You Glare, Shut Up, But Cant Stop Yourself From Hugging Him. He Stiffens, But Then Wraps His Arms Around

You glare, “Shut up,” but can’t stop yourself from hugging him. He stiffens, but then wraps his arms around you, “Wow I never thought I’d miss such a little brat so much…” You laugh, but it’s a little strangled as tears pour down your cheeks. Jr holds you for a little while, letting you cry, then pulls you gently off him, laughing, “You’re getting my shirt all wet…” You laugh too, “Sorry…” You sniff, “I’m so glad you’re ok…” Jr laughs, “Me too…” You wipe your eyes and laugh again, relief making you light hearted. Jr’s dad clears his throat. Jr looks at him, “Can she come in?” His dad glares, “You want me to let a STRANGER in MY house?” Jr glares, “Yes. She’s a friend of mine. I trust her.” His dad snaps, “You know what trust does? It gets you killed…” Jr snaps back, “Yeah? And what about YOUR friends? Do they just NOT COUNT?” The door opens and you jump, looking over at it. A woman walks out. She has black hair with purple streaks and a cold expression. You shrink a little. Somehow, she’s scarier than Jr’s dad. She glances at you, then Jr, “Jr, honey, what’s going on?” Honey doesn’t sound very friendly coming off her tongue… Jr shrinks a little, “I… Wanted to let my friend in…” She gives you a once over. Unspoken words sear your tongue. Maybe if you were braver you would say something. But you're not, so you stand muted, just staring at her. She turns back to Jr, “Why? You’ve seen her already. You’re not THAT close are you?” Jr studies the ground, “No… But I haven’t seen her in a long time. She probably has a lot of questions…” Oh yes you do… A LOT. Like how did his dad manage to get him out of there? And how does he stand his mom? Suddenly, him being such a jerk makes a little more sense… His mom laughs, “Questions about what? Son?” But son sounds like an insult, and now you’re getting angry. Jr looks up, glaring at his mom, “Like EVERYTHING. We haven’t seen each other in MONTHS! I haven’t seen YOU in months! Does the first interaction we have HAVE to be a fight?!” His mom softens, “You’re right. I’m sorry. Let her in.” His dad looks at her, “WHAT?” She glares, “I said 'let her in'.” His dad frowns a little, but shrugs, “Alright…” ‘Nice to know who’s in charge here…’ You think to yourself as you walk in.

You stare, speechless. He’s a CHANGELING? So many secrets everywhere. It makes you question everyone you see, everyone you know. He always seemed so… Normal… Anger suddenly ignites in you. ‘Does EVERYONE have powers except me?!' You feel so small and helpless. Why the Hell do THEY get powers? Why do YOU get stuck with this stupid, weak body. You don’t get ANY powers, you get sick, just like any other human, you even had ASTHMA as a child! You can’t even REGENERATE! You have to where a stupid CHARM to keep magical illnesses away because you're SO UNMAGICAL THAT YOUR BODY CAN’T HANDLE THEM! You really want to punch the wall. But because you AREN’T STRONG LIKE EVERY OTHER PERSON IN THE WORLD it would break your hand. And since you CAN’T HEAL QUICKLY LIKE EVERY OTHER PERSON IN THE WORLD it would last for forever. That just frustrates you more and you stomp around for a while, just letting yourself be angry. Why is life so unfair? Why do YOU have to be weak? Why do YOU have to be human? Why can’t YOU turn into a fucking BIRD and just FLY over the stupid wall? Jr’s brother suddenly lands in front of you, “Let’s go.” You blink, “What? Where’s Jr? Why are you back so soon? I thought we were getting him? What’s going on?”

I have to agree. I write and many of my works are BASED around the complexity of human nature and how indecisive "right" and "wrong" are. I come from a Christian family and had considered writing Christian books, but ran into the same block. With Christian books there was this expectation for it to be perfect and clean and pure. It's simply unrealistic. I don't believe in completely good characters or completely bad characters. All of my characters have some flaw or another. I don't believe in a perfect world and the most gripping and intriguing stories I've read have been about people with demons and internal struggles of their own. Personaly, I think the ideology of a perfect character is, well, childish. The world is so complex. You can't put people in categories of "good" and "bad". Maybe a few, but the majority is in the smudgy grey area in between. And those are the ones I'm most interested in. How they think, how they act, how would they react in this situation? You don't know because they're not automatically going to do what's "right" or what's "wrong". They have their own ideals, instincts, and impulses. That's what makes us human and that's beautiful and interesting and I'll never stop being amazed by how complex people are as a whole.

I’m really nervous to write about this but

When I was younger, I read a lot of Christian books. In high school, I wrote a paper on Christian literature, specifically, what it is about Christian literature that makes it often flatter and less compelling than other genres. I’m not saying it all sucks, but I am saying that somehow, I’ve noticed through my life that Christian books suck more than their secular counterparts on average. I found them to often be juvenile, one-dimensional and derivative, and I didn’t think it had to be that way. I didn’t think that being Christian made a book bad, but I observed that the genre was stuffed with a lot of bad books, and the bad books were far worse than bad books outside the category. 

I’m not intending to start a discussion about Christian literature; I’m not alone in feeling this way or noticing this phenomenon if you believe it’s a thing. Online, you can read a lot of articles discussing the same thing: that Christian lit tends to be lower quality. So I wanted to know why. 

To answer the question, I looked at interviews of Christian authors and submission guidelines for Christian publishers. I wished to understand the intent behind writings in the genre and what might lead to the difference in quality. And what I found was very illuminating. 

Essentially, many Christian authors and publishers feel that: 

1. their books have a responsibility to promote morality in their readers, and authors are somewhat responsible for the moral fiber of their readers  

2. there has to be a strong delineation between “moral” and “immoral” behavior in books 

3. many topics either can’t be addressed at all or must be very clearly pointed out as “bad” if they are 

4. certain topics and ideas ought to be brought up in a book and pointed out as good as part of the purpose or meaning of the book

The conclusion I came to was that these ideas were resulting in flat, one-dimensional characters and dull plots. The responsibility of promoting moral integrity, and having to make absolutely sure that nothing you write could condone or promote immoral behavior, was of paramount importance. 

And what that caused was preachiness, one-dimensionality, a lack of compelling moral conflict, flat characters, and intellectually numbing stories. 

Why am I talking about this? 

Because a lot of the ideas I’ve been seeing spread around in writeblr and in the online writing and reading communities as a whole are identical. 

A lot of the posts I see online now about writing are almost exact echoes of the ideas I wrote about in my paper. 

Nowadays, I see posts constantly urging people to think about why they want to write their stories, and whether they are good or helpful or edifying. I see authors being slammed for not condemning characters with disgusting beliefs hard enough. I see people being dragged for liking characters that are not morally and ideologically pure. I see posts telling people to approach any difficult topic with extreme caution and crisp, unmistakable condemnation. Media is widely vilified when its fandom becomes toxic or nasty, assumed to be at fault for the moral fiber of its fans.

I see authors and publishers advertising their books as “feminist”, as if that makes any sense at all (is the author feminist? Does it just handle female characters well? Are the characters feminist? Is it focused on women’s issues?). I open a book and see poorly-integrated lines of dialogue dropping ideas about prejudice or gender that seem like a Tumblr post or part from a nonfiction book on racism inserted directly into a character’s mouth. I don’t think feminism is bad. I think feminism is great. And I don’t think talking about prejudice or gender is bad. I think these things need to be talked about. I definitely don’t think these ideas can’t be expressed in fiction. On the contrary; I think fiction is one of the best ways of expressing important ideas. 

But, I see some kind of preoccupation with the ideas your writing promotes, prominently including the idea that you must promote and you must condemn certain ideas, and that everything you write makes a statement about morality, and you’re responsible for edifying your audience and making them better people. And it’s really, really familiar. 

The conclusion that my paper came to is that you can’t clean up the reality of humanity. You can’t make the messiness of existence crisp and clear so you can feed your readers the ideas you want them to absorb bite by bite. You can’t have light without darkness, and you can’t have either without shades of gray. 

In life, racist people will not always be obviously horrible. (Even though sometimes they are…) Sometimes they will be people who love their spouses and kids and are generally “nice” and adopt dogs and love kittens, and they will still be racist. Sometimes even “good” people will say or do racist things and have to realize their mistakes and then make mistakes again and have to realize THOSE mistakes. Sometimes getting out of ideas you grew up hearing is long and difficult and you have to catch your brain repeating them even years after you tried to change. Racism can be passive, subtle, it can exist in people who are “good” in some ways. Sometimes people make progress toward changing but still have problems. How do we show this in books? Is it an author’s responsibility to solve all this and sort out everything? 

Is it racist for a racist character who is seeking redemption  to not have entirely overcome their prejudices by the end of a book? Is it the author’s responsibility to make sure racist behavior in the book is clearly labeled? Is it a reflection of the author’s views if a character says something racist? 

Note that I’m asking these questions. I’m definitely open to and would like perspectives from other people on this, people of color foremost and especially. The idea I am exploring is, does giving an author the responsibility of making sure their book clearly and unequivocally promotes certain ideas and condemns others impair them? Could it make it more difficult to address the ideas they want to? 

When I analyzed Christian literature, the conclusion I had to reach was that it does. I found christian lit as a whole to be excessively black-and-white, simplistic, shy of tackling anything with complexity, and almost dishonest about human nature. Is there an analogy in this situation? 

In life, relationships aren’t always pure and unproblematic. People don’t fall neatly into “people who have never done anything to hurt their partner” and abusers. People can sometimes have problems in their relationships and have to change their behaviors to preserve their relationships. Relationships have difficulties and arguments. Sometimes a person needs to change or become better in order to have a healthy relationship. Sometimes a relationship can be unhealthy without being abusive, and sometimes relationships are abusive. Must the author draw lines about “toxicity” and “problematicness” in super clear neon spray paint so people know the difference? 

These arguments come up about all sorts of morality-related things in books. And on some level I agree, you shouldn’t promote racism, and you should be careful and sensitive about portraying some things, but I am also extremely apprehensive about certain aspects of this culture that has sprung up. 

It’s really almost totally identical to what I noticed about Christian literature, and imo there it has done a lot of damage. I don’t really believe that authors are totally past being responsible for damage their ideas do, quite the opposite. But there is this expectation of dictating what’s bad and what’s good on a very clear level. 

That was part of the problem i noticed in Christian literature, the teaching of ideas rather than forcing readers to consider them. 

I’m not trying to talk over anybody at all, esp with things about racism, I’m white after all. And I really urge and ask my white followers and people-who-see-this-post to listen to the opinions, ideas and feelings of people of color who reply on the topic of racism. What I really want is everybody to consider this: is it an author’s job to make sure all “bad” and “good” things in their book are clearly delineated? If not, what is the best practice for an author? If not, might this cause problems? The culture I am seeing in the writeblr community seems to hold that it is, and rejection of redemption for villains, morally ambiguous situations and characters, addressing of complicated topics, and portraying anything “bad” without making absolutely certain that it’s clearly wrong is growing. 

Personally, I have a bad feeling about it. 

Thoughts? 

I just finished my first novel! The feeling is indescribable. Do you have any advice on editing, big or small?

Dear fate-and-chance,

Congratulations on joining THE ENDTIMES CLUB. 

Editing is basically the place the novels become novels — it’s impossible to overstate how the rough draft is only 10% of the process. Here is a pie chart demonstrating the overall gist. It’s messed up because I aggressively and deliberately misunderstand math at all times and also because I traced a ramekin full of discarded date pits on my desk for the outside, but you get the idea.

What I’m trying to say is: be prepared to spend the same amount of time editing as writing. 

GET CRITIQUE PARTNERS

This is the first step to editing. You need outside eyes. You don’t know if you have written the story you intended to tell until readers tell you that you’ve succeeded. A story is not complete until it has an audience. 

You can find some here. 

BIG PICTURE EDITS

It’s important to do your edits in the right order: there’s no point focusing on word choice when you don’t know if you’re going to keep a scene or not. What you’re looking for in big picture edits are

• pacing (is it taking you forever to get to your inciting incident? Are you leaping into breathless action so fast that the reader doesn’t have time to get emotionally invested? Is the general shape correct — do your stakes both emotional and physical slowly ratchet up til the climax?)

• clarity (do we know what the point of the book is? Do we understand who the main character is? Do we understand the stakes of the magic or the mystery or love story, etc?)

• momentum (are your scenes stacked in the correct order, or do you move backwards in stakes or have two scenes that essentially do the same thing?)

• consistency of character (are your characters consistent and inevitable? can we predict their behavior enough to be shocked if they do something out of character for once?)

• correctness of cast (do you have two characters who do the same thing in the plot? do you need to delete or add POVs or characters to your cast?)

• simplicity of execution (does the reader understand where they are in the plot? can they guess they are halfway through when they are halfway through, etc.?)

Title a document “outtakes.doc” and throw stuff that’s not working into it. You can always come back to them if you need them, but it’s often easier to see what you’re doing with the chaff removed.

LINE EDITS

Line edits are when you stop having to move big chunks around and can start fixing things within your newly edited shape. That is when you can start looking at adjusting pacing, tone, and momentum on a line level. Example:

Original sentence: The box rolled out of the truck and hit the ground.

Speed things up: Wham. The box, dropped. Tssss. Glass, exploded.

Slow things down: She snatched at air, and felt the whisper of the box sliding against her fingertips. The sound of the bottles exploding on the pavement echoed down the alley.

Ground us: Everything changed the moment that box hit the asphalt.

Tell us about a character: Ten years before, she’d been watching a box fall from through her mother’s hands in just this way. MORE ANECDOTE HERE 

COPYEDITS

This is the part where you actually fix typos and continuity errors, and it’s the least important part of editing. This is where you can enlist a non-bookish friend to feel useful, because the less invested you are in the book, the easier they are to spot. 

IN CONCLUSION

You could write entire books about revision — someone probably has — but this might be a start.

Happy wording.

urs,

Stiefvater

His mother interrupts, “Speaking of which, Jr, go take a shower and change. You’re disgusting and you’re getting filth all over my couch…” Jr gets up immediately, “Sorry… Come on…” You blink, “You’re going to take a SHOWER. I’m NOT coming with you.” Jr rolls his eyes, “You can hang in my room 'til I get out, just come on…” You glare. He frowns, “Please…” You sigh and get up, “Fine. But if you walk out naked, or with a towel on, or without a shirt-” He laughs, “I get it! I’m not…” He heads down the hall. You follow, “Where is your room?” He slips in a door, “Right here.” You stop, blinking. You’re not sure WHAT you had been expecting, but it’s definitely not this… His room is…. Not much bigger than yours…. There’s a bed, a dresser, and a closet. There’s not even a bedside table or a lamp. Admittedly, the bed itself is nice. It’s a good size, with thick covers and soft pillows, but even that isn’t as expensive as you would have thought it would be. Nothing in here is even name brand. You always figured all rich people had name brand EVERYTHING… You frown, “Where’s the built in bathroom? Aren’t you supposed to, like, have one connected to every room or something?” Jr laughs, “What? No. Why would I need my own bathroom?” You look at him, “I… Don’t know… Because your…. Rich?...” Jr laughs again, “Just because my parents are rich doesn’t mean they’ve doused me with lavish everything…” He goes to the dresser and starts pulling out clothes. You watch, “They could at least give you something better than an old, wore out jacket…” He turns and glares, “If I WANTED something different I could have asked for it. I liked that jacket.” You lift your hands in surrender, “Sorry for mentioning it… Grab your clothes so you don’t have an excuse to come back in here naked…” Jr smirks at that and finishes pulling out his pants and underwear. You find yourself looking away. You hear him open his closet door and some ruckus as he jerks a shirt off a hanger, then he walks over to you. You look at him. He pauses, “You can go in you know… Make yourself comfy. I don’t mind if you sit on my bed. There’s really no where else to sit anyway…” And with that, he’s gone. You stare after him. Why is he suddenly being so nice? Is it because he’s in familiar territory, or did that enclosure change him? You shrug to yourself and go to his bed. Guess now all there is to do is wait…

You sit on his bed and stare around his room. It’s so simple it’s almost sad. The only thing that decorates it is a picture on his dresser. It’s a picture of him and his brother. He has an arm slung over his shoulder and is laughing. His brother is smiling, cheeks red. He looks like he wants to hide, though he also looks happy. You smile. They both look happy. The door opening makes you jump. You look at the door and are surprised to find Jr there, fully dressed… You smirk, “Wow, you actually came dressed!” He smirks back, “I mean, I could go do it again and come back naked. I wouldn’t mind…” You throw a pillow at him, “I will LEAVE.” He grins and comes over, climbing on the bed. You scoot back to give him room. He sits cross legged, “Ok. Ask.” You nod, “How long have you been a werewolf?” “I was born one.” You frown, “But your brother said you were bit…” Jr snorted, “Well he’s a little liar.” You frown, “Oh. Well then, why isn’t HE a werewolf? Ya’ll are related…” Jr shrugs, “The werewolf bloodline isn’t indefinite. Not everyone is born a werewolf just cuz their parents are. Besides, my mom’s not a werewolf, so our blood's not even pure…” You nod, “So your dad’s the werewolf? Was he born one?” Jr shakes his head, “No. He was bit.” You nod, “Do you turn by the full moon?” Once again, he shakes his head, “No. Well yes, but we can learn not to. I don’t. Neither does my father.” You nod again, “Ok. Have you ever bit anyone?” Jr rolls his eyes, “NO. I’m not a monster…” You lift your hands, “Ok, I was just wondering. Has your dad?” “No!” Jr glares. You scoot a little further back. Jr presses his lips together and glares at you. You say, “Have you always had such a bad temper?” You know you’re just feeding the fire, but you can’t stop it from coming out. Much to your surprise, Jr laughs, “Yes. Since I was a baby.” You say, “Why do you always act like such a jerk?” Jr shrugs, “Because I can? Nothing’s gonna happen to me. Besides, the world's fucked with me enough. I think I have a bit of a right…” You glare, “No one has a right. You get what you get. Being mean isn’t going to change that.” He flashes a grin, “Keep telling yourself that baby girl.” You glare, “Don’t call me that.” Jr smirks, “Or what?” “Or I’ll slap you,” you bite out. Jr shrugs, “Whatever. Do you have any more questions?” You glare. And here you were, thinking he was starting to be nice… You should have known better. He’ll always be the same jerk you found on the streets. You say, “Yeah. How do you stand your mom?” Jr laughs again, “Barely. She’s where I get it from, haven’t you noticed?” You snap, “You say that like it’s not a bad thing! You shouldn’t be MEAN to people! Why is it SO HARD to be nice to people?” Jr crosses his arms, “PEOPLE AREN’T NICE. Why am I required to be nice to people who are just going to turn around and call me a monster?!” He bites his cheek, looking away. Ha. Got him. You watch him, “That touched a nerve a little bit.” Jr glares at you, “Are you done?” You nod, “Yeah. I am.” “Then get out.” You get up and walk out. He stays seated, not even watching you leave the room. Your heart is hammering wildly for some reason. You don’t know whether you’re terrified or excited… His parents watch you as you exit the house. As soon as you’re out you run for town. You have the urge to laugh, but you also kind of want to cry. You’re not sure whether to be excited that you finally got SOMETHING real from him, or sad that he has to have such a difficult life…