The authors bring 4 to 6 double spaced pages with enough copies for everyone at the group, usually 10 to 12. Each author has a chance to read his/her work to the group and receive on the spot critique. Meetings are quite informal, and chaotic at times. Your first time you might want to just observe.
Some of What We've Learned
Below is a set of suggestions that the group has put together to help codify some of what we've learned about writing better. We don't claim that any of this is especially profound, but we keep seeing the same issues over and over again, and providing the same advice. (Of course, this could just show that we are limited in what we can spot and advise on.)
The following rules are in a mostly arbitrary order. Feel free to offer suggestions on how to convey these ideas can be conveyed better or how to improve this document can be improved in other ways.
It's about people! Even the most technically accurate science fiction story is boring if you don't have interesting characters who are engaged in some sort of conflict. All good literature is ultimately about people and their interactions with each other and the world they live in. This should probably be called Dave's rule, since it appears to be his favorite.
Show, don't tell. Flat narration is boring except in small quantities, and maybe even then. Whenever possible, move the story along through action and dialog rather than by exposition.
At least, that's one way to look at it. Narration can provide you a way to quickly get from one place to another, a way to convey information that is needed, but isn't important enough to show through action or dialog.
What you show, and what you tell about, give the reader clues about what is most important to your story. Spend your energy showing the pieces that are the most important, you can use narration to fill in the gaps.
Trust your reader. One of the most common mistakes we see, and make ourselves, is giving the reader too much information. It's all right to let the reader figure out things for himself. That's part of the joy of reading.
Dialog is easier to read than narration. This goes with the rule above. Dialog breaks up the page, making it easier to read. When you' are tempted to put in a block of narration, try to find a way to introduce the same information through dialog.
Show the reader what is going on in the character's head. Remember, it's about people and how they are reacting to things. You have to actually show those reactions for the reader to get to know the characters in your story. While you might know what's going on in your character's heads, you have to make sure you give the reader enough information to find out what you know.
Try to keep a single point-of-view for each scene. Changing point of view in the middle of a scene can make it harder for the reader to follow the story.
Actually, how you use POV is an important decision. The most common way of writing stories is third person omniscient, where you tell the story and dip into the characters thoughts and feelings as needed.
It's also possible to write an entire story from a single POV, or from a very limited set of POVs. Just make sure your reader can easily tell what POV you are using at any given moment.
One of the places where it is easiest to mess up is when you switch from the narrator's POV to the POV of one of the characters.
At the very least, put in a new paragraph each time the point-of-view changes. Otherwise the reader will get confused. Changing POV requires a new paragraph, just like when you are changing speakers.
Give the reader a reason to turn the page. If you carefully examine the books you've liked the most, you'll find that you constantly get little mysteries that are created by information that's withheld from the reader. Often those little mysteries are solved just a couple of pages later, but this device is part of what keeps readers' interest high.
Avoid repetition, especially when it means repeating the same word over and over. This applies to pronouns and proper names as well. Following this rule often helps you follow the next one about varying your sentence structure.
Vary your sentence structure. Lots of beginning, and not-so-beginning, writers make the mistake of using the same structure for most, if not all sentences. It tends to cause a metronome effect in the reader's head, sending them promptly to sleep.
Read your work out loud to yourself, or to a patient spouse. Doing so will help you find awkward passages and other problems that are easy to miss.
Editing means cutting, not adding more. A good edit should reduce the size of the text. If you're still adding to the text, you might be rewriting, but you aren't really editing. More often than you want to think about, you'll have to cut paragraphs of wonderful prose because they don't work or bog the story down. It's hard, but necessary.
Vary the voices of your characters. Each character comes to the situation with a different history and outlook on the world. Their speech should reflect that. I'm not talking about accents or dialects, but about word choices and sentence construction. When you've done it right, the reader always knows who's talking just by how they are phrasing things.
The key here is knowing your characters. Know what each character wants out of each scene and make sure you communicate that to the reader.
Watch out for Alexisms. Alexisms, as we call them, because they are frequently spotted by Alex, are examples of poor word choice, ambiguous phrases, and places where it's hard to determine who or what a pronoun refers to. They happen to the best of us.
Describe what's going on around your characters while they are conversing. This gives you a chance to add flavor to your narrative and provide those little touches that sell the story to the reader.
Don't forget that there are five senses. Use as many as you can. Scents and sounds can be very powerful at evoking memories
Watch your verb tenses. Changing tense in the middle of a paragraph is a common mistake. It's also something that can happen when you do a lot of editing, especially cut and paste type editing.
Don't be too writerly. Don't work too hard at your writing. Let your own voice come through. That doesn't happen through endless edits, but through endless writing. The more you write, the easier it is to let the language flow through you naturally. That doesn't mean you won't have to edit your material and rewrite parts:, just that you'll be writing in your own particular style, not in some manner taught to you by a book.
Get the rabbit down the hole. This is usually described in a much more pedestrian, and non-Dave way, like: capture the reader's interest quickly. But it actually goes a bit beyond that. If you pay attention to well-made movies, you'll see that all of the elements you need to understand the plot show up in the first reel. That's what you've got to do with your story as well. You can always fill in back story later. Get your reader into the thick of the action, where the fun is, as quickly as possible.
Ellipses vs. Dashes. We know that the correct way to indicate interrupted speech is th use of an em-dash, however there are many examples in literature of authors using ellipses for the same purpose. Raise this issue at your peril, it's been beaten to death many times.
You are the Writer, take everything we suggest with a grain of salt. You'll get good advice, bad advice, and stuff that's way off in left field. Sometimes we'll all have different ideas how something should be done. It's up to you to decide what to use and what to discard. Don't take anything said by anyone in the group too seriously. Ultimately, you are the one who decides what is best for your work.
Break all these rules, but not at the same time. Most successful writers know all these rules, and break one or more of them. You don't get to be a great or even a good writer by following the rules. Obviously, you might think, basic punctuation is sacred, until you remember e e cummings.