Reading Rage: Don’t Make Me Get Out My Red Pen

Posted by sj — December 13, 2012

Dear Self-Published Authors,

Can we chat for a sec? Here, pull up a chair and let me get you some tea. Tea is good for these types of discussions, right? I think so.

Listen. I think we need to have this talk because, quite frankly, many of you are doing this wrong.

No, I’m not talking about how you market yourself and your books (although Susie kind of has you covered in that department), I’m talking about the actual most important part of your book. Your book. Your writing.

Here’s the thing, self-pubs – by failing to properly proofread/edit/RE-READ your book, you’re not only failing your readers, you’re failing yourself as well.

I totally get that not everyone out there paid all the attention in English Class. I understand that you may not have had your very own copy of your Grammar Primer that you carried around with you everywhere because you just LOVED LANGUAGE SO MUCH. Really – I get it, swearsies.

My precioussssssssssss

I’d be willing to bet that you KNOW someone like that, though. I’d put good money on the fact that if you spend any amount of time on the internet AT ALL, you are acquainted with at least a handful of people that are complete and total grammar nerds.

“Oh, but most people don’t notice those things and if they do, they’re TAKING IT TOO SERIOUSLY!”

Okay, fine. Maybe not everyone will notice. Maybe. But enough people will. And those people that notice will likely either review your book, or just give up on you altogether. Because an author that doesn’t care enough about the experience his/her readers have, just doesn’t give a damn at all.

Someone calls typos to your attention? You are self-published, you can have that shit fixed and updated within an hour – for ebooks, anyway. To say that you “don’t have time” and that you’re “too busy” but you’ll “get around to it” is not only lazy, but disrespectful.

You don’t leave the house half dressed or looking like a cheap schlub, so why do you want to send your book out into the world that way?

“ZOMG, THE EDITORS WANT TO KILL MY BABY!”

Stop that shit. Seriously, you stop that right now. A good editor (even a halfway decent editor) doesn’t want to kill your baby, they want to help it be the best it can possibly be. Why don’t you? (And can we stop referring to books as babies? That’s just gross.) You may think you know what’s best for your book, but if your work is full of homonyms and slipped tenses and just straight up WRONG WORDS, you shouldn’t be hitting that publish button.

”I’m an INDIE! Indies don’t need to have their work polished! It ruins that whole INDIE VIBE!”

This totally works. It’s polished AND from (an) Indie. Technically.

Okay, now you’re just asking for a punch in the junk. Again, putting out something that hasn’t been read, re-read, stuck in a drawer (literal or figurative, name your hard drive “drawer” or something, I don’t care) for at least a month, then read again, rewritten and gone through several rounds of edits should NOT BE SOLD. I don’t care if you think you got exactly what you wanted on the first go ’round. Chances are really good that you didn’t. Or that there are areas that need to be clarified/expanded on/removed altogether. Giving yourself this distance from your work will make it better in the long run. Please trust me on this.

An example:

I used to follow the blog of a woman I had much in common with musically. We listened to a lot of the same music and even liked a lot of the same books. She was funny, and even though I thought her posts needed to be proofread sometimes, I still enjoyed much of what she had to say.

Then came the day that she announced she’d written and self-published a book of short stories.

“Whaaaa? She never mentioned that she’d been writing!” I said to myself.

Why had she never mentioned that she’d been writing? Because she had LITERALLY JUST STARTED. She wrote and published this book in less than two weeks. TWO WEEKS! I’m sorry, but that’s just unacceptable. Two weeks is not enough time to perform rewrites or give oneself any sort of distance at all. You can’t be impartial if only two weeks have passed.

It’s lazy, and it’s rude. Yes, rude. You expect people to PAY for something that you can’t be bothered with? No, I’m sorry.

I still followed her, though.

Until 3 weeks later, when she announced that she’d published both another book of short stories AND a novel. Both of which had been written in that same three week period.

Sorry, lady. I’m done. I don’t have time to read the blog of someone who shows zero respect toward potential readers (and CONSUMERS).

It’s that attitude right there that puts so many readers off of self-published work. That “I wrote it, what else do you want from me?” stance is HURTING so many of you.

We read to escape. We read to learn things. We read for enjoyment. We do NOT read to mentally correct your writing.

I mean, unless you’re paying us to do so, amirite? Why should we pay YOU for something that you haven’t dressed up in its Sunday Best?

This showed up under a search for Dressed Up Books. Might die laughing.

We shouldn’t. And we won’t. Or, at the very least I won’t – and not to sound like a posturing asshole, but I’m the kind of person you want reading your books. If I like something, I make sure the WHOLE WORLD knows. I shout it from the figurative rooftops. I tell everyone I know why they NEED TO read this book (I know, I know, I totally fail sneaky-fuckerism, but my method works for me). And isn’t that what you want? For people to be…y’know, reading your work?

TL;DR

I love self-published authors, as long as they go about self-publishing the right way. If you’ve published something yourself I WANT you to succeed. I want as many people to read your book as possible. Unfortunately, many of you are shooting yourselves in your collective feet by approaching the process so cavalierly. There’s a reason books can sometimes take years to come out in the world of the Big Guys. There’s a reason editors have jobs. There’s a reason people look down on a lot of you. Do us all a favour and proofread the hell out of your book to make sure it’s as strong as possible before sending it out. And if someone brings an error to your attention, thank them and take care of it straight away. People will respect and appreciate that. It shows that you CARE ABOUT your readers.

What do you guys think? Am I too picky, or do more self-published authors need to get out their own red pens? How much of a factor is this for you when deciding what to read? Let me know in the comments!

Reading Rage Tuesday: Authors, you don’t need to yell “Fore!” to foreshadow.

Posted by greengeekgirl — August 21, 2012

The caption on Flickr for this image is “John Laing does murder to a golf ball.” JUST LIKE AUTHORS DO MURDER TO FORESHADOWING.

I touched on the topic of today’s Reading Rage a bit when I reviewed The Absolutist by John Boyne. And when I reviewed 11/22/63 by Stephen King. And (in a flattering way) when I reviewed Boleto by Alison Hagy. I realized after last week’s review of The Absolutist that clumsy foreshadowing seems to be a major pet peeve of mine.

Foreshadowing is a literary device; to foreshadow means to drop hints or indistinctly suggest future plot developments. (Wikipedia tells me that this can also be referred to as “adumbrating,” which is a cool word that means foreshadowing in a vague way, or to give a sketchy outline of something.) When done correctly, foreshadowing can create a fine sense of dread, foreboding, curiosity, excitement, lust, anticipation–all things that make you want to keep flipping pages until you get the big payoff, and then maybe have a cigarette.

This not-at-all creepy video with floating heads will explain more about how foreshadowing works.

Good foreshadowing will sometimes slip right by, unnoticed. Other times, it’s front and center, like the witches in Macbeth. (“Fair is foul, and foul is fair …”) What I find that good foreshadowing never is? Predictable and obvious, and I’ve been seeing a rash of both in books I’ve read recently.

There are times when predictable is good–in science, for example. In science, if you (and those who care to fact-check you) can test a hypothesis to the point where you can actually predict behavior based on your model, it becomes a theory–in other words, it’s considered true. Predictability in science is a win! Not so much in fiction, though, which is why people take spoilers so seriously. Would reading the sixth Harry Potter book have been such an emotional roller coaster if we already knew–SPOILERS–that Dumbledore dies, that Snape was a double agent? If Dumbledore had, before setting off with Harry to find the horcrux, visited Professor McGonagall (or whoever), and if Rowling had ended the chapter with “And it would be the last time she ever saw Dumbledore alive”–would we have felt that same punch in the gut when Snape 86′d him?

No. We wouldn’t have. We need that element of surprise to create the same emotional response to a story as we get in real life, where there are no spoilers to warn us about that car accident that’s about to happen, or that run of bad luck we’re about to have. There’s a fine line between foreshadowing and spoiling, and I’ve seen quite a few authors stepping over the lines in ways that didn’t sit well with me.

But Susie, you’re saying. Foreshadowing is hard. It must be hard if I’m doing it wrong. Can you help me? Can you help me foreshadow better?

Well, I can damn sure try.

A few ways to foreshadow without incurring my wrath:

Lay off predictions and forecasting. Imagine, if you will, a scenario where your BFF is a psychic. An actual psychic, not a “Psychic Friend.” Every time you hang out with your friend the psychic, she tells you everything that’s going to happen in advance. Sometimes, this would be really handy–”Make sure you don’t go immediately when the light turns green, someone’s going to run the light”–but I think, after awhile, it would get really annoying. “Your boss is going to bring in doughnuts tomorrow. Surprise!” “Your boyfriend is sending you flowers–roses, although I can’t see if they’re pink or read. Oh, bee tee dubs, he’s proposing.” “That waiter is going to drop all the plates he’s carrying in two minutes.” I would hate having a psychic friend if they couldn’t keep their predicting to themselves–nothing would ever be a surprise anymore, and that would suck.

Pretty sure I’d rather call the Psychic Friends network. At least they aren’t actual psychics.

Of course, if you have a character who is psychic, they would be making some sort of predictions. I think the trick here is to keep the predictions vague enough that they don’t highlight your intentions in bright neon. I just watched an episode of Northern Exposure that used this kind of prediction well; in the beginning, Maggie has a dream that she’s playing Clue with Joel. He’s anxious to leave because he has a plane to catch; Maggie doesn’t want him to go. At the end, he puts on a black fedora; Maggie warns him not to, but he puts it on anyway. This dream uses hints and symbols to create a sense of doom for Joel: they’re playing Clue, which centers around a dead body; the black fedora is supposed to symbolize the death of the person who wears it in a dream. They allude to the plane trip, but because of the context of the Maggie/Joel sexual tension, her begging him to stay comes off as more seductive than warning, especially since she’s wearing a tight red dress and bright red lipstick. Maggie wakes up, disturbed but not sure what the dream means; we feel the same until she has another dream later in the episode that gives us more clues.

Speaking of symbols, these also make good foreshadowing.

Using symbols in a novel can be tricky, of course–used clumsily, they seem hokey and forced. Symbols can, however, make for excellent foreshadowing–especially since they don’t allude directly to the events to come. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald creates an unsettled mood when Gatsby meets Daisy again for the first time:

“We’ve met before,” muttered Gatsby. His eyes glanced momentarily at me, and his lips parted with an abortive attempt at a laugh. Luckily the clock took this moment to tilt dangerously at the pressure of his head, whereupon he turned and caught it with trembling fingers, and set it back in place. Then he sat down, rigidly, his elbow on the arm of the sofa and his chin in his hand.

“I’m sorry about the clock,” he said.

… “It’s an old clock,” I told them idiotically.

I think we all believed for a moment that it had smashed in pieces on the floor.

The clock, in this case, is symbolic, nestled just before talk of how much time has passed since Daisy and Gatsby have seen each other. Gatsby’s righting the clock is also symbolic–not only does he want to “right” the time that has passed in which Daisy got away from him, his careful action also contrasts with the carelessness that Nick attributes to Tom and Daisy later. The word “smashed” is used again at the end, describing the events that resulted in Gatsby’s and Myrtle’s deaths: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” Symbolic foreshadowing can be oh-so-subtle but still create the proper mood or mindset for the reader. The meeting doesn’t go smoothly, and Gatsby’s story ends in tragedy.

Use a smaller event to foreshadow a larger event.

This time, I think we’ll turn to Steinbeck. In Of Mice and Men, Lennie, the mentally-handicapped man that George travels with and cares for, is given a puppy, which he proceeds to pet to death. Later, when Curley’s wife offers to let Lennie stroke her hair, our stomachs tie up in knots–we know what happens when Lennie gets to stroke soft things. Things don’t end well for Curley’s wife–who also foreshadowed Lennie’s death in her own way. She is a poisonous character, flirting with the men one moment and threatening the lynch mob in the next; when Lennie is fully taken in by her sweeter side, we know that the lynch mob can’t be far behind.

Set the mood with atmosphere and tone.

While you may not want to open a book with “It was a dark and stormy night,” using the weather, the setting, and the general tone can help foreshadow without actually giving away plot details. In Japan, seasons are often used to represent the cycle of life; a professor told my Japanese culture class (ten years ago.. eep) that autumn was symbolically used as dying. Spring would obviously be (re)birth. If I wanted to write a story about death, I might put it at the end of summer, especially if it occurred after a long illness (a.k.a, a long, hot, miserable summer without air conditioning. ZOMG see what I did there? I TRANSFERRED FEELINGS TO SET A TONE.) If you don’t want to go quite so philosophical, use a little mood-lighting, or time of day, or an appropriate setting to get your point across.

Foreshadow early.

There’s no point in introducing foreshadowing late in the game. We’re practically on top of the event by this point, so we don’t need any hints–we just need to keep going to get there.

So, readers–have you read any books with obvious foreshadowing lately? Or books with awesome foreshadowing? Does bad foreshadowing take you out of a story? Would you add anything to my foreshadowing tips? Drop those comments like they’re hot!

Reading Rage Tuesday: Goodreads “bullies” and why authors need to stop the crusade.

Posted by greengeekgirl — July 17, 2012

Update #2: One of the targets of the GR Bullies site pointed out, rightfully I think, on Twitter that the backlash from this particular site isn’t focused so much on bad reviews but on the reviewers pointing out bad author behaviors. Per @_Ridley_, “This is not about reviews. The four of us are being punished for publicizing bad author behavior.” Although I did focus on authors responding to reviews, it must be pointed out that other behaviors–like gaming the system by having friends review and like positive reviews to promote your books, spamming and promoting in inappropriate places, and other things that interfere with an honest review community–reflect just as badly on authors; for someone to point out this behavior is a natural consequence of engaging in said behavior.

For someone to tell others not to support an author’s products as a result of the author’s behavior may not sit well with an author, but it’s what we naturally do as consumers. We as consumers don’t like to support products that don’t align with what we think is right, and we have the right to make the incidents known to other consumers so that they can make informed decisions. Thanks to Ridley for clarifying for me what the issues are surrounding the site.

———-

Bullying. It’s a subject that’s been coming up often in the review community lately. Some claim that reviewers who write mean book reviews are bullies. I don’t follow any of this Goodreads drama closely, but I sometimes hear tales of authors who just wanted to make “one little comment” (whether this was a reasonable comment or not surely differs from case to case) and are set upon by bands of marauding reviewers, having abuse spewed at them left and right for “daring” to reply to a bad or nasty review. Then, in the other camp, the reviewers claim that authors shouldn’t be responding at all to their negative reviews, that it hurts the review community and makes people afraid to post honest reviews. Some reviewers say that this practice silences reviewers, thus making the authors bullies. (I agree more or less with the latter assessment–more later.)

The situation has come to a head recently on a site that someone created called Stop the GR [Goodreads] Bullies. On this site, people who swear that they aren’t authors (yeah right) took up the mantle of trying to stamp out “review bullying.” ~~Their methods are weak~~ but unsettling for reviewers everywhere: the person or persons behind the site dug into the social media of reviewers that they consider the worst “bullies,” posting tidbits like real names and spouse’s names, cities where the reviewers live, and even going so far as to track them down on Yelp! to find the real-life places where the reviewers hang out–possibly to incite harassment against the reviewers? I can’t think of any other reason why anybody would need to know where the reviewer likes to get a pizza in order to “stop the bullying.”

Update: In regards to their “weak methods,” which I thought were a bit silly on the part of the site owner (not that the Goodreads users targeted were silly), I was mistaken and I apologize to the people who were targeted for underestimating the situation. One of the reviewers targeted spoke out about her experience, which included a nasty phone call. Apparently, the information-mining and threatening behavior went further than indicated on the website.

Here’s a sample screenshot (click to embiggen) in which I’ve blurred out the identifying information–I know that you can go to the site and see it easily, but I blurred it in case the site gets taken down in the future:

I, and reviewers everywhere, have found this upsetting. The “detective work” done by the operators of the site isn’t exactly stellar: some last names, none of which were particularly hidden; no home addresses (thank stars); and, in the case of the screencap above, a couple of places where the reviewer checked in to eat dinner. These aren’t staggering revelations that are going to cause massive problems for most of these reviewers . . . unless, of course, you throw in a big ol’ dose of crazy, which is why this site goes from laughable to queasy-making. I, myself, am an active Yelper; I keep my personal and private social media somewhat separate, but it wouldn’t take Einstein to find my Yelp! account. Could I, in the future, anger an author so much that they would take a page from the Stop GR Bullies playbook and come after me at my neighborhood coffee shop or the produce aisle of my preferred grocery store? When you get crazy involved, there’s no telling what someone will do. I think it takes a pretty hefty dose of not-being-aware-of-your-own-crazy to make the unironic statement that someone else is a stalker after you’ve just cyberstalked the entirety of their social media.

Authors: if you do, or have in the past, come out in support against Goodreads “bullies,” you need to come full stop and throw that shit in reverse right now, especially in light of this “action” against reviewers. If you don’t believe me, read on.

Authors shouldn’t, under most circumstances, give in to the desire to respond directly to what they feel are “attacks,” even if they go after the author personally. I know, I know–it’s not fair, why should they get to say whatever they want and authors can’t say anything. Authors should be able to defend themselves, right? Freedom of speech and all that. What if the bad review hurts their sales, etc. Authors, just for a moment, I want you to take off your author hat and put on your consumer hat.

Got it on? All snug? Okay, let’s explore this for a minute.

I’m going to use an example from Yelp!, from a business in my hometown. I blurred out the identifying information, once again because the owner or reviewer might decide to change their response in the future. The review:

Click to embiggen.

So, this review isn’t terrible. It doesn’t compare to some of the nasty book reviews I’ve seen. It could, however, definitely dissuade a few people from trying their products, even though the business has otherwise great reviews. Here’s his response to the above review:

Click to embiggen.

While his response isn’t terribly nasty, despite being a bit passive-aggressive, do you see how condescending it sounds to answer a negative review of your work–even if you think you’re in the right? And do you notice where he made a mistake, assuming she waited four months to eat a brownie at all because she mentions a four-month timeline twice? (She clearly ate some of the brownies when she got them, then stuck them in the fridge and didn’t touch them again for four months–the earlier four months reference meant four months after she learned the product existed.) He basically says that her opinion of his business is wrong, chides her for doing it wrong and then for writing her honest review even after they gave her a refund (which, he shouldn’t hang the refund over her head as a tool to keep her from writing a review), and turns the reply into a pro-his-business advertisement at the bottom . . . which gives no credit to the average consumer for having even a modicum of intelligence.

In my opinion, he comes off like a giant douche; in his mind, he probably thinks that he sounds extremely professional and that this reply was a good damage control move. His reply to the review shows that he doesn’t respect the right of consumers to voice their negative opinions about his product, even if the opinions are erroneous; by “correcting” her, he makes it clear that he thinks her opinion is invalid, which is a no-no if you run a business. He also proves that he doesn’t respect the basic intelligence of consumers to figure out that all products, even great ones that have dozens of 5-star reviews, will get bad reviews by people who don’t understand the product or don’t find it to their personal taste, and that we can generally figure it out. Like I said, he comes off like a douche, which really makes me want to shop there. (Not.)

What does this have to do with Goodreads reviews?

Readers. Are. Consumers.

As an author, you’re not just an artist. Your book is not just an expressive work. The minute you decide you sell your book to the public, you’re also a business person; that book is now a product. Despite talk of “fairness” between reviewer and author, the fact that authors are selling a product they want people to buy puts reviewers and authors immediately on unequal ground. Authors, even if they don’t do it primarily for the money, have a profit motive and reviewers don’t. Of course authors want only positive reviews out there. Authors want to sell books. So, authors, when you try to argue against a review–even if you feel it is “abusive”–the potential consumers of your books see this in a wholly different light than you sticking up for yourself. They see it as authors trying to artificially inflate the reputation of their book by silencing, persuading, or discrediting reviewers who give them bad reviews. Nobody likes to feel like they’re being tricked.

As an author, you don’t want to be seen as the kind of person who would silence reviewers for your own gain; yet, by insisting that reviews should be “fair” or that reviewers are “bullying,” you are expressing a desire to exert some sort of control over what reviewers say about your books. It doesn’t work that way. We want all of the reviews to stand because we want to be able to make our own choices. We want to be able to decide if we think a reviewer is full of shit. Defending your book against bad reviews makes readers suspicious about what you’re trying to hide from us.

Another reason not to organize against “bullying” reviewers? Goodreads has an abuse policy! Here’s their abuse policy:

If you notice abusive content on the site, you can usually click a small “flag abuse” link to alert the Goodreads community managers. Here are the guidelines we use to decide whether or not to delete content that’s been flagged as abusive:

We do not delete:

Content for bad language alone.

A review because it has a negative opinion of the book.

Spoilers (we may flag reviews as spoilers if we can tell, though)

We do delete:

Extremely offensive content, such as pro-Nazi, pornography, child abuse, etc.

Reviews or posts that are extremely off-topic and irrelevant.

Reviews or posts that contain a slanderous personal attack on another member. Content that is argumentative is fine, so the post must be extreme in its malicious attack on another member.

The account of any member who is a scammer or an outright spammer. We make sure to check if they use the site first.

Note that these are only guidelines, not rules. If you accidentally flag something as abuse and it clearly wasn’t abusive, don’t worry, we can tell!

–accessed on Goodreads.com on 7/17/12

So, you don’t even have to take it up with reviewers personally if someone writes an “abusive” review. If a review is truly abusive? Flag it. Goodreads will handle it like a boss. If they don’t handle it? It means that they don’t consider it abusive, and at that point, drop it. Bitch about it privately to friends, write about it in your diary, but for the love of Pete, drop it. Goodreads is not your site. You don’t get to control what is considered abusive or not there; further, I imagine that Goodreads has hired professionals to ensure that they have an abuse policy that fits with what should be done in a review community, if only to avoid lawsuits. If the reviews were going to cause actionable harm against you, you can bet that Goodreads would remove it because they don’t want to get sued.

Notice that the policy says that reviewers who use “bad language” won’t get automatically deleted. Reviewers are free to curse and swear and be (almost) as foul as they want when reviewing. It’s just the way of things. You can’t control it. For more information on why these reviews really aren’t abusive bullying, see the awesome post over at Dead White Guys.

In summation: Because authors have a profit motive, any attempt to fight against negative reviews–even if they “know” they’re in the right–is likely to backfire. Consumers want to decide on their own what reviews are valid and will probably look at any interference with suspicion. Your customers–aka, readers–are smart enough to figure out if any review, good or bad, has merit or not. Goodreads doesn’t consider reviews that contain bad language or that are argumentative to be “abusive;” the reviews are on their site, so authors would do well to abide by their rules. Also, authors look like a bunch of whinypants when they complain about bullies on Goodreads–not to mention, being even tangentially in agreement with the Stop GR Bullies site is creepy. Learn how to take it on the chin, authors. You’re really, really, really not doing yourselves any favors.

Am I right? Am I wrong? Does the Stop GR Bullies website give you the heebie-jeebies? Do you think that reviews need decorum police (beyond extreme cases)? If you could only take one book with you on a trip to a distant planet, which one would you take? Drop it all in the comments below!