I have been up to a lot over the past few weeks in the way of writing this book. It all stemmed from a desperate need for feedback. I have 8 chapters in the bag and the only person who read the entire thing was my husband. Don’t get me wrong – he is absolutely awesome and his feedback has been invaluable, but I just needed more of it. So where does one go to get such needed commentary? A few different places…
One of the first things I did was check out a website called Meetup.com. For those of you not familiar with this site, it is a place where people can create or join groups on pretty much any area of interest that someone can think of. I went on the site looking for writing groups where I could connect with other authors and we could talk about each others’ work to make us all better at the craft. I was able to find a group in my area and I joined.
It was an interesting experience. I live in a fairly rural area, so the group has so far consisted of only about 5-6 people…and they are quite an odd cast of characters. We meet every other week in a local auto body shop and we each read a segment of our work and provide feedback. It’s been okay so far, but it’s difficult to get really substantial and useful commentary when it is based on only a small segment of the book at a time, and occurs so infrequently. I really needed some folks to read the entire set of chapters and let me know if I was headed in the right direction.
My next step was to enroll in an online course through Writers Digest University called Writing the Paranormal Novel. The course is lead by a published author, so I was very excited to get input from someone knowledgeable and experienced. The cost was $199 for a 6-week course and there is an online forum available to post assignments, share your work and collaborate with the other students in the class.
I am 4 weeks into the course and have found the reading assignments to be very helpful (our “textbook” is Writing the Paranormal Novel by Stephen Harper). I have also gotten some useful advice from the other students on the assignments I have posted. Again, they only consist of 500-700 word excerpts from my book, but the comments have been sound. The biggest drawback is that the professor has been almost entirely absent. He has been weeks behind on grading our assignments and hasn’t been actively engaged in the dialog…and hearing from him was the entire reason I signed up for the course. But I do still think it was a worthwhile step to take in this journey.
I then turned to Facebook for beta readers. I posted inquiries on my FB page, but this didn’t net me much because I am still building my network and didn’t get any takers. So I reached out to my sisters who run the Love Between the Sheets book blog and tried to leverage their network. This worked out much better for me and I was able to find a few beta readers. The feedback is still coming in, but so far the consensus is that I’m on the right track.
Here is some feedback I just received on my last graded assignment from the online writing course. The assignment was to write a scene of conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist.
A good action scene and the dialogue crackles. Your protagonist is good at martial arts and other combat stuff. I think you have a real talent for action. Lots of tension, jeopardy, conflict, and drama comes out of this scene, but it is not melodramatic. Possibly some of the dialogue is too elaborate for the situation, one person having a choke hold on another. I think if you pare down the talking a little, that problem might go away. Make the exchanges short and terse. There isn't usually any long-winded sentiments in a situation like that.
Otherwise, your writing really flows. The personalities are thrown in sharp relief. This is a really terrific story you have here, and it really engages the reader's attention. It's a good old pulp fiction tale that could have been in Thrilling Wonder Stories or Unknown or any of those science fantasy magazines.
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