The Huge Mistake You’re Probably Making in Your Novel
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- Опубліковано 25 чер 2024
- Once you’ve gotten your story down on the page, it can be extremely difficult to look at your work objectively and determine whether it has the impact you want it to have. In today’s video, I reveal one of the biggest mistakes I see authors make in their book manuscripts so you can recognize and correct it in your own writing. We'll discuss how this mistake typically manifests in a draft of a story and walk through examples of how you might revise the material to have a stronger impact on the reader.
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MORE WRITING ADVICE:
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Top 5 New Writer Mistakes from a PROFESSIONAL BOOK EDITOR: • Top 5 New Writer Mista...
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ABOUT ME:
My name is Alyssa Matesic, and I’m a professional book editor with nearly a decade of book publishing and editorial experience. Throughout my career, I’ve held editorial roles across both sides of the publishing industry: Big Five publishing houses and literary agencies. The goal of this channel is to help writers throughout the book writing journey-whether you're working on your manuscript or you're looking for publishing advice.
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I swear you got ESP or something 😅 every time I get a rejection on a full, you publish a video that clarifies the agent's issues with my work. Thank you!!
Alfred Hitchcock taught that the AUDIENCE should know critical information that the characters do NOT know, and this builds suspense. Another excellent video, Alyssa.
True, although Hitchcock was talking about movies, which are essentially third person pov and therefore make it easier to pull off dramatic irony without the viewer feeling cheated. With a book that tries to close the narrative distance, it's trickier to pull off dramatic irony (unless there are multiple pov's, etc).
He made very particular types of genre stories, his advice is similarly particular
@@futurestoryteller Actually, he is speaking to a category of writing - Suspense. If my goal is to write a suspenseful scene in my novel (regardless of genre) I can follow this advice and withhold critical information from the fictional characters while the informed reader sweats it out.
@@cjpreach This is not the only way to create suspense.
@@futurestoryteller Okay. But it is the essential nature of suspense. Any technique that accomplishes angst in the audience will do. Thanks for your thoughts. Much appreciated.
Calling out “keeping secrets” is so helpful - I’ve been chewing on this idea that readers care about ACTION, not INFORMATION, and that the suspense or tension that keeps a reader moving through a story is about action and choices, not about revelation (although revelation gives context to choices, it’s not particularly satisfying in and of itself).
Your timing with this video was perfect, Alyssa. I'd just written a scene I knew was crap, a character witnessing something I'd already written about, but I didn't know how to go through the action without retelling. Now I realize I need to show my character's response to the action, not repeat the action itself. Whew, thanks!
So glad you found the video helpful, Lea! Thanks for commenting 😊
Thank you for that. I strongly agree that an author has to minimise reader deprivations, particularly time and place deprivations. The more the reader is actually there the more the reader gets the power of the story without it being filtered by time and distance. That's one of the many reasons why film is so strong - it takes you there, you can feel it as though you're actually experiencing it. A novel is an artificial construct. The trick is to write such that the reader does not feel these boundaries but lives it in the now - as though for real.
Thanks Alan. This helps a lot.
@@mageprometheus Glad I could help.
This is exactly what my beta readers said about my first book! Mostly the last two points.
But I revised it accordingly and now the feedback came back very positive!
BEST info you’ve ever shared: omniscient POV can be very close! 99.9% of the time, however, people automatically assume the omniscient narrative distance is massive. It’s a horrible bias
I had not heard about narrative distance until I watched your video. It is helping me reflect on my scenes more carefully and catch any weak spots.
You have given me great confidence in my writing, and you have a beautiful and easy-to-understand style, as if you literally live inside my mind, and guide me to correct all the mistakes I have made in writing, you will read my book one day, and then you will know that you were one of the reasons for its existence❤ thnx❤
Wow, I am revising my WIP right now to add raw emotions to the scenes. This is very validating! Thank you! ❤😊
Hey this is excellent. Formalizes a concept I have been dealing with purely on intuition and feel.
Thank you. I hope this will help turning 900 pages of Sci-Fi into something solid. Cheers.
Thank you. You just inspired me to rewrite my first chapter and it's going to rock.
Have you considered writing all these tips and information down and merging it all into a book for writers?
Thank you. This clears up some confusion I was having with writing the narrative through the POV character.
Thanks for this great video!
I just love these videos, thank you!
Great video! Super helpful with the examples!
Your videos are invaluable. Thank you so much
This was really great, Alyssa. Thank you very much!!
Thanks so much for your videos! I watched them all throughout my first novel journey! 🎉❤
This is extremely helpful. Thank you. :)
Today I learned!
me too!
Wonderful! Splendidly explained! Again, "wonderful"!
great analysis thanks
Working on my first draft and I'll be sure to look out for this when I revise. Thank you Alyssa❤
Wonderfully presented and now I have a lot to unpack here. Mostly, I am left debating if a flashback is creating narrative distance or if in reflecting back, time has given the protagonist some new perspective not felt in the moment. Hmm.
This was so helpful
This is the best Alyssa video yet 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
I am a big literature enthusiast but I had never heard of narrative distance before. Thank you!
Thanks for the confirmation. I am doing it right.
Your videos are spot on. Thanks for taking the time to post these. You mention in some of your videos that you do book editing. Are you actively seeking new work and new manuscripts?
Great video! 👍😊
As usual, excellent stuff! I was struggling with a segment of my story in which my main character recounts an event-- now I know to go back and write the event in its correct time frame. This was one of the most helpful and important videos I have seen on this channel.
So glad you found it helpful, Ramesh! Thanks for commenting!
I have been applying what I learnt from another writer's class, that if the scene is written vividly enough you don't need to describe the emotional response because the reader will already be feeling it. But it doesn't seem to work, as my critique group all say they need more emotion. It's hard to find a balance. I'm starting to revise my memoir, hopefully for the last time, and will keep your advice in mind. Thanks!
Yes, it is a balance, isn't it? I think we do want to focus on evoking emotion rather than describing it. Meaning, our books will be much more powerful if they make the reader cry rather than describing how the pov character is crying. Yet we want the reader to experience that emotion *through* our pov character. So yes it's definitely walking a tightrope, isn't it?
@@pjalexander_author You got it!
I've often been guilty of not going into a character's thoughts, but I did so under the impression that I was showing not telling.
Wonderful #WritingAdvice!
Great video with useful ideas. When you say 'closing the narrative distance' I think you might be referring to what is often called Deep POV. It is removing filter words such as; thought, saw, heard, felt, wondered, tasted etc. My favourite guide to writing in Deep POV is 'Riveting your Readers with Deep POV' by Jill Elizabeth Nelson. A thin book but it gets straight to the point and has some useful exercise to help one learn. Another good guide is 'Mastering Deep POV' by Alice Gaines. Keep the videos coming please.
This is my first time hearing of naritive distance!
The biggest mistake i have made in my novel? Thinking anyone will read it...
Keep going! Someone will read it 😊
Keep selling! Be proud of your work and sell copies to anyone you run into
If you've finished a novel, you've already succeeded where the majority of the folks who want to write have failed.
What’s your book about?
@@CaseFace981 It's a work of Tolkien-based fiction, about 80% complete. I've been fighting both writers block, and the public hate leveled against fanfiction writers. I am considering simply abandoning the project
First, I've had no training, either formal or informal. What I do have is a very analytical approach to reading/writing, and to everything else in life.
About the main theme of your video: I didn't know narrative distance had a name, but it's something I do intuitively. I often do this on the first draft, but when I edit/revise I check every scene. I've been thinking of it as making the scene more intimate, but your term works, too. If a scene feels flat, that's the first thing I look for.
You touched on a couple of techniques for pacing. I'm aware of those in my writing, also. I do sometimes skip over a plot-changing development, as a creative choice. I'd give examples but the format here is too limited, but when I've done it, it has made the emotional impact much stronger. Writing has a lot of creative subtlety, doesn't it?
Great advice! Alyssa can you make a video about how you think AI and the rise of Chat GPT is going to affect the publishing industry?
Here's an extract from my current WIP, where my protagonist, a young mother, suddenly sees her daughter with a large Dobermann:
"My hands shot to my mouth. I struggled to breathe. There was a reason we’d never had a dog. At that moment, I almost remembered it."
You seem to suggest this is going to put distance between the character and the reader. However, I do not want the reader to know the reason until much later in the story. Is this OK?
If you only had yer FACE printed on the other side of that couch pillow...Satire!
Using the word mused repeatedly?
Now i am beginning to believe, that my computer is spying on me. o_O
Yesterday i talked with my writing partner about an older manuscript i have, where i need to write some better build up scenes, to the different key scenes in the manuscript and all the things you point out in the video, is something i can use. xD
And this video came up as an suggestion when i opened youtube today. O_O
Thank you for this video! I just revised the first five pages of my manuscript, which I just finished the first draft of, and am excited to send them off for feedback.
I have a question. I'm taking the next month at a writing residency to revise my manuscript, after which I'll be talking with an agent at a writing conference about my book. I have to send off a sample query letter and the first five pages to her for feedback and possible representation a month in advance, before the residency; however; I'm not done with the revised manuscript yet and anticipate being close to done with one by the time I meet with her. Is it okay to tell an agent I anticipate my word count to be X amount and that, by the time I meet with her, I will have a revised manuscript ready for review? Or is that too soon? I think this can probably apply to anyone querying, too, whether they should begin querying when they expect their manuscript revisions to be done shortly, or to wait until the manuscript is done "enough." Thanks!
I know this video was from a bit ago, and I have never heard of narrative distance before. In my story, I have two main characters who are not together at the same time, and I'm using close 3rd perspective for both. One of the characters has a "mentor", but the mentor is an unreliable narrator. The majority of perspectives are from the two characters, but at times I will jump into the POV of the side characters, in particular the unreliable mentor. I reveal tidbits of info to the reader when in this POV, but I keep a lot of the mentor's thoughts hidden by only showing the mentors current thought processes. Is this a process that may create undue narrative distance, since the unreliable narrator is withholding a lot of info that isn't in the current thought process, beyond the tidbits I throw out in those thought processes?
Hello Alyssa Please can you do a tutorial on comp. Should we be comparing our manuscript with a book that is new or "trending" in our query letter? Thanks .
Hi there! I do have another video on choosing strong comp titles: ua-cam.com/video/k_NpQGC4azM/v-deo.html I hope that helps!
thank you
10:04 - Would you italicize her thought speech?
I'm sure this isn't a particular strength of mine. Although sounds mostly like the typical "show don't tell" rule, and I was reminded of a sequence I had beta read for; the dual protagonists are undergoing a kind of (call it supernatural) trial, in which, through dialogue, they express the idea that "Whoa, we would have been really screwed if we had been keeping secrets from each other!" or "Good thing our motives are pure!" A number of times
I don't know if I'm good as a beta reader either, but I just had to point out that I didn't think the fact that they weren't keeping ANY secrets from each other made the story _more_ interesting, so while I guess it's kind of nice to have characters who are mostly well-adjusted friends, respecting each other in a healthy relationship, the least the author could do (I would think) would be to create a little short story chapter out of strangers trying to undergo the same trial but with cynical, selfish motives, only for that to be their undoing - that way we don't have to be told by our protagonists "Imagine how this would've gone if we *weren't* good!" because we would have already seen that, with these other characters.
It was the only thing I could think of in that case, but I don't think the author appreciated my advice much in general. 🤷
Hi .... i have written a book and now working on preface/introduction segment... can u suggest how many pages for this segment are good... like i have written 25 pages and i feel that it would be lengthy... my book is science fiction plus spirituality elements.....
I
I've just discovered your videos. I tried to grab the free assessment. I put in my email followed the prompts but no luck. How can I obtain it? Thanks
Sorry about that! Make sure to check your junk folder in case it went to spam. If it's not there, please email me at hello@alyssamatesic.com, and I will resend!
not sure what this means at all
You should move your whole 'Subscribe, I post this and that and yada yada' spiel to the end of the video. It's a bother to scrub through each video finding where it's over.
Alternatively, put chapter markers in the video.
This is not compatible with show, don’t tell
Good advice, but you show us examples of the wrong way to do it, but you don't show corrected examples of the right way to do it! And what was the secret that Kara was afraid to tell Jenny?
Alyssa, I've been an editor and writer for 30 years, and all that you say here is only pap, which helps to make you money through YT, but does almost nothing for these young writers. Your advice is obvious, if only entirely outdated, and only encourages not-very-good authors to waste their time. Meanwhile, you also play at being an expert at book endings, or book beginnings; and how to write the perfect first 10 pages, and etc-etc-etc. When, in fact and in practice, no editor, publisher, nor agent, knows what makes saleable writing sell (much less what is a good book); this is because none of those people have a clue as to what people want to read at any given time. In other words, editors-publishers-agents are scared out of their minds for their jobs because they haven't a clue as to what will sell: good book, bad book, or the greatest book EVER; or an absolute crap story. If anyone (or you, Alyssa) doubts what I have to say, just ask yourself, "Why is Alyssa running this YT channel rather than making millions-billions as an editor-publisher-agent?" Yes, your answer will lead ALL THESE YOUNG WRITERS to the truth: just write; make your characters believable; make your story readable. That's all. And, and, and ... if you get lucky enough to find a publisher, you might get lucky enough to sell books to all the very few readers who are yet out there looking for their next good book to read.