Day: February 8, 2004

Julie Schwartz

Julie Schwartz

I just saw the posting at dragoncon that Julius Schwartz passed on today.

He was a marvelous and sweet man who had a long-time connection with DC Comics and Superman.

He will be missed.

Letter from Julie

Letter from Julie

Todd-

Great news on Dragonsblood, congrats on getting throught the first rewrite and nearly through the second.

I’m curious about your process. How do you collect feedback, wade through the feedback, and decide which thoughts to incorporate and which to table?

I’m glad you updated us, and I’m even happier that you made it short and got back to work. Admirable! Me too, gotta get back to work.

Cheers,
Julie

Julie –

Good to hear from you again.

I had three first draft readers: Mum, my sister Gigi, and a Clarion buddy. My agent, Don Maass, got a copy but I had already gotten the feedback from my first three before I got his.

I had originally intended to have six (actually seven, as one draft would have gone to a couple) but serrendipitously the manuscript wasn’t done in time so when I got to Ireland the first week of January, I printed out four copies, sent one to my agent, and the other three were read then and there.

When they were done we had a quick meeting to go over the short list of the rough spots they’d found (there was a longer list of problem areas, too). I started working from their two markups (my sister hadn’t marked up her copy but had made separate notes).

I got notes from Don and started working with them as well.

I set a hard deadline of January 31st to get a second draft off to my newly appointed “second draft readers” — the three readers who hadn’t seen the first draft. By “hard deadline”, I mean that I would send them something no matter how far I’d gotten in the revision process. Because Dragonsblood has some medical stuff in it, and I’ve been lucky enough to find an MD who is a Pern fan, I’ll be sending off a third draft to her on Monday.

The final deadline will be to send a draft to my editor. That’ll be a fourth draft. I’m bumping draft numbers every time I send a changed version out to readers.

As for deciding which feedback to incorporate and which to table, that’s harder to describe. As Dragonsblood is written in Mum’s Pern universe, her feedback is clearly paramount.

The way I handle feedback is to understand that I make mistakes, that a first draft is a rough approximation of what I really wanted and that it’s going to be flawed. Finding the flaws pointed out in draft, when I can correct them, is a lot better than when the book’s published.

There are two fundamental types of feedback: typos and/or alternate word suggestions; and structural changes. When I’m writing I often don’t find the perfect word (typically an adjective or adverb) that I wanted. Readers often can find and suggest that word which I happily use to replace the original clunker. Typos are a no-brainer — just fix ’em.

Structural changes are more difficult. They can run the gamut of “this is confusing” to “I really don’t buy this character’s motivation”. In the first case, the sentence or paragraph in question may need to be re-written or more material may need to be brought in to explain something better. In the second case, the impact of the reader’s feedback may result in some significant amounts of work.

I have three responses to structural changes:

i) I moan, go hmm or “yup”, and make the requested change.
ii) I moan, go unh-uh or “nope”, and don’t make the requested change.
iii) I moan, groan, whine, and consider making the requested change.

When I consider a change, instead of just making it or vetoing it, I also consider the feedback from my other readers. If most of the readers have flagged this as an issue, then it becomes clear that I need to work on it. If one reader flags something, then I may have to consider the reader’s viewpoint. Fortunately, I can wimp out and wait to see what the second draft readers have to say. And, ultimately, what the editor has to say. So I may decide to table some changes until I get more feedback.

Of course, when I get Dragonsblood all done, I may revise my revision process and do it completely differently next time.

One thing I do believe is that it’s probably a good idea to plan a short number of drafts (four may be overdoing it) with different readers at each point. It’s certainly a good idea not to have too many readers for a particular draft — because it becomes more difficult to integrate all their feedback. Also, I think it’s important to know what you want from your draft readers.

And now back to the third draft.

— Todd

Letter from Angela

Letter from Angela

I have loved the Pern books for a long time. I really liked Dragon’s Kin. You kept true to the spirit of Pern. Thank-you. Angie

Angie,

Thanks very much. I’m glad you liked Dragon’s Kin. Mum and I had a lot of fun writing it and are now talking about writing more sequels following Nuella, Kindan, Zenor, and even Cristov as they get older.

— Todd