Start at the beginning, one, two, three

Meet the players in Chapter one: Sandy and Chloe, seniors at the University of Washington, plan a spring break trip to Hawaii and convince Kerri Ann, their sophomore friend, to tag along:

I’d thought about the trip for quite awhile before committing. They’d been afraid I wouldn’t have enough money to come. I did. I saved earnestly, always had, and prided myself on squeezing every drop of value out of money, that way you didn’t need too much of it. Currently, my stash nested inside books on the board and cement block shelf in my U-Dub dorm room. (A Single Pearl, Chapter One)

Scene: Kerri Ann and Lee meet in Hawaii for the first time by the hotel's pool.

Icons: plus sign ‘+’ to denote good, minus ‘-’ not, and a ‘?’ for obvious.

Ginger: +pool explanation, +goose white skin, +hairy chests, -sunglasses, how could she see his eyes if he wore sunglasses? +like the first meeting, +off with her ends, +hair description…nice dude, +great dialogue.

Jade: +good describing the smells, ‘slowly re-threaded,’ +nice slowly describing the man, ++good description on the eyes.

Kelly: +description of pool scene, cab scene, good inner thought.

Lisa: +good description of poolside and ocean, ‘Pleasure or wickedness’ Wickedness doesn’t feel like right word, +‘North or South,’ +good description of his eyes, +‘off with their ends,’ -would like more fore-shadowing of depression if possible, +like her discomfort of joining Chloe’s family.

Melanie: +deep end position thoughts, goose white skin, loved ‘open and unending,’ used word ‘tracked’ twice when looking at the man holding sunscreen, + ‘North or south, haha, +great twist that the owner of sunscreen not girlfriend. Depression? Maybe sooner?

Pam: +nice opening for Chapter, setting the scene by the pool, et al. +Your details are good, brings image to reader, +skilled writing, interesting story. +Good banter between the two characters. ? ‘over and over on into infinity’ take out ‘on.’ +’off with their ends,’ good allusion to Alice…

Peggy: +great details especially at beginning, +’lungs’ etc, grounded character, ‘flesh stuck to seats’ and smell of sweat… ?Sweat stung her eye…’ can you add emotion/feelings of her surroundings more before going to the reception area? +‘Falling into his eyes…’ etc. +great job capturing her emotion and feelings, “series of mirrors,’ great metaphor/similes throughout. Great description of Chloe ß fun uses of language.

Sallee: + ‘admiration from the hairy-chested…cabby’s body odor…drop of perspiration…the pool awaits…goose-white skin. Great description of envy/jealousy, more great descriptions and imagery! -I’m not sure where this is headed, or what they want. Is this a romance novel? Emphasis on plot. More about her depression, last chance to see friends? Goal to get away from doldrums?

EDITS: Okay, enough positive feedback to lock into the good stuff and throw out the other. One thousand rewrites cracked the scene down to half to one-quarter of original. I knew why all the characters were where they were, hadn’t quite captured it fully on paper, needed to lead reader more into Kerri Ann’s state of mind, she’s depressed, end of an unsuccessful infatuation, primed for the next love struck moment of her life, and this guy has no idea the tiger he will grab by the tail when he falls for her and he discovers what she’s like when she’s not depressed, and the goose white flesh hit the cutting room floor, Lisa wasn’t sure they would brag that way about themselves.

I chose that spot, near the deep end,
even though it didn’t have enough shade. Strategic, away from the pool steps, away from the parade of flirts who roamed in and out of the water and the echoes of admiration of the hairy-chested who ran after them. I needed peace. (A Single Pearl, Chapter One).

Writing Boot Camp, crap we have to read out loud!

I did not start at the beginning of the book, but rather a chapter I was working on at the time. It gets re-read when it pops up again during our die-hard meetings, and it caused some frustration to me as Lisa, who caught my characters not being true to character, again caught me on the second go-round where I still lacked skill. Soooo not fair. That’s writing -- wanting to argue with the reviewers, but once sensible, really want the work to improve, stomp home frustrated, yet determined, turn on the computer and edit.

Scene: Lee has invited his cousins over for the evening and has asked Kerri Ann to go to the liquor store for him, a task she detests, her passive aggressive response spirals out of control and ends in disaster...for her.

The last thing I wanted was a bunch of drunks in my house, of any nationality, but I stocked up. Three to four brands of scotch, whiskey, bourbon, rum, vodka, gin, singles of brandy, cognac, kahlua, tequila and some other crap that was on sale. Enough to open my own bar, didn’t want to have to make that trip for another ten years. I lined up the bottles on the dining table and they covered every inch.

“Jesus,” Lee said, when he walked in the back door, “I didn’t invite the whole country.” (A Single Pearl, Chapter 10)

We used the plus sign ‘+’ abbreviation to denote what we liked, minus ‘-’ did not, ‘?’ for obvious, and I used a dot when I wanted something I wasn’t getting, but it wasn’t bad enough for a minus.

Ginger: +like the storyline, ‘bow at the Lee alter,’ people’s reaction she is not Korean, -confusing at the end of chapter and start of next.

Jade: + ‘his mouth opened but no sound came out,’ and a ‘second shot of electricity sizzled.’

Kelly: great conflict, +‘…until I realized I should, maybe, breathe…’

Lisa: ++good description, funny; good verbs, ?hanbok? What is it, explain. If they’re married and she’s naked after the fiasco, well, something more happens in the bedroom. Tighten up the description of her thoughts about John talking about father.

Melanie: ++love the voice, humor, emotion, tension.

Pam: I assume there is a reason he is Korean? Your dialogue is very telling of the characters. The whole series of action: the cousin yelped, the door slammed, etc. I loved that! It sounds like Lee isn’t all that mad, more fascinated with her. Is Lee his first name? Didn’t you say “Jason Lee” at one point? Probably not. Good visual details and I like your character’s thoughts.

Peggy: +great emotion, gut wrenching. +great description of characters. -May want to add when she left the liquor store and was home, ground the character a bit more there. +everywhere else was good, just make sure reader knows where she is. +nameplates--great description here, +office description, +pressure with handshake J , like her thoughts during John‘s rambling.

Sallee: +good résumé description, t-shirt, bare-bottom (good descriptions), -need more scenery, surrounds, embarrassment goes on too long (?), -confusing as to where we are, +'cute sandal to cute sandal' (good!), + good description of office (old world), more action and conflict, good inner thoughts.

EDITS: I felt when the reader receives the information about the backdrop prior to this scene, what the class felt was missing might feel less so. Am I right? You’ll have to skip ahead to where critique of Chapter 10 occurs to find out. And when you do, well, something more happened in the bedroom, unlike Lee, Kerri Ann
has no problem apologizing. The change altered the mood of the scene, helped end the confusion between chapters, but I felt we lost the concept that Lee is fascinated with Kerri Ann. In the end, the scene served its purpose, explained why she refuses to wear a hanbok, traditional Korean dress, but not necessarily why it was important to him, but that gets explained in Part II.

Yes, book is divided into two parts, One and Two. (That ‘one and two’ was probably unnecessary, but that’s ME, write way more than you need to, now where’s that red pen…or that drink!)

The Critics and the Critiques

So what does a critique group actually say after you pull out your laptop, open your manuscript file and proceed to read something out loud? Perhaps before we follow that there should be an introduction to the critics.

Lisa: full time mom of three boys 6 to 16, prior life physician’s assistant. Great writer of dialogue, hears the significance of each word, signals when it’s the wrong word. Writing an inspirational novel. When she wrote the scene where her male protagonist took his shirt off and strained muscles and poured sweat to chop wood, Mel and I were left panting. Bereft. We’re still waiting for the love scene, but she's just stringing us along. Hey, Lisa--could you give us a love scene with the ex-boyfriend, maybe in a flashback?

Melanie: accounting assistant in plastics manufacturing plant, prior life, police assistant, ambulance driver, cop, endless relater of belly-laugh-stories all from real life--train station, meth dens, the highway, almost shot a man, excuse me, criminal, because she had to pee so bad, as in ‘gonna wet my pants if this doesn’t end soon.’ I’ll let her tell you who needed a change of clothes when it was over. Mel identifies scenes that would be improved by dialogue, sparking the story to life. Defender of the mantra ‘show don’t tell,’ always anxious to ‘see it,’ and can illustrate what that means! Writing historical fiction. Mel’s dagger-of-a-pen and keeps our class in stitches. Mel and I are slightly jealous of Lisa’s ability to ease right into a fully formed chapter as we struggle through re-writes and editing. Mel thinks Lisa may not confess to as many re-writes as she actually does. I don’t know, Lisa looks pretty honest to me…

Pam: retired schoolteacher, traveler, hostess of our group, kids all grown up. Our English prof, correcting the stray error, extremely, character-oriented, catches when our fictional people falter out of character alignment. Loves Lee (from A Single Pearl), hates Lee, loves Lee, hates, loves, hates…I wait with baited breath to receive her feedback at book’s end, will she embrace Lee and all his faults, or will she reject him? Pam is writing a coming of age novel based in the Columbia River Gorge. “I’ve been thinking…” usually signals adventure.

Peggy: stay at home mom, tall, shy blond--very Nordic…angelic children, too young to have a prior life as anything but kid herself. Peggy alerts on repeated words, seldom does that herself, but when it does we’re so surprised, and she has to review her manuscript to believe it herself. Writing young adult fantasy, and makes us wonder why her main female character's hands spark fires as easily as Peggy blushes.

Others: Ginger, Jade, Kelly, Sallee, classmates from Clark College’s Novel Writing Book Camp II, whose thoughts were captured as they shared during actual class moments. They’ll appear at the beginning of the editing process, but variously did not continue the weekly get-togethers, like us die-hards, although they popped up with a stray email here or there.

Worst Critic (me! because I’m not a critic, or at least a very good one): I write it and I think its sooo good, then I edit and I think, man it was bad before, but now it’s really good; then I edit and I say, wow it was bad before, but NOW its really, really good; then I edit some more, some more, some more... To date, I estimate I have thrown out 30,000 words, written, oh let’s say about 150,000+ words, have honed it down to -- well, forget it, I’m not saying, but striving, struggling, besieged and stressed to get it down to 95,000 very succinct, tightly written, finely tuned, conflict-'resoluting,' can’t-put-down words. I dance along, propping my little writer’s heart up, wondering if I had had any concept of what this would take to finish, would I have left the whole damn thing in my head, had a nice little fantasy with a handsome Asian man, I mean drop-dead gorgeous, you would turn your head if he passed you on the street, man? I’ll answer that later.

In the meantime, I sit computer side, addicted to the curse of writing, actually that’s not true, writing is the easy portion we serve, it’s the editing that is the curse!