How to use this Page

The ALIENS have landed!

"amusing. . .engaging, accessible," says Publisher's Weekly

I’ve been writing for years. (Let’s not discuss how many exactly!) It’s easy to fall into habits and to think about stories in certain ways. The best creative people, though, insist that they are constantly learning and to do that, they try something different. They take risks.

Let me suggest some risks you might want to take:

Take a creative risk today! Try a new format, genre, audience, or marketing strategy.

Try for a different audience. Stretch your genre tastes and try a different one. Write a romance for YAs. Or a mystery for first graders. Are all of your protagonists female? Then try writing from a male’s POV and try to capture a male audience.

Try a different process or word processing program. I took a class on Scrivener this spring and am continuing to explore what this amazing program can and can’t do. I’m also learning Dragon Dictate to lessen the ergonomic strain on my hands. I know that these programs have potential to change not just my writing process, but also the output. I’m just not sure HOW they will affect it. It’s a risk.

Market to different places. While we often separate the writing from the marketing–especially when we think about the creative process–I think you can still take creative risks with marketing. For example, identify a market FIRST, and write specifically for that market. In this case, you are letting the market sculpt your creative output. If you write a short story for Highlights Magazine for Kids, it’s got to be 600 words or less. If you write an op-ed piece for the Huffington Post, everything is different in your creative output. If you decide to self-publish, you may find yourself suddenly taking the question of commercial viability much more seriously.

“What else do we notice […]?  Two-tier storytelling.  Isn’t it strange how all three teams have gone to two-tier, independent of each other?

Maybe not.  You’ve cut the print page in half.  If you want each screen to make sense as a discrete entity, you have to respect the cut.  If you want each screen to contain enough information to make it worth reading, you need a strategy to maximise your panelling.  And if you want to be able to stretch out and get a big picture in there while still maintaining storytelling coherency, you’ve kind of got to go wide on the page.”

—Warren Ellis, from a fascinating post on formatting comics for reading in multiple formats, especially tablet, phone, web interface, and of course good old print. Ideas of modularity in comics composition make a lot of sense, when you consider the nested way they’re built fundamentally, in terms of discrete objects: images > panels > pages and on up.

Ellis touches on some recent comics designed for multiple platforms, including Mark Waid and Peter Krause’s new Insufferable, which has gotten some attention for being Waid’s big public splash into making webcomics. While I’m generally suspcious of Big Public Splashes, especially from old media into new media, new thinking is always a good thing. I’m especially interested in Warren Ellis’s ideas on format, as he’s been an early adopter of new formats for years and has a pretty clear-eyed thinking when it comes to what is possible and what should be possible in a given format. 

When you receive an e-mail query where the formatting has been stripped or altered, does that play a part in your rejection? Or are agents as a whole more forgiving of these errors and look only to the writing in e-mail queries?

While agents certainly understand that these things can happen through no fault of the author’s, it does play a part in how we perceive the query, although not necessarily the rejection.

Think of how you read. Before picking up a letter, magazine, newspaper, book, or any printed material, the very first thing you see is the formatting. How that appears has an immediate impact on how you read the material. If the work is written in a childish font you’ll think it’s a piece for children, or take it less seriously than you would if the book were written in a more serious font like Times New Roman. The same goes for formatting. If a letter is formatted without any paragraph breaks or written in an incredibly small font you’re going to assume that everything this writer writes is written in that way.

While I think agents are very forgiving of formatting errors, etc.—in fact, I think agents are far more forgiving than authors often give them credit for—it’s hard to ignore what that first glance says to someone. If formatting is a mess then the letter has to wow that much more to grab the agent’s attention. If she’s on the fence about asking for more, the formatting can be the one thing, whether she’s conscious of it or not, that makes her decide not to ask for more.

Think of your interview suit. You can be the most impressive candidate a company sees, but if you’re wearing ripped jeans and a T-shirt, everything on your resume can easily be ignored.

Jessica

Does Format change a story?

Format. Yes, it makes a difference. How you present information or how you present a story make a difference to the text. For example, I’ve been wanting to write a nonfiction book about a topic and tried writing a proposal for a middle grade book. It didn’t seem right. But then, I decided to try it as a non-fiction ABC book and it has worked well. That format – short snippets of information about 26 subjects – covers the topic very well. Yes, I could include much, much more information; isn’t that always true about a topic you’re passionate about? But this covers the right amount of information for the early elementary years. Just enough, but not overwhelming. The format is right.

Notice that this format change also meant a change in the age of the intended audience.

I’ve taken stories and tried them as a graphic novel, as a middle grade novel and as a YA novel. I’ve taken an early chapter book and divided it into six equal-length chapters, and then divided it again into multiple short, uneven-length chapters (such as Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Stuart Little). The story doesn’t change, but it feels very different. There are books which I find I can’t read, (Heaven’s Eyes by David Almond) but when I listen to the audio version, I love it. I wonder if stories will feel different when read as an ebook?

Audience and format can change the content, the voice, the tone, or the overall feel of a story. What format do you envision for your story? How does that affect what/how you write?

Related posts:

1. Michelle Nagler, Bloomsbury
2. Manuscript Length

In Mexico, I think nothing is more honored and adored than the Virgen de Guadalupe or, as I know her, Tonantzin. Her image is everywhere. Statues, candles, blankets, sarapes, scarves, murals, roadside shrines - her peaceful and radiant countenance blesses you. She lives in homes, tattoos, in the marketplace, in song, everywhere, she touches everything. Even one of the most popular singers in Mexico wrote a song for her! In fact, singers of all types - rock bands, mariachis, the
pop stars, the rancheros, EVERYONE loves the Virgencita Morena, the Goddess of the Americas.









She was the image on the banners and flags of Father Manuel Hidalgo and his followers in the Mexican Revolution. She is entrenched so deeply into our culture and ideology that she’s like an old and very beloved friend. We call her little mother. She’s our collective mother, the mother of a conquered but not defeated nation, the mother who fights for us, protects us and loves us no matter who or what we are and become. We live and breathe Guadalupe. In every family, someone, boy or girl is named Guadalupe and carries that name with pride.







The Catholic Church has it's story of the Virgen de Guadalupe and Juan Diego, we indigenous people have another. Somehow, like so much in Mexico the two things blended and we have Catholic dogma mixed with indigenous belief. Tonantzin wouldn't be erased and she lives stronger than ever in our hearts and minds.



Every year on her day, December 12th - thousands of people gather at her shrine on Tepeyac to give her honor, to pay homage, to dance prayers for her, to sing Las Manañitas to her and to show their devotion. Indigenous people from all over Mexico leave their villages and walk or crawl up to the sierra de Tepeyac in an ancient pilgrimage. The actual holy ground is a little hill behind the Basilica. This hill was sacred to Tonantzin and consecrated to Her by the indigenous people of Mexico long before the conquest. The pilgrimage was happening in pre-Columbian times as well.



As far back as I can remember my life was dominated by the Guadalupe. In the sala (living room) my grandmother Lupe’s house (her name was Maria Guadalupe) in the place of honor on the wall was a huge, framed print of the Virgen de Guadalupe standing on the hill of Tepeyac with Juan Diego kneeling at her feet, tilma open and filled with roses. It was a beautiful print with a soft washed from age look to it. You could clearly see the nopales (cacti) that were growing on the hillside. Every day my grandmother would put fresh flowers in front of that print. “Flores para la virgen”, she would tell me, “Flowers for the Virgen”. I learned to cut fresh roses and other flowers from the garden for vases throughout the house, keeping only the best and showiest to put in front of the print. Just like my grandmother, I’d say a little prayer to her as I left her her flowers. She was as real to me as my sisters were and I talked to her far more freely. La Lupita was my confidant, my protector, my dear little mother.



At church, my grandmother was a member of a society called Las Guadalupanas and they were devotees of her. Every morning, my grandmother Lupe would don her lacy mantilla and head off for mass where she’d pray to the Virgen de Guadalupe. See, she’s everywhere and in everything.



In Aztec culture, Guadalupe was Tonantzin, the mother of all, Mother Earth, The Goddess of Sustenance, Honored Grandmother, Snake, Aztec Goddess of the Earth. She brought the corn, Mother of the Corn. Even then She was All and Everything. She represented mothers, fertility, the moon, the sacred number 7. In fact, she was sometimes known as 7 Serpent. She was always there and she was always our little mother.





Corn is sacred to Tonantzin. The flowers we know as poinsettias were called Cuetlaxochitl were also very sacred to her and they grew on Tepeyac in wintertime as tall as ten feet high. Tunas (cactus fruit or prickly pear) are also especially sacred to Tonantzin growing as they do on the cacti that grows on her sacred and holy ground. Filled with seeds inside and a rich, juicy red fruit, the tunas represent both fertility and the womb, the blood of women and the sweetness of life. Tomatoes are another sacred fruit to Her. On my altar, I often put flor de noche Buena (another word for poinsettias meaning flower of the good night), tunas, chiles, cacao beans and tomatoes. The colors red, white and green, the colors of the Mexican flag are sacred to Her as well.



Early tomorrow morning, the morning of the 12th at 2a.m. at the Placita Olvera (Olvera Street) in Los Angeles, mariachis, devotees of the Virgen de Guadalupe, Aztec dancers, folklorico dancers, deer dancers, musicians, priests, nuns, and many more will start paying homage to Her. We will sing Las Mananitas, the traditional birthday song, we will pray and dance. Aztec dancers will dance at Catholic masses everywhere and they will do the prayer dance Tonantzin first. They will dance various variations of Tonantzin and give Her honor. In Mexico, on a much larger scale, celebrities, the elite, the politicians, Zapatistas, narcotrafficantes, men, women and children will all pay homage to our beloved Virgen de Guadalupe. We will give thanks to her for all we’ve received from her merciful hands, we will pray for the sick, the prisoners, the homeless, the helpless and we know that She is mercy, kindness, acceptance and love. She commands a tremendous devotion from the people that love her just by being Guadalupe. I believe she has given me much – my life, my children, my grandchildren, the food I eat. She is the goddess of the harvest, she represents the mother in me and in all women. She simply is and so I say Tlaxocamatl Tonantzin, thank you virgen de Guadalupe for all you have given. Tlaxocamatl Tonantzin. Ometeotl.







From the City of the Queen of the Angels, desde la ciudad de Nuestra Reina de los Angeles,

Atonatiuh Eloxochitl
Mar y Sol Datura Flower
otherwise know as
Gina MarySol Ruiz
Who is on her way to dance for the Virgen de Guadalupe and one for her Grandmother Lupe too.