Showing posts with label first impressions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label first impressions. Show all posts

Thursday, 17 March 2011

What Impression Are You Giving?

I once fell in love with a dress. It was bright blue and beaded all over. In retrospect, it was the sort of dress drag queens wear, but I thought it was sophisticated and glamorous and, above all, grown up - I must have been about 19. I wanted it, despite the mega price tag that I really couldn't afford.

I brought my friend Alison along to see what she thought. I paraded in the dress in front of her, watching for her opinion. She didn't look convinced. 'It's the sort of dress that everyone will look at the dress and not you,' she said eventually. 'And I'm not sure about the colour...'

I didn't buy the dress.

We all need friends like Alison, especially when you're sending out letters and synopses to agents. Friends like Alison are kind, but firm. They don't let you make an idiot of yourself. You're all wrapped up in dreams of what might be, and they persuade you to take a realistic look at yourself. I've told friends in the past that their agent letters are creating the impression that they are:
Pompous. Nit-picking. Hell to work with. Litigious. Needy. Demanding. Hysterical. Bonkers.

Now, I know that my friends aren't any of those things (except possibly the bonkers bit), but that's the impression they're giving and none of those qualities are desirable in a writer. In fact, they're all turn-offs. I look at the first letter I wrote and I can see that none of the agents I sent it to probably bothered to read beyond the first paragraph, because it created such a ghastly impression of me. (Oh, the shame, I'm blushing just thinking about it.)

So before you waste time, energy and money sending out, ask a friend to tell you what impression you're giving. Honestly.

NEW!!! I've finally got round to organising some course dates....
How to WRITE a Novel: London 3rd May/Birmingham 7th May/
Oxford 8th May/Exeter 21st May/Bath 12th June
How to SELL a Novel: London 24th May/Exeter 4th June/

Tuesday, 30 November 2010

Improbability

I'm currently reading The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farell which I've been enjoying until...There I am, reading away when, whoosh, she's gone too far and put in something improbable. It shot me out of the book world and into the cold reality of my world. It wasn't a nice feeling at all.

I'm back reading again, but with a wary eye. Will she do something unbelievable again? In a strange way, I now distrust the author, and the wonderful suspension of disbelief has vanished.

It's a funny thing, the contract between author and reader. We give them our time, and they give us another world for a few hours. Seems a good swap to me, and it's what I certainly want from a book, that sense of being absorbed into somewhere else, someone else.

But the relationship is fragile. A clumsy phrase can break it, a thoughtless shift in point of view, an improbability. The writer in me knows why she's done it - on a practical level she needed to shift the story to the next phase and didn't want to spend more time on the build up - but without the build-up it's improbable, and - there - she's lost me.

That's why your first three chapters need to be as perfect as possible. There must be no impediments along the way of getting the reader absorbed into your world. You want the reader to be reluctantly dragged away from the world of your book. Typos fret us. Grammatical errors do it too. The relationship is at its most fragile at the beginning.

I'll be carrying on with Esme Lennox because the improbability has come in the middle. I've already invested quite a lot of time in this relationship; I'll see it out to the end. But earlier on? That's when books get discarded.

Thursday, 14 October 2010

First Impressions

I started reading a new book last night, and already I dislike the main character. She goes to meet her boyfriend wearing the earrings he gave her for her birthday. They're silver; she'd hinted she preferred gold, but got silver. I'm guessing this was included as a not very subtle sign from the author that they're essentially not suited to each other, but it completely put me off the main character.

Why?

She and her boyfriend have only been together a few months. Her birthday came shortly after they met. I'm sorry, but I reckon hinting you want gold earrings at this stage is not a good character trait, and I don't like the way she's mentally complaining because she got silver. Later in the scene she's got to go to Norfolk for work, and wants him to join her for the weekend and meet her family. He finds an excuse not to come. She notes that he's turned down several opportunities to meet her family, also, he hasn't invited her to meet his. At this point my eyes are wide - meeting families? After a few months? It's one thing if it happens naturally eg the family in question lives near, you see them regularly, but making a formal visit...Pushy, or what?

And now, because I dislike her, I'm clocking up other reasons for dislike; the way she persistently snipes behind his back about a male colleague who is trying v hard (too hard in her opinion) to bring some work into the business; her smugness at being financially secure and the way she patronises her disabled, struggling-financially sister. Later, she goes onto what is clearly marked as private land and is outraged that people are out shooting. I'm afraid I wished she'd get hit, but no such luck.

First impressions count both in fiction and in real life, and it's very hard to recover from a bad start. Make a list of the characteristics you find attractive in people, and one for unattractive. Your main character should display a lot from the first list in the opening chapters. And if they do have some of the less desirable qualities, a bit of self awareness goes a long way. "She knew she should think herself lucky to have a boyfriend who bought her such a lovely present, and she did. It was just a shame that the earrings didn't suit her. Still, it was the thought that counted, and she wore them even though she knew they did nothing for her."

Well, that's how I'd have done it. Now, for all I know, the author may be setting her up as a character who is going to have to make some changes to her attitudes, but it seems a risky way of going about it - if I was reading this solely for pleasure I would have abandoned the book by now. And if this was a first novel, it would have been a doubly risky strategy.

Get a friend to read the opening chapter and ask them to make a list of adjectives to describe the main character(s). Re-write if there's any word on that list like smug, patronising, spiteful, mean, jobsworth... You may not have intended your character to be like that, but if that's the way they're coming across, then you will need to change it. And if you intended your character to be like that? All I can say is risky, risky, risky - and good luck!