Hey, all! This is the second part of a three-part series of essays related to the release of my book, Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds. Find Part One posted here. And just in case you haven’t seen anything about it yet, the book is out right now in fine stores all across the world! The release party is tomorrow, and here are the details:

Book Release Party
Date: Wednesday, September 19th, 2018
Time: 7:00 p.m., Doors open at 6:00 p.m.
Location: Room 3222/322
Parking: Visitor and “A” parking (after 4:00 p.m.)

Here’s the cover of the US/Canada edition:

Thee UK/Ireland/Australia/New Zealand cover is below. You can also order the UK standalone edition of Legion: Lies of the Beholder.

And if you purchased the other two in the limited binding from Subterranean Press, and you want a matching one, here’s their cover: (Note, this is only the third story, and only comes as a special edition leatherbound, so it’s a little pricey.)

In the last post, I talked a little about how characters come into existence, walking the line between an instinctive process and an intentional one.

Working this way can create some issues. The first is that sometimes when I talk about my process, this part of it ends up getting presented as a lot more… deliberate than it really is. I spend a lot of time trying to help new writers, and I worry that in presenting all of these outlines, exercises, and techniques, we miss emphasizing just how little we really understand about the process.

In some ways, writing a story is like hitting a baseball. You can talk all you want about the physics involved in how a baseball is pitched, then hit with the bat. But the truth is, neither pitcher nor batter are thinking about any of this in the moment.

This makes the process feel overwhelming to some new writers, who think they need to have all of this in hand before they can write a story. Truth is, I’m generally explaining things I did by instinct early in my career, then figured out ways to talk about as I proceeded to study what I’d already done.

You don’t need to feel some mystical connection to characters to start writing—and if you focus too much on the idea that your characters should “feel” right and “do what they want,” you can end up frustrated, as you don’t have the practice writing yet to get them to do what needs to be done to actually create an interesting story.

Another problem with the voices in my head is the worry that I’ll repeat myself. Working by instinct, as so many authors (including outliners like me) do, can lead to repetition. Something can “feel” right because you’ve seen that thing done so many times, you think it is the “right” way—even when it makes for a worse story.

This sort of writing, even when you’re doing something interesting and new to you, can get repetitive as you only write in one way or style. In fact, I see a lot of writers talking about the “right” way to do something, as if it’s a hard and fast rule—but it’s not really that, it’s simply the way they’ve trained their instincts to respond. Something that goes against this feels off to them, but only because of a kind of tunnel vision.

You can also start to regurgitate stereotypes and other weak or harmful tropes because they’re part of your historical experience with genre—and you take them for granted. I did this in the original Mistborn novels, where I spent a lot of time working on Vin as a character, wanting an interesting and dynamic female lead for the stories. But then I wrote the rest of the team as men—not because I consciously decided it, but because stories like Ocean’s Eleven, The Sting, and Sneakers (which were part of my inspiration) contained primarily male casts.

It isn’t that you can’t make a story that does this, or couldn’t have reasons for writing a primarily male cast in a story. But I didn’t have any of those reasons in mind; I did it because I was mimicking, without conscious thought, things I’d seen before. It felt “right” to me, but during examination later, I felt the story would have been stronger if I hadn’t just run with the default that way.

Overall, I think that repeating myself is my biggest worry as a writer. Specifically, I worry that I’ll end up writing the same characters over and over, or look at themes the same way time and time again, without even realizing that I’m doing it. That’s one of the reasons I force myself to approach stories like the Legion ones—where I have to get out of my comfort zone, write in a different kind of setting with different kinds of storytelling expectations, and see where that takes me.

And so, the third part of this series will look at the Legion stories specifically, and where the voices in my head came from in that regard.

Hi all, Karen here.

I’ve just finished reading and evaluating the applications for Brandon’s English 318R class at BYU. For those of you who don’t know, Brandon teaches a creative writing class each winter semester. The lecture portion of the class (English 321R) is open to as many students as can fit into the auditorium, and many of the lectures have been posted online for those who can’t attend in Provo.

The main thing students are graded on is whether they complete 30,000 words of the beginning of a novel during the semester, submitting chapters each week. Brandon encourages students in his lecture class to form writing groups to read and comment on their classmates’ work. The students who are accepted into the 318R workshop class are divided into three groups, and Brandon rotates among them each week, reading the submissions and giving feedback. Because of time constraints, he can only give this personal attention to fifteen students each year.

In order to spend his time and energy where it will do the most good, Brandon has asked me to decide which of the applicants is in the best place in their authorial development to get high-level feedback on their writing craft. It doesn’t help anybody if he has to say things like, “I really couldn’t understand what was going on in this chapter,” or, “Your grammar needs so much work that it overshadows your plot.”

You may think that I’m exaggerating here, but I’m honestly not. Each year, most of the submissions we receive are from enthusiastic applicants whose writing shows that it needs a great deal of work before it will be at a level where Brandon’s individual attention will be helpful. We also get some pretty fabulous submissions each year, and I’m always excited to find them. I have even been known to ask for more of the novel just because I want to read more of it. Some of the students who pass through this class are so well prepared that they go on to publish within just a few years.

Here’s a quick rundown of how the application process works. First I read each submission and write a quick summary and my first impression of the skill level of the writer. Each story gets a grade of yes, maybe, or no. Then I read the applications, and take into account what year each applicant is in school, whether they’ve taken the lecture portion before, and how many novels they have finished. After that, I narrow it down to the fifteen finalists, and send out the good (and bad) news. If you want more details on this process and hints for getting accepted, see the FAQ page.

Most of the submissions arrive in the last few days before the late December deadline, so I do almost all of the reading between Christmas and New Year’s. With all of the regular holiday stresses, I’m often rather grumpy this time of year. Reading fiction that needs so much work makes me even grumpier, so I try to smash the whole process into a couple of very grumpy days (I am exaggerating a bit here; it’s not really that bad). When I worked at BYU’s Leading Edge magazine with Brandon and my (then future) husband Peter among others, we called this sort of reading “wading through the slush pile,” and I think it’s an appropriate activity for some of the darkest, coldest days of the waning year. (Regarding those submissions that arrive well ahead of the deadline, I’m able to review those in a more relaxed and less stressful setting.)

The hardest part of the process is not actually the reading of submissions. Even the ones I dislike for one reason or another have some redeeming qualities—an interesting plot, relatable characters, imaginative settings, and so on. The hardest part is reading the applications’ short essays knowing I’m going to have to reject most of the authors. Almost all of them say something like, “I love writing, and want to devote my life to it. I owe so much to the authors who have inspired me that I want to give back to the community by writing great fiction.” I’m seldom reminded as strongly that my friends and I are living the dream of a career in the publishing world than when I see how many writers out there are still dreaming.

That’s why in every rejection letter I send, I include the hope that those writers will continue writing, continue learning to improve, and continue sharing their work. And in fact, each year I receive and accept applications from students who have applied and been rejected in the past, but have a much better submission the second or third time around.

I’ll end with a few statistics you may find interesting:

• We had 72 submissions this year (though two of those were late, and were rejected without being read).
• There were 39 women and 31 men (I guessed from the names, so this might not be quite accurate).
• After my first impressions, among the submissions there were 9 automatic passes, 40 automatic rejections, and 21 maybes.
• By far, most of the submissions (45) were from seniors, plus 13 Continuing Ed students, 2 law school students, 3 grad students, 10 juniors, 7 sophomores, and 1 freshman.
• Applicants reported a total of 139 finished novels, with the most prolific author clocking in at a whopping 16.

Congratulations to the students who were accepted, and good luck in the future to those who didn’t make it in this year.