David Farland, Grounding, and WOTF

David Farland, a judge for Writer's of the Future, wrote an amazingly helpful blog entry, on Grounding Your Reader.

Dave FarlandPresumably, he's pondering the
genius of my WOTF contest entry

It starts thusly:

"Today I'm going to discuss a bit about what I call “grounding” the reader. Quite simply, grounding is the fine art of letting the reader know what is going on. You need to focus on some basics: Who is in a scene? Where does it take place? What is the major conflict?"

Now, I am entered in the Writer's of the Future contest, and am included in the entries he's reading that apparently brought about these particular tips.

He mentioned a few stories that go on for pages without giving a setting. That used to be a weakness in my stories, and panicked, I pulled up the manuscript. *whew* Got out of that one.

Then he mentions not naming the protagonist early enough. Two thoughts came to mind. First, Neil Gaiman wrote an entire novel, "The Ocean at the End of the Lane," without once naming the main character. And, two, I'm not Neil Gaiman.

My story is in the first person. Did I, in fact, name the narraror? Check! Very early on. Good for me. I patted myself on the back.

I waded through each of his examples, assured myself that I wasn't among them, and then thought through the advice for the rest of the story. I think I'm okay there.

Then, I thought about the story I'm currently writing. It's fine too, but needs some tweaks, particularly in the arena of showing the conflict earlier.

Take a look at the article, and let me know what you think:

Grounding Your Reader.

1st Quarter 2014 Writers of the Future Initial Results

http://www.writersofthefuture.com/1st-quarter-2014-writers-of-the-future-initial-results/

Here's the list of Finalists, Semi-Finalists and Honorable Mentions for the 1st Quarter WOTF contest. Quick math with tell you that there were 116 honorable mentions (minus any that requested their name not be listed, or who didn't respond.)

Anybody who can't stand math can skip the next two paragraphs, but you'll still have to count to two.

I wish I knew how many people entered the contest, but those numbers aren't reported. However, I've read that somewhere between 5% to 15% of the entries receive HMs depending on (wait for it) how many good stories they receive.

Using the 116 HMs and the 5% number, that works out to 2320 entries. The number of HMs is probably higher, which would bring the number of entries higher. The percentage is probably higher too, which lowers the actual number of entries. Nevertheless, I'm confident in saying that thousands of people entered the contest, so being one of 115 HMs isn't too shabby. It's a start, at least. I'm aiming higher though.

Anyway, those of you who are DYING to see my name on the list (like I was) will find it 56 names down on the HM list.

Those who can't be bothered to look it up can see copied and pasted here:
Scott Hughey of North Carolina

I aim to please. Well, I aim to please myself, if nothing else.

The happiness of receiving the HM has faded, and I've gone back to concentrating on improving my craft. In fact, just this week I finished my entry for the 2nd quarter. It's vastly improved over the previous entry. Of course, writers are the worst judges of their own work, so what do I know?

Okay. Back to the novel. And maybe another short story or three.

Writer's of the Future: Honorable Mention

I finally heard back from Writer's of the Future. I'd entered the contest for the 1st quarter of 2014.

My short story, Finding Home won an honorable mention. That's good news, and bad news. Yeah, I wanted to win, but I'm mostly seeing this as a huge positive.  After all, I learned that depending on the number of "good stories," 5-15% of the stories receive Honorable Mention.   So, my writing is moving in the right direction.

This is also incentive to enter a stronger story the next quarter, and to keep working on my craft.

Writing! Yay!