Reading In Your Genre

On twitter, I've talked about the advice to read newly released books in your genre, but I never really did a blog post about it. In fact, I never knew the importance of that advice until I wrote my fifth manuscript.

You see I got an agent with my fourth manuscript. It was a humorous middle grade, and it never sold on submission. I'm pretty sure now that was because I hadn't read enough middle grade books before I wrote it. I usually read in adult fantasy with the occasional middle grade thrown in.  

Then while my MG was out on submission, I did this thing called sign up for NetGalley. NetGalley provides free advance copy ebooks in exchange for honest reviews of those books. It's one of the main sites used by book bloggers. I'm not a book blogger per se, but I love reading. And there's never enough money to buy all the books I can read. So NetGalley provided me free books and all I had to do was write a review on Goodreads.

Actually, I was getting so much more.

By reading books that were newly released, I learned so much. I'm not talking about plot trends. These books were purchased by the publishers a year ago or longer, so trends of plot have passed by the time the public gets to read them. 

No, I mean writing style and pacing and timing and so many other important things. Such as, how long you should wait before an inciting incident? How to space out your action chapters for your genre? What sort of pace is too slow? How much world building should you do? What sort of prologues work? How unlikable can you make your characters and still have people tolerate them? All sorts of information comes from reading lots and lots of recent books.

I find that I've developed an inner rhythm to writing now. My manuscripts fall right into the sweet spot for word count without my having to try. I know how much description works and what sorts makes a reader bored.

My gut tells me it's time to add some action or to slow things down. I sense when the characters need a building relationship scene so they can bond. I believe I know when the story needs new elements added to bring up the interest. At least, I hope I've gotten pretty good at judging these things now. The reviews for Grudging so far have been pretty strong. (And I'd appreciate your support!) 

Regardless of what genre you enjoy, there's a lot to be said for spending a day on the couch just reading. Consider it research!

Review of ALIVE

From New York Times bestselling author Scott Sigler comes something utterly new: a gripping sci-fi adventure trilogy in the vein of The Hunger Games, Divergent, and The Maze Runner. A group of young adults awake in a mysterious enclosed space with no knowledge of who they are or how they got there…and an indomitable young woman must lead them not only to answers but to survival.

A young woman awakes trapped in an enclosed space. She has no idea who she is or how she got there. With only her instincts to guide her, she escapes her own confinement—and finds she’s not alone. She frees the others in the room and leads them into a corridor filled with the remains of a war long past. The farther these survivors travel, the worse are the horrors they confront. And as they slowly come to understand what this prison is, they realize that the worst and strangest possibilities they could have imagined don’t even come close to the truth.

Review:

Note: The author has asked to avoid all spoilers.

I didn't want to like this book ALIVE. The first chapter started off so similar to The Maze Runner that I was rolling my eyes. Oh no, here we go again.  Main character who wakes up and doesn't remember his name, his family or anything about the situation. A rip-off story line, only with a girl this time. Then the girl becomes a group, fighting to discover what's happening to them. More first person point of view; full of short choppy sentences. Ugh.

Then I got caught up in the action and it turned out to be nothing like The Maze Runner, other than minor similarities. The pace just kept going and going. Each chapter brought a new revelation. Or each chapter ended with another great twist. I couldn't avoid paying attention. And within a few chapters I cared about Em, like I never cared for the characters in that other dystopian. 

I can't clearly say why, but I identified with Em. The plot made me curious in a good way. I wanted to find out what happened next. I worried about characters large and small. It's hard to review without giving away any spoilers, but I so appreciated that my questions were ANSWERED in this book. That's right! It didn't end with more questions than when it started. The reader finds out why they are there and where there is. 

Thank you to Scott Sigler for that. Thanks for not making this another frustrating-wait-for-the-sequel type book. I really enjoyed this read. Blew through it in about three days. Found it fun and entertaining with plenty of action and excitement, which I shall not detail to ruin the story. Great twists and yet the whole plot made sense. There was nothing that couldn't be explained logically. 

Big thumbs up! Read it for yourself.

I received a copy from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.