Making of Part 2: The importance of critique

Near the start of the year I spoke to a class of about writing and self-publishing. After the class was letting out, one of the students came up to me and asked something I’d never asked or even considered asking. To paraphrase, the question was: “Has any criticism you’ve gotten influenced what you put in your book?”

Wow! I don’t think I’ve ever considered asking an artist that question. And it is an interesting one as it essentially boils down to “What are changes that were made in this book that you wouldn’t have implemented if other people hadn’t asked?”

All through the book there are various sentence level changes — things I added or trimmed or tweaked — but here are some of the more significant changes that were made after critiques were given.

Some minor spoilers ahead for The Wilderlands.

The Story’s Frame

Even if you don’t know what a “frame story” is, you’ve certainly encountered one.

The Princess Bride is probably the easiest thing to point to to demonstrate a frame story. In the film adaptation, the frame story is the grandfather telling his sick grandchild the story that we’re all here to see. In the book, the frame story is the author struggling to adapt/translate the culturally obscure manuscript that is The Princess Bride for American readership.

In The Wilderlands, there is a specific character telling us the story at the very start, speaking of concern to the gathered listeners about hunters returning from a deep, dark winter night.

While I did always intend to have the narrator addressing an imagined audience, I didn’t really have the implication that those gathered and listening were waiting for overdue hunters. I also added a point later in the book where the narrator addresses another character for a few pages about what might have happened to these hunters.

However, in the same way the grandfather telling the story in The Princess Bride probably only makes up about 15 minutes of the movie, those elements of The Wilderlands probably only make up about 12 pages of the actual finished book.

This frame story was an editorial suggestion recommended that came after the first round of edits. It was something I was initially resistant to — I wanted to keep the book under 300 pages and a whole narrative around the narrative felt like something that would balloon page count — but the more I thought it over, the more I was compelled.

I came up with a slight narrative around the narrative that I felt would help fill in the gaps for a few characters’ journeys where main story leaves off. That said, one of my fears was the frame story making certain aspects of the narrative too busy, so I’m sympathetic to anyone disliking it.

I’ve had one friend tell me the frame story was detrimental and another tell me it was perfect. I mention this to illustrate that taking a critique isn’t a black or white thing; you need to ultimately decide how you feel about it in your story.

The Wizard Words and the Familiar Crow

There is a wizard in the book. This is a character inspired somewhat by the idea of the Merlin. Not the contemporary depictions of Merlin, so much as the druidic idea of Merlin (and wizards in general) where they are weirdo forest dwellers who live separate from society.

To communicate the wizard’s strangeness, I had the character speaking phonetically. (Example “Aye am happee too meet yoo.”) I tried keep the wizard’s speaking to a minimal to account for the character being difficult to understand, but eventually enough people told me it wasn’t working that I decided to change it.

While my brother was one of the people who I don’t think minded the wizard-speak, I posed the question to him of how to fix it since I still wanted the wizard to seem alien.

“Don’t wizards have familiars?” he posited.

Boom! It fell right into place. I already had some references in the book to how crows in particular can peck at people and parrot their tongue. So I decided to give my wizard the crow, Eye, to speak through.

While I think this does make the wizard seem a little bit less like a singular threat, I do think it enhances the strangeness of the situation.

The Girl

Speaking of the wizard, one of the main characters — Dhorena — has a rather lengthy encounter with the wizard in the finished book. While she always found her way to Blaez, the pair’s encounter used to take up just two or three pages. In the published version, there’s probably two chapters worth of story that comes from just them dealing with one another.

This came to be because one of my editors suggested that Dhorena did not have the agency she deserved as one of the book’s primary characters. Some of what my editor pointed to was the ending (which also got expanded). I can’t recall if my editor also pointed to the encounter with Blaez, but — one way or another — that scene stuck out as a place where agency is taken from Dhorena.

That loss of agency is still there, but I hope now that it’s better supported by some of Dhorena’s own rational. Now we see a lot more decision making that leads her to that moment.

I don’t want to give much away about the last few chapters, but things were expanded on there to illustrate her situation a rational a little bit more. (Originally, the book ended after “Night Two,” now there is “A Third Night.”)

There’s probably one or two tiny tweaks I would make if I were still writing the book to adjust some of the details of the impression Dhorena leaves the reader with, but I think those earlier edits made her arc and character motivations stronger across the board.

11th Hour Change

This last one isn’t a critique I got from a reader. However, since the previous points talked about some of the most significant changes in the book, this seems like a good place to discuss the other big change.

Consider this a bonus.

After finishing the first completed draft of the book, I decided to make an addition ended up being vital for informing Knalc’s character.

I won’t give anything too specific away here (though feel free to leave and come back if you want to experience every facet of the story fresh), but if you’ve read even the first chapter of the book, you have probably noticed it mentioned that Knalc has a “clay heart” that he wears. It comes up again a few times through the book, but mainly becomes important in the final third of the text.

From a mechanical/writing perspective, the clay heart enables Knalc to make a necessary decision toward the end of the book. It also acts as a physical object that hints at his backstory before we hear about his past at length.

Only a couple of people would have read a version of the story without the clay heart, so I don’t know how much some people might have dinged Knalc’s arc without it. For me, though, it does ultimately make following him more compelling during the first half of the book and, even if readers don’t notice it, I hope it does the same for them.

*****

Check out the first part of this this “making of” blog series here: How Much Does it Cost to Self-Publish a Book?

The Wilderlands is available for physical purchase now from Barnes & Noble and Amazon. The Wilderlands ebook is available now on Kindle here, on Nook here, on Kobo here, and on Apple here.