"On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous" By Ocean Vuong | Book Review

*This review contains spoilers*

If any of you know anything about Ocean Vuong, he is primarily a poet who won the MacArthur grant for this novel. So likely, it will come as no surprise when I tell you "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous" by Ocean Vuong is a stunning and poetic novel that cuts straight to the core of the identity of a Vietnamese gay man.

His poetic roots really shined in this fantastic novel, for every sentence felt like it could not have been worded more perfectly. Written in the form of a letter from a son to his mother, the book is intrinsically contentious with itself from the get-go. The letter is written in English which his mother cannot speak.

It sets up one of the most fantastic things about the style and the content of this book which is the stark examination of language: how it bridges gaps, builds walls, transcends words, and restricts us. 

The novel tracks a young boy's life, from his earliest memories with his mother through his teenage years and adulthood, where he uncovers his identity, peels away layers of love and the world as it looks to someone who isn't accepted by it.

Vuong weaves stories together and examines many of the truths about the character's existence with such stark language that is nearly impossible not to get emotional while reading.

Themes throughout include sexual revelations, perceiving violence as love and how that comes to be, purpose in the world, drug use, and socioeconomic status.

Primarily, we look at three relationships: the main character (who is largely called "Little Dog") and his mother, Little Dog and Trevor, and Little Dog and himself.

With his mother, this is how we get to know him. We learn of his upbringing, how hard he watched her work for such little money, that they lived in Hartford, Connecticut and didn't have much. His mother beat him regularly, however even at a young age he seemed to look past that and see it stemming from her having been married to someone who abused her. Here, there is a tangle of love, dedication, caretaking, and role reversal. If your mother comes home so exhausted from work every day that she can barely sit up, is she taking care of you or are you taking care of her?

Questions like these propel through the novel and help make it feel as if we the readers are figuring out life with Little Dog.

Arguably the most time is spent on Little Dog's relationship with Trevor, and that felt fitting. With precise language and unflinching metaphor, Vuong shows perfectly the entire course of their relationship and how it encompasses the trickiness of exploring sexuality that isn't accepted. How that can translate to drugs, to not understanding what exactly love is, and not knowing what is in a healthy relationship.

These parts of the book were so authentic I imagine it was painstaking to write, and many of the most emotional parts came here. To learn of Trevor's death was absolutely a tear-jerker and I thought it helped characterize so much of Little Dog.

Finally, the relationship that we see develop the most, Little Dog's relationship with himself. It's with expert prose that this is woven in so indirectly, that we only see these small shifts through existential questions and changes in his actions.

These spurred some of my favorite quotes and some of the most real moments of the book. One of those is when he writes to his mother: "I got what I wanted—a boy swimming toward me. Except I was no shore, Ma. I was driftwood trying to remember what I had broken from to get here."

The entire novel is a poetic masterpiece that ponders love and life and identity, and it is a must-read if you haven't already.


Characters: 100%
Plot: 95%
Depth: 100%
Intrigue: 100%
Style: 100%
Overall: A+

A Beginner's Guide to Copyediting | Part Two

In the last part of this series, we talked about the general parameters of copyediting as a job, style guides, and a little bit on freelancing. If you haven't read that part, check it out here: A Beginner's Guide to Copyediting | Part One

This time, we're going to talk about copyediting marks and when/how to query an author during copyediting. This post is a lot more practical in its application, and these are the skills that you'll be using to actually edit.

Now, it must be said, copyediting marks are only used if the publishing house you're working for still edits with physical manuscripts. If it is digital, there will be other protocols for editing that can include anything from using track changes on Microsoft Word, using the commenting feature on Adobe Acrobat, and commenting or suggesting on Google Docs. That will be specified by the house upon hiring, and when doing that, you just make the necessary changes using the specified tool. Any time you want to query, you'll just add it as a comment.

This displays track changes in Microsoft Word.

So what is querying? Querying is an important part of copyediting, because it is communicating through worded comments rather than copyediting marks that typically concern things like tone, voice, logic, or fact versus fable.

Let's break that down a little bit further. Say you're reading a piece that is written conversationally for a magazine that has a light tone and talks about culture and entertainment in real-time. Everything is in line, and then there is a sentence with high vocabulary and cultural theory that sounds stilted compared to the rest of the piece. In that situation, you might have ideas of words and expressions that would better communicate the meaning of the sentence without affecting the tone. But, your job is to edit, not to write the article, so rather than making the change with copyediting marks, you would query something along the lines of "These ideas come across as a little bit elevated as is. Perhaps use the words..." and then insert your suggestion.

It's important that you explain why you think it might be a problem, and it's also important that you phrase your query in a way that makes it seem collaborative rather than harsh. An author who feels that their work is being attacked won't react well, and that could lead to them complaining to your employer, making business harder, or simply rejecting the edits because of wounded egos. This is never an easy line to toe, however it is a really important thing to be aware of.

Beyond tone or vocabulary, you'll typically want to query something that reads as illogical. This would be working more on a novel where there is supposed to be a logic to the world, plot, etc. or on a more academic piece. If a conclusion is made, or something happens that doesn't follow the logic of the rest of the piece, it is your job to point that out.

A query on something like this would be a little bit more questioning in nature. You can add suggestions of what you think would make more sense, but your main objective here would be to ask the author the questions you have about the logic. When going through and approving edits, they can read where the confusion is and make the necessary changes, or add a sentence substantiating the jump in logic. Either way, this is very important for author credibility.

Sometimes when fact checking, something is undeniable (like the date that a world war started). Other times, however, there are things that you cannot corroborate with your information like the spelling of a person's name or a description of an old town. You'll need to query this outright rather to bring it to the attention of the author.

Here, the key is to not overdo it. If you know for a fact something is wrong, simply change it with a deletion mark and a caret. Only query when you suspect something is incorrect, or you tried and cannot find the information online.

For any of the queries, the comment should be written with the mark "Q:" or "Qu:" preceding the comment in the margins of the text. This looks the same digitally and in print.

Now, for the rest of copyediting marks, what do they look like?

Here's a handy sheet:

These are pretty standard across the publishing industry. You'll use these within the actual text to communicate what needs to change. If the author approves these edits, these marks will be sent to a typesetter to make the necessary changes, so it's imperative that they're accurate and very clearly written.

The only thing that won't go directly in the text is something like "stet," which as you see is circled. Any word/abbreviation that is written out and circled goes in the margin next to the line where the change is being made.

To indicate what copyedit you are reversing, you would just put ..... under the word that was edited with the "stet" in the margin.

What I want to end this post with is a reiteration of my earlier point about how to address the author. In any query, email, or author letter in which you are making changes, you have to keep the tone cordial and respectful.

But you also have to ensure that it doesn't become overly reverent. You can compliment where things are done very well, but your job is not to boost the author's ego. Do not shower them in compliments, or try to be overly nice before you make an edit so that it is received well. Simply ensure that you are suggesting and being collaborative.

In other words, you don't want to say, "This word makes you sound pretentious, change it," but you also don't want to go too far the other way with something like: "You're vocabulary is stunning and it's so impressive how smart you are, but I think here a different word could work."

You want the sweet spot in between there. Something closer to: "As is, the sentence makes sense, but to keep the tone of the magazine and the piece, you might want to consider using a different word such as..."

That way, you are being respectful, but still getting your change across without going too far in either direction.

All of this being said, this is the true meat and potatoes of copyediting. What you'll spend most of your time doing is using these marks and queries to make the changes, and sometimes you'll compile a letter after the fact detailing what you did and some larger changes that the author could consider making that you didn't mark.

Being well-versed in these marks and in this communicative style is imperative for any successful copyeditor.

In the next part of this series, I'll dive into proofreading, some of the trickier grammatical topics such as who/whom, number formatting with different style manuals, and how to make your own personal style sheets. It will be out Monday, April 6, 2020 at noon!

Make sure to leave a comment if you have any further questions, I'm always around to help!

A Beginner's Guide To Copyediting | Part One

As part of an upcoming series on different areas of publishing, I want to start out with an essential part of the publishing industry. Copyediting is a wide-ranging and often overlooked job. In an effort to cover all parts of it, I'll do this in multiple sections.

This post, I will talk about what jobs copyediting could include, style guides, and freelancing.

Copyediting happens toward the end of the publishing process, when the manuscript or article has been developmentally edited and is about to be sent off to final pass pages. In a large publishing house, they'll likely have in-house copyeditors who work steadily and regularly on incoming manuscripts.

In a smaller publishing house or a magazine that's running on a quick operation schedule, copyediting could blend with developmental editing, and it is often commissioned by freelancers. There are a number of networks out there to find a freelance copyeditor. Some of those are typical job networking sites like LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor, etc. However, there are also services such as the Editorial Freelancers Association in which you can pitch yourself to employers looking for a freelance copyeditor.

These are important for the practical aspect of finding work as a copyeditor. So, what exactly is copyediting?

A strange part of the job is that there aren't always clear boundaries as to what a copyeditor's job is or isn't. Generally, a copyeditor is responsible for line-by-line edits that correct grammar, clarity, and vocabulary as it relates to the audience.

Correcting grammar is fairly straight forward: correcting comma splices, verb agreements, dangling modifiers, etc. If you're commissioned to do a light copyedit on grammar in a few hours, you might only be checking things like if there are commas between two independent clauses. But every house and magazine has a respective style guide. 

There are standardized style guides such as AP or Chicago which lay out all kinds of rules. When to spell out numbers, how to style addresses, the correct spelling of certain words, hyphenation guides, etc. However, most publishing houses will send a style guide upon hiring you that will declare something along the lines of: "This house uses AP style except in the case of: numbers (spell out up to 100), title abbreviations, and month abbreviations."

Following that, will be a list of words that the publishing house wants formatted a certain way should they show up in the text that you're editing.

While doing a copyedit, these are all things that you must be mindful of. Due to their specification by the publishing house, they're also things that you must be pertinent not to miss. When copyediting, I like to have the text and style guide up side by side to ensure I don't miss a thing.

For any copyeditor to be efficient and successful, it is imperative that they at least have a working knowledge of the AP Stylebook and Chicago Manual of Style. At the very least, most houses base their guides off of one of these two, and while you're of course welcome (and encouraged) to refer to them while editing, the more you know off the top of your head, the quicker you can work.

With all of that being said, more times than most, the job of a copyeditor does not end at grammar and following a style guide.

The specifics of what is being requested of you will almost always be asked upon your hiring, however if a copyeditor proves their attentiveness in doing a little bit more than what is asked of them, that could earn a recommendation or a re-hire from an employer.

So, what could that entail? Copyediting can include fact checking, ensuring the page numbers match up with the table of contents, clearing that addresses and phone numbers are listed right, checking the math within a graph if there is tabular matter, correcting the titles or numbers of references that occur in the text, and enforcing consistency in voice.

All of these things could be a part of your job if you are hired as a copyeditor. Evidently, you likely won't be spending hours working through the math of an excel chart unless you are working for a finance company, or editing copy whose topic is numeric-heavy, but this is always something to be aware of when going into a job. If that really isn't your thing, ensure beforehand that it won't be entailed, because oftentimes that is expected of copyeditors to have as a skill under their belt.

While some of those things may feel like they fall out of line with the job, correcting page numbers even if it isn't asked of you, could be what earns you a good reputation and referrals among the community. This is essential, particularly if you are planning on entering this business as a freelancer. To be a freelancer is to be your own employer in many ways, and a proper investment in yourself and your skill is to lay groundwork for longevity. Going above and beyond and being extra careful will do that.

And I'm sure all this talk of grammar and style guides feels very cut and dry, but at the end of the day, it is also important to remember that all of this must be delivered to the author in ways that are kind and helpful, rather than seen as slashing down their work.

More on that in the next part, which will touch on copyediting marks, queries, and how to practically apply all of these things. That post will be out on Saturday, April 4, 2020. Keep an eye out for it!

"Crescent City: House of Earth and Blood" by Sarah J. Maas | Book Review

*This review contains spoilers*

As somebody who has read every other Sarah J. Maas book, I think Crescent City: House of Earth and Blood is the craziest one yet.

Set in Maas' sprawling new world, a city quite like our own world with some fantastical tuneups, Bryce Quinnlan navigates the tricky waters of love, loss, corruption, and deceit. As a young twenty-three year old, working all day and partying all night, Bryce comes to us with a sharp mouth, a quick mind, and one goal: to spend as much time as she can with her best friend, Danika Fendyr.

All of that changes when, late one night, stumbling home from a club with multiple drugs in her system, Bryce pushes open her apartment door to find Danika and her pack of wolves savagely murdered.

It's clear that, since this is Maas' first official adult novel, she was given the go-ahead to talk about some topics that she previously couldn't, such as drinking, drugs, more sex (but we'll talk about that later), and cursing. The first twenty or thirty pages were an adjustment for me in a similar way that The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling seemed to affect people. It's as if, because the floodgates were open, all those years of pent-up curse words and bar scenes tumbled out.

And at first, I was a little bit frustrated, worried that Maas would suffer a similar affliction to Rowling, but after about a hundred pages, once the plot properly began to pick up, she seemed to even back out into her old rhythm of things, incorporating those things where they were believable rather than wherever she could.

Now, let's talk about world building. I'll admit, this book wasn't my favorite for a long while. I actually debated DNF-ing it because the beginning of this book was slow. The world Maas created is fascinating, a breeding ground for all kinds of creatures. Mer-people and humans, Fae and shape-shifters, wolves and archangels all co-existing.

But the first fifty pages felt like a deluge of information. Like every other paragraph was explaining something new about the world, how different things functioned within it without showing that to us. It almost became too much at once, like reading a world handbook rather than the actual story. And to be frank, I found most of those explanations went over my head, and I really understood things once we saw the city functioning in action.

Perhaps that's why the first fifth of the story just didn't pull me in, but I found myself really unsure if this was going anywhere that I was interested. Bryce, though fun, felt like another iteration of Maas' other two main characters, and when we met the brooding Umbra Mortis who would be watching her as they strove to discover two years later who had killed Danika and her pack, I knew he was Rhys or Rowan incarnate.

But once the story picked up, Maas drew me in. What she does, even if the characters aren't entirely new, is fantastic character work. Between dialogue and habits, she creates characters that feel undoubtedly real, for whom you have to sympathize with.

Bryce being a half-Fae with near-negligible power, so little that her father refuses to recognize her in a world where being a half-breed gets you called just that, you have to feel sorry for her. She's lost her best friend and is clearly struggling with that. And you have Hunt, who's a slave that is forced to kill, tormented all these years later by a lost love, slaughtered at her sisters hands.

The characters are so sympathetic that watching them heal one another slowly is something you want to stick around for.

But once the plot really got going, that was nothing to shy away from either. My favorite genre is crime, and so finding out that this book was practically fantasy-crime made me feel electric.

The clues were laid perfectly. I'll admit, some of them I saw coming, or had an inkling. With the incessant reference to Bryce being nothing more than a half-Fae, not blessed with any power, a deep part of me promised that that was not true. However, I never expected her to hold Fae light within her, to make the drop solo and plummet so deep into power. I didn't once predict that the horn was inscribed on her back in that tattoo, and I definitely didn't see that Micha was behind all of the killings.

The last two or three hundred pages were breakneck, hurtling to an end that felt inevitable, but was set back so many times by complications, you had to wonder if it would truly come to fruition.

An unexpectedly tender and emotional moment happened toward the end, when all of the Summit is watching Bryce face off with Micah on the big screen and Lehabah—who, though I didn't love towards the beginning, really grew on me—sacrifices herself for Bryce after being freed. It was brief, not entirely new, but so emotional and so essential that I couldn't help but love it.

The reveals of this plot were done expertly, and they really made the end of the book feel worthwhile.

Many of the things that went down here tied into the different species hierarchies in this world, and I found that to be done very tastefully. The way Fae looked down on half-Fae, and all of the Vanir looked down on humans, with archangels and angels brooding above the rest. It added a nice flavor of reality to this book, where so much of it is fantastical. Our society is layered with hierarchies and gates for those who do not qualify, and I liked seeing Maas tackle something so head on.

All of that being said, I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about a few of the things I didn't love.

The characters all felt like new iterations of the same people Maas has always written. The men are possessive, brooding, and though everyone in the world thinks they're killing machines, they're all soft and cuddly at their heart. The women are all biting, irreverent, and take any chance they get to call the "alpha" men on their "alpha" bullshit.

And every single one of them are, per usual, stunning, gifted with unnatural beauty and perfect bodies.

I'm never really a huge fan of sex in fantasy books unless there is purpose to it. A sexual scene can elevate the plot if it's with someone unexpected, if it has either huge negative or positive implications, if it shows cheating or reveals a character's sleight of hand. There are a lot of ways to spin this. But Maas has always written uncomfortably detailed, way-too-long sex scenes that are smut for the point of smut.

That works for some people, for me I just don't need it. All of the masculine words and the mixing of scents and things just aren't interesting to me. Her strength is world and character building and big reveals we didn't see coming, so I wish sometimes she could just cut some of the sex scenes out. If anything, though, I still felt like this book was less smutty than A Court of Mist and Fury, which is a win in my book.

Overall, the beginning started out slow and a little bit rocky for me, but as the plot picked up and the characters deepened, I found myself engrossed, reading the last three hundred pages in practically one sitting. Maas created a series with massive potential as it goes on, this book clocking in as one of her best plot- and setting-wise.



Characters: 95%
Plot: 98%
Depth: 90%
Intrigue: 90%
Style: 80%
Overall: A-

What "Dynasty" Teaches Us About Plot Complication

Just three years ago, CW announced that it was doing a reboot of the classic show "Dynasty" starring Elizabeth Gillies, Rafael de la Fuente, James Mackay, and more.

I recently binged the series on Netflix (a great pastime, in case you were wondering; there's 22 episodes per season and each episode is chock full of drama) and as I was watching, I found myself noticing that the show is actually a great vessel with which to look at arguably the most important component of plot: complication.

Briefly, let's talk about complications and how they are important to plot.

In every story, no matter if it's 100 words or 100,000, the plot is defined by key moments of complication in the story. Good stories, ones that have us gripping the pages and hovering on the edges of our seats, are full of complications, and use these complications to propel the story forward and keep our attention.

A complication, simply, is any sort of problem or conflict in the plot. And while that can seem like a big moment—a war, when enemies are born, a fight, an affair—it doesn't necessarily have to be. The beats of all stories are big complications, but a complication in a story can be so small as a young boy not wanting to take off his shoes at someone else's house and the homeowner insisting.

In fact, while big complications are important to stories otherwise there is no climax and there are no beats it, oftentimes smaller complications can be particularly productive and fruitful. Looking at the instance of a young male character not wanting to take his shoes off, but the family whose home he is at insists, we can learn a lot, both about the tone of the story and the characters involved.

This moment could be as quick as this:

"Sweetie, can you take your shoes off?" asked the mother, stooping down with a smile so wide it stretched the edges of her cheeks.

The boy moved behind his father's legs and murmured, "I don't want to."

"Oh, but I must insist," affirmed the mother, shuffling to the left to keep his eye contact. "We just don't want dirt trekked into the house, now do we?"

The woman's smile still lingered, though her words were poisonously sweet.

"Surely that's not a problem," the boy's father said with a half-laugh. He put a hand on the boy's back and said, "Take off your shoes, okay?"

The boy did so with a huff.

In the context of a story, these six lines are practically nothing, a passing moment that in just a few paragraphs will be forgotten for the next complication, but it is incredibly revealing.

First off, this moment sets the tone of the piece as tense. The air is already taut between these two families as the boy defies the homeowner. This isn't necessarily a fight, and nothing should be coming to a head in moments like this, but they're helpful tools if you want to establish tension and electricity in the air before the rest of the plot unfurls.

In addition, this one complication tells us a lot about these three characters. The son is massively uncomfortable, and very particular. He doesn't feel relaxed in this scene, and for whatever reason, taking off his shoes is a big no-no. Similarly, we learn that the homeowner must have things her way, no matter how small and no matter who it is pertaining to. Oftentimes you might have a character make a passing comment about it if they are slightly less uptight and slightly more passive, but here, we see that the mother confronts things head on, and is very particular about everything.

With the dad being the parent that the boy hides behind, you can tell that they have a good relationship, so much so that the boy feels most safe behind his legs. However, in the dad leaning down and asking the boy to take off his shoes with a laugh, we can tell he is a peacemaker and he wants nothing more than to comfortably and politely diffuse the situation.

Do you see how these small complications, these moments that could seem insignificant, could actually produce a lot of useful information in terms of tone and character that will be relevant later in the story?

Thus, complications, both big and small, are essential to stories and are something most writers should strive to have a lot of. If you can pack in these complications—as long as it's sensible and fitting—then the story will be propelled and attention will be hooked.

The show "Dynasty" is a great example of that.

Every episode—hell, every ten minutes—of this show is so full of complications that you cannot get up for even a second because you could be lost by the time you come back. Every time you think you're heading to a solution, every time you think it cannot possibly get any crazier, another wrench is thrown; somebody comes back, a scandal is leaked, somebody goes missing, an old secret is unearthed, etc.

The writers of this show (really, the original "Dynasty" writers, as this is only a remake) are complication geniuses, because not only do they pick the perfect complications to tell us what we need to know and to show us more about people's characters, the complications are always believable.

Now, "Dynasty" is a soap opera, so of course some things are going to be overdramatic and of course sometimes the complications are going to feel a bit excessive. If you are a writer and you're writing anything that isn't a serialized soap opera, you probably shouldn't use "Dynasty" as your exact model, but we can look at it to take inspiration for how to create complications.

If you haven't watched the show and want to, I'd suggest you watch the show and then come back, because I am about to spoil the plot of the first episode to show how they create complication.

First, in episode one, we open with introductions to the characters and to their billion-dollar-lifestyle.

Both Fallon and Steven—the children of Blake Carrington (owner of Carrington Atlantic, a Fortune 500 company) have been called to return home, and neither quite know why. Within minutes of the opening shots, Steven and Fallon have had a conversation about Steven not wanting to come home because he feels unfulfilled, pressured, and a misfit in the affluent and corporate world that the rest of the Carringtons live in.

This is already a huge complication (not to mention smaller ones, such as Fallon sleeping with her father's driver, which we find out he doesn't know about, Fallon longing for the COO position in the family business which she is certain she will get) that will drive the plot, but that teaches us a lot about that family's life.

When they arrive in their father's study, they find him on top of a woman, one garment away from having intercourse. There is disgust on both of their faces, only for Fallon to realize that this woman works at Carrington Atlantic. Another two complications in the plot.

Then, Blake and the woman—Cristal—announce that they are engaged and that the children were called back for their wedding. A further complication because as the next scene reveals, neither children really approve of or are comfortable with this marriage, let alone that it is someone from the company.

Keep in mind, all of this has happened within ten, maybe twenty minutes of footage.

The rest of the episode unspools and we see Steven running into a boy at a bar who he recklessly has sex with, and through that it is revealed that his father and his family were not very accepting of his sexuality. Then, moments later, the man he has sex with is shown moving into the Manor that they live in, as he is in fact Cristal's nephew.

Blake and Cristal move up the wedding and lie about the date, and to top if off, Blake names Cristal the new COO of the company, embarrassing Fallon and robbing her of the one thing she'd wanted.

All of these complications (and, quite frankly, probably more that I missed or forgot about) are packed into just the first episode of this sweeping drama show, and you'll notice a few things.

One, all of this charges the air with so much tension and such clear character dynamics that you can't help but marvel at how the writers selected the complications to reveal stuff to us about this family. Two, there is so much in the first episode, you almost have to keep watching because you're so on your toes about how all of these things could possibly play out. Three, all of these things are appropriate conflicts and complications for the characters. It's believable. Because of what we know about Fortune 500 companies, because of what we know about ambitious people and the lavish lifestyle they live. Every thing that happens you can believe because it all fits nicely, if not a bit haphazardly, into the frame.

And this is why "Dynasty" shows so much about complications that all writers could learn from. Is it perfect? No—a lot of this show feels crazy, and it heavily banks on its frame as a soap opera, but through all of the insanity of the show, we can learn a lot about how to create plot and how to use conflict to the very best of your abilities.

P.S. if you keep watching the show, the complications only get bigger and more frequent. It's truly brilliant.