Ask the Author: C.S. Pacat
Answered Questions (7)
C.S. Pacat
Captive Prince started off as a web serial that garnered viral attention, and after I'd written the first two volumes in that format I tried to publish commercially, and was rejected just about everywhere - agents, publishers, you name it. But because I had so many requests for a paperback from online readers, I eventually self published, and the books shot up the charts - and after that were picked up by Penguin, where the series went on to become a USA Today bestseller.
I was lucky in that sense that I learned that rejection has nothing to do with whether a book will make it or not, or whether it will connect with readers. Publishers might reject a book because it's just not to an editor's particular taste, or because it's new - publishers are essentially venture capitalists, and if something is new it's marketing potential is zero, or at best "question mark". I was also really lucky to have had enthusiastic readers, who encouraged me along the way, and to be writing at a time when the internet and self publishing offers alternate paths for publication. My book got to prove itself to publishers in the market.
I didn't necessarily have a single method for dealing with rejection, but I remember when I was sending Captive Prince out on queries, I kept a "rejection book" where I printed and pasted all my rejection letters, and journalled my feelings about each one next to them. I found that useful to process what I was feeling, and make each rejection feel like part of a process rather than the End of All Things.
As for criticism - I think all writers receive criticism, because no book is universally liked. Liking a book is often not only a matter of personal taste, but of the exact moment in time that you read it: the book I read and loved at fifteen I might hate at thirty, and vice versa.
I think it's important to take criticism seriously but not personally. I always want to grow and improve as a writer, and I think criticism and praise both offer opportunities to do that, ways of glimpsing your work from the outside as it is received by different types of readers.
I am one of those writers who thinks that the book is made by the author and then remade by the reader's mind - remade by the act of reading - so that in a sense no two people read the same book. In that way, writing is an imperfect form of communication: you write hoping to evoke this image or this feeling in the reader, but your tools are blunt, limited, and once the reader begins to read, you the author have lost control over what exactly they will feel and experience. Thus a book that is consoling to one reader may be corrosive to another, a book that is boring to one reader may be brilliant to another, because a reader's mind is where a book springs to life.
The best advice I ever heard about criticism was from Karen Joy Fowler who was asked - but if books are subjective, how do you know when your book is working, how do you know which criticism is valid? She said (paraphrasing) that if there are people who love the book, it is working, and it's okay if there are people who don't like it, as that will happen for every book. But if the love isn't there yet, then rewrite.
I was lucky in that sense that I learned that rejection has nothing to do with whether a book will make it or not, or whether it will connect with readers. Publishers might reject a book because it's just not to an editor's particular taste, or because it's new - publishers are essentially venture capitalists, and if something is new it's marketing potential is zero, or at best "question mark". I was also really lucky to have had enthusiastic readers, who encouraged me along the way, and to be writing at a time when the internet and self publishing offers alternate paths for publication. My book got to prove itself to publishers in the market.
I didn't necessarily have a single method for dealing with rejection, but I remember when I was sending Captive Prince out on queries, I kept a "rejection book" where I printed and pasted all my rejection letters, and journalled my feelings about each one next to them. I found that useful to process what I was feeling, and make each rejection feel like part of a process rather than the End of All Things.
As for criticism - I think all writers receive criticism, because no book is universally liked. Liking a book is often not only a matter of personal taste, but of the exact moment in time that you read it: the book I read and loved at fifteen I might hate at thirty, and vice versa.
I think it's important to take criticism seriously but not personally. I always want to grow and improve as a writer, and I think criticism and praise both offer opportunities to do that, ways of glimpsing your work from the outside as it is received by different types of readers.
I am one of those writers who thinks that the book is made by the author and then remade by the reader's mind - remade by the act of reading - so that in a sense no two people read the same book. In that way, writing is an imperfect form of communication: you write hoping to evoke this image or this feeling in the reader, but your tools are blunt, limited, and once the reader begins to read, you the author have lost control over what exactly they will feel and experience. Thus a book that is consoling to one reader may be corrosive to another, a book that is boring to one reader may be brilliant to another, because a reader's mind is where a book springs to life.
The best advice I ever heard about criticism was from Karen Joy Fowler who was asked - but if books are subjective, how do you know when your book is working, how do you know which criticism is valid? She said (paraphrasing) that if there are people who love the book, it is working, and it's okay if there are people who don't like it, as that will happen for every book. But if the love isn't there yet, then rewrite.
C.S. Pacat
When I first started trying to write a novel, I wish I had known two things. First, that writing a novel is really hard, and second, that no one can write a novel when they first start out - everyone will have stuff they just can't do, like plotting, or coming up with ideas, or getting past the beginning, or making decisions, or whatever.
When I was starting out - and I think this happens to a lot of people - I found everything hard, and there was a lot that I couldn't do, and I thought that since it wasn't easy and I couldn't do it straight away, I must not be a writer. I wish someone had said to me then, "This is normal. It feels hard because it is hard. No one can do it when they first start out. What you're feeling, every novelist goes through this. The long period where you're producing bad work and you can't write a novel is the normal stage that everyone has to persevere through in order to be able to write a novel."
When I was starting out - and I think this happens to a lot of people - I found everything hard, and there was a lot that I couldn't do, and I thought that since it wasn't easy and I couldn't do it straight away, I must not be a writer. I wish someone had said to me then, "This is normal. It feels hard because it is hard. No one can do it when they first start out. What you're feeling, every novelist goes through this. The long period where you're producing bad work and you can't write a novel is the normal stage that everyone has to persevere through in order to be able to write a novel."
C.S. Pacat
Yes! I'm always amazed by how creative fans are, by the fanart, cosplay and enthusiasm. I love seeing different interpretations of characters. One thing that's surprised and delighted me is the way that in art and fan castings there's a sort of Universal Laurent who rarely varies other than in hair length, but that there are lots of different, highly diverse Damens. I love the idea that each reader is experiencing the book with an individual and distinct Damen. I'm always fascinated by the way that the book is first written by the writer, and then in a sense written again when it is read by a reader, who brings their imagination and ideas to the story.
C.S. Pacat
Although I don't compulsively re-read my beginnings, I do go through phases where I hate my own work, which I have learned is completely normal, and something all authors experience.
I have a few ways of dealing with it, one is that I use a journal where I write my feelings about my writing to get them out and move on - I do this not every day, but only when I need it. It shows me that the feelings are cyclic and unrelated to how good or bad the writing is.
Another way is to remind myself that it's normal to experience a lot of distorted thinking while writing a novel, and to use mindfulness techniques to deal with them - just because it feels bad doesn't mean it is bad, emotional reality is not objective reality, etc.
A third way is to use mantras - I lot of my friends use positive affirmation mantras ("I am great! I can write a great novel!") but I just use one where I add "And I'm still going to finish" to the end of whatever negativity I'm feeling. "This sucks... and I'm still going to finish."
Writing a novel is hard psychologically as well as technically, so figuring out what your stressors and weak spots are and coming up with active strategies to cope with them is really important in being able to finish a manuscript.
I miss Sydney, hope to come back this year!!
I have a few ways of dealing with it, one is that I use a journal where I write my feelings about my writing to get them out and move on - I do this not every day, but only when I need it. It shows me that the feelings are cyclic and unrelated to how good or bad the writing is.
Another way is to remind myself that it's normal to experience a lot of distorted thinking while writing a novel, and to use mindfulness techniques to deal with them - just because it feels bad doesn't mean it is bad, emotional reality is not objective reality, etc.
A third way is to use mantras - I lot of my friends use positive affirmation mantras ("I am great! I can write a great novel!") but I just use one where I add "And I'm still going to finish" to the end of whatever negativity I'm feeling. "This sucks... and I'm still going to finish."
Writing a novel is hard psychologically as well as technically, so figuring out what your stressors and weak spots are and coming up with active strategies to cope with them is really important in being able to finish a manuscript.
I miss Sydney, hope to come back this year!!
C.S. Pacat
Great question! There's a classic story structure called the "hero's journey" that would indeed have started before Damen's capture. The template for a hero's journey is to start in the hero's ordinary world, then have an inciting incident (in this case the capture) that propels the hero into the story. EG Harry lives with the Dursleys before his invitation propels him into the world of Hogwarts, or we meet the Pevensies while they are staying with their uncle before Lucy discovers the wardrobe that leads her into Narnia.
Because of that I actually made two attempts to do just that - I tried to do it in my first draft and it didn't work out, and I tried again to do a rewrite along those lines when Captive Prince was picked up by Penguin. But no matter how I wrote it, it slowed the narrative down, and robbed the beginning of its immediacy. There are also a few key pieces of information and sort of - invisible heavy lifting - that the opening prologue is doing that narratively that collapsed when it changed into an "ordinary world" opening.
Elsewhere, Captive Prince broadly follows a hero's journey structure, but to keep the immediacy and because I wanted Damen's biases to make themselves known to the reader slowly, I decided to instead let us learn about him through his thoughts and actions after his capture rather than before.
Because of that I actually made two attempts to do just that - I tried to do it in my first draft and it didn't work out, and I tried again to do a rewrite along those lines when Captive Prince was picked up by Penguin. But no matter how I wrote it, it slowed the narrative down, and robbed the beginning of its immediacy. There are also a few key pieces of information and sort of - invisible heavy lifting - that the opening prologue is doing that narratively that collapsed when it changed into an "ordinary world" opening.
Elsewhere, Captive Prince broadly follows a hero's journey structure, but to keep the immediacy and because I wanted Damen's biases to make themselves known to the reader slowly, I decided to instead let us learn about him through his thoughts and actions after his capture rather than before.
C.S. Pacat
I like writing that is invisible. That is, I like the writing to feel simple but to feel there are things going on between the lines. My favourite author is Dorothy Dunnett. Dunnett is the master of the invisible. Where is this tension coming from? Why is this scene so agonizing? Tension and emotion pervade her books, sometimes almost unbearably, yet when you look at the writing, at the actual words, there's nothing to show that the scene is emotional at all. Her control over what I think of as her "unwritten text" - that which is not said - is phenomenal. She has been an enormous influence on my writing.
I'm also very influenced by some of the epic fantasy storytelling that comes out of Japanese manga, and some of the series that inspired me include Berserk, Tokyo Babylon, Hikaru no Go as well as some of the yaoi epics like the Mirage of Blaze novels or Ai no Kusabi. I think that there is often a quality to manga that feels very free, unfettered by writerly self-consciousness, a willingness to take work to imaginative extremes. I also think that Japanese fantasy has a very sophisticated understanding of character archetypes, and the power that archetypes bring to a series.
Finally, as a teenager, I read a lot of online fiction and fan fiction, and found the community very inspiring, firstly, in their willingness to experiment. But also in the way that they were writing the stories that they themselves (and other readers) most wanted to see - in the case of fan fiction, even changing the source material until it was exactly what they wanted. That was very different to the creative writing classes that I took later, where many people found it difficult to tap into "reader desires", and were often writing stories that they themselves would never read in a million years.
I'm also very influenced by some of the epic fantasy storytelling that comes out of Japanese manga, and some of the series that inspired me include Berserk, Tokyo Babylon, Hikaru no Go as well as some of the yaoi epics like the Mirage of Blaze novels or Ai no Kusabi. I think that there is often a quality to manga that feels very free, unfettered by writerly self-consciousness, a willingness to take work to imaginative extremes. I also think that Japanese fantasy has a very sophisticated understanding of character archetypes, and the power that archetypes bring to a series.
Finally, as a teenager, I read a lot of online fiction and fan fiction, and found the community very inspiring, firstly, in their willingness to experiment. But also in the way that they were writing the stories that they themselves (and other readers) most wanted to see - in the case of fan fiction, even changing the source material until it was exactly what they wanted. That was very different to the creative writing classes that I took later, where many people found it difficult to tap into "reader desires", and were often writing stories that they themselves would never read in a million years.
C.S. Pacat
I don't have a single favourite fictional couple but I have a few dynamics that I gravitate towards consistently. I loved Starbuck/Apollo on Battlestar Galactica, because to me Starbuck could be read as a bit male identified or male coded, and her relationship with Apollo as a result had a slightly genderflipped dynamic. A lot of my favourite het romances are sparkly because they have unconventional gender dynamics - I love Lois/Clark when Lois wears the pants and Clark is the Girl Friday. Lois/Superman with its more conventional approach is less interesting to me.
I also love true nemeses, in an enemies-to-lovers story. Nemeses is probably the only other genre where I can get enthralled by het romance, which I suspect is because there's an inbuilt assumption of equality when someone is your nemesis, that sidesteps gendered roles or assumptions. My favourites of this type were Aeon and Trevor from the Aeon Flux cartoon (not the film, where Aeon is neutered), and Batman and Catwoman.
I don't prefer love stories when ordinary is paired with extraordinary - when the girl next door is swept away by someone epic and powerful. I like both characters to be epic and powerful! I have always longed for Epic Lesbians of this type, and the closest I found was Clarke and Lexa from The 100. I loved their power as leaders of opposing tribes, and the way they swung from enemies to uneasy allies to lovers and back again. I loved and related to Clarke's bisexuality. I was one of those devastated by The Spoiler.
Finally, I love it when both characters are equal-but-opposite, extraordinary in their different ways. I created Damen and Laurent from Captive Prince to fill my need for this type of dynamic. I think I'm still searching for a favourite story of this type, so if you have recommendations - please tell me!
I also love true nemeses, in an enemies-to-lovers story. Nemeses is probably the only other genre where I can get enthralled by het romance, which I suspect is because there's an inbuilt assumption of equality when someone is your nemesis, that sidesteps gendered roles or assumptions. My favourites of this type were Aeon and Trevor from the Aeon Flux cartoon (not the film, where Aeon is neutered), and Batman and Catwoman.
I don't prefer love stories when ordinary is paired with extraordinary - when the girl next door is swept away by someone epic and powerful. I like both characters to be epic and powerful! I have always longed for Epic Lesbians of this type, and the closest I found was Clarke and Lexa from The 100. I loved their power as leaders of opposing tribes, and the way they swung from enemies to uneasy allies to lovers and back again. I loved and related to Clarke's bisexuality. I was one of those devastated by The Spoiler.
Finally, I love it when both characters are equal-but-opposite, extraordinary in their different ways. I created Damen and Laurent from Captive Prince to fill my need for this type of dynamic. I think I'm still searching for a favourite story of this type, so if you have recommendations - please tell me!
About Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
Oct 22, 2017 08:28AM · flag
Jun 12, 2020 10:29AM · flag