Category Archives: writing

September 25, 2015 · 6:45 am

#amwriting: working in the blender

Once you have a book published, the hardest, most difficult part is trying to fit writing the next book into all the other demands on your time. I have an editing job that I work at from 6:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. daily, I write five blog posts a week for various blogs (3 for this blog) I have several novels in the works, and I am my own publicist.

That last part is not going so well, just so you know.

For one of my writing gigs, I am a member of the staff for Edgewise Words Inn, which had been quite fun as I get to explore the creative writing side of my life. I just began a serial there, a medieval fantasy, called Bleakbourne on Heath. The first installment posted September 11th, and the next will post on Tuesday the 29th of September. This has been quite fun, as it is a series of short-stories (Less than 2000 words each) chronicled by Leryn, a bard. He is the observer, but is sometime drawn into the action against his better judgement. The first two episodes are a little dark, but episodes 3 & 4 have been far-fetched and quite fun to write.

I have also signed on to edit an anthology for my publishing group, Myrddin Publishing. That has been an absolute joy–the stories that are being included in this anthology are extremely high quality. And the good part of that is, I have wonderful people working with me on the production of that book, Alison DeLuca and Lee French.

NaNoWriMo is approaching–and I am planning to spend the month of November writing a series of short stories, some set in Bleakbourne on Heath, and several random shorts.

But, like every other working person, I also have a home to keep in some sort of order, minimal though that effort is, laundry to do, cooking (yes, even vegans cook) and I try to maintain some sort of communication with our kids and grand-kids–even if it is just stalking them on Facebook.

And lets talk about Facebook, that soul-sucking time-waster from the Netherworld. Many of the events I do are organized though Facebook, and that means I get a lot of email to sift through, while I am trying to accomplish something productive for my clients.

So-and-so, the organizer, encourages everyone involved in the ordeal to post something in a thread:

But if you do, you will get 200 emails from that thread alone.
But if you don’t, you will miss some critical piece of information.
But if you do, you will get 200 emails from that thread alone.

If you are careful when you select which event to get involved with in the first place, these events can raise the indie author’s visibility, and indeed, any author’s visibility. I have done many that were not good experiences, and many that helped sell books.

To that end, I, along with many of the authors I know and a lot whom I’ve never met (over 200) will be participating in the first annual Virtual Fantasy Con in November, the 1st through the 8th.

So far, at least on the participant’s end, it is being set up like a really well-run convention, so it will be interesting to see how smoothly this goes, and how much visibility we will actually gain from this. We participating authors will have the opportunity to take part in many publicity events prior to the actual convention.

The only thing I worry about is how confusing keeping up with all the email and information is. I am afraid I will accidentally not do some critical thing–which is why I am the world’s worst personal assistant for myself.

But it’s a lot of work keeping everything organized. My ‘personal assistant’ is not as good at her job as I wish she was.

Sigh.

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Filed under Humor, Publishing, Uncategorized, writer, writing

Tagged as #amwriting, Bleakbourne on Heath, Facebook the Soul-Sucking Time Waster, NaNoWriMo, Virtual Fantasy Con 2015, Writers Conventions

September 23, 2015 · 6:45 am

#amwriting: the external eye

More people than ever are writing books. In today’s marketplace, every author must find ways to get his/her manuscript in as perfect shape as they can before they begin shopping for agents and publishers. At every seminar I attend this one fact is stressed most firmly.

What this tells me is that agents and editors at the large publishing houses see so many submissions on a daily basis that they don’t have time to do more than look at the first page or two before deciding to look further. If it is not formatted to industry standard, or if it is a rough draft, it goes into the trash, based on that quick glance. (See my post, How to Format Your Manuscript for Submission.)

Therefore, we make our manuscript as good as we can before we send it off to an agent or a large publishing house, or take the plunge and self publish. To this end, during the second or third draft we may consult what has become known as the beta-reader, volunteers who read our work, knowing it is in its infancy.

You can find many good freelance editors who offer this service, but I do recommend you ask them what it involves and what kind of report you will get back before you commit your funds to it. I can also recommend Critters Writers Workshop, a free author-driven service. Or you may have a spouse or good friends who will help you with this.

A word to the wise: Editors and other authors make terrible beta readers, because it is their nature to dismantle the manuscript and tell you how to fix it.

But what if you don’t have the luxury of a reader who both likes the kind of work you write and who also is willing to spend the time reading your work? Consider asking them to read a selected chapter, instead of asking them to read the whole thing.

I suggest this, because reading the rough-draft of an entire novel is a huge commitment to ask of someone. It is not reading for pleasure, although we hope they enjoy it.

Give your reader this list of questions, and ask him/her to please answer them, explaining that you can’t continue until you hear back from them:

Were the characters likable?
Where did the plot bog down and get boring?
Were there any places that were confusing?
What did the reader like? What did they dislike?
What do they think will happen next?

You need a reader who reads your genre, reads fairly quickly, and won’t devolve into an editor. Questions two and three are the most important: Where is it boring, and where is it confusing? Having it read in small chunks will give you a good idea of what you need to do with the ms as a whole.

I usually send my manuscripts in short pieces to my trusted crew when I need to know if I am on the right track. But the final ms in the Tower of Bones series is different. I hope to have it ready for publication by spring, so I have taken the plunge and sent Valley of Sorrows to David Cantrell for a structural edit. Dave and I have worked together on many projects.

Structural editing is digging deep. This is a tricky novel, because it tells two separate but entwined story-lines, Edwin’s and Lourdan’s, so I need an interested, but surgical, eye on it before I begin the final revisions. Dave has read Tower of Bones, and knows the world, the magic system, and the characters.

I hear you asking, what if he asks me to cut something I think is an integral part of the piece? I will have to decide what to do after I:

Re-read the section in question: Is it garbled? Was my intention not clear when I wrote it?
Look at the section in the context of the entire manuscript: Will losing this section change the story in a way that I don’t want? Or will cutting that section allow a more important point to shine?
Decide how married I am to that plot point. Sometimes divorce is the only answer.

In my own work I have discovered that if a passage seems flawed, but I can’t identify what is wrong with it, my eye wants to skip it.

But another person will see the flaw, and they will show me what is wrong there. That is why I rely on the external eye, and work with a structural editor.

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Filed under Literature, Publishing, Uncategorized, writer, writing

Tagged as #amwriting, beta reading, creative writing, Elements of the story, fantasy, first reader, indie publishing, writing craft

September 21, 2015 · 6:45 am

#amwriting: Rothfuss and Gaiman, crafting good prose

Some fantasy qualifies as literary fiction because of the way in which the story is delivered.

One example of what I think of as literary fantasy is Neil Gaiman’s Stardust. In the very first sentence of chapter one, Gaiman commits the most heinous crime an author can commit, according to those critique groups armed with a little dangerous knowledge:

Quote: There once was a young man who wished to gain his hearts desire.

And then, to make matters worse, he throws out a bit of background:

Our story starts in the village of Wall, a tiny town about a night’s drive from London. A giant wall stands next to the town, giving it its name.
There’s only one spot to pass through this huge grey rock wall, and it’s always guarded by two villagers at a time, and they are vigilant at their task.
This is peculiar, because all one can see through the break in the wall is meadows and trees. It looks as if nothing frightening or strange could be happening there, but no one is allowed to go through the break in the wall.
The guards only take a break from the wall once every nine years, on May Day, when a fair comes to the meadow

omg! Did he really do that? What was he thinking, starting a fantasy novel with a TELLING, PASSIVE sentence followed by an info dump? To answer your question, he thought he was offering up a good story, and guess what? HE WAS!

And he did it with beautiful, immersive prose.

Who else writes great prose? Patrick Rothfuss, for one. Take the first lines of The Name of the Wind.

Quote: It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.

Rothfuss then goes on to commit what some purists (aka trolls) consider a heinous crime–he DESCRIBES THE SILENCE. He does this on the first page and guess what–the reader is sucked into the story and has no desire to leave. To compound that crime, the story is a story within a story, told to a chronicler, and what most would use as the prologue actually comes after the first chapter, in chapter eight:

(quote) If this story is to be something resembling my book of deeds, we must begin at the beginning. At the heart of who I truly am. To do this, you must remember that before I was anything else, I was one of the Edema Ruh.

When we write, we are writing because we have a story to tell. (Yes, I said tell). To that end, every word must count, every idea must be conveyed with meaningful words, and sometimes you can just have a little fun with it.

In the opening lines of Gaiman’s Stardust, nothing unimportant is mentioned although the prose meanders in a literary way. Yes, he takes the long way, but the attitudes, mores, and personalities of Tristam’s village are conveyed with humor and the journey is the best part of this fairytale. He never devolves into purple prose.

The Elements of Style calls “Purple Prose” “hard to digest, generally unwholesome, and sometimes nauseating.” To be fair, purple prose is subjective and each reader has a different level of tolerance for it, but it is something we definitely don’t want. What do you want to convey? Choose your words based on what you want the reader to see and feel:

Plain: He set the mug down. (conveys action–what’s going to happen next?)
Somewhere in the middle: He eased the tankard onto the table. (conveys a medieval atmosphere–what’s going to happen next?)
Bleah: Without haste, the tall, blond barbarian set the immense, pewter, ale-filled cup with a wooden handle onto the stained surface of the rough, wooden table. (conveys nausea–don’t care what happens next.)

Of course you are not going to devolve into sticky-sweet goo in your attempts to show the mood and atmosphere. But please, if I may use a cliché here, don’t “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” Lean prose with well chosen imagery will express your ideas in such a way that the reader can hang their imagination on your words.

In direct contrast to Gaiman’s lighthearted opening prose in Stardust, the opening lines of Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind, are dark and heavy with portent. Rothfuss sets the mood, and conveys the subtle power kept restrained by Kote/Kvote, and he uses this atmosphere to drive the tale.

Both Rothfuss and Gaiman use words chosen for their imagery. Gaiman’s story is told with sardonic humor, which makes it all the darker, and Rothfuss’ prose evokes the dark of nightmares. They write with widely different styles, but both books are dark, both books are fantasy, and both books moved me.

Both authors write so well that the internet is rife with haters and trolls who can’t wait to trash their next book. THAT, sadly, is the mark of success, or genius, in today’s world of fanatics in dark rooms, armed with a rigid idea of what fantasy should be, and waging war via the internet on authors who dare to write outside those boundaries .

Write from your heart, and dare to write what moves you. Think about the rush of “yeah, this is it!” that you get when you read a piece that takes you out of this world and changes your life for a few brief moments. That author knows something about the craft, or you would not have been so moved by it.

Study the prose of those whose work shocks, rocks, and shakes you. See how they craft the sentences, and form the moods and emotions that drive the plot. Learn from them how to show the true character of a protagonist, or the smell of an alley by the wharves. Read, and then apply what you’ve learned from the masters to your own work.

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Filed under Fantasy, Humor, Literature, Publishing, writer, writing

Tagged as #amwriting, books, creative writing, fantasy, humor, literature, Neil Gaiman, Patrick Rothfuss, the importance of good prose, writing craft

September 18, 2015 · 6:45 am

#amwriting: Write like a pansy

My favorite books are written by fearless writers. These authors dare to write because they have something to say, not because they have something they think will sell.

So how does that concept of fearlessness tie in with the title of this blog post? It does say “pansy,” right?

Don’t sell pansies short.

Pansies are fearless plants. They thrive in the strangest places–at least in our yard they do. My husband is an avid gardener, but he really doesn’t plant a lot of annuals. He does get a few hanging baskets and sets a few pots on the front steps for color. Other than that, our yard has large shrubs, lilacs and hydrangeas.

But it wasn’t always that way:

This story began ten years ago, when we bought our house. It was just a brand new tract-house, sticking out of the rocky, Northwest mud. No grass, no plants, nothing but mud everywhere. What we didn’t know then is that we sit on glacial till—lots of rock, and very little soil.

The house came with no landscaping, although a month after we moved in, the builder did spray hydro-seed over the scant inch of topsoil where our front…lawn…would attempt to grow. We were a little strapped for funds, so we bought $100.00 worth of annuals, and a few perennials, and had a few yards of topsoil for berms brought in so at least the front of the house would look decent.

Some of those annuals that made our yard look okay that year were pansies.

Ten years and a professional landscaping later, those few pansies that were just for fill that first year are still going strong, reseeding themselves and expanding their reach every year.

During those ten years, we have had deep freezes, we’ve nearly been flooded, and this year we have had an unprecedented drought.

And every year, those pansies have grown bolder, and stronger. They’ve thrived when nothing else did, and this year they have staked out new territory–our driveway.

Yep! The soil they like the best is the driveway gravel. It’s harsh and dry, with few nutrients. Apparently pansies are like authors: adversity makes them strong.

My husband and I like our free-range pansies–and we’re pretty much treating them the way we do our grand-kids:

If that’s where they want to grow, fine. Just don’t break anything.

That is pretty fearless, setting down roots where a Subaru Forester is regularly parked by a man who may forget you’re there and park on top of you.

And what does this tale of resilience and free-range gardening have to do with writing?

Be fearless in your writing. Write because you have a story to tell, and only you can tell it. If the story takes you to uncomfortable places, but you can’t stop writing it, just go with it. Sometime the best work is a little edgy, and a lot scary to write.

What you do with your work after you’ve written it is up to you, but I’ve always been glad that the bold writers dared to publish their work.

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Filed under Humor, Publishing, Uncategorized, writing

Tagged as #amwriting, creative writing, indie publishing, johnny-jump-ups, Pansies, volunteer plants, writing

September 16, 2015 · 6:45 am

#amwriting: keeping short stories short, when all your stories want to be long

Autumn Landscape With Pond And Castle Tower-Alfred Glendening-1869

Over the summer I posted several times about why we need to write short stories, and each time I’ve talked about writing them to build stock for submissions to magazines, anthologies, or to enter into contests. Today, I want to talk about the art of keeping a story short.

First, decide what length you want to write to–if you have no specific contest in mind, 2000 to 4000 is a good length that will fit into most submission guidelines.

For those of you who have trouble writing short works for contests and anthologies with rigid word-count limits, this is where mapping your story becomes really important.

Let’s say you want to write a story that can be no longer than 2,000 words. You know what the story is, but when you sit down and begin writing, it’s like there is way too much story for only 2,000 words. You need to map it out.

Short-stories are just like novels, in that they have an arc, and you can make it work for you. By looking at it from the perspective of the story arc, you can see what you have to accomplish, and how many words you have to accomplish it in.

Every word in a 2000 word story is critical and has a specific task–that of advancing the the plot. To that end, in a story of only 2,000 words:

No subplots are introduced
Minimal background is introduced
The number of characters must be limited to 2 or 3 at most
Every sentence must propel the story to to the conclusion

Lets say you are writing a fantasy, titled, A Song Gone Wrong. Because he was a bit too specific when a putting a local warlord’s fling with another man’s wife into a song, our protagonist is now a wanted man. Divide your story this way:

Act 1: the beginning: You have 500 words to show these plot points

setting: the village of Imaginary Junction,
the weather is unseasonably cold
In an alley, a bard, Sebastian, is hiding from the
Soldiers of the lord he has inadvertently humiliated

Act 2: First plot point: You have 500 words to tell how

the soldiers surround and capture Sebastian
he is hauled before the angry lord and
thrown into prison, sentenced to hang at dawn, but now you are at:

Act 3.: Mid-point: You have 500 Words to explain how

Sebastian meets a dwarf, Noli, also sentenced to die
Noli is on the verge of managing an escape, but needs help with one last thing
Noli and Sebastian manage to complete the escape route
but the guard seems suspicious, hanging around their cell door, hampering their escape

Act 4: Resolution–you have 500 words to show how

The smart guard finally is relieved by a less wary guard, which
allows Sebastian and Noli to squeeze through the escape route
They are spotted at the last minute, but Noli’s friends are waiting, and
they are whisked to a dwarf safe-house, leading to Sebastian’s next short-story adventure

Once you have parsed out what needs to be said by what point, and in how many words, you can then get to the nitty-gritty of turning that far-fetched tale of woe into a good short-story.

You will see that in order to keep to the strict limit of words, you will have to choose your words carefully. You will have to find words that really convey what you want to say, concisely in one or two sentences. Sebastian can’t give Noli a recap of his troubles in your hearing–all that will have to be off-stage. On-screen conversations are critical–they will convey the personalities and the minimal backstory of the piece.

After a few times of creating short stories this way, you won’t need to think about it. When you know the length a given tale has to be, you can mentally divide it into acts and just write for fun.

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Filed under Publishing, Uncategorized, writer, writing

Tagged as creative writing, How to write short-stories, indie publishing, short-story arc, Story Arc, writing, writing craft

September 14, 2015 · 6:45 am

Elements of the story: when the novel is not a novel after all

In the rough draft, the goal is to get the work out of your head, and the concepts onto the page. To that end, I advise you to just write, and try not to self-edit as you go, because you may lose your train of thought.

If we let ourselves drop into the zone, in the first draft we are in story-teller-mode, which is where our best work happens. Yes, our prose is uneven and may contain things we wish had been written by someone else, but all we were doing was getting the idea down:

T~~hus it was that~~ On departing Billy’s Revenge ~~on this particular job~~, Lackland and Mags ~~had~~ kept the conversation cordial and polite, but little of substance passed between them. ~~Oh,~~ They joked and laughed~~, and said all the things~~ ~~that~~ as they would ~~say to~~ with any Rowdy ~~that~~ they were ~~on a job~~ working with, but it felt all wrong. ~~Still,~~ Even so, Lackland did not press for anything more ~~from Lady Mags~~, although he was full of questions and desperate for answers.

It’s okay write crap when you are just getting it on to paper. You have to get the basic ideas down before you can craft them into a proper novel or short-story. (That drivel was from the rough draft of my 2010 nanowrimo manuscript. I can get rid of at least 24 words in that paragraph, and although I did replace several words, losing the fluff made it stronger.)

Remember, the rough draft–the first draft–is the proto-story, the just-born infant that is the child of your creativity. You do the shaping when you come back to it in the second draft. Some will stay, and some will go.

This weekend I discovered that one of my works in progress is not really a novel after all.

It was at 85,000 words, but it has occurred to me that it is a novella, because in the first half of the book, 4 chapters don’t advance the protagonist’s story. When I am done weeding it out, the ms may only top out at about 50,000 words. In some circles that is a novel, but in fantasy, it is half a book.

Still, I’m not going to try to force it to be any longer than it is, because I have nothing of value to add to the tale. I would much rather be known for having written a strong novella than a weak novel. So, now at the end of the rough draft, this book must become a novella.

Those four cut chapters total about 16,000 words. Add to that the words that will be weeded out in the second draft and I would say its going to lose a lot more weight–perhaps another 8,000 to 10,000 words. But why do I think this? Because I am just finishing the rough draft and I have realized several things:

Besides the four chapters that must go since they don’t belong there anymore, 3 more chapters are mostly background that doesn’t need to be in the finished product. When I went in and removed large chunks of exposition I was able to condense those 3 chapters into 1 that actually moved the story forward.
Add to that the fact that in the rough draft we will always have a lot of words we can cut (or find alternatives for), words and phrases that weaken our narrative:

There was
To be

I will also make some contractions, ‘was not’ becomes ‘wasn’t,’ ‘has not becomes hasn’t,’ etc.

It’s amazing how many times we can simply cut some words out, and find the prose is stronger without them. Many times they need no replacement.

Sometimes we use what I think of as “crutch” words. You can really lower your word-count when you look at each instance and see if you can get rid of these words. These are overused words that fall out of our heads along with the good stuff as we are sailing along:

so,
very,
that,
just,
so,
literally
very

But back to one of my current works-in-progress: why am I cutting an 85,000 word MS down to 50,000 or so words?

A lot of what I have written is good work, but as I said, several long passages don’t advance my protagonist’s tale. They pertain to a different character’s story set in that world–so they were a rabbit-trail to nowhere in the context of this tale. However, those passages will come in handy later if I choose to write that character’s story, so I am saving them in file labeled “Out Takes.”

The fact is, you must be willing to be ruthless. Yes, you may well have spent three days or even weeks writing that chapter. But now that you are seeing it in the context of the overall story arc, you realize it is bogging things down, and NO–Sometimes there is no fixing it. Just because we wrote it does not mean we have to keep it.

In genre fiction, no matter how much you like the prose you have just written for a given chapter, if the chapter does not advance the story, it must go. The story arc must not be derailed, and sometimes amputation is the only cure.

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Tagged as #amwriting, books, creative writing, Elements of a story, humor, novel or novella?, self publishing, The second draft, writing, writing craft

September 11, 2015 · 6:45 am

Elements of the story: Crafting magic systems

I am thrilled that Tad Williams is writing another series of books set in Osten Ard. Tad is an author who absolutely understands the craft of writing fantasy. He knows what makes epic fantasy EPIC. There is just the slightest hint of the rebellious indie in his work, which makes it a little wild. But more than that, Tad understand how important it is to make the limitations and roadblocks forced on the protagonists power the narrative.

If you love epic fantasy and have not read his powerful trilogy, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn–you should.

In Tad’s work, magic systems feel natural, organic and are not all powerful. I love epic fantasy books where the magic systems have been as well thought out as the political systems, and the characters are limited in what they can do with them.

I despise books where the hero/heroine can do anything, and be as awesome as she/he needs to be, all because he/she has a special power. No need to worry about planning that mission, because our hero can read minds and predict the future–he knows exactly how to thwart Evil Badguy. Several boring scenes later, an opportunity for something interesting turns up, but no! The author has blessed his favorite supercharacter with (cue the fanfare) amazing magic powers that have no explanation, and apparently no limits.

If you are writing fantasy, consider this–Infinite abilities instills infinite boredom in me as a reader.

Let’s talk about magic. Who has magic? What kind of magic–healing or offensive or both? What are the rules for using that magic and why do those rules exist? Magic is an intriguing tool in fantasy, but it should only be used if certain conditions have been met:

if the number of people who can use it is limited
if the ways in which it can be used are limited
if not every mage can use every kind of magic
if there are strict, inviolable rules regarding what each magic can do and the conditions under which it will work.
if there are some conditions under which the magic will not work
if the learning curve is steep and sometimes lethal

Even if it does not come into the story, you should decide who is in charge of teaching the magic, how that wisdom is dispensed, and who will be allowed to gain that knowledge.

is the prospective mage born with the ability to use magic or
is it spell-based, and any reasonably intelligent person can learn it if they can find a teacher?

Magic and the ability to wield it usually denotes power. That means the enemy must be their equal or perhaps their better. So if they are not from the same school, you now have two systems to design. You must create the ‘rules of magic.’ Take the time to write them out, and don’t break the laws, without having a damned good explanation for why that particular breaking of the rules is possible.

Limits make for better, more creative characters. In the Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley made the magic a natural outcome of religion, something only a few characters had access to, and they paid a great price each time they used it.

Lets pretend we have a mage, Gerald—we’ll make him a lowly journeyman mage, just allowed out of magic school on his own. Events beyond his control occur, and only he can rid the world of Stinky Sam. Sam is a very powerful, very naughty wizard, who will crush young, untried Gerald with no effort whatsoever.

Let’s say Gerald has a few skills at the beginning: he can draw water out of the air for drinking, and maybe he can use the elements of fire and lightning as weapons. Can he also use magic to heal people? Can he heal himself? What are the rules governing these abilities and how do these rules affect the progress of the story? When it comes to magic, limitations open up many possibilities for plot development.

For this to be a good story, our bad guy, Stinky Sam, must be a master in whatever area Gerald has chosen–and he should have a few skills and abilities Gerald might never learn.

This means Gerald must work hard to overcome the obstacles set in his path by Stinky Sam. With the successful completion of difficult tasks, and overcoming great hardships, Gerald will learn what he needs to know about his magic/gifts, and acquire the ability to counter Stinky Sam’s best efforts in the final showdown, although it will be difficult.

In great fantasy, evil is very strong, and has great magic–but there are rules. The evil one might be a bully and he may have some awesome skills, but he’s not omnipotent, or there would be no story. All magic systems have limits, which means he has a weakness. With the discovery of the antagonist’s limitations, your character has the opportunity to grow and develop to his fullest potential in process of finding and exploiting it.

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Filed under Fantasy, Publishing, writer, writing

Tagged as #amwriting, creating magic systems, creative writing, fantasy, magic, Memory Sorrow and Thorn, Tad Williams, writing craft, writing fantasy, writing magic

September 9, 2015 · 6:45 am

Elements of the story: showing the mood

Most of us, if you are reading this blog, are writers who love to read for pleasure. We each enjoy different sorts of books, but all our favorite reading has one thing in common: the story, whether fictional or true, moves us in some deeper way, making us think about it long after the final page has been read.

In order for the reader to be moved by a story, his imagination must have been completely engaged in the work. Thus, the writer must perform a tightly controlled balancing act, walking the fine line between giving too much description and not enough.

As writers we are constantly admonished to show, not tell. This can be taken to extreme, and the result is a boring, unimaginative walk-though of a character’s most minute expressions. For example:

Gordon’s brow furrowed, and his eyes narrowed. His eyebrows nearly met in the middle. His lips turned down at the corners. He screamed, “You bloody idiot.”

Well, duh. Pick one, and let the reader imagine the rest.

Gordon appeared angry.

That doesn’t do it either. That is simply telling the reader Gordon was upset, rather than showing it. Perhaps Gordon’s face darkened and his voice was harsh. Or, Gordon’s eyes narrowed. “You bloody idiot!”

If your character is angry, please don’t have them hiss their dialogue. People do not snort, hiss, or spit dialogue, no matter how angry they are unless they are a snake or a camel.

The writing world has several good handbooks on showing emotions, and these two are in my library:

The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi
Write Great Fiction – Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint by Nancy Kress

It’s good if you have bought a book on this subject and are using it to help show what is going on in your character’s minds rather than telling it. But use some common sense. If there are fifteen ways to show dejection, please don’t use them all to describe one moment. Simply have your character sit slumped, or refuse to engage the others.

Readers don’t want to be told in minute detail what to imagine. They will put your boring book down and walk away with only one regret–that they bought it in the first place.

I’ve put together a little cheat sheet for showing emotions. Be sparing–show just enough to keep your readers engaged and the story moving along. If you provide a good framework and allow the reader’s imagination to do the rest, you will engage the reader. That, my friends, is priceless.

Cheat sheet for showing emotion and mood

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Filed under Humor, Publishing, Uncategorized, writing

Tagged as #amwriting, creative writing, developing consistency in writing, indie publishing, Not Enough Description, Too Much Description, writing craft

September 4, 2015 · 6:45 am

Marilyn Rucker, Nick’s, and September

Albert Bierstadt – Autumn Landscape PD|100 via Wikimedia Commons

September is the month that always sneaks up too fast. This year we had a long drought, with 80 and 90 degree weather (that is 26.7 and 32.2 degrees Celsius) and well above from the first of May through most of August.

Then, just about the time we took our vacation to Cannon Beach, the weather turned cold, and a little rain finally began to fall. Over the last week it has been cold and rainy here, so much so that I have had to wear socks in the house, and long-sleeved jammies for work. (!!!) And the rain–in the last two weeks we have had more than in the prior four months.

The unwatered lawns are turning green again in our less-than-affluent suburban neighborhood–it’s likely to be a bad year for hay up here in the Northwest.

Last evening my dear old hubby and I met in Bellevue with well-known musician and author, Marilyn Rucker, who is up from Texas to perform at Tumbleweed Music Festival in Richland, Washington. Marilyn wrote Sax and the Suburb, a hilarious and entertaining band-geek murder mystery. Marilyn is an awesome performer, and her music has been featured on King of Queens, and many other television shows. She plays with both The Studebakers and the Hootchcakes Band, but is performing solo in Richland.

If you love hilarious, witty music, give her solo album, Interstellar Pirate Queen a spin. It’s full of wry wit and fabulous, entertaining music to write to.

But we did have an amazing dinner at a place we had never been to, as we are rarely in Bellevue, and we discovered this little jewel in the culinary crown of the Puget Sound region by accident. The place is called Nicks Greek and Italian Cuisine, and all I can say is “Ooh, baby.”

And Nick himself is quite the character with his lovely accent and genuine, welcoming way.

My hiatus from contract editing is over, and I am back at work once again. Writing has to assume the secondary position in my pantheon of tasks. I have a wonderful fantasy novel by Carlie M.A. Cullen currently in my editing pile. I’m also editing an anthology for my publisher, Myrddin Publishing. The work I have received for this anthology so far is outstanding–Myrddin has some fine authors under its banner.

I will take another break from editing in November, as that is NaNoWriMo month.

This year I plan to use that as my opportunity to write a 2000 to 4000 word short-story every day until I have my 50,000 words, and then I will wing it, until November has ended. I am currently building my list of prompts.

Autumn Landscape With Pond And Castle Tower-Alfred Glendening-1869

September is the month I enjoy the least. It represents the end of fun, the last hurrah of the summer. It means playtime is over and work begins in earnest. I hope the weather will turn nice again for a week or so, to give us those final few days of sunshine and 75 degrees (23.3)–that is the perfect, ideal summer day, the kind of day we were denied this year because of the unusual, San Diego-style heat.

I want to sit on my back porch with my kindle and enjoy the last bits of sunshine before the monsoons close in. I want to sit there, watching the birds and planning my next writing adventure, and I will, if only the rain would relax for a week or so, and allow me that little pleasure.

My wish for this winter is that it snows prodigiously in the mountains where it belongs, and rains frequently here in the lowlands. Then, promptly on July 5th as is expected, may our allotted six weeks of summer begin anew with temperatures in the low 80s. Please, may we have a “normal” year, if normal can be measured in our ever-changing world.

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Filed under Fantasy, Humor, writing

Tagged as #amwriting, humor, literature, Marilyn Rucker, Nicks Greek and Italian Cuisine, writing

September 2, 2015 · 6:45 am

Elements of the story: making effective revisions

There is no feeling of accomplishment like that of having completed a novel, or a shorter piece. Once that final sentence is written, there is that happy-dance moment, where we are shouting and the world is singing.

Following that, we have the urge to immediately look the finished manuscript over and see where some revisions could be made.

I know it’s tempting, but don’t do it. We need to gain some distance from our work in order to see it more clearly, so put it aside. If you work on something else for a couple of weeks, or even a month or two, you will gain a better perspective on what you just finished, and your revisions will bring out the best in your work.

But when we do get back to it, where do we start?

Stephen King said it so eloquently in his book, On Writing: “I got a scribbled comment that changed the way I rewrote my fiction once and forever. Jotted below the machine-generated signature of the editor was this note: ‘Not bad, but PUFFY. You need to revise for length. Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%. Good luck.’ — Stephen King, On Writing, 2000

This means we must cut the fluff. If your 1st draft is 100,000 words, try to cut 10,000 words out of it, making it 90,000. The following is a list of things to consider:

Dialogue pitfalls: Search for clichés. Speaking as a reader, do a global search for the word alabaster. If you have used it to describe a woman’s skin, get rid of it, and find a different way to describe her. It’s an overused word that has become cliché. Find different ways to say what you want, unless you have a character who uses clichés–if so, he’d better have a good reason. Even then, don’t go overboard. Click here for a looooong list of common clichés: ProWriting Aid.
Try to make your sentences do without these words: very, that, just, so, and literally. There will be places where they are the only words that will work, and you will use them in that instance. Usually just cutting them out of the sentence and adding nothing makes the sentence stronger. Fluffy, over-blown prose weakens the narrative.
Flowery prose, even in a medieval setting, is off-putting to a reader. Do a global search (Cntrl F) for two letters: ly. This will bring up all the ~~adjectives~~ (oops adverbs, thank you David Cantrell) because they end in ly. Look at each instance and if it is possible, get rid of them. Often the sentence is stronger without that extraneous word. Find a way to show the idea without flowery prose. This is where you grow as a writer–you give visual clues that enhance the story.
Examine the ms for conversations that are opportunities for info dumps. Info is good, but don’t dump it–dole it out as needed, and only when needed.
Are people long-winded, and ranting on and on, with nary a pause for breath? Decide what is really important in what they are saying and cut everything else. Conversation in literature must have a purpose, or it is as boring as hell. Cut those marathon speeches down to where they sound like normal people talking, not like orators.
Conversation must pertain to and advance the story. Small talk and verbal tics are obnoxious, and should be avoided at all cost. DO NOT have your characters preface sentences with “Hmmm…” and DO NOT have them use the name of the person they are speaking to, unless there are more than two characters in the scene. You can avoid things like “Well, Bill, it was like this…” just by having the speaker turn to Bill, and say it.

And now for my pet peeve: People do not smile, snort, or smirk dialogue. I mean really: “That’s a lovely dress,” snorted Clara. (eeew. ) Stick to simple dialogue tags, such as said and replied. In fact, it is often best to do away with speech tags (attributions) altogether for a few exchanges every now and then, if: A. you have only 2 speakers, and B. you have clearly established who is speaking. You can also show who is speaking in other ways:

Miss a few beats. Beats are little bits of physical action inserted into dialogue: John fell quiet and stared out the window. Halee turned and walked out the door. Used sparingly, these pauses serve to punctuate the dialogue, to give the scene movement, and to maintain a strong mental picture in the absence of description. They’re best placed where there is a natural break in the dialogue, because they allow the reader to experience the same pause as the characters.
Don’t over do the action within the conversation. If your characters are rattling pans, slicing apples or staring out the window between every line of dialogue, the scene becomes about the action and not the dialogue, and the impact of the conversation can be lost entirely.

In our first draft we are trying to make our point, and we inadvertently repeat ourselves. A good way to find where you are repeating yourself is to read a chapter from the bottom up, one paragraph at a time. My editors frequently tell me, “You said it once, that’s enough.”

In my own work, I hear repetitions and other things I need to cut, if I read it aloud to someone else. I think that’s because when another person is listening, we are more aware of how a given passage sounds.

Also, consider not including a prologue. About half of the readers see the word “prologue” and assume it will be a boring info dump, so they skip it.

This begs the question, “Why go to the trouble of writing it if they aren’t going to read it?” If you must have a prologue, consider calling it Chapter 1– and make it clear that is occurring twenty years before the present day (or whatever). Make it immediately exciting, make it a true first chapter. And don’t do an excerpt from a Holy Book as your prologue. I did that once, and it flew like an iron kite. So I moved my Holy Book to the appendices, and if a reader is interested, they can read it there.

These are just a few things to look for when you begin revisions. And just so you know, revisions are not editing, they are rewriting. If you are “editing” your own manuscript, you have a fool for a client. There is no such thing as self-editing–the best you can do is make revisions and admire your work. You may do very well at that–some people do.

You must make revisions before you hire an editor. Then, ask other authors who they might recommend as an editor and see if you can work well with that person. Your editor will likely point some things out that you didn’t see, but that a reader will. At that point, you will make revisions again. But the results will be so worth it!