Tag Archives: writing

March 2, 2022 · 6:00 am

Editing part 2, What Submissions Editors Want

In the publishing world, there are several different kinds of editors: line editors, structural editors, submissions editors, and so on. Each does a specific job within the industry. When you look at the annual salaries, you can see that none of these jobs pay well, so it’s clear that, while they like to eat and pay the mortgage as much as any other person, editors in all areas of publishing work in the industry because they love a good story.

toolsToday we are discussing a particular kind of editor: the submissions editor. When I first began this journey, I didn’t understand how specifically you have to tailor your submissions for literary magazines, contests, and anthologies. Each publication has a specific market of readers, and their editors look for new works their target market will buy.

I’m just going to lay it out there for you: it’s not worth a publisher’s time to teach you how to be a writer. You have to learn that on your own.

So, if magazine editors aren’t going to edit your work, what does the editor for that publisher do? Magazine editors look for and bring new and marketable stories to the reading public.

Marketable is the keyword. If your submission doesn’t fit what that magazine’s readers expect, the editor will reject it.

War_and_Peace_Franklin_Library_By_Leo_Tolstoy_First_Edition_1981The quality of your work isn’t the problem, and you have selected a publication that features work in your chosen genre. But your subgenre may not match what the readers of that publication want to see. After all, both spaghetti Bolognese and bruschetta are created out of ingredients made from wheat and tomatoes, but the finished meals are vastly different.

A person who craves spaghetti Bolognese won’t be satisfied with an offering of bruschetta despite the fact they both feature wheat and tomatoes. The genre may be Italian, and they feature the same ingredients. But the delivery method is a subgenre that may not appeal to every diner.

Editors for contests and large publishers of books do the same—they find and bring work they enjoy to the public in specific genres. If your story makes it through the publisher’s door and into the first part of their process, their editor may ask you for minor revisions, small things you may have missed when self-editing.

But they won’t offer you technical advice.

This is because they shouldn’t have to. Before submitting your work to an agent or submissions editor, you must have the technical skill down.

For the indie author, magazines, contests, and anthologies are the most logical places for getting their names out to the reading world. You must ensure you have a clean manuscript that is marketable to the readers of the publication you are courting. You may need to have someone in your writing group proofread it before submitting it.

Professionals do the required work and don’t think twice about it—self-editing and proofreading are just part of the job.

leaves of grass memeSome hobbyists expect special consideration and are offended when they don’t get it. Egos are rampant in this business, but in reality, no one gets to be treated like a princess.

Prominent publications have wide readerships. The more people who read and enjoy a short piece by you, the more potential readers you have for your novels. These people likely read books, and guess what? They might look for your novels when shopping for books at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other digital booksellers.

When you have a great story that you believe in, you must find the venue that publishes your sort of work. Know your genre. If you write fantasy, google magazines featuring fantasy and sci-fi. A good place to start would be the website Worlds Without End, an author resource site listing magazines that publish fantasy and science fiction.

Not all publications will be accepting new work, but some will. Be warned—finding magazines with open calls for submissions is a lot of work.

Anthologies with open calls might be more plentiful, but you have to know how to find them. Make connections through the many writers’ forums on Facebook and other social media platforms.

If you haven’t any short work ready for submission but would like to write something, do some research before setting pen to paper. Buy magazines, read them, and write to those standards. 

For those of us who can’t afford to buy magazines, you can go to websites like Literary Hub and read excellent pieces culled from various literary magazines for free. This will give you an idea of what you want to achieve in a story and where you might considJackie Onassis memeer sending your work.

Go to the publisher’s website, find out their submission guidelines, and FOLLOW THEM. (Yes, they apply to EVERYONE, no matter how famous, even you.) If you skip this step, you can wait up to a year to hear that your manuscript has been rejected, and they most likely won’t tell you why.

Formatting your manuscript is crucial. When the editor of a contest, publication, or anthology opens the call for submissions, they will get hundreds of entries, perhaps thousands. Their editors will have no time to deal with badly formatted manuscripts when a call goes out.

Editors are only one person, and they want to read every submission. Publishers have specific, standardized formatting they want you to use, and these guidelines are clearly posted on their websites.

Time is always of the essence in the publishing world. Publication dates are set well in advance and must be adhered to. Unfortunately, some great stories won’t even be read out of all the entries they receive. This is because the author didn’t format the manuscript in the way the submission rules stated.

Expediency kicks in. If the first page shows the manuscript is not formatted to industry standards, the editor will reject it and move on to the next submission.

A few simple formatting rules are universal to most publications. You should ensure the font is Times New Roman .12 or Courier .12 font and the body of the manuscript is aligned left.

  1. 1 in. margins
  2. Double-spaced
  3. 1 space after each sentence (NOT 2 as we dinosaurs were taught in typing class)
  4. Each page is numbered in the upper right-hand corner
  5. Has formatted indented paragraphs (DO NOT USE THE TAB TO INDENT!)
  6. The header contains the title and author’s penname
  7. The first page includes the author’s legal name, mailing address, and phone or email contact information in the upper left-hand corner

UrsulaKLeGuinQuotePlease, if you consider yourself a professional, format your submissions properly. You want to stand out but getting fancy with your final manuscript is not the way to do that—you will be rejected out of hand if you don’t make this effort.

Below are the links to two posts (with screenshots) detailing how to make your manuscript submission-ready:

Formatting Your Paragraphs

Formatting Short Stories for Submission

You have to keep trying, keep improving as an author, and keep believing in yourself and in your work. Most importantly, you must never give up.

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February 28, 2022 · 6:00 am

How the Process of Editing Works part 1 #amwriting

Editing is a process where the editor goes over the manuscript line by line, pointing out areas that need attention. These might be awkward phrasings, grammatical errors, missing quote marks, or numerous other things that make the manuscript less readable.

toolsMost editors will ask to see the first twenty pages of your manuscript before they agree to accept the job. Sometimes, significant issues will need to be addressed. If so, an editor will probably refuse to accept your manuscript. However, they will tell you why and give you pointers on how to resolve the problems.

This is because freelance editors book projects in advance and can’t take on manuscripts that will bog them down for months.

During the editing process, some editors will generate a word-frequency report. Also, a style sheet will be developed for usages and unique spellings that may pertain to your manuscript. Check your email regularly because most editors will want to verify the spelling of names, invented words, and common words that may differ from standard usages to create that style sheet.

Be prepared—the editor will ask questions regularly as they come up. You must respond promptly to enable the editor to meet your agreed-upon deadline.

Conversely, most editors respond to your questions as soon as they receive your email. If your editor doesn’t respond in a timely fashion, you need to find out why. On rare occasions, you may need to find a different editor.

to err is human to edit divineFor new and beginning authors, it may take an editor more than one trip through a manuscript to straighten out all the kinks. This may be a three-step process involving you making the first round of revisions and/or explanations, sending them back to the editor, who will make final round of suggestions. At that point, the editor is done. You have the choice to either accept or reject those suggestions in your final manuscript.

In academic writing, editing involves looking at each sentence carefully and ensuring that it’s well designed and serves its purpose. In scholastic editing, every instance of grammatical dysfunction must be resolved.

A client’s future depends on the quality of their finished dissertation as much as it does the content. Their work will be measured by the standards of their department head and the academic world in general.

f scott fitzgerald quoteFor creative writing, editing is a stage of the writing process. A writer and editor work together to improve a draft by correcting punctuation and making words and sentences clearer, more precise. Weak sentences are made stronger, info dumps are weeded out, and important ideas are clarified. At the same time, strict attention is paid to the overall story arc.

The editor is not the author. Editors can only suggest revisions, but ultimately all changes must be approved and implemented by the author.

Some editors return your manuscript with suggestions for revisions noted in the reviewing pane on the right-hand side of the document. You click on each comment, then choose to make that change or not, and then delete the comment.

This is the least confusing way for new authors, but it takes more time for the editor to work their way through the manuscript. This is how a manuscript with comments in the reviewing pane might look:

Track Changes 3 comments in sidebarEditors who have been in the business for a long time find it much faster to use the markup function and insert inline changes. A new author or someone unfamiliar with how word-processing programs work might find it confusing and difficult to understand.

Track Changes 4 inserted revisionsInserting the changes and using Tracking cuts the time an editor spends on a manuscript. Writing comments takes time, and suggestions may not always be clear to the client.

Tracked changes are only SUGGESTED changes. To become permanent, they must be accepted. You may disagree with some of the tracked changes and choose to reject them. Below are the instructions for accepting and rejecting comments, followed by instructions for deleting comments made in the comment column.

If an editor has to insert many changes, they can become distracting to the author. Many editors use both inserted changes and comments when that is the case.

Word has several ways to customize how tracked changes appear:

  • Simple Markup: This shows the final version without inline markups. Red or black markers will appear in the left margin to indicate where a change has been made.
  • All Markup: This shows the final version with inline
  • No Markup: This shows the final version and hides all markups.
  • Original: This shows the original version before changes and hides all markups.

Places where an editor inserts a suggested change will be shown in a red font and have a line beneath them. Deleted items will be in red and have a line through them.

To accept or reject changes:

  1. Select the change you want to accept or reject.
  2. From the Review tab, click the Accept or Reject
  3. The markup will disappear, and MSWord will automatically jump to the next change. You can continue accepting or rejecting each change until you have reviewed all of them.
  4. Click the Track Changes command to turn off Track Changes when you’re finished. Just click on it, and the gray will return to the same shade as the rest of the ribbon.
  5. To accept all changes at once, click the Accept drop-down arrow, then select Accept All.
  6. If you no longer want to track your changes, you can choose to Accept All and Stop Tracking.

How to Remove comments

If your document has comments, they won’t be removed from the comment column when you accept or reject tracked changes. You’ll have to delete them separately.

  1. On the Review tab, in the Comments section, click Next to select a comment.
  2. On the Review tab, click Delete.

To delete all comments at once, click the arrow below the word Delete, and then click Delete All Comments in Document.

To turn off the Reviewing Pane:

Track Changes 2

Those changes are not permanent or engraved in stone. All you have to do is use the Track Changes function and click accept or reject for each change.

Some editors offer a separate report detailing their overall impressions of your manuscript’s strengths and weaknesses. Others will want to talk via the phone or Zoom.

Hiring a freelance editor is well worth the cost if you can afford it. You will learn many things about the craft of writing as you look at their suggestions.

ok to write garbage quote c j cherryhHowever, many authors don’t have the money to hire an editor. If that is the case, you may have a friend in your writing group who has some experience editing, and they will often help you at no cost. Your writing group is a well of inspiration, support, and wisdom, and they are invested in your book. They want you to succeed and most will gladly trade services.

Each editor is different and has their own style and approach to the task. But no matter how they approach the task of editing, all editors are readers who love what they do.

Editors want to help you make your manuscript as clean as possible because they love books. Next up, we will talk about what editors for publications look for when they are acquiring new work.

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February 23, 2022 · 6:00 am

Proofreading vs. Editing #amwriting

I am in the middle of revisions, working with my editor on a large project involving merging old work with new. The difference in the quality of the older work vs. the way I write now is clear—and embarrassing.

keep clam and proofreadWhen I am finished with the revisions, I will format my manuscript as both ebooks and paper books. At that point, I will be looking for proofreaders.

At some point, we must draw the line and say, “this book is done. I want no more changes, no more fiddling with it.” So, when the manuscript is as polished as I can possibly get it, I will have one final step, one that will either ruin a formatted manuscript or make it great: proofreading.

I have said this before, and while some people will dispute this, proofreading is not editing.

Proofreading is done after the final revisions have been made. Hopefully, it is done by someone who has not seen the manuscript before. That way, they will see it through new eyes, and the small things in an otherwise clean manuscript will stand out.

By the time the manuscript has come to this stage, we know it far too well. We have seen every sentence, every paragraph, every scene so many times we are sick of going through them. Our eye sees what it expects to see. We find many things, but we don’t catch it all.

This is where the final person in the process comes in–the proofreader.

they're their there cupIf you didn’t see it when I mentioned it above, I will repeat it: proofreading is not editing. We discussed self-editing in my previous post, the three-step process for successful self-editing. However, editing as done by a professional editor is a different process, one I will go into at length next week. All editing and revisions are completed, and the final manuscript has been approved by the time we get to the proofreading stage.

Even though an editor has combed your manuscript and you have made thousands of corrections, both large and small, there may be places where the reader’s eye will stop. These errors are usually introduced in the process of making final revisions, so the author and editor have no idea they are there.

If it has been edited, why are there still errors?

When making revisions, we do a lot of cutting and pasting as we move passages to better places or even remove entire sections. In some places, words might inadvertently have been left out, or punctuation may be missing at the end of a sentence.

Any number of small, hard-to-detect things can occur as we make revisions, and these small errors are what we are looking for.

At the outset, the proofreader must understand that no matter how tempting it may be, they have not been invited to edit the manuscript for content. That has already been done and done again, and the author is satisfied with their novel’s arc. 

Find another proofreader if the one you have can’t refrain from asking for large revisions regarding your style and content.

What the Proofreader Should Look For:

Spelling—misspelled words and homophones (words that sound the same but are spelled differently). These are words that spell-checker may or may not catch, so a human eye is critical for this.

  • Wrong:  Bobby wont out the door, slamming the screen.
  • Right:  Bobby went out the door, slamming the screen.
  • Wrong: There cat ran, and he had to chase it
  • Right: Their cat ran, and he had to chase it.

Epic Fails meme2Repeated words and cut-and-paste errors. These happen when making revisions, even by the most meticulous of authors. The editor won’t see any mistakes you introduce after they have completed their work on the manuscript.

These are insidious and difficult to spot, and spell-checker won’t always find them. Sometimes these errors seem like unusually garbled sentences.

  • Wrong: First of all, all, it is accepted practice to italicize thoughts.
  • Wrong: First of all, it is accepted practice thoughts.
  • Wrong: First of all, it is accepted to ot thoughts.
  • Right: First of all, it is accepted practice to italicize thoughts.

Missing closed quotes at either end of the dialogue:

  • Wrong: “Doctor Mendel, you’re new to the area. What do you know about the dead man? asked Officer Shultz.
  • Right: “Doctor Mendel, you’re new to the area. What do you know about the dead man?” asked Officer Shultz.

Numbers that are digits:

  • Wrong: There will be 3000 guests at the reception. (It’s easy to inadvertently miss key digits.)
  • Right in certain circumstances: There will be 300 guests at the reception. (For notes and emails, we can use digits.)
  • Right: There will be three hundred guests at the reception. (In literature, we write it out.)

Dropped and missing words:

  • Wrong: Within minutes, the place was crawling with cops, and Officer Shultz was sitting at my kitchen table me gently while I made hot water for tea.
  • Right: Within minutes, the place was crawling with cops, and Officer Shultz was sitting at my kitchen table grilling me gently while I made hot water for tea.

Each time you (or a well-meaning editor) tweak the phrasing or create a new passage in your already edited manuscript, you run the risk of creating another undetected error.

Do not ask an editor to proofread your manuscript, as they will be unable to resist tweaking the phrasing, asking for more changes. Editing is their nature and their job. This can go on forever, and you might iron the life out of your manuscript. You could lose the feeling of spontaneity, making your narrative feel contrived.

Conversely, you risk putting up a manuscript that looks unedited because of the flaws introduced in the proofing process.

I have said this before, but it bears repeating. Don’t allow someone else, even an editor, to make the changes for you. Editors are human and can inadvertently make mistakes. When they are too familiar with a manuscript, they might see what should be there rather than what is.

Any person who makes changes to the final product can inadvertently ruin it.

At some point, your manuscript is done. You have been through the editing process, and the content and structure are what you envisioned.

  • Have the manuscript proofread before you format it for print or publication.
  • Then, have the final product proofread before you press the publish button.

Those two final steps will ensure the body of the manuscript you upload to Amazon KDP or IngramSpark is as clean as you can make it.

oopsUnfortunately, my last book went live when I thought I was ordering a pre-publication proof.

I said a lot of naughty words because the paperback version and the Kindle version are two different things. There was no option to order a pre-publication copy, which would have helped me a great deal. You’re less likely to see the formatting flaws until you hold that paper book in your hand.

I don’t know if this policy of not offering pre-pub paperback proof copies has changed or not. If you are publishing to KDP for a paper or hardback, carefully go over the PDF proof that KDP offers you. Do this despite the fact it’s terribly difficult to see and understand the possible formatting errors on a PDF, unless you really know what you are doing.

That experience is why I will be hiring a professional to format my paper books in the future. I see that as money well spent.

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February 21, 2022 · 6:00 am

The three-step process for successful self-editing #amwriting

Last week I was asked about my self-editing/revision process. I do have a method that works for me, but it’s time-consuming. There is no magic bullet for this.

toolsIn some ways, novels are machines. Internally, each book is comprised of many essential components. If one element fails, the story won’t work the way I envision it.

So, what are these parts?

  • Characterization,
  • Dialogue,
  • Mechanics (grammar/punctuation),
  • Pacing,
  • Plot,
  • Prose,
  • Theme,
  • Transitions.

I began this journey knowing nothing about how a novel is constructed internally. I wanted to write stories, but they never came out the way I saw them in my head.

Plot-exists-to-reveal-characterSo, realizing I knew nothing was the first positive thing I did for myself. I made it my business to learn all I could, even though I will never achieve perfection.

Writing is a craft where the bar is raised with every success. Each achievement you make pushes the hope of perfection a bit higher, still just out of reach.

But I won’t stop trying.

As an editor, I’ve seen every kind of mistake you can imagine. This tendency to not see the flaws in our own work is why I have an editor. I can see the places that need work in your manuscript but need someone with a critical eye to see my work.

When prepping a novel to send to my editor, I use a three-part method. This requires specific tools that come with Microsoft Word, my word-processing program. I feel sure these tools are available for Google Docs and every other word-processing program.

Phase one: the initial read-through. Once I have completed the revisions suggested by my beta readers, this stage is put into action. After considering their suggestions and revising the manuscript, it looks finished. But it has only just begun the journey.

In Microsoft Word, on the Review Tab, I access the Read Aloud function and begin reading along with the mechanical voice. Yes, it’s annoying and doesn’t always pronounce things right, but this first tool shows me many places that need rewriting.

the review tabI use this function rather than reading it aloud myself, as I tend to see and read aloud what I think should be there rather than what is.

  • I habitually key the word though when I mean through. These are two widely different words but are only one letter apart. Most, but not all, miskeyed words will leap out when you hear them read aloud.
  • Most but not all run-on sentences stand out when you hear them read aloud.
  • Most but not all inadvertent repetitions also stand out.
  • Most of the time, hokey phrasing doesn’t sound as good as you thought it was.
  • Most of the time, you hear where you have dropped words because you were keying so fast you skipped over including an article, like “the” or “a” before a noun.

strange thoughts 2This is a long process that involves a lot of stopping and starting, taking me a week to get through an entire 90,000-word manuscript. I will have trimmed about 3,000 words by the end of phase one. I will have caught many typos and miskeyed words and rewritten many clumsy sentences.

But I am not done.

Phase Two: The Manual Edit

This phase is where I find my punctuation errors most often. I look for and correct punctuation and make notes for any other improvements that must be made. Usually, I cut entire sections, as they are riffs on previously presented ideas. Sometimes they are outright repetitions, which don’t leap out when viewed on the computer screen.

  • Open your manuscript. Break it into separate chapters, and make sure each is clearly and consistently labeled. Make certain the chapter numbers are in the proper sequence and don’t skip a number.
  • Print out the first chapter. Everything looks different printed out, and you will see many things you don’t notice on the computer screen or hear when it was read aloud.
  • Turn to the last page. Cover the page with another sheet of paper, leaving only the final paragraph visible.
  • Starting with the final paragraph on the last page, begin reading, working your way forward.
  • With a yellow highlighter, mark each place that needs correction.
  • Put the corrected chapter on a recipe stand next to your computer. Open your document and begin making the revisions you noted on your hard copy.

CAUTION INFO DUMP ZONE AHEADThis is the phase where I look for info dumps, passive phrasing, and timid words. These telling passages are codes for the author, laid down in the first draft. They are signs that a section needs rewriting to make it visual rather than telling. Clunky phrasing and info dumps are signals telling me what I intend that scene to be. I must cut some of the info and allow the reader to use their imagination.

I will have trimmed about 3,000 more words from my manuscript by the end of phase two.

Phase three is the step that only works if you understand grammar and industry practices. Be aware that understanding context is solely a human function at this stage in our technology.

You may have found that your word processing program has spellcheck and some minor editing assists. Spellcheck is notorious for both helping and hindering you. It may or may not alert you to an obvious error.

  • There, their, they’re.
  • To, too, two.
  • Its, it’s.

In this third phase, I go over each chapter using Grammarly. I have also used ProWriting Aid. Each program has strengths and weaknesses. There are several other programs available to writers, but I have only tried these two.

DangerEditing programs operate on algorithms and don’t understand context. I am wary of relying on Grammarly or ProWriting Aid for anything other than alerting you to possible problems. If you blindly obey every suggestion made by editing programs, you will turn your manuscript into a mess.

If your knowledge of punctuation is sketchy, don’t feel alone. By the time we begin writing as adults, most of us have forgotten whatever grammar we once knew. If this is your case, your best bet is to avoid these costly programs.

It takes far less money to invest in a book like the Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation and learn how grammar works.

Good editing software is expensive. For my specific needs, it has been a worthwhile investment. If you choose to invest in some, use common sense when reviewing the program’s suggestions.

My three-part self-editing process can take more than a month. When I’ve finished, I’ll have a manuscript that won’t be full of distractions. I will send it to my editor, and she’ll be able to focus on finding as much of what I have missed as is humanly possible.

And, if you read any books published by the large Traditional publishers, you know that a few mistakes and typos can and will get through despite our careful editing.

We are only human, after all.

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February 16, 2022 · 6:00 am

Write from the heart #amwriting

Writers are entertainers. We write books for people who want a diversion from the daily grind. No matter the subject or genre, we write escapes for people who need to just get away for a while.

MyWritingLife2021Our stories take the reader to exotic places and introduce them to other realities. When we publish a book, we hope it will find a reader on the day they were looking for just such an escape.

If it does, we hope we have written something reader will stay with to the end. We hope they see life and vitality in the narrative, the kind of energy we thought we were imparting when we wrote it.

No matter how well edited a manuscript is, readers will only stay with us if we allow ourselves to write from the heart. We must write what we believe is true even though the story is about people and events that never happened. If we believe in what we write, the prose will have power.

poetry-in-prose-word-cloud-4209005I wrote poetry and lyrics for a heavy metal band when I first started out. I was young, sincere, and convinced I had to impart a message with every word. I didn’t know until twenty years later when I came across my old notebook that my poems weren’t honest. Eighteen-year-old me was trying to make a point rather than offering ideas for further thought.

Paging through that notebook and looking back at my work, I could see the falseness clearly. My words were contrived – I was trying too hard to be the next Bob Dylan. The words that emerged hadn’t been good enough, so I went out of my way to be clever.

When I began writing stories for my children, I knew better than to get fancy. I still wrote crap but what I wrote then was honest crap because I no longer had anyone to impress.

my-books-cjjasp-own-workChildren are unimpressed by the fact their parents might write a story or play music or paint or do any of the creative arts.

They are also blunt when they tell you where a story or a song or a picture fails to impress them and are upfront about why. Thanks to the tough audience that my children were in those beginning years, I found ways to write fairy tales with truths that weren’t shaded by what I thought art should be.

These stories were better, but they weren’t written by an educated author.

As my children left home, I had more time to learn how to write a literate, well-plotted story. I made connections with other writers and joined writing groups. That was when I discovered that an author needs to be consistent with punctuation even when writing from the heart.

I had no idea I was uneducated because I had done well in writing and literature in school. I navigated college courses with no problem other than laziness. Alas, members of my writing group pointed out that I hadn’t retained much of what I was taught in elementary school.

steering the craft leguinAs Ursula K. LeGuin said in her excellent book, Steering the Craft, A 21st Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story, “If you aren’t interested in punctuation, or are afraid of it, you’re missing out on some of the most beautiful, elegant tools a writer has to work with.” [1]

So, I knew a lot of words but didn’t know a lot about how to shape them. I try to embrace what I fear, so I forced myself to re-learn the fundamentals of American English grammar. I’m not perfect, but I try to do as well as possible. My editor still finds habitual errors.

If you are a regular reader here, you know I enjoy reading books in every genre and style.  While the books I love are scattered all across the spectrum, they have one thing in common—they are all written by authors with an understanding of the basic rules of punctuation.

Often, these authors break other grammar rules with style and abandon, but they do pay attention to punctuation.

Punctuation matters because it is the traffic signal telling the reader to go, yield, go again, or stop. If an author gets the punctuation right in most places, the reader can suspend their disbelief.

Writers begin as readers. In his book, On Writing, Stephen King gives us permission to read for six hours achicago guide to grammar day, should we so desire. Reading is how we come to understand writing and the art of story. Mr. King also admonishes us to learn the fundamentals of punctuation and grammar.

In my quest to understand the art of constructing a story, I have come across some pretty awful books. As a freelance editor, I have twice had work submitted to me by authors who believed a convoluted mess was ready for the publisher and just needed a bit of proofreading. No editor has the time or desire to completely rewrite a story for a client, and they will decline that project.

We all suffer agonies on hearing criticism until we have been at it for a while. At first, our skin is thin and delicate and bleeds copiously when flaws are found in the precious child that is our work.

storybyrobertmckeeEvery editor will tell you no amount of money is worth the time and effort it would take to teach an author how to write coherent, readable prose. That is what seminars, books on craft, and books on style and grammar are for.

I have said this before—I don’t consider something awful and hard to read if it is written in an old-fashioned style. However, I do think a book is awful when its author wastes my time by not learning how to construct a sentence.

And when it comes to the narrative, poetry can’t be forced, but good prose can be ruined by trying to make it poetic.

I learned the hard way that contrived prose is not poetic, nor does it prove you are talented. When poetry or good imagery emerges naturally, rejoice and keep writing. Let the imagery flow when it will, and don’t force it. Every word we write doesn’t have to be golden.

LarrysPostRapturePetSittingService_EllenKingRiceI want to read an honest story about people who seem real, who have the kind of problems we can all relate to on a human level. I want to read a story that comes from an author’s deepest soul. The setting doesn’t matter—it can be set on Mars or in Africa. Characters matter, and their story matters.

I read all genres and all settings. I will forgive the imperfections if the author has tried to be consistent and knows the fundamentals of punctuation and grammar.

I love nothing more than finding a great story that rings of truth and touches my heart. If it has passages that flow naturally and strike deep into my poetry-loving soul, all the better.

CREDITS AND ATTRIBUTIONS:

[1] Quote: Ursula K. LeGuin, Steering the Craft, A 21st Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story, ©1999 Ursula K. LeGuin, First Mariner Books Edition 2015, page 11.

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February 14, 2022 · 6:00 am

Three Grammar Rules We Know but Don’t Know We Know #amwriting

In English, as in other languages, certain rules of speech are learned so early on in life that they are instinctual. No matter the level of our education or the dialect we speak, we use these rules and don’t know we are doing so.

to err is human to edit divineToday I am revisiting three wonderful quotes on these rules from linguist Steven Pinker, editor Stan Carey, and Tim Dowling, a journalist for The Guardian.

The Jolly Green Giant rule:

The rule is that multiple adjectives are always ranked accordingly: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose. Unlike many laws of grammar or syntax, this one is virtually inviolable, even in informal speech. You simply can’t say My Greek Fat Big Wedding, or leather walking brown boots. And yet until last week, I had no idea such a rule existed. Tim Dowling, for The Guardian, Sept 13, 2016. [1]

My editor often finds and points out words whose order must be rearranged to sound natural. Inadvertently putting our words in the wrong order is why some sentences seem clumsy when you read them. The author wrote them that way when they were in the middle of laying down the first draft of the manuscript and didn’t notice it during the revision process.

It happens because, in the first draft, we are madly getting the words out of our heads. In the rush to get the thoughts down, words emerge in the wrong order. My red large Cadillac is comfortable to ride in. 

Muddled phrasings often slip by when we revise our work because our minds automatically put the words in the correct order. This is the writer’s curse—we see what should be there, the eye skipping over what we actually wrote.

This ability to see a finished product is a necessary facet of the creative instinct. But it is a curse to see our work as intended and not as it is. The naïve belief in the perfection of our work is why we need an unbiased eye to read our work and point out those rough areas.

My large red Cadillac is comfortable to ride in. 

Ferrari_Portofino_M_IMG_4351Actually, my large dirty minivan is not as comfortable to ride in as it used to be. Grandma’s imaginary red Ferrari would be a lot more fun, but alas—if wishes were Ferraris, my driveway would look a lot fancier.

In every language, native speakers automatically order their words in specific ways. In English, we order them this way:

  1. opinion,
  2. size,
  3. age,
  4. shape,
  5. color,
  6. origin,
  7. material,
  8. purpose

Shannon’s light blue wool jacket was left behind.

The Mishmash rule:

“Reduplication” is when a word or part of a word is repeated, sometimes modified, and added to make a longer term, such as aye-aye, mishmash, and hotchpotch. This process can mark plurality or intensify meaning, and it can be used for effect or to generate new words. The added part may be invented or it may be an existing word whose form and sense are a suitable fit. Stan Carey, A hotchpotch of reduplication, MacMillan Dictionary Blog 2012. [2]

Have I mentioned how much I adore mishmash words? They roll off the tongue with a kind of rhythm and musicality. Sadly, while I regularly entertain my youngest grandchildren with them, I hardly ever get to write them. Mishmash. Hip-hop.

The Hip-Hop rule:

powerwordsWordCloudLIRF06192021Have you ever wondered why we say fiddle-faddle and not faddle-fiddle? Why is it ping-pong and pitter-patter rather than pong-ping and patter-pitter? Why dribs and drabs rather than vice versa? Why can’t a kitchen be span and spic? Whence riff-raff, mishmash, flim-flam, chit-chat, tit for tat, knick-knack, zig-zag, sing-song, ding-dong, King Kong, criss-cross, shilly-shally, seesaw, hee-haw, flip-flop, hippity-hop, tick-tock, tic-tac-toe, eeny-meeny-miney-moe, bric-a-brac, clickey-clack, hickory-dickory-dock, kit and kaboodle, and bibbity-bobbity-boo? The answer is that the vowels for which the tongue is high and in the front always come before the vowels for which the tongue is low and in the back. (Pinker, The Language Instinct, 1994:167) [3]

So, you now have a mishmash of words, three rules native speakers of English know and use without consciously thinking about it. Wonky word order is just one more thing to watch for when revising our work.

CREDITS AND ATTRIBUTIONS:

Media: Ferrari Portofino,  Alexander Migl, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

[1] Tim Dowling, Order force: the old grammar rule we all obey without realizing, © The Guardian 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/13/sentence-order-adjectives-rule-elements-of-eloquence-dictionary (accessed 25 May 2018)

[2] Stan Carey, A hotchpotch of reduplication, MacMillan Dictionary Blog 2012 © Macmillan Publishers Limited 2009-2018. http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/a-hotchpotch-of-reduplication (accessed 25 May 2018)

[3] Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct, Pinker, Steven. 1994. The Language Instinct. New York: HarperPerennial.

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February 9, 2022 · 6:00 am

Creating Characters vs. Defamation of Character #amwriting

Real-life has moments that are far stranger than anything I could dream up. I’m not alone in this—everyone has a story. That story will have moments that are difficult to hear and others that are amazing.

DangerWriting fiction allows me to put reality into more palatable chunks. It’s easier to cope with that way.

One of the ways I design my worlds is by drawing on the real world to help develop the unreal. Reshaping and reusing the scenery and terrain around you are habits of good world-building.

However, crafting characters is different. We shouldn’t use the real names and exact situations of people we are acquainted with for any reason. Don’t thinly disguise your hated boss or neighbor with a different name because they could recognize themselves and sue you.

This was made clear by the late Betty MacDonald’s situation. Her first published book was picked up by J.B. Lippincott. The Egg and I is a fictionalized account of Betty’s life as a chicken farmer. It was set in Chimacum, a small community in rural Washington State.

Many members of my family were from that area of Puget Sound and still lived there during the post-WWII years, the time frame in which Betty’s book was set.

A wide disparity in education and social services existed between urban and rural communities at that time. Only a basic education was available to most families of loggers, brush pickers, and small farmers in Washington.

Thanks to the US government’s efforts, the indigenous people were in dire straits. Traditionally, Puget Sound tribes were mainly hunter/gatherers and now suffered extreme deprivation. They had lost access to their traditional hunting and fishing territories. They were losing the culture that had been their foundation for untold thousands of years.

Betty MacDonald’s book was a success in that era and moral climate, selling well over a million copies and spinning off several movie adaptations.

The Egg and I fell into disfavor in the 1970s because cultural awareness had changed the way we view indigenous people. Critics now saw a lack of understanding and cliched treatment of our local Native people in the book.

This post isn’t intended to address or pass judgment on a 1940’s treatment of cultural issues. These are things we avoid in our modern connected society, but which people took for granted in 1946 when the book was written. Instead, we need to focus on the moral and financial repercussions of writing fictional characters too close to life.

Betty’s book motivated several lawsuits against her and her publisher for defamation of character.

From Wikipedia:

Post-publication lawsuits

Following the success of the book and film, lawsuits were filed by members of the Chimacum community. They claimed that characters in The Egg and I had been based on them, and that they had been identified in their community as the real-life versions of those characters, subjecting them to ridicule and humiliation. The family of Albert and Susanna Bishop claimed they had been negatively portrayed as the Kettles. Their oldest son Edward and his wife Ilah Bishop filed the first lawsuit, which was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.

The second lawsuit was filed against MacDonald, publisher J. B. Lippincott Company, and The Bon Marché (a Seattle department store which had promoted and distributed the book) for total damages of $975,000, as sought by nine other members of the Bishop family ($100,000 each) and Raymond H. Johnson ($75,000), who claimed he had been portrayed as the Indian “Crowbar.” The case was heard before a jury in Judge William J. Willkins’ (who was also one of the presiding judges at the Nuremberg Trials) courtroom in King County Superior Court beginning February 6, 1951. MacDonald testified that the characters in her book were composite sketches of various people she had met. The defense produced evidence that the Bishop family had actually been trying to profit from the fame the book and movie had brought them, including testimony that son Walter Bishop had had his father Albert appear onstage at his Belfair, Washington, dance hall with chickens under his arm, introducing him as “Pa Kettle.” On February 10, 1951, the jury decided in favor of the defendants. [1]

stoplightWe all draw inspiration from real life, whether consciously or not. However, if we are writing fiction, we must never detail people we are acquainted with, even if we change their names.

If you become a success, some people may see that as their ticket to a little extra money at your expense. This, despite the disclaimer we put on the copyright page:

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or deceased, is entirely coincidental.

However, we can and will draw impressions from the people around us.

A common “coffee shop” game is a good way to develop characters for your stories and won’t get you sued. Now that the pandemic is winding down, many coffee shops offer indoor seating once again. Pick a place that is new to you and have your pen and notepad or laptop at the ready. Watch your fellow patrons. Observe their behavior, their speech habits, and their unconscious mannerisms. You can build an entire fantasy life for them.

Each character sketch is the kernel that can be the start of a short story or even a novel–and all of it is fiction.

My Coffee Cup © cjjasp 2013The best thing is that you don’t actually know a thing about them other than they like a Double Tall Hazelnut Latte. Peoples’ conversations are unguarded in coffee shops, openly talking about what moves them or holds them back. They are lovers or haters, quiet or loud, and most importantly, anonymous.

The moods and mannerisms, idiosyncrasies, and habitual quirks that you see can give rise to a character you can use without risking your financial security and your reputation. People-watching is a necessary habit for the author to develop.

Credits and Attributions:

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “The Egg and I,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Egg_and_I&oldid=1050662692 (accessed February 8, 2022).

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February 7, 2022 · 6:00 am

Food, culture, and what your characters eat #amwriting

I write books set in fantasy environments. An important part of worldbuilding includes the appropriate food for your level of technology.

feeding your fictional charactersSeveral years ago, I read a fantasy book where the author clearly spent many hours on the food of her fantasy world and the various animals. She gave each kind of fruit, bird, or herd beast a different, usually unpronounceable, name in the language of her fantasy culture.

The clumsy way she inserted the information into the narrative ruined what could have been a great book for me.

The book started out well, and I really liked the characters. It was a portal story, and the group had been dropped into a strange world. One of the local farmhands agreed to be their guide.

However, every time the protagonists halted their journey, they pulled some random fruit with a gobbledygook name out of the bag and waxed poetic about it. As they passed each field or forest, their guide would stop and explain the various fruits, herbs, and creatures in nearly scientific detail.

As a reader, I think Tolkien got the food right when he created the Hobbit and the world of Middle Earth. Food is an essential component of a culture but should be only briefly mentioned. Whether commonplace or exotic, it should be similar enough to known earthly foods to create an atmosphere a reader can easily visualize.

Plow_medievalAs many of you know, I have been vegan since 2012. However, during the 1980s, my second ex-husband and I raised sheep. Most of the meat we served in our home was raised on his family’s communal farm. Our chickens and rabbits roamed their yard and had good lives, and our family’s herd of twenty sheep was managed using simple, old-style farming methods.

We were self-employed in the photography industry and were able to rotate whose turn it was to spend a week caring for the animals. Fortunately, my sister-in-law’s husband was Palestinian. He ensured our sheep were raised and butchered according to halal dietary laws.

I could write a book about those five years, but no one would believe it.

I grew up fishing with my father and have a first-person understanding of what it takes to put meat, fish, or fowl on the table when a supermarket is not an option.

Take my word for this: getting a chicken from the coop to the table is time-consuming, messy, and stinks. We had as many vegetarian meals as we did those featuring meat of some kind.

Village_scene_with_well_(Josse_de_Momper,_Jan_Brueghel_II)

Village Scene with Well, Josse de Momper and Jan Brueghel II PD|100 via Wikimedia Commons.

That experience taught me many things. As far as food goes, in a medieval setting, meat, fish, and fowl won’t be served every day in the average person’s home.

Yes, it is a real job to slaughter and prepare it for the table, but other, more subtle factors come into play, things that affect the logic of your plot.

In the Middle Ages, the wool a sheep could produce in its lifetime was of far more value than the meat you might get by slaughtering it. For that reason, lamb was rarely served. The only sheep that made it to the table were usually rams culled from the herd.

Chickens were no different because you lose the many meals her eggs would have provided once a chicken is dead. Young roosters, however, were culled before they got to the contentious stage and were usually the featured meat in any stew that might be on a Sunday menu. Only one rooster was kept for breeding purposes and if he was too ill-tempered, he went into the stew pot and a young rooster with better manners took his place.

Cattle and goats were also more valuable alive. Cows were integral to a family’s wealth as they were milk producers and sometimes worked as draft animals. Only one bull would be kept intact for breeding purposes in a small herd. The others would be neutered, made into oxen and draft animals that pulled plows, pulled wagons, and did all the work that heavy farm machinery does today.

In medieval times, it was a felony for commoners in Britain to hunt for game on many estates. Poachers were considered thieves and faced hash penalties, horrific by our standards if they were caught.

However, most people were allowed to fish as long as they didn’t take salmon, so fish was on the menu more often than fowl, sheep, or cattle. Eels were a menu staple.

Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_Peasant_Wedding_-_Google_Art_Project_2

Pieter Bruegel the Elder – Peasant Wedding (1526/1530–1569) via Wikimedia Commons

Therefore, eels, eggs, dried beans and peas, grains, and vegetables were easy and figured most prominently on the menu. Pies of all sorts were the fast-food of the era, often sold by vendors on the street side or in bakeries.

Wheat was rare and expensive. For that reason, the grains most often found in a peasant’s home were barley, oats, and most importantly, rye.

Common vegetables in medieval European gardens were leeks, garlic, onions, turnips, rutabagas, cabbages, carrots, peas, beans, cauliflower, squashes, gourds, melons, parsnips, aubergines (eggplants)—the list goes on and on. And fruits?

Wikipedia says:

Fruit was popular and could be served fresh, dried, or preserved, and was a common ingredient in many cooked dishes. Since sugar and honey were both expensive, it was common to include many types of fruit in dishes that called for sweeteners of some sort. The fruits of choice in the south were lemons, citrons, bitter oranges (the sweet type was not introduced until several hundred years later), pomegranates, quinces, and grapes. Farther north, apples, pears, plums, and wild strawberries were more common. Figs and dates were eaten all over Europe but remained rather expensive imports in the north. [1]

For the most part, my characters eat a medieval/agrarian diet. In medieval times, peasants ate more vegetables, grains, fruits, and nuts than the nobility. The primary source of protein would be eggs and cheese, and fish. Herbal teas, ale, ciders, and mead were also staples of the commoner’s diet because drinking fresh, unboiled water was unhealthy. Medieval brews were more of a meal than today’s beers.

In my world of Waldeyn, the setting for Billy Ninefingers, when food is mentioned, it’s likely to be oat or bean porridge, soup or fish stew, ale or cider, or bread and cheese.

Billy is captain of a mercenary company and an innkeeper, and for most of his story, he does the cooking. I keep the food simple and don’t make too big a deal out of it. The conversations that happen while he is trying to feed the Rowdies are more important than the food. The food is the backdrop.

avacado dinner saladKnowing what to feed your people keeps you from introducing jarring components into your narrative. In Mountains of the Moon, set in the world of Neveyah, my people have a melding of familiar New World ingredients for their diet and do a lot of foraging. For a good list of what this diet might entail, go to this link: Indigenous cuisine of the Americas. You will be amazed at the variety of common foods that originated in the Americas.

When it comes to writing about meals, I feel it’s best to concentrate on the conversations. The food should be part of the scenery, a subtle part of worldbuilding. The conversations that occur around food are the places where new information can be exchanged, things we need to know to move the story forward.

CREDITS AND ATTRIBUTIONS:

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “Medieval cuisine,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Medieval_cuisine&oldid=896980025 (accessed Feb 06, 2022).

The Medieval Plow (Moldboard Plow) PD|100, File:Plow medieval.jpg – Wikipedia (accessed Feb 06, 2022).

Pieter Bruegel the Elder – Peasant Wedding (1526/1530–1569) PD|100 via Wikimedia Commons.

Village Scene with Well, Josse de Momper and Jan Brueghel II PD|100 via Wikimedia Commons.

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February 2, 2022 · 6:00 am

Agency and Consequences #amwriting

In my previous post, Agency and Character Development, I briefly mentioned the importance of consequences. It is a word with many uses and connotations.

WritingCraftSeriesAgencyLIRF01302022Let’s look at both the meanings and synonyms for the word consequences.

Consequence (noun)

[kon-seh-kwens]

consequences (plural noun)

[1] The result or effect of an action or condition.

“Many programmers were laid off from work as a consequence of the failing economy.”

Synonyms:

Result, upshot, outcome, sequel, effect, reaction, repercussion, reverberations, ramification, end, end result, conclusion, termination, culmination.

[2] Importance or relevance.

“That’s of no consequence.”

Synonyms:

Importance, import, significance, account, moment, momentousness, substance, note, mark, prominence, value, weightiness, weight, concern, interest, gravity, seriousness.

[3] Social distinction. (Slightly dated usage. Its synonyms are more commonly used.)

“Adelaide Brown was a woman of consequence.”

Synonyms:

Fame, distinction, eminence, preeminence, prominence, repute, reputation, prestige, acclaim, celebrity, note, notability, mark, standing, stature, account, glory, illustriousness.

For today’s post, let’s consider agency and the importance of choice. How will the results of their decisions affect our characters’ lives? After all, a story isn’t interesting without a few self-inflicted complications.

Once again, we will go to J.R.R. Tolkien and look at Bilbo’s choices and his path to becoming the eccentric eleventy-one-year-old hobbit who vanishes (literally), leaving everything, including the One Ring, to Frodo.

ConsequencesLIRF07122020In the morning, after the unexpected (and unwanted) guests leave, he has two choices, to stay in the safety of Bag End, or hare off on a journey into the unknown. He chooses to run after the dwarves, and so begins the real story—how a respectable hobbit became a burglar and became a hero in the process.

The consequences of his decision will shape his entire life afterward. Where he was once a staid country squire, having inherited a comfortable income and existence, he is now expected to steal an important treasure from a dragon. At the outset, that particular job doesn’t seem real. He is beset by problems, one of which is his general unfitness for the task. He’s always been well-fed, never had to exert himself much, and suddenly, his opinions carry no weight.

Bilbo’s hidden sense of adventure emerges early when the company encounters a group of trolls. He is supposed to be a thief, so he is sent to investigate a strange fire in a forest. Reluctantly, he agrees. Upon reaching the blaze, he observes that it is a cookfire for a group of trolls.

Bilbo has reached a fork in the path of life. He must make a choice: the smart thing would be to turn around at that point and warn the dwarves. However, his ego feels the need to do something to prove his worth. “He was very much alarmed as well as disgusted; he wished himself a hundred miles away—yet somehow he could not go straight back to Thorin and Company empty-handed.” [1] Bilbo feels the need to impress the Dwarves and makes decisions he comes to regret.

In the process of nearly getting everyone eaten and having to be rescued by Gandalf, he discovers several historically important weapons. One of them is Sting, a blade that fits Bilbo perfectly as a sword.

At first, Sting has no name, a long knife that the hobbit Bilbo Baggins discovers in the cave of trolls. Gandalf and the dwarf Thorin also find their respective swords, Glamdring and Orcrist.

Although it is only a dagger, its length corresponds to a short sword for a creature the size of the hobbit. It turns out that, like the swords of Gandalf and Thorin, this dagger was forged by the elves of Gondolin in the First Age and possesses a magical property—it shines with a blue glow when orcs are close.

the hobbitThe blade does not acquire its name until later in the adventure, after Bilbo, lost in the forest of Mirkwood, uses it to kill a giant spider and rescue the Dwarves. This is when Bilbo’s decisions become more thoughtful, and his courageous side begins to emerge.

Decisions and consequences shape Bilbo’s character and force his growth. His experiences and bad choices along the way have consequences that shape how he thinks. As the Dwarves continue to get into trouble, he makes plans for their rescue and considers what may or may not go wrong before implementing them. He doesn’t know it, but he thinks like a warrior instead of a staid country squire.

Consequences force the character arc. Sometimes the decisions our characters make as we are writing them surprise us. But if those decisions make the story too easy, they should be discarded.

We, as their creator, must take over, cut or rewrite those scenes, and force the story back on track.

Credits and Attributions:

[1] Quote from The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, by J.R.R. Tolkien, published 1937 by George Allen & Unwin, Ltd.

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January 31, 2022 · 6:00 am

Agency and Character Development #amwriting

Now that we are well into the new year, many of us are finally getting back to work on novels we began for NaNoWriMo or work we had on hold for the holidays.

WritingCraftSeriesAgencyLIRF01302022This is an excellent time to look at the freedom we give our characters to act and react within the story. I have mentioned many times that I am a plotter. However, when I am in the process of writing the first draft of a novel, the characters sometimes take over. The plot veers far from what I had intended when I began writing it.

West_End_Fair_Gilbert_PA_Demolition_DerbyThis happens because my work is character-driven, and sometimes, they’re like demolition derby drivers.

When a significant change happens, I have to adjust events to match the timeline. Adjusting my outlines is a simple process because I create them in Excel. I can delete and move events as needed to ensure my story arc doesn’t flatten.

Other people use whiteboards and sticky notes, and still others use Scrivener—a program my style of thinking doesn’t mesh with.

I tried Scrivener but grew too frustrated, so I returned to my good old Excel spreadsheet program. Google Sheets works well too, and it’s free.

Usually, the ultimate ending never changes no matter what the characters do. However, the path to that place can go quite far afield from what was initially intended.

I try to keep the plot moving so that it flows naturally. The characters must still act and speak individually, the way that I envision them. I want their uniqueness to remain central to the story, even if their motives and actions evolve from what I first planned.

PinocchioThis is called giving your characters “agency.” Agency is an integral aspect of the craft of writing. It means that you allow your characters to make decisions that don’t necessarily follow the original plot outline. This gives them a chance to become real, the way Pinocchio wanted to be a real boy and not a puppet.

Many times, the way to avoid predictability in a plot is to introduce a sense of danger early, a response to an unavoidable, looming threat. Every character has a different personality and should respond to each event differently. The freedom you allow the protagonist and antagonist to steer the events is crucial for them to emerge as real to the reader.

In literary terms, “agency” is the ability of a character to surprise the author, and therefore, the reader. If you plan their every response when you are writing them, it can feel canned and boring. The most exciting moments I’ve had as an author are when my characters surprise me and take over the story.

Sometimes my characters make their own choices. Other times, they go along as I, their creator, have planned for them. Ultimately, they do what I intend for them, but they always do it their own way and with their own style.

Plotting, for me, means setting out an arc of events for a story that I hope to write. I do this in list form in a new Excel workbook. My outline workbook will contain several spreadsheets. On page one, I create the characters and give them personality traits. On page two, I list the order of events that I think will form the arc of the story.

When my characters begin evolving, new events are added. My plot outline must continually evolve with them so that I don’t lose control of the arc and go off on a side quest to nowhere. The evolution of the outline happens once I begin writing because that is when I get to really know my characters. Only when the writing commences can they make choices and say things that surprise me.

That is when they have agency.

When I first consider writing a new novel, I get the idea out of my head by creating a plot outline. For me, introducing the threat and warning signs of inescapable danger early in the story arc limits my habit of writing too much backstory. Their history can happen off-screen, in a file marked Backstory. That way, I get to know my characters, but no one is going about “life as normal” in the narrative. Readers aren’t looking for ordinary—they have enough of that in real life.

Each character will be left with several consequential choices to make in every situation that arises along the timeline. I consider the personality and allow the characters’ reactions to fit who they are.

Author-thoughtsNo matter how they respond, they will be placed in situations where they have no choice but to go forward. After all, I am their creator, the deity of their universe. I have an outline that predestines them to specific fates, and nothing they can do will stop that train.

The consequences my characters face for their choices affect the atmosphere and mood of the story as it emerges. Think about it—if there are no consequences for bad decisions a character might make, everyone goes home unscathed. So why bother writing at all?

So, while I am an outliner and plotter, I also fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants to a certain extent. I love it when my characters take over and drive the story.

Credits and Attributions:

Lowenburg at the English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Pinocchio by Enrico Mazzanti (1852-1910), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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