To hide or not to hide!

I have far too many days during the course of writing a book when I feel the need to run and hide under the duvet. 

Sometimes, the writing process seems impossible and I’m so convinced that I’m incapable of stringing a coherent sentence together that I feel the need to hide. 

When those magical words The End are finally written, I think my worries should be over - but no. They only increase. I have to send the book to my editor and that brings on another of those days. Nails are chewed and nerves are strained to breaking point as I convince myself that she’ll hate every single word. 

Publication day should be a doddle, right? I’m happy that my book’s worthy and my editor likes it so what’s to worry about? Plenty. That brings on a hide under the duvet with a very large bottle of alcohol day. I know I should be out there promoting it but all I want to do is hide in case the whole world hates it. 

Publication day comes and goes and I should relax. World War Three didn’t break out. No Worst Book Ever headlines appear. Time to relax, right? Sadly, not. For me, the worst worry ever then raises its ugly head. The reviews. I know that not everyone likes every book. I know I’ve plucked up courage to read a one star review only to see “Haven’t read it yet”. (What’s that about?!?) I know that books destined to top the bestsellers lists for months pick up a lot of negative reviews. I know all this yet I never stop worrying. I tell myself not to read the reviews but can never resist a quick look. 

My latest book, The Final Echoes, hasn’t received many reviews yet but they’re coming in slowly and surely. And they’re good. All very positive. (Don’t feel obliged but the book is on sale at Amazon for the whole month of June. :o)) 

Time to stop worrying? No, because the whole sorry process has started again. You see, I’m writing the next book. Yes, the whole process seems impossible. And yes, I’m convinced I can’t string a coherent sentence together. 

Maybe I should forget writing and take up something that’s easier on my nerves. Sky diving or perhaps swimming with sharks springs to mind.

Does anyone else feel the same or is it just me?  

Finding Your Bliss

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you
where there were only walls.” ~ Joseph Campbell

I’ve been trying to finish a light amateur sleuth mystery (yay! Finally a series to write!) but another story keeps nagging at me. It’s one I’ve picked up and put down about a dozen times; changed the focus; the motivation; everything except the central characters and the theme.

I’m not sure why that book keeps pulling me back. Maybe it comes from the idea that each one of us has something special to contribute—maybe work we feel compelled to do. By doing it, we feel fulfilled and enrich the world. Joseph Campbell talks about finding your own path (“If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it's not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That's why it's your path.”). How do you find that path? Some refer to it as following your bliss. Others say, find your heart’s passion.

But is that passion the broader goal or a kernel that embodies it?

For many of us on this blog, our passion is writing. Taking intuitions, snippets, dreams and moments of pure fantasy imagination. Adding overheard conversations, glimpses of a vignette as we pass by. Grabbing that nebulous possibility, and shaping and turning into a polished story.

Is writing the passion we want to share with the world? Or is it a particular theme or story that we feel we have to tell to reach that bliss?

I really have no idea, so I keep putting one foot in front of the other and step by step find my path.

Right now, that path is strolling along with a snarky divorcee who's temporarily living on a tree farm... You might hear a bit more about her later.

But as much fun as the amateur sleuth is to write, that other story is still there, a siren song.

Even if we take the steps to become an author, maybe we chose a certain path because we fear the stories we want to write won’t sell. We love chic lit or romantic mysteries or literary stories where the characters rule and the words flow to a different rhythm, but we read online, hear from editors, agents, creative writing texts that D, all the above are passé. We’re tempted to follow trends rather than listen to the story inside us. I think most of us have cleared that hurdle, but the doubt is always there--should I have chosen a different path?

Overall, I'm happy with my path to "here." Sure, there have been highs and lows, joys and regrets. I'm happy our paths crossed, here on the blog, at Carina, conferences or any of the other places we've connected. I hope my passion for writing lives on and that I can share my joy and make a small corner of the worlds a better place.

And in the meanwhile, I think my other story is still growing—or growing up—quietly evolving in my subconscious. I have many books still to write.

But I suspect “that story” will one day be the one I have to tell.

What about you?

“As you go the way of life,

You will see a great chasm. Jump.

It is not as wide as you think.”

Joseph Campbell

Electronic Notebooks

Join the authors and friends of Not Your Usual Suspects for an occasional series of posts about their world of reading, writing and publishing.

Short and sweet, hopefully both informative and entertaining - join us at I-Spy to find out the how's and why's of what we do.


TODAY'S POST: I-Spy Paperless Notebooks...

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A few years ago I read an article about an attorney who had gone paperless in his law practice. The attorney used an electronic notebook: the Microsoft OneNotebook program. Intrigued, I checked my laptop when I got home. Lo and behold, OneNotebook was listed in my Microsoft programs. At first, I set up notebooks to contain research for a  book I was writing at the time.  Rather than filling notebooks/folders with printed material, I copied and pasted online material into labeled sections.

At the conclusion of the book, I realized I didn't have a mountain of paper to file or toss.  Hmmm.  When I began my next book, I decided to set up a full blown electronic notebook. They function like any other paper' notebook. You can have as many sections as you wish; above is a screenshot of the tabs I used for Her Dark Protector. 

Same thing for subsections; have as many as you need:

I now have an electronic notebook containing all the common templates I typically used, including a plotboard. 

The beauty is the 'page' is as wide or long as you need. The section grows with added material.  Photos can be copied as well.  Here's one of the research pages where I pasted a photo of the motorcyle ultimately used in Her Dark Protector.

An obvious benefit of an electronic plotboard is the portability. Grab the computer and go; all your research, charts, etc. at your fingertips. Use different colors, fonts, etc. to help highlight turing points and POV's. As I write/review/revise a manuscript, I'll note them like below.

Whenever I run across an intreresting online article about writing or other frequently used topics, such as criminal investigation, I send it to a special topic notebook.

I've become such a believer in the digital notebook that I now use them at work. With Outlook I'm able to send documents to the case notebook.  Have a document or pdf file you wish you could add to the notebook? One of the print options [at least in Microsof] is to send the document to OneNote.

Don't have Microsoft?  I googled and there are a number of electronic software progams available. In this digital day and age, an electronic notebook is a match made in heaven for organizing writing. Besides, think of all the trees being saved.

:) Carol Stephenson

Award winning author Carol Stephenson lives in southeast Florida with her beloved Shih Tzu. She's an attorney by day and author by night. She's best known for her emotionally drawn, hard-driving romances.  You can keep up with Carol and her books on her Web site at www.carolstephenson.com.       

FUTURE POSTS will cover:

Kindlegraph / the art of research / writing male/male romance / rejection and writer's block / building suspense / writing love scenes / anti-piracy strategies / audio books / interviews with editors and agents / using Calibre.
We welcome everyone's constructive comments and suggestions!

Character Surprise

It's finally spring here in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. New life abounds – the geese

and ducks with their babies and the fresh green of new leaves.

There's lots of work required at the tree farm – setting up the irrigation system, grading and filling low spots in the access roads, as well as waiting for this year's new seedlings to arrive.

After a long grey winter where many things shuffled creativity to the side, writing has re-bounded with my shiny new story. Not only is it a lighter book, it's the first time I've deliberately planned to write a series. Like the farm, writing—especially writing a series—requires building the infrastructure and then adding and deleting—grading and planting if you will—to strengthen plot and character. Simple and yet wonderfully complex.

About a year ago, I read a wonderful quote. Paraphrasing: Once you finish writing a book, you haven’t “learned” to write any book, you’ve learned to write the one you just wrote.

WIP  Which means the next one isn't necessarily “easier.” Some manuscripts seem to write themselves. Others constantly struggle—in concept, writing, revision, etc. Every book is different.

I'm at the delightful part of my new story, where anything is possible. Not only is the plot evolving, my characters make interesting announcements as they introduce themselves. Yesterday—Mother's Day—my main character abruptly told me why she divorced The Jerk. It wasn't just that he'd cheated on her. He'd done it deliberately, looking for a new wife, one who could have children. My heart twisted as the words appeared. I have two wonderful children and can only glimpse the pain of someone who can't have a child. While this isn't the focus of the story, I can see already that those experiences are going to shape who Keri is as a character and how she moves forward with her life.

So what about you, fellow authors? Do your characters surprise you with details that make you rethink the character, subplots or the plot itself?

What about you, fellow readers? (I don't know many authors who aren't readers.) Do you enjoy the layers that build a character or are you action oriented? As in, it's all about the plot? Or the characters?

Oh, the terror!

I'm about to start a new romantic suspense novel! I've got my notepad and pen handy for plotting and character development and several hours left of the day with no pressing obligations. The laundry is done, husband busy with his own projects and I'm…

Terrified.

What if I can't think of anything to say? What if my characters fall flat, my plot is insupportable, there isn't enough conflict? What if my agent hates it?

Or what if it gets published and every review is negative?

I don't know why I go through this every time I write a book. I've written several and had three published so far, so it would follow that I'm somewhat confident. And I am…somewhat.

This is my first try at a trilogy. I've got the first book written and almost half of the third—which I thought was the second, but realized it needed to be the last book. There are three siblings in the Hunter family: Nathan is the oldest, and his book is written. Rick is the middle child and Kat is the youngest.

Nathan is a wounded former cop turned P.I. who specializes in finding missing kids. He takes on the search for a senator's son, which leads him to the boy's stepsister—a woman with a past who doesn't want to be found. In order not to spook Sophie when he meets her, he doesn't tell her he's tracked her down to find her stepbrother, all of which sets up a disastrous chain of events for Nathan and his family.

Here's an excerpt from Nathan's book, which I'm calling Trust No One:

In the bedroom, Sophie could hear Nathan's voice very faintly from the powder room off the kitchen. Either he was talking to himself or he was on the phone.

In the bathroom. On the phone.

Her gut seized.

Please, God, don't let him be one of them.

A moment later his silhouette filled the bedroom doorway and she was sitting on the bed in the dark, wrapped in a towel, frozen with doubt and fear. He unbuttoned his shirt as he walked over to the bed, but didn't take it off.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Of course," she said. How could he tell there was something bothering her? He could barely see her. "Why do you ask?"

The bed creaked when he sat down beside her and reached out to stroke her hair. "I can feel the tension rising off you, that's why."

Tell him to leave. Tell him you changed your mind.

But he was big and warm and smelled so masculine, and he'd already given her a taste of what it would be like. And there was the way he smiled and the way he was with Max…

"I thought I heard you talking to someone," she said, hoping he couldn't hear the tremble in her voice. "Were you on the phone?"

His hand didn't falter. "I called my little sister, Kat. I spoke to her yesterday, and she didn't sound so good. Her husband's kind of a schmuck."

Very smooth. But was it the truth? "Isn't it a little late to make a phone call?"

"Kat has trouble sleeping," he said. "Especially when her husband's on the road, which he is now. She's alone with three kids, including twins not much older than Max."

"Oh." She couldn't think of what else to say. She had to make him leave now, before he touched her again. "Nathan—"

"What are you afraid of, Sophie?"

She closed her mouth. If he were one of them, wouldn't he have arrested her by now? Or was he planning to screw her first and then pull out the cuffs?

"Talk to me," he said softly. "You can trust me, I swear. Get it off your chest."

Oh, God, how she wished she could tell him everything and make him understand. But what if he was just manipulating her into confessing? No. She couldn't trust him. Couldn't trust anyone.

"I was just going to say that I think we're… moving a little too fast."

He nodded. "I'm happy to go very, very slowly. Whatever you like."

He bent down and planted a kiss on her bare shoulder, and every nerve ending in her body lit up. Her breasts swelled with need, as did the hard nub between her legs. Was it so bad that she wanted this man, even if…

No, he wasn't one of them. He couldn't be.

-- Ana

I love to hear from readers. If you liked this excerpt and would like to read one of my current ebooks, either leave a comment or email me at: ana@anabarrons.com, let me know which book you'd like (WrongfullyAccused, Son of the Enemy or Betrayed by Trust) and in what format and I'll send you a copy. Easy as that!

The Letter of the Law

New writers ask a lot of questions. They ask for help. Which is why they get so much confusing and contradictory information -- as well as some downright bad advice.

 

I thought today maybe we should discuss three of the worst pieces of advice new writers receive -- which, ironically, are also three of the best pieces of advice we receive. The key to knowledge is understanding. Too often writers memorize and parrot the opinions of others and thus believe they have absorbed useful knowledge. You have to understand the reasoning behind the rules in order to actually understand the lesson.

 

Look at this way. There is the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. Mathematicians and scientists (and cops) are concerned with the letter of the law. Artists and philosophers (and judges) are those concerned with the spirit of the law. Neither is better than the other. We need both. But the type of writer you become depends on whether you are a Letter of the Law writer or a Spirit of the Law writer.

 

1 - First piece of good/bad advice - Write What You Know.

 

Except you don’t know anything. And what you do know is too boring to read.

 

Why is this good advice? Because beginning writers don’t write anything resembling real life. Their characters are unreal, their plots are preposterous, and their stories take place in a world that bears no resemblance to any planet in any solar system in any uni--well, you get the idea.

 

What the advice really means: regardless of what you write -- fantasy, mystery, historical -- your stories must be grounded in recognizable reality. Your reality. The reality you know. That doesn’t mean the characters are based on your family and friends or (God forbid) you. It means you’ve been living and interacting with people -- or at least observing them -- long enough to have formed a workable construct of how real live people behave in various situations. You take what you know and you apply it to your fiction.

 

It means you do your research and you use your imagination and you apply these things -- these things that you know -- to your fiction.

 

So when you write about life on an ice planet you bring what you know about the cold and the wet and frost bite, and you take your research, and you come up with a fantasy world that for a few hours can seem more vivid and realistic to a reader than her own living room.

 

 

2 - Second piece of good/bad advice - Don’t Worry About the Market, Just Write the Book You Want to Write.

Except you want to sell your book -- and you could potentially enjoy writing all kinds of things.

 

 

Why is this good advice? Because when you try to write something merely because you think it will sell, that paint-by-numbers attitude often shows in the work. You must write what you enjoy reading.

 

That said, of course you want to keep an eye on the market and trends within publishing. You need to know if the market for cozy mystery is glutted. You need to know if gothic is making a comeback. That doesn't mean you won't go ahead and write your cozy gothic, it just means you'll be a lot less frustrated if you know what you're up against.

Most of us have broader reading tastes than plain vanilla. Maybe we like French vanilla. Maybe we like vanilla with chocolate sauce or sprinkles or lavender bits or ground up vanilla bean. Maybe we like vanilla mixed with sherbet or Neapolitan ice cream. Maybe we like vanilla frozen yogurt or ice milk. You get what I’m saying? Romance is a big seller, but maybe romance with chili peppers is a harder sell than romance with lavender sprinkles.

 

The idea that you can’t -- shouldn’t -- be aware of the market and what’s selling and still write the book you long to write is nonsensical. A successful publishing career is built of creative and artistic compromise. Just like all your relationships in life.  

 

 

3 - Third piece of good/bad advice - Don’t Use Adjectives, Adverbs, Any Words Ending in “ly” OR Any Dialog Tag Other Than “said” or “ask.”

 

Yeah, because there is one -- and ONLY ONE -- genuinely “good” writing style -- and it works for ALL fiction, literary and genre.  And coincidentally, it’s also the very same style used for non-fiction. It’s one size fits all. How perfect is that????

 

Why is this good advice? It’s good advice because most new writers tend to overdo all these things. Most new writers get carried away with the “busyness” of their scenes, keeping their characters twitching and jumping with lots of expressions and gestures and glances that mean essentially nothing. Every line of dialog has a tag or a bit of business attached, and these too add nothing. It’s all filler and it is tedious to read.

 

What does this really mean? Adverbs, adjectives and dialog tags are to good writing what salt and pepper are to good cooking. Less is more -- but no seasoning whatsoever is usually pretty bland. Quality rather than quantity of detail is what you’re always aiming for in your writing.

 

 

I SPY: Danger

Join the authors and friends of Not Your Usual Suspects for an occasional series of posts about their world of reading, writing and publishing.

Short and sweet, hopefully both informative and entertaining - join us at I-Spy to find out the how's and why's of what we do.


TODAY'S POST: I-Spy something beginning with ... Danger

Using the Five Senses in Danger Scenes

It's a running joke at my house that I write suspense and mystery. The humor behind this fact is that I am basically afraid of my shadow. I'm a timid, timid lady. That said, my incredible fear of absolutely everything keeps me in touch with what terror feels like. When I begin a danger scene, my heart knows and it races in solidarity with my poor heroine.

As writers, we're told repeatedly, "show, don't tell." Don't say she's frightened, show us she's frightened. The best way to show fear is to describe those sensations. They are intense, trust me. If you're like most people and not a big chicken like me, then this could be tougher for you. I realize not all my readers understand what it's like to see a monkey pop up unexpectedly on television or at carnival on a little leash, and need a valium. *puffs air into paper bag* I HATE monkeys. *icky shiver* They all want to kill you, you know that, right?

For the braver souls in this world, I need to add more details than hot necks, and cheeks. More than a pounding heart and thickening throat. They might not identify with the steady rush of blood between your ears or the shimmer in periphery that accompanies the too familiar I'm-gonna-DIE feeling I live with daily. Some readers might not connect with that moment when I realize I'm going down in a dead faint in 3, 2, ...

So, I explore the other things involved in my scene. You know, a little something for everyone :) How do I do this? Well....Have you ever wondered why, in hostage scenes, when the heroine has a sock stuck in her mouth...why doesn't she just spit it out already!? I did. Or...What kind of wrist ties are the easiest to bust out of? On that note: How much can your heroine-in-distress really accomplish with both hands behind her back? Can she get up? Nose-dial a cell phone? Walk with a chair tied to her legs? I can answer all those questions and more because I've tried them all. My family doesn't even blink if I ask them to lock me in the basement, attic or garage these days. True story. But, how else will I understand? I want to know if it smells like dry heat and campfire remnants in attics or faint motor oil and dirt in a garage like I imagine. It doesn't always, by the way. My in laws garage smells like bleach and Pine Sol. Not very scary.

The more details we add to danger scenes the better. It gives the reader more opportunity to connect and engage with the stress and fear your character is experiencing. Try thinking in terms of the five senses and ask your MC what they can see. If they're blindfolded, what can they hear? Traffic in the distance? Perhaps a rescue team that doesn't know she's there and may not find her? What do things feel like? The walls, if it's dark, the temperature, extra details add to the tension and that's what makes a danger scene so terrifying.

If that doesn't work, feel free to throw in a bird or an oompa loompa or something else that might scare them to death. What? You aren't afraid of those things either? Just me again. Figures.




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FUTURE POSTS will cover:
Kindlegraph / the art of research / writing male/male romance / rejection and writer's block / building suspense / writing love scenes / anti-piracy strategies / audio books / interviews with editors and agents / using Calibre.
We welcome everyone's constructive comments and suggestions!

Serialously Late!

And other terrible puns.

I apologize -- I'm writing the final chapters of a serial novella I began a couple of months ago on Wattpad. I've reached the point (at last!) where the writing is going well and I am completely immersed in the story. That's the good part (as far as enjoying the work) and the bad part (as far as getting anything else done).

The story is called The Haunted Heart and you can read the first eleven chapters right here.

It's a ghost story and a romance, but not only is it serialized, it's the first of four interconnected novellas, so while part of the story completes this weekend (fingers crossed) the full story won't complete for...well, it's possible that it might take years. Writing schedules being what they are.

In fact, I just signed a contract with Carina Press for two new stories. Stranger on the Shore (classic romantic suspense with an M/M twist) and Fair Play, the sequel to Fair Game. So that's a lot of next year taken up already.

I've never done a serial before, and it's been a fascinating experience. Obviously there is pressure to produce. That's not a bad thing; in fact, right now it might be a very good thing for me. It's strange getting feedback as I'm working on the rough draft, but it's also encouraging in a way I didn't expect. It's difficult sharing a rough draft (and I know how rough this is), to work through questions of age and motivation and backstory in public. I hate the strings of the puppet show to be visible! At the same time, I'm relieved to find that I'm not any more acutely aware of the reader than usual, so that's good. I guess it turns out I'm always aware of the reader, but that awareness only influences me so far. So that resolves one of my fears about working this way -- the fear that the story might change into something not my own if it was revealed in its malleable form.

As a reader, I'm not a fan of serials. I like being able to look ahead. Yes, I admit that. If the tension becomes insurmountable, I like to look ahead and decide if I'm going to keep reading. I'm one of those. You can't do that in a serial. You can't read ahead and you can't know how it all turns out. I guess that's a good thing. I was climbing the walls reading Ginn Hale's Rifter series.

When I'm done with this story, I plan to let it sit for a while. That won't be easy to do because we're all conditioned to cranking stuff out at the speed of light. But I know there are layers here that I'm missing because of the time factor, so I will finish and then I will go back and layer in the little details that give any story its richness and depth. Also I made my mind up that no erotic scenes would be shared in this format. That's more because Wattpad is mostly populated by very, very young writers and readers.

Anyway, this was an experiment for me, and so far it feels successful. I've noticed that a number of writers are experimenting with serialized stories, so I wonder if the serial is making a comeback? What do you think? Do you enjoy reading serialized stories? Do you enjoy writing serialized stories?

I SPY: EDITING

Join the authors and friends of Not Your Usual Suspects for an occasional series of posts about their world of reading, writing and publishing.

Short and sweet, hopefully both informative and entertaining - join us at I-Spy to find out the how's and why's of what we do.


TODAY'S POST: I-Spy something beginning with ...

EDITING by Anne Marie Becker

a.k.a., Wielding a Machete Like a Pro

When the high of completing the first draft of a manuscript fades, you may emerge from your writer's cave, bleary-eyed, look around and find you’re in the jungle. And it’ll take a machete to work your way through the overgrowth of convoluted sentences, buried themes, and repetitive words that threaten to stifle your manuscript’s potential.

Love it or hate it, editing is the key to making a good story great. I’ve heard that 90% of writing is rewriting. Some of my manuscripts have been through more than a dozen drafts, and I've never produced a sparkling-perfect first draft, so I’d say that’s a pretty accurate estimate.

I don’t pretend to be an expert at editing, but after nine manuscripts, three of which are (or soon will be) published, I’ve learned a few things I’d like to share. (And thank you to my Carina Press editor Deborah Nemeth for the lessons she’s taught me.)

Manuscripts, Like Ogres, Have Layers

            In the movie Shrek, the ogre by the same name says “ogres are like onions.” They have layers. Manuscripts are similar. And thorough polishing requires paying attention to each layer.

(But first, a caveat - if you feel you can’t be objective in any of the areas I’ve listed below, and you’re thinking about self-publishing, consider hiring a professional editor. There is a distinct advantage to having someone other than yourself review your work. If you’re submitting to agents or editors but want that polished look, consider joining forces with a critique partner (or two). And then, go buy chocolate. Because when that revision letter hits your inbox, accepting criticism isn’t always easy, but sugar helps the medicine go down.)

When I’ve completed my first rough draft, I try to let my manuscript sit for a week or two before going back to it. Viewing it with fresh eyes lends me a new perspective.

           

1. Developmental (Story) Edits

            Just as it sounds, this stage of editing is the most global. We’re looking at the entire story (ahem, jungle) and trying to make sense of it, looking for themes, cohesiveness, dead ends, etc. For this layer, I recommend tying up your inner critic and leaving him/her in the corner (a gag helps). Read through and take notes, but DON’T make extensive changes to wording, grammar, etc., because some of those sentences you're trying so hard to make perfect might get chopped, and then you've wasted time. Perfect sentences/wording is not the focus of this go-round. (Of course, if you’re like me, you can’t resist adding a comma here or changing out a word there, but don’t let it pull you away from the task at hand – fixing the STORY.)

            As you’re reading, look specifically for the following and make notes of what to change (remember, you don’t have to fix things yet, until you get to the end of this re-read):

§ Opening

·     Does the opening line grab the reader’s attention?

·    Is conflict (or impending conflict) apparent within the first few paragraphs?

§ Characters

·     Are they likeable? Will the reader connect with them?

·    Do they have a goal? Is the growth arc apparent over the course of the story?

§ Scenes

·    Is the purpose/goal of each scene clear and important and is it written from the POV character's viewpoint?

·   Does it move the action forward?

·   Does each scene end on a hook?

§ Pacing

·    Where does the writing slog?

·    Are there things that make the reader’s attention wander or jerks him/her out of the scene?

·   What sections make you groan and stumble? Why? Are the characters being true to themselves? Is the scene’s goal clear?

§ Ending

·   Were there any loose ends?

·    Were all of the conflicts resolved in satisfying ways?

§  Check your facts

·    If there were references to actual items, historical events, people, etc., are they true to reality?

§  Theme

·    Is there a common thread that can be layered or woven throughout the story during the next layer of editing? If so, where is that evident? Where else can it be made evident?

2. Line Edits

            After you’ve read your story through again and made the necessary “global” developmental edits, it’s time to look at the manuscript more closely, line by line. Here’s a checklist of what I try to notice on this go-round:

§ Repetitive words

·     Get rid of common/overused words. In my case, I look particularly at the use of “said” and other such words and try to replace most of them with action tags. I also watch out for overused gestures, such as smiling, arching eyebrows, etc.

§  Tighten writing

·     Axe those darlings! (Even if you love something, if it's unnecessary or bogs down the pace, axe it. Then eat chocolate.)

·    Beware of the passive voice.

·   Use juicy words. (For instance, choosing "stalked," "skipped," or "stumbled" is much more descriptive than "walked." Where you can, choose the more descriptive way of saying something.)

·    Get rid of unnecessary phrases that denote the POV character (and deepen the viewpoint as a bonus!). (e.g., “She knew,” “she thought,” “she felt” are superfluous if you're in that character's deep third POV. Cut these phrases where you can.)

§  Tip: Read out loud

·      This allows you to hear the cadence of your words, gives a new perspective on the pacing, and catch overused words. With dialogue, it can help you identify sections that don't sound natural.

3. Copyedits

            In the final stage of editing, we’ve gone from global, to local, to microscopic.  Look specifically for anything that doesn’t appear visually correct – grammar, punctuation, capitalization, italicizing, etc. - as well as homonyms, misspellings, and word-by-word revisions. Try reading the document backwards to catch spelling errors.

Before submitting, I try to do a final read-through, because there are always (always!) things that are missed. And I feel better knowing I’ve tamed that jungle to the best of my ability by giving it that extra once-over. 

Here are a few resources I’ve found helpful in my editing process:

Strunk & White’s Elements of Style

Online Dictionary and Thesaurus

Grammar Girl: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com

How about you? Do you enjoy the rewriting process? Do you have any editing tips or resources you’d care to share?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Anne Marie has always been fascinated by people—inside and out—which led to degrees in Biology, Chemistry, Psychology, and Counseling.  As a games hostess at Sea World, tutor, waitress, personal and family counselor, and high school counselor, she indulged her curiosity through sanctioned professions.  Now, as a stay-at-home mother of three, her passion for understanding the human race is satisfied by her roles as mother, wife, daughter, sister, and writer.  

She writes to reclaim her sanity. 

Connect with Anne Marie at her website, Facebook page, or on Twitter.

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FUTURE POSTS will cover:
Kindlegraph / the art of research / writing male/male romance / rejection and writer's block / building suspense / writing love scenes / anti-piracy strategies / audio books / interviews with editors and agents / using Calibre.
We welcome everyone's constructive comments and suggestions!

The Best and Beautiful

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.

Helen Keller

 

 Having resumed work after a year long sabbatical, I’m newly conscious of the creative process. Until I was dealing with burn out, creative process wasn’t anything I really thought about. I just wrote.

 

I don’t say that I wasn’t conscious of craft, or that I wrote the way I did when I was a kid or even a fledging pro. I could crank out five thousand words a day if I had to – there were days I did eight -- but naturally the longer I wrote, the more I understood about craft and what I was doing, the more time and care I took. The words came more slowly, but they were better words.

 

It wasn’t until the desire to write anything at all – ever – faded that I knew I was in trouble.

 

Oh, I still thought of stories – I have a notebook full of story ideas I jotted down during my sabbatical. I even outlined a few of them. But the desire to write them, to apply that intense and extended concentrated focus for the length of time it takes to produce a story of any length…no. The idea actually filled me with dread.

 

And yet I missed writing. I thought about writing all the time. Everything I watched, everything I read, practically everyone I talked to was viewed through the lens of potential fodder for fiction. Writing is a strange profession. It’s not one of those jobs you can switch off at the end of the day when you turn off the office lights.

 

Being a writer isn’t just something you do. It’s something you become. It’s your way of viewing and, more importantly, processing the world.

 

In my case it was also my livelihood, so my inability to write had alarming implications. Even though I couldn’t handle the idea of writing, I couldn’t think of anything else I wanted to do with my life.

 

But that’s the beauty of time off, time without pressure. The months passed and slowly but surely the desire to write returned.

And so I’m writing again, but this time I’m conscious of the creative process, the mechanism of inspiration – and how fragile and finicky that mechanism is. I find myself jumping from project to project as the urge takes me, and I’m surprised at the things that spur the desire to write. Music, in particular, has a powerful effect on me. Not merely in sparking the story telling instinct, but letting the emotional tenor of the song even influence the development of the story.

 

Case in point. Right now this song by Lifehouse seems to define the main character in thriller I’m working on. The story is about an FBI agent who teams up with a small town sheriff to try and catch a serial killer. But it’s also a story about finding your place, coming home…even if it’s to a place you’ve never been before. The song has become a kind of talisman for the story.

 

 

What about you? Out of all the potential ideas for stories that occur to each of us each day, what inspires you to choose one? Do you find yourself choosing a particular item as a kind of charm to represent your project?

 

      

Contract With Myself

 

 

2012 pitched me a screw ball, throwing my writing for a loop. After working in an office for most of my adult life, my job changed to an alternative work environment, meaning I work mainly from home.  Fortunately, my writing discipline served me well as I ‘report’ to the office every day at a certain time.

 

However, the reverse wasn’t true; the change didn’t serve my writing.  My writing room became the day job office.  My work as an attorney had never been a nine-to-five job in the first place, but leaving a physical office helped with the switch to the writing brain cells. Turning around in the chair from one desk to another sucked as a transition.

 

 What I didn’t realize until I met a few fellow authors for a holiday lunch was the effect of social deprivation.  After spending hours of solitude, I turned to going out more with friends.  I never knew how important interaction with people was to me.  Time previously spent writing turned to competing on a trivia, scrapbooking, cooking, or simply doing a jigsaw puzzle over a glass of wine with friends. 

 

The benefit has been a priceless deepening bonds of friendship; the downside is -0- writing.  Soo…with the new year, I am going back to basics by making a contract with myself: to get up earlier to write.  Before I go to bed, I will set up my laptop on the dining room table.  In the morning, after I walk my dog, I will hit the keyboard until it’s time to go to ‘work’.

 

This routine will leave evenings and weekends to have fun with my friends.  Obviously, page production will take a hit.  When I became serious about writing, I kept a page count so that when I did sell my first book, I was able to estimate realistic deadlines.  I will go back to tracking.  Together with my agent, I have set a first quarter writing plan of action.

 

New Year, new game plan.  

 

What writing goals have you set for yourself?

 

: ) Carol Stephenson

http://www.carolstephenson.com

 

"Edit" is not a four-letter word

“The beautiful part of writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile.”

~ Robert Cormier

I’d be willing to bet everyone who’s published a novel has been told once or a hundred or a thousand times, “I always wanted to write a book.”

My standard response? Go for it! You may enjoy telling stories, creating worlds, bringing characters to life.

I love crafting stories, even if it never turns into more than a fun short for my own pleasure. But if you’re writing for other people’s enjoyment, the expectation level should rise.

 

A lot.

 

Once that first draft is hammered out, the real work of writing begins. Some people groan about revisions and editing, but I enjoy it. Smoothing transitions, finding the rights words, building in layers of meaning, subtle foreshadowing, and (oh, so important!) killing our darlings – also known as cutting the boring parts, losing the overwritten, the purple prose.

To me, the most important question to ask as I revise is: Am I bored here? The wonderful teacher and writer Margot Livesey, put it like this: if you are bored, it’s not because you’ve read that section so many times. It’s because it’s boring.

My favorite editing technique is reading the manuscript aloud. Sometimes my fabulous hubby willingly listens while he’s driving. (We have a cabin in the mountains, a couple of hours away from our home). Speaking the dialogue tell me in a hurry if it’s flat or stilted. An awkward silence tells me he’s losing interest. Either one results in an immediate note in the margin – do I need this scene? Tighten? What’s the point? Is there a better way to convey what’s needed to move the story forward?

Authors, care to share an editing technique? Readers (which of course includes writers!), what’s your pet peeve for poor editing?

I-Spy: Writing the Gay Mystery (Characterization)

Join the authors and friends of Not Your Usual Suspects for an occasional series of posts about their world of reading, writing and publishing.

Short and sweet, hopefully both informative and entertaining - join us at I-Spy to find out the how's and why's of what we do.

Today’s Post: I-Spy Writing the Gay Mystery…with Josh Lanyon

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First, I want to apologize for missing last month’s column. I unexpectedly came down with the flu, and that was pretty much that for the next two weeks! Yeesh.

So we’re going to be running one month behind schedule, which means that instead of discussing Setting, we’ll be talking about Characterization today.

There are two types of stories: the plot-driven story and the character-driven story. In the plot-driven story, the characters are shaped and ultimately revealed by the turns and twists of plot. In the character-driven story, the characters themselves -- their choices, their decisions --determine the course of the story.

Either way, if there’s a single most important element in modern storytelling, it is characterization. For most readers, the difference between liking and loving a story very often comes down to how they feel about the characters.

It’s not enough to create believable characters; you have to create interesting and engaging characters. Ideally, characters the reader comes to love.

Then again, just creating believable characters can be a challenge for many new writers, so maybe we ought to start there. You’ll find plenty of information and advice on the web regarding creating characters. I’ve seen recommendations for everything from buying expensive software to thumbing through a thesaurus in order to match verbs with personality types. If you like writing exercises you can develop bios, cast astrology charts, cut photos out of magazines, spin the color wheel… If you like reading and talking about writing versus writing, try this article on for size. Or this one. Here’s another one.

This is the thing... I’ve never met a writer who could admit he or she has trouble creating characters. Occasionally a writer will confess difficulty writing opposite sex POV, but generally I’ve found most writers believe -- whether true or not -- that characterization is one of their strengths.

We writers are predisposed to love our own creations. This leads to two common mistakes. The first is to create characters in the author’s own image. The second is to create nauseatingly perfect characters that embody all that the author wishes he or she could be. So the first rule is to preserve a proper distance between ourselves and our creations. It’s too hard to put our characters through the necessary hell they need to evolve and grow if we get too attached to them or identify with them too closely.

You have to remember that we writers aren’t…well, we’re writers. So we have to look beyond ourselves and our experiences and our reactions when we’re creating “normal” people to populate our stories. The ideal character is someone the reader can relate to. A good refresher is to read non-fiction -- in particular biography and autobiography --relating to both law enforcement and crime.

One of the first things you notice when you read any biography is that every human has strengths and weaknesses. This needs to be true of your characters too. Now strengths are rarely a problem since the tendency is to make our characters too perfect. Coming up with recognizable weaknesses is harder. Usually what we see in fiction are “weaknesses” like…the character’s blindness to how gorgeous/talented/adorable he really is. Or the character is too successful or too brilliant or too whatever for his own good.

However, characters in mysteries do often suffer from a genuine weakness known as TSTL (Too Stupid To Live). But this is generally not deliberate on the part of the writer -- which means it’s something we have to watch for when our characters are making the life and death decisions that frequently crop up in a mystery novel. Granted, some leeway must be given characters in crime and mystery fiction because if our characters behaved sensibly, they’d never get involved in crime or mysteries.

When you think about crafting any character, you should focus on the things that define us all: who we are in our work, who we are at play, who we are at home. If you know who your characters are when they are at work, at play, and at home, you know all you need to know about them.

As you’re sketching out your characters -- and I do recommend keeping biographical notes because it makes life SO much easier if you don’t have scan earlier chapters to verify whether Protagonist A has green eyes or hazel or Protagonist B’s grandfather graduated from Yale or Harvard -- think about the character traits that would make someone likely to get involved in a crime or a mystery -- and survive the experience.

Think also about how their work or hobbies mesh with developing the skills and personality traits that will allow your protagonists to believably survive their involvement in this particular and unique crime or mystery.

Note: Romantic relationships with cops or other law enforcement is a staple in mystery and crime fiction, but try and give your protagonist some useful skills and abilities in his own right.

Remember that if your protagonist will need some special knowledge or talent to solve the crime or save himself, you need to establish that talent or background early on. For example, if your character needs to speak Russian to decipher a mysterious message, at the very least hang a print by Karl Bryullov on the wall of his apartment.

The trickiest part of good characterization is remembering that you can’t tell the reader that your character is well-educated or inquisitive or free-spirited. Nor can you have other characters comment in clunky fashion, “You’re so well-educated/inquisitive/free-spirited, Jonah!” You have to show this to the reader, you have to prove it, you have to make your case for characterization based on the way your character speaks, the car he drives, the clothes he wears, the newspaper he reads, etc.  

Characterization is not about reciting a list of facts about your character, it’s about showing who and what that character is in every glimpse the reader has of him. You establish characterization in every single scene. Every choice your character makes carries symbolic weight and reinforces who he is. And who he turns out to be will determine whether your reader thinks of him as a character in a book or someone she can’t wait to spend more time with.

This month's recommended reading features gay historical mystery:
My Dearest Holmes by Rohase Piercy
Gaywyck by Vincent Virga
Willing Flesh by JS Cook
Lessons in Love: A Cambridge Fellows Mystery by Charlie Cochrane


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A distinct voice in gay fiction, multi-award-winning author JOSH LANYON has been writing gay mystery, adventure and romance for over a decade. In addition to numerous short stories, novellas, and novels, Josh is the author of the critically acclaimed Adrien English series, including The Hell You Say, winner of the 2006 USABookNews awards for GLBT Fiction. Josh is an Eppie Award winner and a three-time Lambda Literary Award finalist

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FUTURE POSTS will cover:
Kindlegraph / the art of research / writing male/male romance / rejection and writer's block / building suspense / writing love scenes / anti-piracy strategies / audio books / interviews with editors and agents / using Calibre.
We welcome everyone's constructive comments and suggestions!