Lee Rene's Blog, page 8

20 Holiday Gifts for Writers

I found this post timely and amusing. Hopefully I removed all the saucy language - If not, please forgive me.


The Top 20 Most Original Gift Ideas for That Writer You Know

From Margaret Muir, Just The Tip

So you have to buy a present for a writer, huh?

This inevitably means you’re left scratching your ass in the middle of the aisle of a Barnes & Noble as we speak, wondering which of the holy trifecta of cliché writerly gifts you should pony up for: A Barnes & Noble gift card, a moleskine, or a book from the discount table.

Unfortunately, nothing says, “I didn’t put any thought into this and I kind of resent having to get you something” like a gift card and, well, the rest? Are pretty unoriginal, my friend. And you want to be original, right? You want them to gasp with adoration, right? You want them to throw their arms around you and proclaim their love THAT YOU WILL BE THE ONE THEY PUT IN THEIR BOOK. Right?

So, as a professional writer, I thought I would take it upon myself to make a wee little list of what it is that writers really want to be given. As cute as an Emily Dickens candle might be, let’s be honest: Nobody’s chomping at the bit for a vanilla scented picture of a dead person.

1. Give the writer the gift of…mental sanity.

AKA one whole night or silence-laden weekend at a hotel. Do you know how hard it is to write when you’ve got four mockingbirds, three french hens, and a partridge in a pear tree barking up your rear all day long? (Read: The kids, your relatives, your spouse…the list goes on.) The coolest thing you could ever buy for a writer? A night – or two! – at a quiet little boutique hotel in your city, so they can go on their very own mini writer’s retreat. All. By. Themselves. Just think: They can snuggle with the fifteen moleskines everybody else got them while secretly penning you into their will.

2. Give the writer the gift of…their very own words.

What are they most proud of writing? Can you track down their very first blog post they ever published? Something that was featured in a magazine? Or just something they’re currently working on…and putting all of their heart, sweat & other bodily functions into? Tease out the first line or paragraph, and send it off to a printer to print on a gorgeous, oversized wall canvas. Who doesn’t want to be reminded of their brilliance every time they look up from their drudgery to read the one line that started it all? By the way, this idea was inspired by this hotel in my home city of Philadelphia. OBSESSED.

3. Give the writer the gift of…a massage, for goodness sake.

Do you know what it’s like to sit in some chair that is definitely not optimized for ergonomics, crouched for up to 14 hours at a time while pinching your shoulder blades together and squinting at some dumbass little black cursor as it blinks at you in mocking SHAME? It’s not pretty, and we’re all going to end up looking like The Hunchback of Notre Dame. We secretly know this. This scares us. Let us have hope.

4. Give the writer the gift of…your energy.

Why not find out what kind of work they’re trying to publish, and go do some research to curate a hand-picked list of the top book agents in that genre, complete with their contact information & submission preferences, and then compile it all together and have it printed on gorgeous stationery, and bound with love…or a stapler. (Or something fancy at Office Depot.) This would also work for something like a top 50 list of publishers who would love their work, or even a top list of blogs where they really should be featured…and suggestions on angles for articles they could pitch. Talk about a wow-thoughtful gift.

5. Give the writer the gift of…your own words.

Listen, writers are writers because at some time or another, they thought pages were porn. Bottom line: We love physical books. The smell of them. The touch of them. The excitement as soon as you walk into the bookstore, and the feeling when you buy one you’ve been dying to read. But one of THE greatest gifts our loved ones could ever get us? Isn’t just any book. But a book you wrote yourself. About us, preferably. Because, hello, we’re all secretly dying to be a star.

6. Give the writer the gift of…a consult with a literary agent.

Many literary agents don’t just represent authors, but also offer their own consultancies as well. It would be a dream for any writer to have a chance to pick the brain of someone in the industry who can help guide their work at any stage, or even have their work reviewed. And yes, you will be a total hero. Probably forever. So, bonus.

7. Give the writer the gift of…a funny, entirely personalized, handcrafted series of email auto-responders.

Great for any time they’re having writer’s block, are pissed off at themselves, are procrastinating writing, are actually busy writing, are going deep into the writing zone for weeks on end (with no food or water or exercise or sunlight), or, you know, just felt like taking a fucking nap. You can have them designed & printed & packaged into a fun little gift, or you can make a digital version that they can just pop into their actual canned responses…and begin using right away. Which would just be hilarious. Alternatively, you can always take a shortcut and gift them access to LOVE, BUSINESS OWNER: A sophisticated, searchable database of over 300+ scripts for any conversation you don’t want to spend an hour thinking about how to say nicely, professionally, or tactfully.

8. Give the writer the gift of…one of those fancy digital pen & pad sets.

Because the first thing they’ll do with it is practice signing their autograph for book signings over and over and over again, which they’ll then promptly save in Photoshop and affix to the end of every single email they write from now until the end of time. They might also doodle smiley faces. It’s a toss up, really. I have one of these.

9. Give the writer the gift of…any one of the following apps.

Probably easier to just link you to this page that WILL MAKE YOU WANT TO KISS MY KNEECAPS.

10. Give the writer the gift of…an Audible Membership.

Because truth be told, we get peeved anytime we have to do normal human things like drive places and eat things for the simple reason that it interrupts our reading and writing time. But at least with a collection of over audio books by our side, WE’LL NEVER BE PEEVED AGAIN. Until we get our first rejection letter, that is. Check it out here.

11. Give the writer the gift of…some bombass earplugs.

Or maybe even Bose noise canceling headphones if you’re feeling ultra generous. Or guilty. The #1 thing a writer cannot stand is having the words in his or her own head interrupted by other people’s blathering nonsense.

12. Give the writer the gift of…business smarts.

Is your writer thinking about starting a copywriting business? The very first thing you need to put into their stocking is a USB drive with Mike Montiero’s talk, “Pay Me” on it. And the very second is a hand written card letting them know you’ve added them to the notification list to be mentored by me in 2015 via my up-and-coming private mentorship program exclusively for aspiring copywriters who want to make great money writing words without taking any shit.

13. Give the writer the gift of…warm feet.

Because heated footpads are sure shit fancy, and every writer in the world should have one.

14. Give the writer the gift of…a cleaning service. Or a babysitter. Or both.

Who has time to write the next great American novel when they’re too busy cleaning up chicken pot pie crumbs? No, really. Exactly no one has time for this. This is an awesome present.

15. Give the writer the gift of…inside vengeance.

Buy a copy of their rival competitor’s book, hollow it out with a butcher knife, and then fill it full of those chocolates filled with booze. Because booze.

16. Give the writer the gift of…laughter.

Take the deadbeat out to a comedy club already, will ya? It’ll help to cross train their creativity. You can even tell them that’s the reason so it feels like official writerly business. (Don’t forget to stuff some of those boozy chocolates into your pockets.)

17. Give the writer the gift of…zero pressure to do anything besides write.

The best way? Order them a month of food delivery service. THIS MIGHT BE THE ALL TIME BEST GIFT EVER. Mostly because it’s impossible to think about doing Suzy Homemaker type things when your wrists are sore, your eyes are seeing cross-eyed, your shoulders feel like there’s a rhinoceros sitting on top of them, and your brain is so fried you keep saying “stradegy” instead of “strategy” and can’t even remember WHY IT’S WRONG. Can’t afford meal delivery? Try a crockpot. I hear they work wonders for people who like to quote “set it and forget it.” An economy sized bag of hot pockets would also be well-received.

18. Give the writer the gift of…more hands.

Buy ‘em a virtual assistant for a month. That way, they don’t have to spend 800 hours researching that thing they want to write about when they should just be WRITING.

19. Give the writer the gift of…calligraphy.

When I was a little girl, I would hand write all of our Christmas cards using calligraphy ink & the most gorgeous of parchment paper, and to this day, there’s something about the beauty & art of the written word…not the typed word. Any writer – unless they’re an overbearing bore of a recluse – will love this gift. Whether they break themselves away from the grips of the computer to use it? Well, that’s another story.

20. And finally, if you’re really biting at the bit to get them that moleskine, don’t. Give them this instead.

It’s called Mod Notebook, and it’s a gorgeous, paper notebook that actually syncs your writing to the cloud (it’s almost 2015, after all!), which is fantastic for the writer who wants to get out and spend some time writing outside without the glare of the screen…or having to transfer all of their notes later. Co-founder Marshall Haas is a personal friend I met while living in the same apartment building in Santiago, Chile, where I may or may not have accidentally stolen his sweatshirt. Oops. Sorry Marshall!

How A Pantser Outlines

I found this post on Molly Greene's blog - Outlining versus Pantsing is an ongoing argument - Molly gives us a viable alternative.

How A Pantser Outlines: My Method
by Molly Greene

I’m a panster at heart. But there’s no denying that outlining does help an author write faster, so I do a bit of it before each book. Outlining helps. I have to backtrack less, revise less, and it gives me an opportunity to think up cool scenes I might have otherwise missed. Bottom line, it increases productivity. As a matter of fact, I am working on my next book, working title Memory of Hours, while my current mss is with beta readers. So it’s a perfect time to describe my method – not just outlining, but the method I use to I establish a plot and develop it.

And the plot thickens

I maintain a generic folder in in DropBox that I add to as much as possible, filled with articles I’ve found about strange and interesting real-life happenings and incidents, ways to make bombs, poison people, expensive treasures that are missing, odd murders, bizarre events. Sue Coletta’s 60 ways to murder your characters is an excellent example of the neat stuff my folder contains. I refer to these gems when I start a new book outline because they stimulate ideas. They’re a springboard. They make the creative juices flow. Here’s how and where I find these plot ideas.

Begin with a concept

I always start with a single plot element, something that has grabbed my attention. Before Lock the Cellar Door, I read an article online about a teenage boy’s skeleton found in an unmarked grave in the basement of a seventeenth century house on the East Coast. Cool beans. My plot developed from there.

Once I have an idea for a book – however brief – I create a new folder and name it the project’s working title. Inside, I create three more folders – 1) MSS, 2) Cover, and 3) Resources (this is where I keep my research).

I LOVE to begin work with a series of images that will someday – hopefully – become the cover. A name and cover image helps me focus. I find my images on Depositphotos, Dreamstime, and Big Stock.

Flesh out the main character

Whenever the mood strikes me, I open a Word doc and do a stream-of-consciousness sort of description of the main character (Gen’s new client) by answering questions such as, How does s/he meet Gen? What does s/he look like? What is their demeanor? What’s their secret and their goal – does it have to do with the actual problem? How will s/he change over the course of the story? How will Gen change as a result of meeting him or her?

I also decide What does s/he know/ have expertise in? This leads to tons of Googling. For instance, Amanda in Swindle Town knew about wine, so I got to learn about wine and corks, too. I’m considering giving my current character OCD to account for her obsession with the minutia of her life, so, of course, I’ll learn all about OCD.

I also ask myself what I want Gen to learn in this book. In Cellar, she learned to shoot a gun. In Swindle Town, self defense.

List potential scenes

Answering all this will determine a certain amount of the book’s content. So, then I begin a list of out-of-order scenes – in a single line description – that must happen to reveal the answers to these questions. Then I add the scenes I want to write to move Mack and Gen’s (my main series characters) relationship forward, plus which friends for me – will Mack reveal more about his past? How will Gen react, and how will it impact their relationship?

I don’t try to establish every detail, as I trust my imagination enough at this point to resolve sticky plot problems along the way, often things I never coulda/woulda thought up at the outlining stage. So I dive in and let ‘er rip, adding to my scene descriptions as I go.

Believe it or not, driving in the car often helps me put it all together. It’s half an hour on a rural two-lane road from my home to the nearest shopping in any direction, and these drives are conducive to developing ideas. I have a small digital tape recorder in my glove box, and I use it – you can also use your phone – to record my flashes of brilliance (lol!).

Goal: A brief 35 chapter

And, as I work through it all, the order in which all this happens begins to make sense. Some of it is obvious, some not so much. I shoot for 68k-70k words in a first draft, so I try to settle on 35 scene/chapter ideas that will, hopefully, then become 35 chapters of 2k each. Trust me, they never do. Some get pitched, some don’t work, some ideas are too short for 2k, some are too complicated to fit in a mere 2k words. And that’s okay. What this DOES help me do is to be sure each idea will move the plot – or Gen and Mack’s relationship – forward. If it doesn’t, the idea doesn’t get included. That really, really works for me.

… with plot points/beats

This method also helps me define the chapters where I’ll be writing climax, debrief, wrap-up and conclusion. In other words, plot points and structure, which I have been lax about in the past and have warned myself to stick to. I have basics “rules” for my books. One is that all characters, motives, goals, locations are in place by 20k words, or (around) Chapter Ten. This will not apply, of course, if you’re introducing a surprise character.

I’ve written about my mss method before: I use Word. Each chapter is written in a separate doc. Once I begin to write, I keep track of chapter content, timeline, and word count in an Excel file. I also use this file to make notes about places to go back and add clues – say, in a conversation between Gen and somebody in a position to drop a clue. Clues that I don’t know yet. This makes it easier to track as the plot develops. Then, when I’m ready, Word neatly tucks them all together into a single doc.

What I know going in

• I will NOT stick to my outline. Characters will think, do, and say marvelous things that trump the outline, and I will go with these detours 99.9% of the time.

• I try to have an idea how it will end, but I often do not stick to it.

• My basic writing goal is only – really! – 1,000 words per day. That means I have cobbled together the first rough draft in 70 days. Sometimes this actually happens.

• I write faster in the colder months, slower when it’s hot. I’ve written long enough now that I see this is true, and it helps me manage my expectations.

• I write in the morning, and every afternoon and/or evening I conjure up the scene I will write the next day.

The truth is, some books flow and some struggle to be born, with or without an outline. I’ve done it both ways.

The books that challenge me benefit from an outline, and the ones that race to get out of me never really needed one.

12 Can’t-Put-Down Books That Hook You From The Very First Page

We all strive to craft that special sentence that hooks the reader from the first, but for some of us it remains a daunting task. Writer E. Ce Miller of Bustle.com examines twelve marvelous works that did just that.

In my experience, starting a new book is kind of like going on a first date — and sometimes it’s vastly more satisfying. With some books (or dates) you know immediately that they’re just not for you: you’re not connecting with the dialogue, you’ve heard some variation of this plot a dozen times before, and even though you know you shouldn’t judge a book by its — well, you know — the cover is just all wrong. Definitely not a keeper. Other books take a little while to warm up to: OK, the back flap summary isn’t really doing it for you, but about 50 pages in you’re pretty convinced that you and this book will end up being good friends. So you make a little room for it in one corner of your bookshelf.

Then there are the rare, elusive, totally spellbinding books that grab you from the very first page and pull you into their world completely. It’s a total “you had me at hello” moment. We all love stumbling across books like these, and just like perfect first dates, they’re uncommon, but they’re out there.

Get ready to toss out all those fabulous plans you had this weekend in favor of curling up under the covers with one of these gems, because here are 12 books that will hook you immediately — some even from the very first sentence.

1. Zinky Boys by Svetlana Alexievich

There’s a reason this writer just threw Nobel Prize tradition right out the window by being not only a woman, but a woman writer of nonfiction to win the Noble Prize in Literature. “I never want to write another word about the war,” Svetlana Alexievich tells readers at the beginning of Zinky Boys. So of course, that’s exactly what she ends up doing. Alexievich felt her story about the war between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan was too important to pass up — and from the first page you will, too.

2. Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Lydia Lee is the favorite child of her parents Marilyn and James — she is beautiful, popular, and destined for great success. Unfortunately, she’s also dead. Her family just doesn’t know it yet. So begins Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You, the 2015 ALA Alex Award-winning novel about family secrets, concealed identities, and a tragedy that will either save the surviving Lee family members from each other, or destroy their lives forever.

3. Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

Protagonist June Elbus is 14-years-old and seems to have only one friend in the world, her uncle Finn Weiss. So naturally, when Finn dies under mysterious circumstances, June’s young world is turned upside down. Carol Rifka Brunt’s Tell the Wolves I’m Home is a novel filled with loss, mystery, intrigue, and discovery. It unfolds the way all great can’t-put-‘em-down novels do: with expansive emotion, surprising twists and turns, and unyielding hope.

4. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

From his lonesome imagery of the high wheat plains of western Kansas to his haunting description of a family farm so isolated that four explosive gunshots in the middle of the night go undetected by the nearest neighbors, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood is a work of investigative journalism that you will not be able to put down from first page to last.

5. An Untamed State by Roxane Gay

One of the few contemporary writers who can begin her novel with the words: “Once upon a time, in a far-off land” and totally succeed, Roxane Gay’s novel An Untamed State begins with the intensity already so heightened you can actually feel her words moving around inside you, and she just keeps turning the dial up. “I was kidnapped,” her first sentence continues, “by a gang of fearless yet terrified young men with so much impossible hope beating inside their bodies it burned their very skin and strengthened their will right through their bones.” Wow.

6. The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert

The Last American Man, an early work of nonfiction by the irresistible Elizabeth Gilbert, begins with the line: “By the time Eustace Conway was seven years old, he could throw a knife accurately enough to nail a chipmunk to a tree.” OK, so yeesh… But now you definitely have to read more, don’t you?

7. Girl at War by Sara Nović

Ana Jurić is 10 when the Yugoslavian war begins, transforming her once-carefree childhood into a landscape of violence, child soldiers, air raids, and escape plans. Fast forward to Ana’s much-changed environment of her 20s — one where nobody knows of the trauma of her past. Naturally, it’s a trauma that Ana must journey across the world and into herself to revisit and resolve. You won’t be able to put Sara Nović’s Girl At War down until you learn what she discovers.

8. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

“It was a queer, sultry summer,” this novel begins, “the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.” If you’ve read Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jarbefore, you know how difficult a novel it is to get through. Yet you keep reading, because the writing draws you back in, line by line by line. An intimate depiction of one woman, Esther Greenwood, and her decent into insanity, the writing is so intense you might wonder if you’re going a little insane, too.

9. The Liars' Club by Mary Karr

“My sharpest memory is of a single instant surrounded by dark,” so begins Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club, a memoir of Karr’s upbringing in an east Texas oil town, surrounded by her fierce, wild, substance-abusing family members who are somehow both unbelievable and totally recognizable at the same time. With an opening line like that — curious, undoubtedly honest, and just a little bit funny — how could you resist this one?

10. Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson

From the blue jeans so unwashed they’re greasy to the deafening cacophony of revving motorcycle engines, Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels grabs you from the very first image and pulls you into a setting you never thought you’d be a part of: that of the largest and most notorious biker gang in the world. “The Menace is loose again…” wrote Thompson, and indeed his unparalleled storytelling has set that Menace — the unpredictable, road-worn, violent, and complexly human personalities of the Hell’s Angles — loose in your mind.

11. Girl at War by Sara Nović

Ana Jurić is 10 when the Yugoslavian war begins, transforming her once-carefree childhood into a landscape of violence, child soldiers, air raids, and escape plans. Fast forward to Ana’s much-changed environment of her 20s — one where nobody knows of the trauma of her past. Naturally, it’s a trauma that Ana must journey across the world and into herself to revisit and resolve. You won’t be able to put Sara Nović’s Girl At War down until you learn what she discovers.

12. Please Look After Mom by Kyung-sook Shin

It’s been one week since 69-year-old So-nyo has gone missing, last seen by her husband in a Seoul subway station, where they were separated in the throngs of fast-paced commuters. As it turns out, her family — daughter, son, and husband — never really knew her at all. Told from four utterly disparate perspectives, Kyung-sook Shin’s Please Look After Mom will have you turning pages to find out not only what happens to So-nyo, but how each of her family members, and she herself, understand it

36 Killer Writing Tips from Stephen King

From Why Not Books

This article is from April, 2014, but tips from a master like King will always be timely.

Forty years ago this month, Stephen King’s first novel, Carrie, was published. He has since produced more than four-dozen bestselling books, from Cujo to Christine, from The Shining to The Stand, from The Dead Zone to The Dark Tower. But here at Why Not Books, far and away our favorite Stephen King book is On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.

It is part memoir and part invitation—an opportunity to peek behind the curtain of a masterful mind. As he wrote in the foreword, “What follows is an attempt to put down, briefly and simply, how I came to the craft, what I know about it now, and how it’s done. It’s about the day job; it’s about the language.”

Actually, that was from the “first foreword.” In the “second foreword,” he wrote, “This is a short book because most books about writing are filled with bullshit. Fiction writers, present company included, don’t understand very much about what they do—not why it works when it’s good, not why it doesn’t when it’s bad. I figured the shorter the book, the less the bullshit.”

He was being modest, of course. Of the many we could have chosen, here are our 36 favorite tips from one great storyteller:

1. “Put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.”

2. “Write with the door closed, and rewrite with the door open.

3. “There are lots of would-be censors out there, and although they may have different agendas, they all want basically the same thing: for you to see the world they see… or to at least shut up about what you do see that’s different. They are the agents of the status quo.”

4. “Write what you like, then imbue it with life and make it unique by blending in your own personal knowledge of life, friendship, relationships, sex, and work. Especially work. People love to read about work.”

5. “Dumbo got airborne with the help of a magic feather; you may feel the urge to grasp a passive verb or one of those nasty adverbs for the same reason. Just remember before you do that Dumbo didn’t need the feather; the magic was in him.”

6. “The real importance of reading is that it creates an ease and intimacy with the process of writing; one comes to the country with one’s papers and identification pretty much in order. Constant reading will pull you into a place (a mind-set, if you like the phrase) where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness. It also offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn’t, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what just lies there dying (or dead) on the page.”

7. “Stylistic imitation is one thing, and a perfectly honorable way to get started as a writer… but one cannot imitate a writer’s approach to a particular genre, no matter how simple what that writer is doing may seem.”

8. “While it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one.”

9. “Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation.”

10. “In my view, stories and novels consist of three parts: narration, which moves the story from point A to point B and finally to point Z; description, which creates a sensory reality for the reader; and dialogue, which brings characters to life through their speech. You may wonder where the plot is in all of this. The answer—my answer, anyway—is nowhere.”

11. “For me, what happens to characters as a story progresses depends solely on what I discover about them as I go along—how they grow, in other words. Sometimes they grow a little. If they grow a lot, they begin to influence the course of the story instead of the other way around.”

12. “We’ve all heard someone say, ‘Man, it was so great (or so horrible/strange/funny) … I just can’t describe it!’ If you want to be a successful writer, you must be able to describe it, and in a way that will cause your reader to prickle with recognition.”

13. “Paragraphs are almost always as important for how they look as for what they say; they are maps of intent.”

14. “In fiction, the paragraph is less structured—it’s the beat instead of the actual melody. The more fiction you read and write, the more you’ll find our paragraphs forming on their own. And that’s what you want.”

15. “Writing is refined thinking.”

16. “Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn’t, toss it.”

17. “You can’t please all of the readers all of the time; you can’t please even some of the readers all of the time, but you really ought to try to please at least some of the readers some of the time.”

18. “You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair–the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.”

19. “We need to experience the mediocre and the outright rotten; such experience helps us to recognize those things when they begin to creep into our own work, and to steer clear of them.”

20. “You undoubtedly have your own thoughts, interests, and concerns, and they have arisen, as mine have, from your experiences and adventures as a human being. . . . You should use them in your work.”

21. “For me, good description usually consists of a few well-chosen details that stand for everything else. In most cases, these details will be the very first ones that come to mind.”

22. “The important question has nothing to do with whether the talk in your story is sacred or profane; the only question is how it rings on the page and in the ear. If you expect it to ring true, then you must talk yourself. Even more important, you must shut up and listen to others talk.”

23. “What would be very wrong, I think, is to turn away from what you know and like...in favor of things you believe will impress your friends, relatives, and writing-circle colleagues.”

24. “Nobody is “the bad guy” or “the best friend” or “the whore with a heart of gold” in real life; in real life we each of us regard ourselves as the main character, the protagonist, the big cheese; the camera is on us, baby. If you can bring this attitude into your fiction, you may not find it easier to create brilliant characters, but it will be harder for you to create the sort of one-dimensional dopes that populate so much pop fiction.”

25. “I most often see chances to add the grace-notes and ornamental touches after my basic storytelling job is done.”

26. “Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create a sense of artificial profundity.”

27. “Good fiction always begins with story and progresses to theme; it almost never begins with theme and progresses to story.”
28. “Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction, can be a difficult, lonely job; it’s like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There’s plenty of opportunity for self-doubt. If I write rapidly, putting down my story exactly as it comes to my mind, only looking back to check the names of my characters and the relevant parts of their back stories, I find that I can keep up with my original enthusiasm and at the same time outrun the self-doubt that’s always waiting to settle in.”

29. “If you’ve never done it before, you’ll find reading your book over after a six-week layoff to be a strange, often exhilarating experience. It’s yours, you’ll recognize it as yours, even be able to remember what tune was on the stereo when you wrote certain lines, and yet it will also be like reading the work of someone else, a soul-twin, perhaps. This is the way it should be, the reason you waited. It’s always easier to kill someone else’s darlings than it is to kill your own.”

30. “There is a kind of unspoken (hence undefended and unexamined) belief in publishing circles that the most commercially successful stories and novels are fast-paced. I guess the underlying thought is that people have so many things to do today, and are so easily distracted from the printed word, that you’ll lose them unless you become a kind of short-order cook, serving up sizzling burgers, fries, and eggs over easy just as fast as you can. Like so many unexamined beliefs in the publishing business, this idea is largely bullshit.”

31. “The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting. Stick to the parts that are, and don’t get carried away with the rest. Long life stories are best received in bars, and only then an hour or so before closing time, and if you are buying.”

32. “When you step away from the ‘write what you know’ rule, research becomes inevitable, and it can add a lot to your story. Just don’t end up with the tail wagging the dog; remember that you are writing a novel, not a research paper. The story always comes first.”

33. “Too many writing classes make Wait a minute, explain what you meant by that a kind of bylaw… Writing class discussions can often be intellectually stimulating and great fun, but they also often stray far afield from the actual nuts-and-bolts business of writing.”

34. “Submitting stories without first reading the market is like playing darts in a dark room—you might hit the target now and then, but you don’t deserve to.”

35. “Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well.”

36. “I’ve written because it fulfilled me. Maybe it paid off the mortgage on the house and got the kids through college, but those things were on the side–I did it for the buzz. I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever.”

Strengthen Your Novel's Concept

A great post from writing coach, Larry Brooks



Crafting a Compelling Novel Concept by Larry Brooks

An excerpt from Story Fix: Transform Your Novel from Broken to Brilliant by Larry Brooks Writer’s Digest Books).

Almost always, the source of weakness and dysfunction within a story dwells in the nature of the concept itself; i.e., the degree, or complete lack, of something compelling within the concept.

It’s hard to turn a boring concept into a compelling premise, and yet, this is the golden ring of revision. We need to do precisely that, usually by adding a conceptual layer rather than by looking to the premise to fix the problem.
This means that recognition of weakness as the first step in the repair process, because that recognition allows you to jettison the weakness and replace it with something better.

Concept is a tricky issue.

You could write a novel from this concept: “a story about a guy living alone in a big city.” That actually is a concept, just not a very compelling one. At first there’s nothing interesting or unique about the protagonist, the setting, or the situation. It’s flat, and therefore dead on arrival. You don’t need to chuck it, but you do need to enhance it to save it. Good concepts go beyond the banal to offer something fresh and, most of all, compelling, and this example is nothing if not generic and bland.

A better concept might look like this: “a story about a wealthy widower who suddenly finds himself alone after thirty years of marriage and moves to Los Angeles to live with his younger brother, a film director who enjoys life in the fast lane. The man must negotiate his staid values and comfort level with the onslaught of aggressive, sophisticated women who seem to want to rescue him from his depression.”

To me that sounds like a significantly more compelling story than the first concept. If you don’t agree, then the issue resides with your story sensibility, which is the key variable for what you decide to write.

I encounter this particular concept issue frequently with my coaching clients, and often their response to my feedback is something like, “Well, I intended that. It’s obvious that something else will be in play that complicates his situation.”

It’s not obvious. Never assume an agent, editor, or reader will expand the scope of your concept in his mind because it’s obvious to you. If the juice of your concept is layered, define the layering at square one.

The second example meets several of the criteria for a compelling concept, one of which is this: The reader hasn’t encountered this story before, or if she has, this offers a new and intriguing twist.

The acid test of a compelling concept is simple.

If you pitch your concept—without having to add elements of the premise to make it interesting—and your listener responds, “Wow, now that is interesting. I can’t wait to read a story based on that idea,” then you’ve hit pay dirt. If you received that response, then your concept is, by definition, compelling and intriguing, at least to that particular listener. The trick is to offer something that a stadium full of listeners would respond to in the same way.

The word compelling, however, is a mixed bag.

Reaching for the bar labeled compelling presents an opportunity to add depth and richness to your concept. Yet, “compelling” always remains a matter of opinion. What is compelling to some may be considered trite and ridiculous to others. That’s why we have different genres. Readers of romances may not find the notion of traveling to a different dimension to encounter an alien life force all that compelling. Even if it’s a romance, if you set it in an alternate universe, then it is also something else.

There are no hard and fast guidelines for attaining a “compelling” level of appeal. One agent’s next Hunger Games is another’s been-there-read-that story. For the writer sitting alone in his office, this leaves little to work with other than his instincts. This is why it’s important to develop a cutting-edge, highly market-accurate story sensibility, because without a commercial nose for what masses of readers will find appealing, a writer’s notion of “compelling” may fall short.
The goal of all of this, at its highest level, is to evolve your story sensibility.

You want to be able to look at your existing story concept and say, “Yeah, that’s good,” or admit, “Well, I thought this was cool, and it is cool for me, but I can see now how others might not agree, because the story is nothing special.”

You may like mustard on your peanut butter sandwiches. But good luck trying to launch a chain of sandwich shops based on that concept.

Elevating your story sensibilities becomes the most potent tool of all in the revision of a story. With concept, an idiosyncratic story sensibility shows itself immediately, via the criteria and then via reader reaction to the idea itself. Thus a concept can either make or break your story before you write a word.

Here are some examples of inherently conceptual concepts.

These concepts meet the criteria for a compelling concept without delving into premise. Notice how there are no heroes here, no plots, no actual story. Each of these is an idea for a story that has been imbued with a conceptual layer, which renders it immediately compelling, at least to the market sensibilities of the people you are trying to impress. It may not be your thing, which means you shouldn’t write that story … just as you shouldn’t write it if your story sense tells you that you alone hold affection for it. Some of these have been taken from best-selling stories you might recognize, while some are concepts that promised a story the writer(s) couldn’t quite deliver on.

“Snakes on a plane” (a proposition)

“The world will end in three days.” (a situation)

“Two morticians fall in love.” (an arena)

“What if you could go back in time and reinvent your life?” (a proposition)

“What if the world’s largest spiritual belief system is based on a lie, one that its largest church has been protecting for two thousand years?” (a speculative proposition)

“What if a child is sent to Earth from another planet, is raised by human parents, and grows up with extraordinary superpowers?” (a proposition)

“What if a jealous lover returned from the dead to prevent his surviving lover from moving on with her life?” (a situation)

“What if a fourteen-year-old murder victim narrates the story of her killing and the ensuing investigation from heaven?” (a narrative proposition)

“What if a paranormally gifted child is sent to a secret school for children just like him?” (a paranormal proposition)

“A story set in Germany as the wall falls” (a historical landscape)
“A story set in the deep South in the sixties, focusing on racial tensions and norms” (a cultural arena)

In general, if you can add “hijinks ensue” to the end of your concept, you may be on to something good. If the hijinks themselves lend a conceptual essence to the idea, then include them in your statement of concept.

High Concepts vs. Real-World Concepts

High concepts depart from the norm. They exist at the extreme edge of imagination and possibility. High concepts are simply more conceptual than more common, real-world concepts. Examples would be Superman and Harry Potter and the Avengers, which bring in fantastical and supernatural elements. Examples of reality-constrained concepts that are equally compelling would be James Bond or Alex Cross or The Help or Gone Girl.

Stories about real people in real situations also benefit from something that creates a compelling context for the story. Something about a hero can be conceptual, or something a character does or believes or must deal with can be conceptual. For example, one of the main characters in Gone Girl conspires to kill herself while framing her husband for her death; this becomes the concept itself.

Concepts, high or otherwise …

• can be character-centric, like the above examples.

• can be a speculative proposition, like The Da Vinci Code or Star Wars.

• can be thematically conceptual, like The Help or The Cider House Rules.

• can be lifted from perspectives and drama in the real world, like a story about the 1980 U.S. Hockey Team or Apollo 11.

• offer a setting, time, or place rendered conceptual by virtue of the promise it makes: The forthcoming story will play out there. Historical novels live and breathe by this conceptual potential.

• could be about stories set within a given culture, such as Fifty Shades of Grey or a story about the Blue Angels or even the Hells Angels.
Notice how all of these examples are different than—more conceptual than—a “story about a guy living alone in a big city.” Nothing about that particular concept is unique or fresh. It doesn’t push buttons; it doesn’t appeal to a given demographic, interest, or fascination; it doesn’t pose an intriguing (at least, intriguing enough) speculative question or proposition; and it doesn’t unfold within a setting, time, or culture that would allow the reader to take an appealing, vicarious trip into such a place.

Great concepts always promise a vicarious ride for the reader. They can take readers somewhere or place them into situations that are not possible, realistic, or even something they would choose in real life. A strong concept takes readers on a ride of a lifetime, one they will never know in their personal reality.

A concept can define the story world itself, creating its rules and boundaries and physics, thus becoming a story landscape. (Example: A story set on the moon is conceptual in its own right.)

A concept can inject speculative, surreal possibilities, such as time travel, ghosts, paranormal abilities, cloning, etc., into an otherwise normal reality.

In short, a concept is simply the compelling contextual heart of the premise and story built from it. It imbues the story atmosphere with a given presence. It elicits that sought-after response: “Wow, I’ve never seen that before, at least treated in that way. I really want to read the story that deals with these things.”

It does not include a hero … unless the hero is, by definition, a conceptual creation, which is the case in several of the examples just given. A story is built around a protagonist leveraging her conceptual nature. The character isn’t the concept—because every story has a protagonist or hero. What makes her fascinating, and therefore conceptual, is the proposition that renders her unique and appealingly different (think Nancy Drew, Stephanie Plum, or Wonder Woman). When that difference screams for a story to be told, you have a great concept on your hands.

It might be helpful to consider what another story without a vivid concept would sound like in a pitch: Two people fall in love after their divorce. It’s not a bad story if you can pull it off. But divorce is all too familiar and therefore not a strong concept by itself. An agent wouldn’t quickly invite you to send him a draft; he’d want more from the concept, leading into a premise that picks up the conceptual power it offers. If you could bring something contextually fresh to it—for instance, Two people who both want to murder their ex-spouses fall in love—then the story is already strengthened from its conceptual promise alone.

Agents and editors are looking for something fresh and new—in other words, they are looking for the conceptual. Imagine, for instance, that you are an agent and this pitch crosses your desk: “My story is about a detective who is assigned to find the killer of a girl.” This common concept crosses my desk regularly, and my feedback is easy: “There’s nothing here that sets your story apart. You’ve defined the genre itself without adding anything inherently appealing.” You might as well have said, “My story is a by-the-book detective mystery.”
No sale.

When I say, “Agents and editors are looking for something fresh and new,” it may be tempting to say, “Well, I’m not dealing with them. I’m going directly to readers, so I don’t have to worry about all this fresh concept stuff.” That’s risky thinking. Readers screen titles online, looking for pitches—concepts and premises—that draw them in. It’s the exact same dynamic.

For more story-fixing tips, check out Story Fix: Transform Your Novel from Broken to Brilliant .

What I Wish I'd known

A great post on the publishing from The Thrill Begins blog

What I Wish I’d Known by Jennifer Hillier

I hemmed and hawed about writing this post, because I know this blog is designed to be read by debut authors, and the last thing I want to do is scare anybody who’s new to the profession. I don’t want to be that dude.

But there are things I wish I’d known seven years ago when I was writing my first novel and dreaming about my books being in bookstores. Because, you know, not only was I was going to be in bookstores, but I’d have my own standalone section right beside Stephen King’s. Who has, of course, blurbed all my books and declared me the greatest thriller writer of my generation, a sentiment enthusiastically echoed by all the major trade reviewers, the New York Times, and also Clint Eastwood, who’s signed on to produce, direct, and play the title character in my third book, The Butcher.

So, okay, none of that has happened. My books are in bookstores, but most of the time I find them spine out, filed alphabetically in the Fiction section under H. I have received rave reviews, but I’ve also received lousy ones. I’ve sold a lot of books and made some money, but not quite enough to pay off the car or take my family on that bucket list vacation to Italy. And nobody from Hollywood has called.

Which puts me in the same boat as 99.999% of published writers, because unless you’re Stephen King or JK Rowling, you, my fellow writer, are me.

I wish I had known, when I was starting out, how hard it would be to write a new book while reading reviews for the novel that was just released. The advice, “Always be working on the next book,” is spot on, but it’s easier said than done. If it’s a good review, you’ll feel like a superhero, but if it’s a bad review, it can kill your writing mojo for the work-in-progress. Your published book, even if it’s a fictional story, is a part of you. Once it’s out in the world, you can’t help but feel naked and exposed, and do any of us really want to know what other people think about how we look, naked? Does someone pointing out that I have jiggly thighs make me want to do more squats? No, it does not. It makes me want to camp out on the sofa and eat chocolate until I vomit.

I wish I had known how hard it would be to juggle writing with the business side of publishing. Had I released a book ten years ago, this might not have been an issue. But times have changed, and authors have to do most – if not all – of their own marketing and promotion, a lot of which happens via social media. I like Twitter, but I hate tweeting about my books. I like Facebook, but I hate posting yet another reminder that I have books for sale. It makes me feel like an infomercial. “Wonderland has dead bodies, a clown museum, and a detective who must find missing teenage boys… but wait, there’s more!”

I wish I had known how scary it would be to get the next book published. It’s a really big deal to sell your first novel, especially if you’re an unknown and have never published anything before. When my first book sold, I felt unrestrained joy. But then I found myself terrified I’d never be able to sell anything else. Which is why, when my second book sold, I almost collapsed with relief. And then the pressure set in, especially when my editor said, “We want it to be just like Creep. But, you know, different.” Huh?

And don’t even get me started on how difficult is it to write a book on a deadline. With my first novel, I took all the time I needed, because I was unagented and unpublished and nobody was expecting it. But every book since then has had a pretty tight timeline. When I asked for a few more weeks to finish Wonderland because I’d just had a baby, my publisher was very understanding, though they pointed out that if I didn’t get it in before a specified date, I’d crash the production cycle.

I wish I had known how important it was to be social with other writers. I’m a chatty person in most parts of my life, except for the writing part, where I tend to be quiet and insecure, wondering if I have anything to contribute. I learned – only in the past couple of years– how crucial it is to let other writers in. And I’m not talking about the online stuff. It’s important to have writerly conversations in person, to go to conferences and conventions, to meet the people whose books you’ve read and who’ve read your book, and talk about what’s awesome and what sucks and everything in between. These people are your tribe. They get how hard it is to get published and stay published, they get the terror, and they have your back. They’ll remind you why you wanted to write a book in the first place.

And why did you? It wasn’t for the money, because you’re smarter than that. It’s because you love to write. And that’s another thing I wish I’d known. Your love for writing will carry you through the stress of your book being out in the world, the disappointment of a bad review, the challenge to both write and sell at the same time, and the pressure and expectation of securing another book deal. The love is what gives you the mojo to write the next book, and the one after that, and the one after that, and makes it all worthwhile. You must always hold on to the love. It’s easy to tell when a writer’s lost their mojo – it shows in the work.

Don’t be that dude.

Jennifer Hillier writes about dark, twisted people who do dark, twisted things. She’s the author of CREEP, FREAK, and THE BUTCHER. Her newest standalone thriller, WONDERLAND, is out now from Simon & Schuster/Pocket Star. Find her on the web at jenniferhillier.ca.

Punctuation Review

I often have issues with punctuations for family - This short post from Daily Writing Tips gives the proper way to punctuate from The Chicago Manual of Style.

Punctuation Review: Family Relationships

A random Web search suggests that people writing about families are not all on the same page when it comes to hyphenating terms for family relationships. For example:

A step-sister is the daughter of a step-parent to whom one is not biologically related.

I drew closer to my stepsister because I thought that we had something in common.

This is exactly what I loved about my grand Aunt, her passion for life and living.

My grandaunt’s husband was a businessman Is “adoptive mother” the same as “foster-mother”?

Nakeita took Jamal back in and remains his dedicated foster mother.

My dad always speaks very highly of my great grand mother who ran a printing press.

The sister of my great grand-mother, named Anne, married her first cousin.

My great-grandmother was a quarter Cherokee.

The Chicago Manual of Style offers these rules for family terms that include the words foster, grand, great, half, and step:

foster

The noun forms are open: foster mother, foster father, foster parents, foster home.

The adjective forms are hyphenated: foster-home background, foster-parent role.

grand

Grand compounds are closed: grandmother, grandparent, granddaughter.

great

Great compounds are hyphenated: great-grandmother, great-great-grandfather.

Note: The OED shows great-aunt and grand-aunt. M-W has great-aunt and grandaunt. Fortunately, great-aunt and grandaunt mean the same thing: “the aunt of one’s parent.” American speakers can avoid the strange compound grandaunt by sticking to great-aunt when referring to that particular relationship.

half

When referring to a sibling, the compound is open: half sister, half brother.

step

Step compounds are closed, except with grand and great: stepdaughter, stepsibling, step-grandfather, step-grandparents.

Review of May I Quote You On That

I enjoyed this review from Daily Writing Tips - hope you do to. I plan to buy the book


It has been quite a while since I reviewed a book about usage and grammar on this site. The only thing to set such books apart is the formatting and the title. The content is usually the same.

A new guide from the Oxford Press is no exception to the charge of sameness of information. However, the colloquial writing style and the quotations used to illustrate usage add a dimension that will be especially valuable to ESL learners and struggling native speakers.
It’s also a treat for those of us who have mastered basic grammar, but still enjoy reading about the language.

The book is May I Quote You on That? A Guide to Grammar & Usage by Stephen Spector, OUP, 2015.

I knew from Chapter One, “What Is Standard English, and Who Gets to Decide What’s Proper English Today?” that Spector is my kind of English professor. His goal is to illuminate standard English usage, but he’s not dismissive of the way most of us actually speak:

[Standard English ] is the level of communication that people normally use in the news media, government, and other leading national institutions, and it’s the type of English that we learn in school. […] It’s widely understood, but people use it mainly in writing, not speech. When we speak, most of us use a regional English, or a mixture of regional and standard Englishes.

Spector notes at the outset that rules of Standard English are not necessarily permanent, but reflect a consensus among literate speakers at a given time. He engages the user of the book in the ongoing process of weighing current professional opinion about usage in order to arrive at informed usage on a personal level.

Chapter Two is a review of basic grammar terms.

Chapter Three discusses such topics as the correct use of pronoun forms and grammatical number. It also deals with “tricky words” like less and fewer, like and as, and alternate and alternative.

Chapter Four discusses more “tricky words,” but these are words that have either been introduced since 1900 or have undergone changes in spelling or meaning.

Chapter Five is dedicated to “look-alike words.” These are the sorts of words I write about in “words commonly confused” posts. For example: adverse/averse, affect/effect, fortuitous/fortunate, route/rout, set/sit, etc.

Chapter Six gives a thorough treatment of the formation of English plurals.
As this brief overview shows, the content of May I Quote You is no different from what can be found in most grammar books or in the DWT archives.

What makes the book stand out is the way the content is presented.

All English teachers collect quotations to illustrate usage, but Professor Spector has to be the greatest quotation collector of all time. During several decades of teaching English to college students, he has put together an enormous collection of quotations, not only gems from long-dead authors of English classics, but the utterances of athletes, actors, and other cultural celebrities. Browsing this grammar book is as much fun as spending time at Brainyquote.

The book is a collection of lessons. Instead of beginning each lesson with a rule or definition, Spector begins with quotations drawn from the writing or speech of (mostly) native speakers.

For example, he begins his explanation of nouns in Chapter Two with these quotations:

Man was made at the end of the week’s work, when God was tired. —Mark Twain.

I’m not a member of any organized party—I am a Democrat. —Will Rogers.

You can lead a man to Congress, but you can’t make him think. —Milton Berle.

Cricket is basically baseball on Valium. —Robin Williams.

These four quotations, in which each noun has been underlined in the book, are then used to illustrate the part of speech called noun.

This is the logical way to present language. It is how we all learn our native language: speech first, explanations afterwards.

Some of the explanations are fairly lengthy. For example, Spector’s discussion of the split infinitive in Chapter Three covers two and a half pages. The impatient reader can skim the arguments and just read Spector’s advice, which stands out in boldface type.

The advantage of peppering the lessons with funny and often profound quotations is that some of them will lodge in the mind of the student. Then, because they’ve been internalized, they anchor the usage they illustrate in the memory.

A really cool bonus to the book is a website that contains practice drills.
The only thing I don’t like about May I Quote You on That? is the texture of the cover. I’ve noticed this type of cover on several paperbacks I’ve bought recently. I believe it’s what’s called “a matte finish.” Some readers seem to like it, but to me, it feels sticky and unpleasant.

Other than that, I’m pleased to add Professor Spector’s entertaining and useful style guide to my collection.
English teachers looking for a text that may appeal to grammar-phobic students are encouraged to take a look at this one.

The Importance of Editing

What kind(s) of Editing does your Novel Need?

By Kate M. Colby

Notice the title of this post is not Does your novel need editing? The answer to that question is YES. Always. I don’t care if you wrote The Great Gatsby of the modern day; your novel needs to be edited.

For those of you going the traditional publishing route, this question is a little less important. Personally, I would advise paying for a professional edit or two to give your novel a leg up when it reaches potential agents and/or publishers. However, once you sign on the dotted line, your publishing company will hook you up with editing and everything will be hunky dory. More on the traditional publishing process here.

For those of you going the independent route (like me!), editing is crucial. Selecting which type—or, more commonly, types—of editing you need is one of the many “sell or sink” decisions you will make during the book creation process. This is especially difficult to do if you have little-to-no experience with editing and/or are on a tight budget. Let’s face it: varying verbiage and even more varying prices fill the editing world with.

Here are the five most common types of editing indie authors utilize: from most intensive/large scale and most expensive to least intensive/micro scale and cheapest.

Developmental Editing

Typically, developmental editing takes place while the author is still drafting the novel. In this type of editing, the editor will work with the author to help develop the plot, subplots, characters, story arc, etc. To an extent, the editor acts like a co-author or counselor, helping the author bring his ideas to fruition. A developmental edit does not address style, grammar, and/or punctuation. Because of the intense time commitment and amount of work this requires, this is often the most expensive form of editing. Developmental editing is the least common form of editing and not usually recommended unless the author is having major issues during the book’s drafting.

Content Editing

Content editing is similar to developmental editing, only it occurs after the novel is drafted. During a content edit, the editor will examine all elements of the novel: plot, subplot, character development, story structure, narration/description, word repetition, stylistic details, etc. Essentially, anything related to the novel’s content is addressed at this stage. Depending on the content editor, she may point out issues related to grammar, but that is not the primary focus of a content edit. Again, because of the time and large-scale criticism this type of content editing involves, it is usually rather expensive. Content editing is recommended mainly for first time or new authors who are still learning the basics of writing craft.

Edit: As many authors noted in the comments, beta readers can provide content editing (for free).

Line Editing

Line editing and copy editing are rather similar. Some editors consider them synonymous; others differentiate between them. In essence, line editing is the form of editing in which grammar becomes involved. A line editor will address a novel’s grammar, sentence structure, and punctuation. Typically, a line editor will also offer advice on the author’s writing style, and at his discretion, may comment on a few larger scale issues, such as story line or character development. This is an extremely common form of editing for indie authors to utilize and comes with a middle range price tag.

Copy Editing

Again, copy editing is similar to line editing. A copy editor will correct grammar and punctuation errors. However, a copy editor does not typically advise on sentence (re-)structuring or writing style. Of course, at her discretion, a copy editor may comment on broader issues with the novel, but this is not likely. Like line editing, this is a common form of editing for indie authors and comes with a middle range price tag.

Proofreading

Proofreading is the most “basic” form of editing. A proofreader corrects typographical errors related to capitalization, spelling, punctuation, and basic grammar. Most of the time, a proofreader will not comment on anything outside of these errors, but again, more intensive editing is at her discretion. Proofreading is generally the cheapest form of editing.

Because of its “basic” nature, proofreading is very dangerous. Many indie authors feel that they can skip over proofreading, in favor of doing it themselves. After all, why pay someone to do what spell check can do? Industry professionals (and even amateurs like me) strongly advise against this. It is extremely difficult to see one’s errors, especially after one has already written, read, revised, edited, re-written, re-read one’s book so many times. At the very least, find a friend or fellow writer with strong grammar skills, who is an avid reader to do the proofreading for you.

Of course, as with any industry, there are other forms of editing and other definitions of these five types. However, these are the most common types of editing and, in my opinion, good stock-standard definitions of them.


Kate M. Colby is a writer of multi-genre fiction and creative nonfiction as well as a writing-craft blogger. Kate graduated summa cum laude from Baker University with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, Creative Writing, and Sociology

9 Ways to Write Body Language

I found this post by writer, Jeni Chappelle so helpful. We all have "go to" movements and character tics, but Jeni helps us expand them.

9 Simple and Powerful Ways to Write Body Language

Dialogue is a great tool to establish relationships between your characters and deepen emotional connection to your readers. But if you rely on dialogue alone to show how your characters interact, you’re missing a big opportunity. In real life, nonverbal cues—body language—account for more than 90% of our communication. Including body language in your writing gives your characters more depth and provides a relatable, interactive experience for your readers.

That’s easy enough to see in real-world interactions or on the stage or screen, but how can you write it into your story?

How to use body language effectively in your writing

There are so many components to body language, and many writers only ever use a few. To create believable and engaging characters, it’s important to look at all the ways to communicate body language in your writing.

1. Gesture

Most of my clients don’t know this because we primarily work over email and telephone, but I talk with my hands. Big time. Some of your characters probably do too. Sure, not everyone uses finger guns (even though they should), but virtually everyone shakes hands, points, or waves.

One word of caution: be aware that your book will likely be read around the world, and some gestures have different cultural connotations. One common example is the two-fingered V. Other than being super popular now in selfies, it has also meant victory, peace, or an insult. If you use it, make it clear how it’s being used.

2. Facial expression

Again, some of us have very expressive faces, and others are harder to read. But facial expressions are an important part of body language because they are pretty much universal. Even people who curb their reactions still have tiny involuntary changes called microexpressions. Our brains pick up on these and decipher them, even when we aren’t aware that they’re happening. How cool is that?

3. Tone of voice and cadence

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, “It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it.” For example, my kids know I’m close to losing my patience when I slow my speech and lower the pitch of my voice. That’s their cue to get in line or risk Mom’s wrath. Your characters’ speech will sound different to each other, depending on what emotion they are feeling. How does your protagonist sound when she’s excited? Guilty? Apathetic?

4. Touch

Some gestures relate to touch, but I included it as a separate category because it’s all about how the characters interact. Touch conveys so much in just a fleeting moment. Think about all the emotions expressed by physical contact—running a hand through a child’s hair, laying a head on a friend’s shoulder, punching someone in the face!

5. Posture

Posture is how we hold our bodies while we stand and sit, but it’s more than just being able to balance a book on your head. The way a character carries himself as he goes about his life says a lot about him. Does he stand tall or slouch? Does he sit back with his legs crossed or lean forward? How does your character hold his head, shoulders, arms, and legs—and what does that tell your readers about him?

6. Proxemics (personal space)

This aspect of body language makes me think of that old Seinfeld episode about the close talker, a man who doesn’t understand the idea of personal space. Most people respect that people want 18 inches or so between themselves and others. To be inside that space usually means either intimacy (if wanted) or threat (if unwanted). Again, there are cultural differences here, so be aware of that when you write.

7. Physical appearance

Our cleanliness, hairstyles, clothes, accessories, and other decisions about personal appearance tell others plenty about us. In fact, our first impressions of people often come from these choices. Show more about your characters by showing these aspects of them as well. Maybe she only likes to wear skirts or always wears a cross necklace. Maybe she has giant, unruly curly hair. Maybe she was just born that way, and it doesn’t mean anything about her, OK???

8. Actions

Sometimes a character’s actions are a kind of body language. How and when he acts in certain ways can be meaningful (it isn’t always). Running instead of walking, slamming doors, taking a drink to fill a loaded silence, jumping in a car and driving away…these are all actions that carry emotion.

9. Physical sensations

Especially effective when writing in deep POV, these are the involuntary responses a character’s body will have to a certain stimulus. It might mean prickling skin, sweating, blushing, fast pulse, dry mouth…you get the idea. These are physiological responses we all share, so it engages readers’ senses and memories. It’s easy, though, to end up with a bunch of sweaty people with goosebumps who are practically having heart attacks. So be careful not to overdo it or go into clichés or purple prose.

A few other tips

Use it to strengthen dialogue
Body language reinforces the emotional connotation of the words, breaks up large amounts of dialogue, and provides a better alternative to dialogue tags.

Make the connection

Make sure you’re clearly connecting the chain of emotions, thoughts, motivations, actions, and reactions. Don’t hit your reader over the head with it, but don’t leave it ambiguous either.

Use multiple kinds of body language

Don’t rely on one nonverbal cue to communicate everything. Write them in little groupings and sprinkle them throughout the story.

Sometimes it’s about what they don’t do
Some characters are carefully blank, schooling their expressions and controlling their actions. What a person doesn’t do can say as much about them as what they do.

Intention

Make sure you include intentional actions as well as unconscious reactions to go even deeper.

Body language habits = personality quirks
Use your characters favorite body language as a personality quirk. Be careful not to repeat it too much, though, or you may bore your readers.