Rob Bignell's Blog, page 223

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Published on February 22, 2018 05:00

Client��s novel follows crash survivor��s journey

A recent editing client has published her first novel. Kathi Mims�� Brace for Impact�� tells the story of a passenger on the famous US Airways Flight 1549, which Captain Chesley Burnett ��Sully�� Sullenberger ditched on the frigid Hudson River after a goose flew into a plane engine on Jan. 15, 2009. Following the rescue, the passenger sitting in the window of the exit row �� Peter �� connects with airline agent Mary Jo, as she guides him through the survival process. Driving from New Jersey to Charlotte, the two strangers connect in a bond of friendship and reflection, as they weave through the obstacles and repercussions from an event that no one could have predicted. The novel is available on Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, and at Mims�� website.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

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Published on February 21, 2018 04:45

5 Science Fiction Novum Writing Prompts

Science fiction stories typically arise from a novum, a scientifically plausible concept that is a ��reality�� in the tale. The novum might be an mechanical device like robot servants, artificial intelligence, or faster-than-light spacecraft; it also can be a hypothetical idea such as ��The Earth is a scientific experiment run by aliens to determine the meaning of life�� or ��The government outlaws books.�� The author then asks ��What if?�� exploring how the world with this novum is different than ours.

Among the problems of many novice science fiction writers is instead of introducing a new novum they rely on used furniture �� that is, they borrow novums from popular SF series. After all, how many novels have you read that use starships exploring the galaxy for the Earth-based Federation? Barely changing names to appear as if you are not appropriating �� a starcraft seeking M-class worlds for the Earth-centered Alliance �� still doesn��t cut it as original or fully using the potential that science fiction offers to examine our culture or humanity.

To help SF writers, here are some novums of potential near-future inventions from which stories could be built:

Carbon-breathing batteries
What if electrochemical cells sucked in CO2 to generate power for our many electronic devices or lithium-air batteries that utilize oxygen to generate power? How will this affect the popularity of electric cars?

Designer antibiotics
What if we developed drugs to destroy very specific forms of bacteria rather than use drugs hitting a wide-swath of microbes (which happens to cause bacteria not being targeted to evolve into superbugs)? Will this stop superbugs or bacteriological weapons from working?

40 Eridani A expedition
What if we found a planet orbiting this star in its habitable zone? An expedition to a terrestrial planet around this star might conduct studies to determine of there is a geological record of the red giant winds from 40 Eridani C before it became a white dwarf; ice ages due to the dusty space caused by Star C's red giant phase is one possibility.

Malapert Mountain South Pole Multi-Spectral Observatory
What if at the bottom of the moon we installed a 100m spinning ionic liquid mirror telescope so that we could see the surface of extrasolar planets? How do the discoveries made by the observatory alter human perceptions about our place in the universe?

Volcano mining
What if we are able to mine previous metals and minerals from ocean volcanos, which are rich with such resources? How could this be made economically feasible?

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

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Published on February 20, 2018 04:45

9 Must-Know Tips for Plotting a Story

�� What is a story? An autopsy of a tale
�� Your story isn��t its plot or structure
�� Narrative structure: One step ahead or two back?
�� Which is best: Character- or plot-driven stories?
�� What is a ��cookie cutter�� story?
�� Think of plot as set-up, build-up, pay-off
�� Start your story in middle to increase suspense
�� Don��t end novel with cliffhanger
�� Utilize both internal and external conflicts
�� BONUS: ��Books don��t offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.�� - David Mitchell

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

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Avoid sexism in indefinite pronouns

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Published on February 19, 2018 04:30

5 Great Quotations about Plot

��What some people call a nightmare, a writer calls a plot.�� - James R. Paddock

��Story is honorable and trustworthy; plot is shifty, and best kept under house arrest.�� - Stephen King

��Every novel should have a beginning, a muddle, and an end. The ��muddle�� is the heart of your tale.�� - Peter de Vries

��The best stories don��t come from ��good vs. bad�� but ��good vs. good.�� - Leo Tolstoy

��Get your character is trouble in the first sentence and out of trouble in the last sentence.�� - Barthe DeClements

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

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Published on February 18, 2018 05:45

Become a Better Fiction Writer Today: In 7 Minutes a Da...

Become a Better Fiction Writer Today: In 7 Minutes a Day to Mastering the Craft of Writing, writers receive 50 tried-and-true techniques to improve their writing craftsmanship, including using active voice, showing not telling, ramping up dramatic tension, and being more descriptive.

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Writing Inspiration: Who are you?

Four ways to write a great tweet that sells books

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Published on February 17, 2018 04:45

Interlink on social media posts to boost sales

Often authors set up several social media sites to promote their books. The objective of these promotional efforts is to get readers of your posts heading to another site where they can purchase your books. Achieving this requires that you practice interlinking.

Interlinking is a link on a post pointing to an external website. For example, you might tweet something about your book but include a link that takes anyone clicking it to your website or to a landing page where they could buy your book:

What makes a person a ��writer��? http://bit.ly/YMyrOt

The link heads to my blog. Once there, the visitor can find unobtrusive links to my editing service and books.

Pushing a book sale or interest in your business are just a couple of reasons to interlink. You also might do so to drive up your search engine rankings.

Generally, links on social media posts should send visitors to an article on your blog. Interlinks at your blog article then can take readers to you authors/business website and landing pages that sell your books. You can include links to your authors/business website and book sales pages on your social media posts, but they should be interspersed amid a heavy dose of posts with links to your blog articles so you don��t appear spammy.

The most common social media platforms to make posts with interlinks include YouTube, Twitter, Google+, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Depending on the kind of book you��ve written and on your readership, some platforms will attract more followers and views than others; consider trying all of them one by one and see where you get the most traction.

Your own blog and website can contain interlinks to a landing page where consumers can purchase your book, services or products. Always make sure the interlink appears natural, however, for forced or random links actually can hurt your page ranking and turn off readers. Achieve this by pretending to be a reader visiting your blog or website and asking if the links appear helpful or answer a question you have. If the answer is ��no,�� then the link probably will be received as unnatural.

Lastly, ensure that each social media network you��re on includes direct links to your business website other networks, if it is allowed. These links would be included on your profile. On your website, include social media widgets that show your latest posts along with follow/subscribe buttons.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

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Published on February 16, 2018 04:30

How to write a lead-in line for a bulleted list

A vertical, bulleted list marks an excellent way to summarize information and present it in a reader-friendly format. An important element of the bulleted list is the lead-in line.

A lead-in line is phrase, clause or sentence that introduces a vertical, bulleted list. It typically appears after the headline and immediately before the first bullet point. For example, if your bulleted list were about the five types of conflict that are used in fiction, the lead-in line might read Authors can use any of five conflicts in a story:

Follow three simple guidelines whenever using lead-in lines. First, a lead-in line always gives an overview of what the list is about. Secondly, the lead-in need not be a complete sentence; in fact, it usually isn��t. Lastly, always punctuate the lead-in line with a colon, even if it is a complete sentence. An example of these three guidelines would be...

Every story consists of five elements:
�� Plot
�� Setting
�� Character
�� Point of view
�� Theme

Bulleted lists with lead-in lines often appear in nonfiction books and on blogs. An upcoming entry will examine how to handle the bulleted items in such a list.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

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Five Great Quotations about Stories - Inventing Reality Editing Service

12 Tips for Creating a Compelling Plot - Inventing Reality Editing Service

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Published on February 15, 2018 04:45

Avoid sexism in indefinite pronouns

Indefinite pronouns �� words like each, anyone, everything, no one, somebody �� often prove controversial because for a good number of readers they can potentially be sexist.

For example, if you write Everyone should cast his vote next Tuesday, some women will take offense because they were excluded (and some men will take offense because you excluded women).

For centuries, this has not been a problem for writers. In a male-dominated society, most times only men (or at least primarily men) would perform the actions referred to in a sentence with an indefinite pronoun. That obviously has changed.

To solve this problem, some writers now opt to include both genders by using constructions like he or she, him or her, his/hers, and him/herself. These usually come off as awkward, throwing off the sentence��s cadence. Other writers create new gender-neutral words such as s/he, but this looks odd, almost like a typo. Yet others alternate between the genders, so that one sentence uses he, the next she, and so on. This can create confusion among readers who expect to see one gender, however.

Another option is to rewrite the sentence so that the pronoun must be plural �� they, them, their. This is a good solution that usually works �� the above example of Everyone should cast his vote next Tuesday would become All people should cast their vote next Tuesday. Still, this approach often that means revising the rest of the passage so that all of the antecedents and pronouns in it will be plural, even though a gender-specific pronoun makes more sense in other sentences.

The best solution and the one used by most professional writers, however, is to revise the sentence so that no pronoun is needed. For example, Everyone should cast his vote next Tuesday could become Everyone should cast a vote next Tuesday. Even better, get rid of the antecedent so that no pronoun is required, as in Cast a vote next Tuesday! That approach often delivers a punchier sentence.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

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Published on February 14, 2018 04:45

5 Sci-FI Writing Prompts Based on Novums

Science fiction stories typically arise from a novum, a scientifically plausible concept that is a ��reality�� in the tale. The novum might be an mechanical device like robot servants, artificial intelligence, or faster-than-light spacecraft; it also can be a hypothetical idea such as ��The Earth is a scientific experiment run by aliens to determine the meaning of life�� or ��The government outlaws books.�� The author then asks ��What if?�� exploring how the world with this novum is different than ours.

Among the problems of many novice science fiction writers is instead of introducing a new novum they rely on used furniture �� that is, they borrow novums from popular SF series. After all, how many novels have you read that use starships exploring the galaxy for the Earth-based Federation? Barely changing names to appear as if you are not appropriating �� a starcraft seeking M-class worlds for the Earth-centered Alliance �� still doesn��t cut it as original or fully using the potential that science fiction offers to examine our culture or humanity.

To help SF writers, here are some novums of potential near-future inventions from which stories could be built:

Biotic arches
What if cities built 30-story skyscrapers, consisting of four curved vertical sections that joined at the top and consisted primarily of botanical gardens, to absorb local carbon emissions? How many of these would have to be built to make a dent in global warming?

Epsilon Indi A colonization
What if interstellar travelers set up a colony on a planet orbiting this nearby K-type star? Because the star system is quite young �� less than a billion years old �� there��s no oxygen on any planet in the habitable zone. http://ourstellarneighborhood.blogspo...

Tachyon communication
What if, to shorten the distance that signals must travel is space, communications were sent on beams of tachyon particles that can travel faster than the speed of light? How does such a communication system revolutionize settlement of the solar system?

Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket
What if we actually are able to develop this revolutionary space propulsion system, which would reduce trips to Mars to 39 days in the best-case scenario? How does this alter our ability to colonize the solar system?

Zettaflop computing
What if a computer is finally able to have the processing power of a zettaflop (1021 floating point operations per second)? On-chip photonic communication and memristor memory techniques may be required for this breakthrough.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

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