Rob Bignell's Blog, page 283

Perish the thought! Disdain vs. distain

All too often writers who mix up these two words are the butt of mockful criticism.

Distain is an archaic word meaning to be stained or disgraced. Typically what writers mean when they use the word distain is actually disdain.

Disdain as a noun means something not worthy of respect, such as Many New Yorkers hold Los Angeles��� art scene with disdain. It also can be a verb that means to judge poorly, as in She refused to go through the door held, disdaining his offer to be a ���gentleman.���

In short, if you find yourself using the word distain, cross it out. You probably mean disdain.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper 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. Whether you come from a big city like Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, or a small town like Boring, Oregon, I can provide that second eye.

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Writing Prompt: Opposite ethical decision

Suffering from writer���s block or need to add some spunk to your writing? The problem may be that you need to change up your routine.

To that end, try this tip: Consider an ethical decision made by a character in one of your favorite books. What would have had to occur in the book for the character to arrive at the opposite decision? Approaching stories from that perspective can give you ideas for new tales to write.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper 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. Whether you come from a big city like Houston, Texas, or a small town like Chicken, Alaska, I can provide that second eye.

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Avoid using flashback as a plot gimmick

Sometimes when writing a story, the author needs to go outside of the timeline. When a scene is set during a time earlier than the main narration, the author is using a flashback.

If you wrote a story in which the main character is afraid to swim, you might use a flashback to show a time earlier in his life when he nearly drowned. Flashbacks primarily are used so that the reader better understands the reasons for a main character���s current feelings or way of thinking.

Unfortunately, novice authors often use flashbacks for the wrong reasons, such as to add action to an otherwise flat story. The result is that the technique draws attention to itself and becomes gimmicky.

When utilizing the flashback, follow some simple guidelines:
��� The flashback should serve multiple dramatic purposes ��� A flashback can be at its most dramatic when creating a sense of uncertainty in the reader yet also serving to reveal character or offering hints that bring the character closer to solving the plot. Flashing back to an event that happened the day or week or even month before doesn���t give the main character enough time to process it.
��� The event in a flashback shouldn���t occur too close in time to the story���s timeline - Doing so reduces the event���s powerfulness in effecting the main character���s emotions and thoughts during the main story. The trauma of the past event should have shaped the main character���s personality over a long time, making the ability to change and overcome it in the main story difficult.
��� The flashback should clearly have occurred in the past ��� If the reader is befuddled wondering why this event is happening in the present, then the author has not left enough clues about when the event happened in the main character���s life.
��� Keep the flashback short ��� Even if the flashback is action-packed, moving away from the ���now��� reduces immediacy in a story. A long flashback can confuse readers about what events occurred in the main story.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper 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. Whether you come from a big city like Oakland, California, or a small town like Goobertown, Arkansas, I can provide that second eye.

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Five Great Quotations about Why We Write

���The purpose of writing is both to keep up with life and to run ahead of it.��� - William Saroyan

���I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.��� - Octavia E. Butler

���The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it.��� - Samuel Johnson

���A writer writes to a great extent to be read (let's admire those who say they don't, but not believe them).��� - Albert Camus

���We who make stories know that we tell lies for a living. But they are good lies that say true things, and we owe it to our readers to build them as best we can. Because somewhere out there is someone who needs that story. Someone who will grow up with a different landscape, who without that story will be a different person. And who with that story may have hope, or wisdom, or kindness, or comfort. And that is why we write.��� - Neil Gaiman

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper 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. Whether you come from a big city like San Jose, California, or a small town like Boar Tush, Alabama, I can provide that second eye.

 

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Writing Inspiration: Ask key questions

Even if you have the seed of a story idea, imagining how it might grow into something greater can be daunting. Asking yourself some key questions about the story idea, however, can help you develop it. For example, if writing fiction, you might ask: What is the story���s main conflict or what upsets the order of the world? Who is the main character that must solve this conflict or re-establish order? What internal conflict does the main character possess that prevents her from going forward to resolve this conflict? What compels her to overcome this inner conflict and re-establish order?

The above questions work well for fiction, but what if writing nonfiction? Some key questions you might instead ask include: What is the one piece of information that I want readers to get from my book? What are some subpoints to that one idea? What are some different ways that this information can be explained to readers? Why do my readers need to know this information?

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper 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. Whether you come from a big city like Chicago, Illinois, or a small town like Humptulips, Washington, I can provide that second eye.

 

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Boost book sales with promo codes, coupons

Often when a retail store or a business wants to generate interest in a product, it offers coupons. You can do the same with your books.

While you have limited control over your book���s price at online sites such as Amazon.com, you still can offer a variety of promo codes and coupons that drop its cost. CreateSpace has a promo code option for the paperbacks its prints while Smashwords actually offers a coupon generator that can be applied to ebooks for Kindle, iBook, Nook and Kobo sold through its site (KindleDP allows for your book to given away free, though no promo code or coupon is necessary for potential buyers.).

When offering promo codes and coupons, follow some basic guidelines:
��� Set an expiration date ��� A limited time offer creates a sense of urgency in potential buyers. Move your book by relying on their impulse to not let a good deal to slip away.
��� Keep it focused on a lone book ��� Think in advance about what you most hope to achieve by offering a discount. Move a book that isn���t selling? Generate interest in a series? To land new customers? Determine in advance which lone book in your cache of titles best serves your goal and focus on selling that one. Sales of your other books naturally will follow.
��� Promote the heck out of your special offer ��� Provide readers your promo code or coupon at all of your social media networks, your website/blog, and via your mailing list. The promo code and coupon does no good if no one knows about it. Encourage your readers to share the code or coupon.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper 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. Whether you come from a big city like Miami, Florida, or a small town like Normal, Illinois, I can provide that second eye.

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Ebooks differ significantly from paper books

Often when publishing a manuscript, new authors think of the ebook as simply a digital copy of their paper book. Indeed, the largest producer and seller of ebooks ��� KindleDP ��� unintentionally reinforces this thought by offering a simple online conversion of one���s just-published paper book to ebook. In truth, ebooks are a much more complex product than what a quick online conversion suggests.

Arguably, an ebook is as different from a paper book than a TV show is from a radio production. While both the TV and radio show may tell the same story or provide the same information, how they do so is significantly different. So it is with a paper back and an ebook.

Ebooks differ from a paper book in five major ways:
��� Page numbers ��� Ebooks don���t contain page numbers. That���s because the reader can change the ebook���s font and size on their ereader, tablet or mobile device. Because of this, the table of contents is constructed slightly differently than in a paper book, and an index is all but obsolete.
��� Interactivity ��� An ebook page is essentially a website page. It can contain hyperlinks that actually can take readers away to the book, instantly to other parts of the book, to photo albums, and even to videos. Readers also can change the way the screen shows the ebook page.
��� Article-like content ��� As a website page, an ebook lends itself to shorter writing than does a paper book. Bulleted lists often appear repeatedly in a single ebook. The reading of such quick blurbs would be tiresome in a paper book but are easy to digest in digital form. This is not to say that long paragraphs and swaths of text don���t work on an ebook ��� they do ��� just that quick, list-oriented writing can work better in ebooks than paper books.
��� Not conducive to poetry and tables/charts ��� The line breaks and word placement in poetry tends to get messy when the reader can alter the book���s font size and when the piece appears on a small screen. The same applies to tables and charts, which usually work best on a page/screen that is at least a few inches wide and high.
��� Shorter overall lengths ��� The price of ebooks are invariably lower than paper books if only because the former don���t require extensive production costs, such a ink, paper and the labor to run and maintain a printing press. This affects the structure of the ebook as many writers, to get more return on their investment, deliberately pen shorter ebooks; sometimes, they���d even be too short to be printed or sold as a paper book! Sales figures suggest that readers are okay with purchasing ebooks with low word counts.

As writing your book ��� and especially if you plan to release it first as an ebook ��� you should consider how these differences affect the way you can best present your story or information. You may find yourself creating two at least slightly different versions of the same book!

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper 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. Whether you come from a big city like San Francisco, California, or a small town like Nimrod, Oregon, I can provide that second eye.

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Editing client���s essay published in NYC magazine

An essay by a long-time editing client of mine, Los Angeles' Lasher Lane, was published in Volume 1 Brooklyn's Sunday Stories. Her ���An Honest Reflection Serves No One��� tells the story of how her father ��� a Protestant from small town New Jersey ��� met, courted and married her mother ��� a Catholic from cultured New York City. The essay also relates how once married her father tried to avoid entanglements with the mob. The piece can be read online.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper 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. Whether you come from a big city like Houston, Texas, or a small town like Chicken, Alaska, I can provide that second eye.

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Writing inspiration: Go on vision quest

In a way, writing is like a waking dream meditation (a ���vision quest��� in other parlance) in which the very essence of who you are utilizes the symbols of everyday things to discover the answers to life���s most challenging questions. Which of the ���big questions��� of life does your writing address? If none at all, would your writing improve if you examined the deep questions that you find important?

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper 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. Whether you come from a big city like Augusta, Georgia, or a small town like Funk, Ohio, I can provide that second eye.

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Writing Inspiration: Set steps for your goal

What is your big, seemingly impossible, goal as writer? To write a nonfiction book? To publish a short story? List the steps you must take to achieve this vision. Now work on achieving each one of those smaller steps as you head toward your big goal.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper 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. Whether you come from a big city like Ogden, Utah, or a small town like Rake, Iowa, I can provide that second eye.

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