Taven Moore's Blog, page 43

Alternate Song Lyrics

My husband seranaded me to sleep last night.

With this.

(sung to the tune of “The One That I Want” from Grease)

The bodies are multiplyin’

The police are getting close

Cuz the corpses they’re a’findin’!

You’ve been falsifyin’!

You shoulda shipped him off

When you killed that man

‘Cause his body leads to you

You shoulda shipped him off

Lucky I’ll hide the clues.

I’ll mail his heart in a box to you!

Now, you’re the one that they want

(you are the one they want)

For ooor ooor murder!

And you’re the one that I want

Now, you’re the one that they want

(you are the one they want)

For ooor ooor murder!

(you are the one I want)

Too ooo ooo murder….

You’re the one that I’ll bleed!

Oh yes indeed!

Related posts:

Best Song Mashups
And The Winner Is …

[Perry] How to Write Intrigue

There’s a lesson I picked up about writing intrigue into plots that I learned by reading The Gap Cycle by Stephen Donaldson. I’ll share it with you today.

I think the key to writing good intrigue lies in the separation between the facts and the interpretation of those facts.

In essence, there should be a single string of events that can be interpreted a number of different ways based on the character witnessing it and what they fear or hope is the cause of said events.

That got a little abstract so let’s work with a few more concrete examples.

A) King Mynock dies and the crown prince, Jormund ascends to the throne.

This example is fairly bereft of intrigue potential, simply because there aren’t that many ways to interpret the event. It basically comes down to either the king passed away peacefully/accidentally and the prince gains the throne or the prince hurried his father along into the grave. There aren’t many shades of meaning to be gleaned from the event and as such, it makes pretty poor fodder when it comes to adding a bit of intrigue to the plot.

But what happens if we add just one more event to the proceedings? Something that opens it up to a little more interpretation…

B) King Mynock dies and the crown prince, Jormund ascends to the throne. His first act is to throw the queen (his mother) into the dungeons.

Just like that, possibilities spawn like a bundle of baby rabbits. We went from an event with two potential explanations and spilled a can of worms all over it. Now it could be that the king was hurried along by the queen. The dutiful son, learning this, throws his mother into prison. Or maybe it was a plot by both the prince and the queen and after he gains the throne. Jormund fears the queen will reveal his part in the regicide and imprisons her. Maybe it was just Jormund that orchestrated his father’s murder but the queen found out and he had to lock her up before she revealed his terrible secret. Hell, maybe Jormund kills his father for the throne and then locks up the queen for a completely unrelated reason.

The point is that for intrigue to work, it needs at least two things. It needs events that are capable of holding more than a single layer of depth and those events need to have some wiggle room for different characters to interpret them in different ways.

The reason why The Gap Cycle worked so well as a hotbed of intrigue is that while there was only one chain of events, everyone sitting on the sidelines interpreted those events in a different way.

A single chain of events links together the plot and the people at the nexus of those events know exactly what’s happening and why. Everyone else, the cops, the gangs, the politicians and the invading aliens all come up with their own interpretation of the motivations that drive said events.

The best part about it was that every single interpretation could have been right. Based on what they knew of the facts, every interpretation could have been accurate and fit the actions of those involved. And depending on which set of motivations was the correct interpretation, the final outcome of events would have turned out very, VERY differently.

In that way everyone is kept guessing as to what will happen next based on what they think is happening now until it all comes to a glorious close at the end of the series.

When writing intrigue, remember that everyone wants different things. It’s only human to allow our hopes and fears to color the cold, hard facts.

Characters will be after differing goals. Based on those goals, characters will also unconsciously color the facts according to what they think will happen, in essence, creating a story to link the events that they see/learn of. And when they come into conflict with one another’s interpretation of the facts is where the climax of the story can arise.

Now this isn’t the only way to write intrigue and make it work. Far from it. But the main ideas behind this version of intrigue can be used as the driving force for intrigues of other types, be they political or other.

Go forth and add some intrigue to your worlds!

Fictional worlds could always use a little more backstabbing.

 

 

Related posts:

[Perry] Write What You Know
[Perry] Sex Part 1: The Purpose
Paying Yourself to Write

A Snippet of Worldbuilding from Zonduth

Steven and I have been worldbuilding and storybuilding for Zonduth over the last few months. That may seem like a lot of time spent without any story output, but we are firm believers that you cannot build a story on a weak world or your story will also be weak.

We’re also both programmers, and well aware that every hour spent planning saves three hours in revision. Revision is by far the LEAST fun part of writing.

I thought I’d share a tiny bit of the worldbuilding that we’ve done and compare it to a similar-but-different piece of worldbuilding so that you can see how we work.

“Warbirds”

Our original concept for Zonduth (over ten years ago) included a mount for the human armies called Warbirds. Think brown ostrich without all the plumy feathers, with a sour red eye and a vicious attitude.

Well, we no longer have armies (for various worldbuilding historical reasons) so we had to decide if we wanted to keep the original concept of the bird.

We did, so we thought about how they’d be used and by whom, and what they’d look like and how big they’d be and all the sudden we’ve got a life cycle where the dinosaur-like RAPTORS (No longer Warbirds) hatch from a clutch of eggs.

As they grow, they have no gender. Around puberty, depending on the requirements of the flock, they will split into males (hunters and protectors) and eggless females (egg tenders and child rearers). One female may become a queen, capable of laying eggs and starting her own flock. This is not something that happens in every clutch, and even the people who have Raptor ranches in our world don’t quite know exactly how to force a Queen to emerge.

Eggless females are docile and drab, with no markings or feathers. They will only emerge if there aren’t enough tenders for the flock already, so are typically left with their mother.

Males are the most common result of clutches. They are brilliantly colored, with stripes and spots and extravagant feathers, used to woo Queens. In the wild, the males are the only ones to leave the flock, and they hunt in packs and carry meat back to the cave for the females to eat. In captivity, most of the males are taken as soon as their gender begins to show, to be trained as mounts. They are much like puppies at that stage, and can be trained to be a companion and protector.

Queens are much larger than either of the other types. Although they will grow some feathers, their decoration is nothing along the lines of the males. Queens are also incredibly ill-tempered and territorial. Once they’ve established their flock, they are the last line of defense for the eggs and they will kill any living thing that gets in their nesting caves.

How Much Of That Matters?

All of it MATTERS. I just don’t know how much is going to make it into the book. That’ll be situationally dependent upon the needs of the plot.

However, we went from “bird mount of army” to all of that because our storybuilding led us to adding a Warbird to our adventuring party. As such, we needed to know rather a lot about the animals in order for its inclusion to actually drive the story forward. Because we went into that amount of detail, this warbird isn’t just an amusing animal companion — it drives character growth for not one but two of our heroes, and the problems it causes become plot points that affect the story.

When we added the “bird” to the party, we made sure it mattered, and we couldn’t do that without knowing more about it.

Cheebum and Banglo

Contrast that with a few other animals youthful-us added to our story a decade ago. The Banglo and the Cheebum.

Banglo are bunnycatkangaroo things. They’ve got the long ears of a rabbit, but the thick balancing tail of a kangaroo, tipped with a tuft of fur like a lion. Cheebum were developed at the same time, as part of a not-so-friendly rivalry between two mages. Cheebum are small like a mouse, but have some ungulate features, like hooves and grinding teeth so they can eat both grasses and seeds.

We know they were developed by Beast Cadre mages on a lark but that enough of them escaped to the wilds to start causing some serious problems with the native ecosystem. Rabbits and mice are now almost extinct.

How Much Of That Matters?

That’s it. That’s all we’ve got. Seems kind of weak compared to the worldbuilding we did for the Raptors, right?

Well, sure, but we don’t have any Banglo or Cheebum driving important plot points right now, excepting the historical significance of Beast Mages monkeying about with genetic manipulation. We don’t even have a character with a Banglo pet.

If it becomes important, we’ll add it at that time.

Worldbuilding Forever!

We focus our worldbuilding on the elements that need it. Otherwise, we’d NEVER finish worldbuilding. How many of us even know much about the plants and animals in our own biome, let alone ecosystems we don’t live in?

It’s a delicate balance, choosing what to build and what to leave out, but the primary question remains the same.

What matters for the STORY we’re trying to tell?

Everything else is just spinning our wheels, and I can assure you that I am itchy as heckfire to get started writing this story.

Related posts:

NaNo2010 > Worldbuilding 1
NaNo2010 > Worldbuilding 2
On Worldbuilding And Infodumps

[Bill Denise] Novel Revision Database

Hello again! Tami is way too nice to cut me off, so I’m here to offer you a completely self-serving post about my Novel Revision Database.

Don’t touch that dial! If you stay to the end there are two bonuses!

 

OK, what in the world is the Novel Revision Database? It started as a simple tool for organizing my notes during my revision travails, and over time has grown into a pretty fancy tool, if I do say so myself!

In order to understand how it works, it is best to try and understand my thought process – don’t be scared – we won’t go too deep.

Let me see if I can describe this coherently…

Revision Process

While re-reading my manuscript, I was looking for many different things, but the overall theme, if you will, was finding things that did not work. They could be characters, plots, sets, themes, or any other number of things. You can find excellent tools to help with this in both revision methods I mentioned in the previous post. But, no matter what process you use for revision, you will do something similar.

When I found something broken, either big or small, I made a note to myself and kept reading. Generally, it is good advice not to try and fix anything until you have the whole big picture together. Otherwise you could waste time rewriting a section that actually needs to be deleted, or something similar.

Next, I had to make a bunch of decisions on how to fix the problems. This is a long process, but not something I’m going to explore here in detail. It’s very specific to your novel and your style. The important thing for this discussion is that more notes were generated in this process. Again, I did not make changes to my novel, but merely made notes to myself.

Somewhere in the process, depending on your approach, you will break down your manuscript into scenes. This is a critical step, and begins the structure of the rewriting phase of the revision. In each scene, you list the important components such as characters, setting, plot, props, etc. This is important because your rewrite will proceed scene-by-scene, and it is at this level that you need access to all of the information you gathered from the big picture.

*dramatic music* This is why I created the Novel Revision Database.

The Novel Revision Database

(I’ll be using examples from the “Sample Novel” that comes with the database, so you will be able to follow along once you have a copy. I’ll use pictures too!)

The database is organized around “cards.” Specifically, Scene Cards, Character Cards, Set Cards, and Prop Cards. There are also plots, but they do not require whole cards devoted to them (although I could …). Now, as you are filling out the cards for each character, for example, you may have specific comments about that character that you know need to be addressed. You can enter these directly on the Character Card, and wherever that character shows up, these comments will come with him. You can do the same thing for sets, props, and scenes. See the picture to get an idea: This character, Esme Burdekin, has one specific note: She needs to show favoritism to Pryke (another character) earlier in the story. This is a real comment from my novel. I found that these two characters were strong allies in the end, but there was no hint of it early in the story. Therefore, I want to give the suggestion of an alliance early on, making me look like a good writer.  Now, when Esme shows up in a scene, this comment will also pop up, reminding me to make the change.

However, this is not the real power of the database. This gets harder to explain.

Note Association

Many notes are generated in a read-through before the scenes are defined and before the big picture is formulated. These comments can be entered on the general “Note Entry” form (see picture), and if you know nothing else, at least put down the page number or numbers where the comment is applicable.

Let’s follow a single, simple example:

During my review, I realized that I wrote the phrase “shook his head to clear it” waaay too often. So I entered a note and added a page reference every time I found the phrase. On the Note Entry form, you can also associate this note with a specific Character, Plot, Prop, Set, or Scene, but this is not required. In this example, it applied to more than one character and many scenes, so I only filled in the page numbers initially. As you play around with the database, you’ll find when it is best to use the other associations.

Then, once I have found all of the instances of this offensive phrase (and after I defined the scenes), I click “Assign Notes” on the Main menu and the database goes to work. Using the page numbers you entered on the comment and the page numbers defining the boundaries of each scene, it assigns the comment to the appropriate scenes.

Bear with me, just a short aside…

Scene Cards

Scenes are extremely important since they form the basic building block for the revision. It is in each scene that the words hit the page and you need to address all of the problems found during the read-throughs. Take a look at the Scene Card sample in the picture, and you will find details about the scene itself, plus the associated setting, plotline, props, and characters. It is through these associations that the database pulls together all of the applicable notes for the scene so you have everything you need in one neat package. Now we’ll see how it all comes together…

Scene Notes Report

Click on “View All Notes Associated with this Scene,” and the database looks at everything referenced on the scene card, pulls all of the pertinent notes from the data, and presents them in a list for your viewing pleasure. Then, to make it a little more useful, you can print the scene notes, which also includes the important info about the scene itself, as you can see in the picture. This is the report you want in front of you when you rewrite the scene. As long as you’ve made the associations properly, which is easy if you do them as you go along, the database ensures that you get all the right notes at the right time.

Viola! Easy revision!

(Then why is mine dragging on into its 5th month? Too much time spent programming, I say!)

If you’d like more detailed information on the Novel Revision Database, you can access the user’s manual here: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwkDqWr8d0ewMVp5Y0YwYThrUVk/edit?usp=sharing

Bonuses! (and prizes!)

For those of you still here, I have two offers for you: a discount and a contest!

The Discount: I plan to sell the Novel Revision Database for $20, but for the loyal readers of Tami’s blog it is available for only $5. I don’t have my own website set up yet, so you’ll have to buy it from eBay: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160981919440. Once you purchase, do not pay until I send you a reduced-price invoice.

This special pricing is only available if you purchase before March 15, 2013!

The Contest: Since “Novel Revision Database” is such a clever name, and I can’t seem to come up with something good myself, I thought we’d hold a naming contest. Please post your name ideas in the comments and the winner (chosen by me) will get a free copy of the database!!

Now THAT’S exciting!

Thank you for listening, and feel free to ask me any questions.

Related posts:

[Bill Denise] Adventures in Revision
[Bill Denise] Adventures in Writing
NaNo2010 > Of Flags and Notecards

[Bill Denise] Adventures in Revision

Hello, I’m back with the second part of my story:

Revision.

I was much happier when I didn’t understand what it meant.

After I finished my novel, I went back to the beginning and started reading and editing my work. I was fixing bad sentences, correcting the grammar and punctuation that I could find, and generally cleaning things up.

GREAT! Right?

Nope. Not great. Not at all.

It’s not that the things I was doing were wrong or bad, but at best they were out of order. Luckily I dropped a note to Tami and she set me on the right path. She told me that I needed a strategy for revision, much like I needed planning for my novel.

I did NOT like the sound of this. MORE PLANNING?!?

I wanted to burn through the manuscript, fix what I could and then drop it on some unsuspecting readers to help me find any problems with the story itself. Now I discover that there is even more work involved – more preparation before I can start revising my work? BAH!

And to make things worse: this time Tami did not have an excellent series of blog posts to teach me the method, I needed to find it elsewhere.

I started with Holly Lisle’s course How To Revise Your Novel (HTRYN). For those of you unfamiliar with the course, it is extremely detailed and absolutely FULL of wonderful tools to help you with the revision. The most important thing is this: it teaches you to go through your story start to finish to find things that are not working in the big picture. This sounds so small, but really it is soooo BIG. It is much, much more than correcting grammar and making sentences flow better. I was analyzing characters, plotlines, settings, and scenery at a level of detail I’d not seen since I was deep into worldbuilding. I’m not going to try and explain how and why here because, well, I couldn’t. Suffice it to say, her course probably covers every possible tool you could ever need to fix a novel.

I also referred to Cathy Yardley’s excellent little book Rock Your Revisions. This book is focused more on the process of revision, and as I tried to write my own summary of it, I found that the author said it best in her introduction: “…a simple, systematic approach to identifying what needs fixing in a manuscript, [followed by] a scene-by-scene revision plan..” I really liked her approach to the process, even though she did not provide as many tools as HTRYN.

For me, Rock was a breath of fresh air. While going through HTRYN, I often felt lost and disconnected from the overall plan. This is purely a personal-preference thing, due to my nature.

Perhaps I should explain…

If I’m putting something together, I’m the type of person who reads through all the instructions before I start.

When driving somewhere new, I read all of the turns and look at the big map before following turn-by-turn directions (This drives my wife crazy when she’s reading me directions in transit: Me: “what’s the next turn?” Her: “30 miles then take a right” Me: “and then what?” Her: [some variation of] “WHO CARES!?! IT’S 30 MILES AWAY AND YOU’LL ASK AGAIN WHEN WE GET THERE!” and she’s right, of course, but I can’t help it.)

In short, I’m crazy  I want to see the big picture, the destination, the final product BEFORE I start working from step 1. Therefore, Cathy’s explanation of the system made me much more comfortable during the whole process.

Both of the revision methods are very good, and you’ll have to decide which one suits your way of thinking. The most important lesson I learned was that revision is HARD, and it’s not as much fun as writing in the first place.

After using the big picture tools to determine what grand themes needed to be fixed, I read through the novel again, keeping these big ideas in the front of my thoughts. I made notes every time I found something out of line with the big picture.

Finally, I started writing-in the changes. I did this on a scene-by-scene basis, collecting the notes for everything involved in the current scene: sets, characters, props, plots, themes, etc. Armed with all of these notes, I could see where details, both big and small, had to be changed. The revision plan gave me the tools to reach the final destination using scene-by-scene guidance.

In the middle of my revision, I found that I had a whole lot of notes and no good way to organize them. So, being the geek that I am, I decided I needed a database to track them all! I developed a tool that I think is very helpful in this respect, which I cleverly named the Novel Revision Database. I won’t go into all the details here (possibly in another post, if Tami doesn’t banish me) but it allows you to take notes by subject, character, set, prop, plot, etc, or simply by page number as you read through your novel, and then using the magic of databases, it collects all of the relevant notes into the applicable scenes so you have them available as you revise scene-by-scene.

I’m still not done with my revision (did I mention it’s not really that much fun?), but I’m trying to knock it out in another couple of weeks. After it’s done I plan to send it to an editor and then self-publish. Once it’s done, I hope that Tami will let me advertise the fact on her blog.

Thank you for listening, I’ve enjoyed sharing my story with you. Feel free to contact me with any questions!

Related posts:

[Bill Denise] Adventures in Writing
Weekly Wordcount
Sketchbooks for Writers

[Bill Denise] Adventures in Writing

Hello! Tami has granted me the honor of writing a guest post for her wonderful blog, now I’ll try not to make her (and you) regret it!

I’d like to tell you a little story about my adventures in writing. But, before I begin, I need to tell you just a little bit about myself. I’m an engineer by schooling and a project manager by experience.

I was never a writer.

I learned a long time ago that creativity is not my strong suit, despite the fact that I have always tried to be creative. In junior high school I was the DM in our AD&D group (yes, I’m that old – AD&D was the newest version! ), but I mostly used store-bought campaigns. Try as I might, I never had the vision to create anything truly my own. I’ve had no formal writing training, and I barely get by in the real world with my rudimentary knowledge of grammar.

 

I have always loved reading. I read all of the John Carter of Mars books when I was young, and my love of science fiction and fantasy has grown ever since. Like many avid readers, I dreamed of writing my own novel some day. Also like much of the general populace, I thought that writing said novel was simply a matter of taking the time to do it. As you all know, I was wrong! I tried writing a couple of times, but gave up after only a few pages because I sucked.

Almost two years ago, through a long series of events while searching for tanking info for World of Warcraft (thanks Honorshammer!), I eventually found myself on the Saucy Ink website. There I learned about NaNoWriMo, and the writing bug was rekindled. Luckily, I also found Tami’s excellent NaNo prep course, and I followed every step of her plan or I would not be writing this today. (See, you CAN blame her for this post!)

I was surprised to discover that writing takes planning! Now, remember, I’m a project manager, so I’m all about planning! This I could understand. Taking what little creative juice I had, I planned the heck out of this novel. I planned for two whole months leading up to NaNo, and I needed every bit of it. To be honest, I find a lack of creativity can actually be helpful in this process, since I don’t have new and exciting ideas constantly knocking on the door and disturbing my focus.

So, I planned and I planned, and I waited for November to start. I also got involved in the Saucy Ink short story group, which helped me more than I can explain. I learned so much from that small group of talented writers, from reading their work and their critiques of others’ work. Submitting my short story to them for review was surprisingly frightening, even though they are all very nice people! The process taught me more about writing than any other single thing I’ve done.

NaNo was fun, crazy, and actually quite productive. I won, which simply means I wrote 50,000 words in the month, but more importantly, I discovered that writing is hard work. During the month I truly realized how important the planning was to actually getting words on the page. Without the planning guidance from Tami, I would never have had enough structure to allow the story to make it that far. A good idea is nice, but it won’t get you past anything longer than a short story.

With NaNo complete, my enthusiasm waned. I realized that 50,000 is nice, but my story was only half done.  At times I had to force myself to write a hundred words or so, and I found that it was best to write something every day, rather than waiting for the mood to strike. I won’t lie to you, there were long stretches when nothing at all made it to the page.  By now I really didn’t like my book anymore, but as I’ve mentioned, I had no other cool ideas trying to steal me away.

At one point I decided I didn’t need to finish. Why should I? I’m not writing a best-seller here, I’m not going to make a living as a writer, so who cares if I quit? I’m only doing for fun, right? Then my 11-year-old son asked me when the book would be done. Apparently he’d told his teacher that I was writing a book, and the teacher wanted to know when he could read it. If I quit now, it wouldn’t set a very good example would it?

So I buckled down. Somewhere I got the idea that I needed to finish the book before NaNo came around again. It should have been easy, but it wasn’t. I still struggled with getting words down, and now I’d hit the empty places in my initial outline from soooo long ago. Despite that fact, I had created the ending in the planning stage, and I knew (sort of) how to get there; there was simply the DOING.

Finally, during lunch while at work, I typed in “THE END” at around 107,000 words. It was October 31,2012. WHAT A RUSH!

Now comes the easy part – Revision! It’s easier than writing, right?

To be continued…

Related posts:

Writing Status, July 2012
NaNoWriMo is Uponxt Us
Where’d the Writing Go?

Art: Birthday Cubs

I’m actually getting my birthday art done early this year! My two favorite kidlets (and the only two who get yearly birthday art from me) are turning 2 and 3, so it’s time for new arts!

First up, we’ve got a blue lion cub (with a balloon) who is pretty sure you wanna wrestle.

After that, a rainbow snow leopard (also with a balloon) hugs her own tail, because seriously? If my tail was that fluffy? I’d be hugging it all the time.

Related posts:

That’s Not How You Blow Out Birthday Candles
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
Pre-Birthday Post

Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Tami Dreams of Writing.

So there’s this documentary out, called Jiro Dreams of Sushi. The movie is available on Netflix and is utterly gorgeous in its execution. The people who made the film aimed for “beauty” and hit their mark squarely.

On the surface, the film is about Jiro, the most celebrated sushi chef in Japan.

Underneath, it’s about motivation, dedication, and a philosophy of hard work.

During the intro, Jiro says the following quote, and I could not help but feel that he was speaking to me.

Once you decide on your occupation … you must immerse yourself in your work. You have to fall in love with your work. Never complain about your job. You must dedicate your life to mastering your skill. That’s the secret of success … and is the key to being regarded honorably.

This philosophy is how Jiro’s sushi bar became so highly regarded that its minimum $300 per plate, sushi-only menu requires reservations months in advance.

The first reviewer praises the simplicity of Jiro’s sushi. The brightness of the flavors in such a deceptively simple package.

There is no magic to Jiro’s sushi. No complex, miracle process that could not be duplicated. And yet he stands apart.

All octopus served in Jiro’s sushi bar is massaged for an hour before it is ever served to the diners.

Does it make a difference? I have no idea. I am not a sushi expert. It’s entirely possible I could be served Jiro’s sushi and find it delicious in much the same way I enjoy a roll from Sushi Muramoto in town here.

Surely all of that love, all of that attention to detail MUST matter, though. Even if each individual effort gives only a marginal improvement on the overall output, even if I don’t see or notice it … surely it matters.

Surely … surely the months of effort spent on worldbuilding Zonduth will be worth it. Surely, even if you never learn the complete history of the tragedy that overtook the once-verdant forest of Cruth, surely if you never realize that some fire mages are employed making glass or that an insect beast mage helped map the Tulata Tunnels beneath the Sonu Plains … surely it matters that it exists.

Surely the years spent learning story structure and plotting and characterization and sentence structure make a difference.

I am unlikely ever to be hailed as a national treasure, as Jiro is.

I can only hope that the reverence he feels for his sushi, the reverence that I feel for my writing … that it makes a difference.

Related posts:

Writing Status : In The Shop For Repairs
Taking Writing Seriously
Diagnosing And Solving A Writing Problem Through PoV

[Perry] Things to be Shared

There is something that I need to share with you and I want…no, I NEED you to listen, okay?

This applies primarily to those pursuing endeavors of a creative nature but really, you know what? You can apply this to just about any and every aspect of your life so long as you’re attempting to expand your horizons.

So this is me, trying to help you. This is me telling you that I know exactly what you’re going through.

This is me, telling you with all of the blood and fiber of my being that you are not alone and so long as you refuse to give up, it’s okay.

Just about everyone we know has gone through it, are going through it or will go through it.

There are no shortcuts, no secret paths through the brush. The only way out is through to the other side and I need, NEED you to know that you’re not alone. That we’re all in this together and that we’re all HERE for you.

At the end of the day, all we have is each other. So keep it in mind, in the dark teatimes of your soul when it seems all hope is lost and you question why you’re bothering to do what you do.

We all understand.

You’re not alone.

So don’t you guys love how I deftly managed to switch the topic from what I was talking about to the nature of love?

Moving on, Patrick Rothfuss’s blog has been a source of neverending wonder to me and never more so than recently when he put up a post on Valentine’s day about the nature of love.

If you’ve ever loved or thought about the nature of love before, I think you owe it to yourself to take a look at it.

The post hugged my freaking heart and I didn’t even know that was possible. 

So, do yourself a favor. Read this post then go and find the people you love most in the world and give them a hug. Tell them that you love them.

Because I’m sure we can agree that the world could use a few more hugs these days.

Related posts:

[Perry] Write What You Know
[Perry] Perry’s Review of The Unremembered
[Perry] Using An Unreliable Narrator

How To Review A Book on Goodreads or Amazon

Book Reviews

A blog request from Ted, and one that I was very happy to fulfill.

In general, a blog review on a website is intended to fulfill multiple purposes. It should educate, answer questions, show the reader how to purchase the book, and hopefully entertain at the same time.

If you’re writing a book review for a site like Amazon or Goodreads, though, you have only one thing to do.

Answer the reader’s question of “should I read this book.”

I do not comb through goodreads just to learn more about the reviewers. I’m satisfying a need of my own to find books for me. It’s an entirely selfish thing. Rarely do I read a review simply for the pleasure of reading the review.

A Simple Question

Clearly, the question is anything but simple. I have loved books that have been HATED by my friends, and vice versa. You, reader who came before me, have no way of knowing whether I should read this book.

In order to help answer the question for me, you have to go into just enough detail to help me figure it out for myself.

Medium Length

A short review is often missing detail that I’d need. “OMG best book ever, you should totally read this!” doesn’t help me at all.

A LONG review is just too long. I’m glancing down the page in a hurry. I don’t have time for an essay. If your review is significantly longer than 500 words, it might be time for you to consider starting a blog post.

Bias

If you are biased (either for or against) anything about the book, mention it. “I loved this book dearly, but I freely admit that I love talking animals in stories.” or “I’m not a huge fan of this author’s other work, but I surprised myself by really enjoying this one.”

This personalizes your review. Whether the person reading the review agrees with you or not, you have made it much easier for them to determine if they want to read the book or not.

Specific Good Things

“It was amazing and breathtaking”

Does this mean :

The prose was nearly poetic in voice, with beautiful drawn-out imagery.

or

The adventure took my breath away, with death-defying maneuvers and hairsbreadth escapes.

It fits equally well with both, but you can see how the second one is more helpful to the reader trying to find their next “fix”. =]

Bad Things

Be careful with the bad things.

When reading reviews, I like to know what didn’t work. Knowing that a character was weak or that the book is written in first person present tense and you’re not a fan helps me decide if the GOOD things you mention outweigh the BAD, at least for me.

I do NOT like to read passionate diatrabes about how worthless the author and the text is.

Remember, you’re not writing hate mail to the author here, you’re reviewing a book.

If the characters were shallow and the plot ridiculous, don’t feel like you need to avoid saying those things simply to keep from being negative. Keep it professional, though. Imagine you have to say these things in front of the author themselves, in person. While you’re at it, go ahead and imagine that they genuinely want to know what you didn’t like about the book and that they are very nice people who love stories and kittens and warm chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven.

No, you’re not supposed to be writing these reviews for the authors. You’re writing them for readers. But sometimes imagining the person who just cut you off in traffic is a sweet sweet man who noticed what he did at the very last moment and now feels just awful about it can help you forgive and sometimes imagining that you have to deliver bad news to a nice person motivates you to soften the blow a little.

And sometimes I just can’t find anything nice to say, so I either don’t review it at all, or give it a low star rating and move on with my life.

Review the BOOK

Don’t review the author. Don’t review the shipping or the packaging or the cover art.

If you hated book 1 but this is book 2, focus on THAT. If you heard that the author said “X!” in an interview and you found that offensive, the book review is not the place to get your anger off your chest. The opposite is also true. If Rowling can do no wrong in your eyes, and you spend the entire review talking about her charity work … that’s nice, but it’s not about THIS book. Get a blog! *grin*

I am surely not the only one who is growing frustrated with one star “shipping sucked!” or “why can’t they write book X again?!” reviews.

Goodreads Specifically

My goodreads account has much of the Saucy Ink group friended, as well as a few others. I have their reviews batched into a single email and sent to me, and there are a few folks on the list who do FANTASTIC book reviews. (You may choose to include a link to your Goodreads page if you like, I just didn’t want to out you. You know who you are.)

Any Other Tips?

Any reviewers (or readers of reviews) out there who have something to add? What do you like to see, and what are you tired of seeing?

Related posts:

Book Review : Shotgun Gravy
Book Series Review : The Underland Chronicles
Book Review: Beka Cooper Series by Tamora Pierce