Courtney Wendleton's Blog, page 18
December 26, 2016
How Do You Get Readers to Trust You?
by Jacqui Murray
I went to my bi-weekly writer’s critique group last night. We get submittals ahead of time, gather our thoughts and comments, and then each of us gets 5 minutes during the meeting to share our suggestions. This week, we were reviewing the work of one of my favorite group authors–we’ll call her Mari. She is writing an amazing piece about a family coping with Alzheimer’s. It’s character-driven fiction, but could also be classified as creative non-fiction so detailed and realistic are the scenes.
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Writing the Building Blocks of a Page-Turner
by Allison Maruska
Books are made of chapters, and chapters are made of scenes. Those segments of the story are what hold the whole thing together. Write them well, and you have a page-turner. Write them not so well, and…zzzzzz.
No writer wants to do that to their readers, so it’s worth figuring out what makes a scene good.
I decided to write this post when I ran across this quote on the interwebs: “There are only three kinds of scenes: A fight, a seduction, or a negotiation.” – Mike Nichols
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Reading is Not the Same After Writing
by Samantha Fenton
One of the most surprising things I found had happened as a result from starting to write seriously, was how I read books differently. After writing a novel, I can’t look at a book the same way again – which makes sense, right?
Picture someone close to you deciding to play soccer. You don’t know much about soccer. Turns out, that someone is really into it, and you end up going to a lot of their games and listening to them talk about it all the time. You’re going to have a different view about soccer now because of it. Now, maybe you can watch a soccer game on tv without being bored. You can watch a player shoot a goal and you can say, “wow! What a great play!” Or see the player make a pass a say, “what a terrible pass. They should’ve held onto it!”
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December 18, 2016
Why the Reader Put That Book Down
I do a ridiculous amount of reading because it is part of my job as a writer. My job in particular because I blog about craft. I read all genres and go through anywhere from 2-4 books a week. Audible will go bankrupt if I’m ever hit by an ice cream truck.
This said, I think I’m in a fairly good position to guide you guys on pitfalls to avoid from a reader’s POV. These are the mistakes that will have me railing at the heavens and throwing a book across the room…followed by depression because I can never get those wasted hours back.
I just returned a book so bad that I cannot believe I read as much of it as I did. It is a prime example why reviews can be misleading, even good ones.
I finally had to return it because there was just not enough blood…
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How to Write More Meaningful Symbolism
by Millie Ho
Netflix’s Luke Cage was an entertaining series, and it also helped me understand how to write better symbolism.
Here’s a summary of my talking points.
AVOID USING SUPERFICIAL SYMBOLISM
In school, I was taught to reference existing works or mythologies if I was writing symbolism. For example, a guy who was strong would be given the name Hercules. Or I would use colours to represent different character attributes. Green was the colour of greed, so a character who was greedy would carry a green purse, which became a symbol.
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December 16, 2016
Join the #WovenWords_Dream_Team!
After a shout out calling for authors and writers to join Book Bank on Facebook, for book reviews and other pre and post publishing activities, I am here to share a wonderful opportunity with all my friends who love to review books.
We all know how difficult it is to write a full fledge novel. Then reaching out to the agents or publishers is a totally different ball game. Keeping that in mind, I feel that as reviewers how we could probably play an important role in a writer’s journey in becoming an author. A published author!
So, this is one new initiative which I wish to see my friends join as a team while we strive to fulfill more dreams!
Here is the formal announcement about it!
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Calling all bloggers/social media markets/youtubers etc.
As everyone is gearing up for the holiday season and awaiting the silent…
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December 15, 2016
Contest Time!
Hello readers and writers!
Today marks the first day in a month-long contest. The talented Sean Lowery with High Impact Covers and author Allison Maruska have generously donated prizes to 6 winners. Here’s what 6 lucky people will win:
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Fuller House Flip or Flop?
Season 2 was just released a couple of days ago and everybody has been binge watching. Myself included, but as with Season 1 it is painfully obvious that the writers have no clue about the original series. Yes, this is not going to be a “happy go watch the show” post. There are so many things wrong that tick me off.
Starting with the biggest thing that irks me: Kimmy Gibbler. By the end of the original series she was bugging me because there was no character development with her then and for the most part, there still isn’t any character development. She is still the dumb best friend comic relief. There are small moments of maturity, but even those are marred by sheer dumb luck. Further perpetuating the stereotypical dumb blonde.
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In contrast to prove my point about her, at the high school reunion they brought Duane back. The boyfriend who used to say “Whatever” all the time. He matured and made something of himself. Yes, Kimmy was still able to turn him into a big pile of “whatever” goo but that was because I think he still has a crush on her, or that is what we are supposed to think. In any case he went from caveman, to normal human person! Kimmy is still an idiot.
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The crass, dirty jokes that are part of “aging with the original audience.” The original audience grew up with clean, family friendly jokes. Some may have been aimed at the parents, but were never so openly in the gutter. One instance that sticks out most right now is in Season 2 Episode 1. Fernando is wearing Kimmy’s robe. It is too small and right away you know he is going to bend over and his junk is going to be exposed. In the original, this would have been done with more finesse, showing him bending forward with junk away from camera. Today the junk is blocked out in full view of the audience. Oddly enough I can’t find a screen grab of the scene, but it happened.
Then, with the crass and lazy humor, there is the full on shock value of same sex kisses exchanged by hetero characters. Kimmy and Stephanie, a couple of times.
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Matt and Steve
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And while there have not been full out kissing between the three, but Fuller House has completely perverted the platonic relationships between Danny, Jesse and Joey. Almost every scene they are in together, the script alludes to them being together. Watching the original series, you know there was nothing like that going on. It would have been ok, but I don’t think that anyone would have even thought about it if Bob Saget hadn’t said that he took the part because he thought it was about being progressive and was “three men in a relationship raising kids.” This was revealed in the Lifetime Movie Network “documentary” about how the series got started.
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Poor Becky has been turned into a baby hungry robot. I swear every other word out of her mouth has been “baby” the other word being “want.” I think the writers finally got tired of hearing it too and gave into her demand by letting her adopt a child at the end of season two. Now what are they going to do with her character? Is she going to demand another child? One of their own? Or is she going to talk Stephanie into letting her be a surrogate?
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Speaking of Stephanie, Oh my God! They have turned her into a slut. Not only have we seen her go through a few on the show, it is alluded to her going through them like a diabetes in a candy store while she was working as a dj. Obviously she has been characterized as the female version of Jesse before he settled down with Becky, but really? Let’s make her a slut in order to replace the Jesse from season one of Full House.
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Given her the inability to have children and paired her up with a nimrod who was invented for this part. He was never mentioned in the original series, Kimmy only had an older brother named Garth and possibly younger sisters.
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Let’s not forget the numerous slight of hand jokes shoved down our throats and aimed at the Olsen Twins. We get it they didn’t want to do the show and everyone is upset. They didn’t want to do the show, get over it and move on. Their little sister at one point said she would step in for them. Let her. If not use another actress or leave Michelle where she is. Stop hounding the twins and the audience like we can do something about it.
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The new kids don’t really bother me too much. Jackson can be a brat off and on, I’m waiting to pass judgement on the middle son because I think they are building up for something with him and if they lead us in the wrong direction with him, I will be pissed. The babies can’t do any wrong, they are babies. Ramona…I don’t have bad or good to say about her. She is just there. Same as the “Popco(?)” and “Lola” characters. They don’t add much but they don’t take away much either.
And is New Kids on the Block going to be replacing the reoccurring roles of the Beach Boys? If so couldn’t you have picked a better band? They kind of suck
I’m pretty sure there is more, but that’s all I can think about right now. My wine is clouding my memory. Anyone else think the new series is going down the toilet?
An introduction to the writers of the Grimdark group part 1
This will be a pretty lengthy post so I’ll split it up in two or more parts. Long story short in this post I will introduce you all to the lovely writers of our Facebook group Grimdark Fiction Readers & Writers. Many of whom have been published but I’ll also be introducing the aspiring and unpublished writers because everyone deserves a little grimdark love.
Grimdark was use by emos and goths through the years, it has also been used in the Warhammer 40k world. In the last years it’s mainly used to describe the darker fantasy book genre. When you see the term grimdark used to describe a book or graphic novel don’t expect happy endings and squishy pink unicorns.
So what can you expect when grimdark is used to describe a book? Well, expect main characters to be evil not every faerie loves children some just enjoy eating them…
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10 Things I’ve Learned From Self-Publishing
by J.U. Scribe
It’s been three years since I self published my first book. It’s definitely been a learning experience marked by relative successes and failures. As I mark the 3rd anniversary since I self-published Before the Legend , here are the top ten things I’ve learned over the course of three years in no particular order.
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