Tim Learn's Blog, page 15
March 21, 2016
One More Review for Chewy
Here’s a review from a fellow introvert who’s done a bang up job. Besides reviews, you should check out the photos of books he takes. He definitely has a knack.
[Review] Chewy Noh and the Fall of Mu-dang (Chewy Noh, #1) by Tim Learn
March 19, 2016
Chewy 3 Review
Here’s another review for the third Chewy from a great and phenomenal blogger who just started self-hosting. Check her and it out.
A Review of Chewy Noh and the March of Death by Tim Learn
March 3, 2016
Top Three Rules for Descriptions
Top Three Rules for Descriptions
When it comes to descriptions, most newbie writers—and even some vets—go way overboard. To some degree, I understand why. When I started, I did the same thing. In part, it was due to all those exquisite books I read and loved. Their words flowed through my head, and getting an image, I tried to capture it in the same way some of my favorite classic writers had done. The only problem with this is: that’s not how things work now. Styles change. What worked for Pope, Dickens, or even Doestovesky, won’t work now. The grandiose verbiage and overly wrought paragraph of physical description are no longer chic. In fact, they’re out right shunned, and for good reason. They slow the story down. Why do you think it is that so many modern readers dread reading classics? Not everyone has an ear for them, no less the patience. So here I’ve outlined some guidelines to keep the story moving, with less speed bumps of description along the way.
Scenery
Now, don’t get me wrong—scenery description is a must. I’m not telling you to shirk your authorial duties altogether and throw this aspect away. Yet, it does seem this area of description has quite a dichotomy. Some give none; others, too much.
To address the former, we need it to now where our characters are and to ground them in our heads. Don’t deny us this.
To the latter, please remember the rule of three. Far too often writers delve into every little detail, categorizing it in long lists and in hyper spatial depictions. This is not necessary. Instead, give us the three key elements to the scene. And when describing something specific, limit yourself to three as well. Three adjectives are much better than a page. Trust me!
The staircase wound upwards like a snake in the dusty library. In fact, the dust was so prevalent hardly anyone entered without sneezing. But that didn’t mean people didn’t enter, as it clearly was the best room in the house with all the windows letting in glorious amounts of natural light. In essence it was a reader’s sanctuary, filled with old tomes and warmth. Even the bumpy floors brought a delicate ‘lived-in’ feel that couldn’t help but invite even the most hesitant guest from taking a seat for a breather, if it weren’t for the dust. And after sitting for a while, that said guest would soon notice the woodwork surrounding the shelves—handcrafted with ornate gargoyles along the top. Dropping their eyes to the ground, one would also see the gold trim that lined the floor, framing the room as if it were a masterpiece, which truly it was with its stark maroon ceiling and turquoise walls, each with their own lamp glowing gently. If anyone ever actually cleaned the place, the room’s true beauty would be much easier to spot, but as it was the dust suffocated everything.
A bad paragraph? Maybe not. Is it a useful paragraph? Decidedly no. Though it characterizes a room, it would be much better to show characters sneezing as they enter the room, and leave the extra wordage on the floor. The problem with these paragraphs particularly is that if you start describing one thing this way, all your paragraphs end up this way, and then where are you?
2) People
Again, when it comes to the characters in their work, certain writers go crazy, defining all the astounding aspects and qualities their beloved protagonist or antagonist may have. However, most of us find this boring. Instead, the best thing I’ve noticed to do is to pick one or two defining traits so we get an idea of what the characters looks like. Along with this, make sure to identify these characteristics in relation to an action they are performing or in contrast to something in their environment. The last thing you want to do is to show the person standing up in the morning and then going into a long, windy production about how they look. Always tie it into the world around them.
3) Actions
Here you may be confused, but what I want to point out is how a few people falter at appropriately describing the actions of their characters. Unlike scenery—where three is the magic number—here, leave it at one. If your character is doing something, don’t add extra words to depict the same thing again and again. In your head, you may think this sounds awesome or very ‘writerly.’ But it doesn’t come off that way. It just slows things down, and above all, could confuse your reader. Make sure their actions are different and not a repeat of the action before. Look below.
Hearing Tessa’s compliment, Tommy turned red, grew shy, and couldn’t speak. “Thanks,” he said.
Here we see the author showing us that Tommy is embarrassed by the compliment Tessa gave him, but it’s written in their twice—turning red, growing shy—and further more, made confusing by saying he couldn’t speak, despite him then issuing a “thanks.” Connecting the emotions to actual movements can sometimes help, like here:
Hearing Tessa’s compliment, Tommy turned his head shyly and swallowed hard out of embarrassment. “Thanks,” he said.
All in all, keeping things simple will win over the reader and keep the plot moving. Good luck!
March 1, 2016
A Reflection of One Year
A Reflection of One Year
I’m happy to say I’ve now had this blog up and running for a year. On top of that, I’ve published a hefty amount of posts. It’s been thrilling so far to have an outlet as well as something that keeps me focused on not just writing fiction and getting it out there for people to see, review, and comment on, but also to have a place to put up and produce more writing in general. Having somewhere to do so is a boon to fine-tune one’s writing and to tinker with the clarity of sentences.
Added to this, I’ve read and reviewed many books—all of which are self-published. In total, I’ve downed over thirty of these types of books, ranging in genre and skill. Though most have not been up to the quality I expect in a book, I have seen that most writers probably just need another round at editing, if not a few more hours of practice, which the manuscripts I’ve read clearly are the stepping-stones to something bigger and better if they stick with it.
Here I am, hoping for another productive and interesting year of reading and writing.
February 28, 2016
End of February Review
End of February Review
Clearly, I haven’t been very productive this month, and that goes without saying. I’ve been mighty busy visiting home, flying here and there. Overall, it’s been a good break and I’m happy to be back. Nonetheless, I’ll run down what I was able to accomplish, if at all.
Books Read and/or Reviewed
As stated before, I’m not reviewing or reading any self-published books over my vacation. I hope to get back into the swing of things soon, though that might be hard for the next couple of weeks. As for my other reading, that, too, has suffered, but I can say that I’ve started a few books, actually. They will most likely be up on my goodreads tally soon.
Book Reviews Received
Again, my reviews received have been slow. I got one post onto goodreads. Otherwise, most bloggers I go to have been busy and will be reading and hopefully posting about Chewy Noh sometime soon. That being said, I did renew my goodreads ad, but haven’t seen my sales or clicks bounce back up. With this in mind, I’m wondering why the sudden slump of interest.
Progress on 2016 goals
Finish Chewy 5: No writing done this month, but with all the free time on flights from city to city, I was able to edit and review over the first part. This has allowed me to get a better scope and grip of the story. I’m excited to get back to work and start pushing forward into the final lap.
Read ‘The Recognitions’: Again, little progress here. I’ve picked up Wallace’s ‘Broom of the System,’ Ness’ ‘The Knife of Never Letting Go,’ and Nelson’s ‘I’ll Give You the Sun,’ so I might be backed up for the time being before cracking that big tome open. But it will happen!
Compiling my Editing book: Sadly, I haven’t even looked at this, but with only two months down, I feel a little more procrastination is fine.
Next Month’s Agenda
I hope to put down the fourth part in Chewy 5. On top of this, I have two books I’m beta-reading, and from the looks of it, both need extensive work. Added to this, I will be reading and finishing the new books on my TBR (listed above), along with, hopefully, restarting my semester of reviews for self-published authors. It should be a busy March.
February 9, 2016
On Reviews
On Reviews
Since publishing my own books and taking on the task of critiquing others’ works, I can’t get the difficulty of reviews out of my head. It’s frustrating, and I’ve never really paid attention to it before.
First off, it’s subjective. You may think I’m stupid since that’s clearly a given, but what I’m trying to say here is that each reviewer comes up with their own criteria with which to judge a work. Most often, they post these criteria on their blogs, and when deciding whom I want to review my book, I examine them thoroughly. However, the disconnect happens when the review is read. I have a feeling not too many readers go an search the criteria out to clarify the reviewers feelings. I know I don’t. I see a book I’m interested in and I read the review, never once questioning where this perspective originates.
Furthermore, if you look at any Goodreads or Amazon review page, you’ll see the oddity of the system. Because of these two tent poles for reviewing, many use the five star rating to judge books; however, the use of it lacks reason. I’ve seen one person review a book as two stars, citing bad punctuation while another will give it four stars, citing the same problem. At other times, a reviewer will give a rave review, strongly urging many to read it, and yet give the book only three stars.
I keep returning to this issue only because I can’t wrap my head around it all. Does it really help anyone to read reviews when they are so varied and so different? I’ve noticed that for myself, most reviews tend to be far skewed from my reaction anyways, yet it seems that many authors and other book authorities alike keep attesting to how much reviews are needed. One author even tried to persuade me into just pushing the star rating up to five but leaving my complaints that same. I can’t help feeling a little useless.
February 2, 2016
What I learned from Coates’ ‘Between the World and Me’
What I learned from Coates’ ‘Between the World and Me’
First off, there is no way I can encapsulate everything I learned from this book in one small post. This tiny book focuses on the death of Prince Jones, and is a behemoth of emotions and insights that cannot be rightfully reviewed or detailed. Almost every page brought me pause, and even after a week of finishing it, I still ruminate over its implications. The least of which is below.
While walking the other day—here in Korea—one element of Mr. Coates’ book struck me particularly strong. In my Korean context, it is quite normal for Korean children and other learners of English to adopt Western names, usually of the Biblical type as in Mark, John, Paul, and David. Strangely, my middle name—Michael (the most common name in America)—is undetectable here; not one child so far in my ten year tenure, which explains why they keep pronouncing it as ‘Michelle.’
The peculiarity strikes me after recalling my French and German classes where I, too, took on foreign names, only to hastily discard them as soon as the classes ended. However, here in Korea, this doesn’t happen so quickly.
Many students hold on to their names throughout all of their schooling, including my wife, who as an English teacher, is now known and addressed by her English name regularly by mothers. In fact, one of her close friends once even asked her to get the phone number of a certain reputable teacher, only to have my wife turn to her and say, “I am her,” in full Gatsby manner (sans the Gatsby smile, of course—no one can pull off that smile, not even Leonardo DiCaprio.)
I guess what I’m saying is I don’t understand why Koreans so readily adopt Western names to appear more comfortable to the West. Many Korean stars have already done so—Gianna Jun, just to name one. Yet it has never made sense to me. Korea is a full culture that is related and expressed in their names. What is wrong with Korean names in a Western context?
With this, I return to Coates’ book. He sets down that, in his own vocabulary, that he and others like him are forced to live along others who believe they are white and whom perpetrate the advance and belief of the Dream—the belief of being white. I love the way he rarely uses the word ‘racism’ because, as he points out early on, many say they are not racist and yet act in a way that clear fuels a greater systemic problem.
In this way, we get to the tragic tale of his friend, Prince Jones, and already, with the mention of his first name, I can hear a certain sub-section of America scoffing at it. His name, as many African American names do, represents a collection of values and culture, but sadly are used by a number of individuals at large as one more bit of proof as to why people like Prince Jones will never fit into society. And until now, I didn’t understand either side. A name is a name, no?
But after reading his entire book, I’ve never been hit so hard with this dichotomy. I see the readiness of certain Koreans to toss of their names to appease Western values, and find it strange and a bit disconcerting, and yet at home, this ridiculousness is regularly thrust upon a whole group of Americans how are ‘Western!’ I just can’t help buy wonder why must everyone have white-worthy names to succeed or be recognized? It doesn’t make sense to me.
January 30, 2016
End of January Review
End of January Review
This months been busy with preparing for my trip to America, teaching my lessons, and tackling my projects, but overall, I’m happy with what’s turned out. Here we go.
Books Read and/or Reviewed
For my vacation time, I’m not reviewing any self-published works, but that doesn’t mean I don’t read. So here are the books so far that I’ve gone through. My book is there too because—well—I had some editing to do before it got sent out, so I figured why not.
Book Reviews Received
Overall, it was a slow month for reviews and sales. I believe quite possibly me ending my ads on Goodreads is one cause of this. I had not idea the daily clicks I received from them helped so much. I’ve just started a new campaign, so I’ll see how that turns out. Otherwise, this month’s reviews for Chewy Noh are below.
Progress on 2016 goals
Finish Chewy 5: I’m happy to say my progress here is going along smoothly. I’ve finished part three out of the usual five part structure. Already this book is looking to be the biggest yet. At a little over the half way mark it is about the size of the first book alone. I don’t know whether that’s a good sign or not.
Read ‘The Recognitions’: Unfortunately, I haven’t even started here. I’m leaving this monstrous undertaking for when my semester starts in March. I’m hoping I will have a lot of downtime to read….but so far my schedule is looking to be pretty tight. Still, crossing my fingers.
Compiling my Editing book: Again, little has been done. I have at least six more posts to produce before I can start compiling and organizing a format and theme to the overall look and feel. I hope to get some down in February, but that may not happen.
Next Month’s Agenda
I worked hard in January because I’ll be gone in February and may not get to many things. Nonetheless, I plan on rereading the first part of Chewy 5 and to have notes ready for me upon my return from vacation. In addition, I want to push out some of those grammar points along with a few other posts. Beyond that, I will be buying more books in America that I hope to add to my future reading lists.
January 29, 2016
The First Review for Chewy 3
Jenna did a great job here. I hope everyone checks out her review!
January 22, 2016
Another Well Writren Chewy 2 Review
Got a great review from the beta reader. Check it out!
