EDITING EDITING EDITING
Okay. I’ve talked about this subject a few times before, right? More than a few times. Because it’s my web site, I can write what I want, and I have to follow my muse, my muse says, talk about editing again!
This doesn’t come out of a vacuum. Anecdotal incidents drove me to this and I think it’s time to bring it up again, especially for any new readers to my site (and as a reminder to you long-time members).
FOREST THROUGH THE TREES
I think that was even the title of one of my articles a ways back. The other morning, I edited a story by another editor. Why? Because she wrote it. That’s exactly why I took my crack at editing. She wrote it. Forest through the trees.
As an editor myself, I know I can’t see beyond my nose a lot of times, and need that separate set of eyes. Of course, with all the experience behind me, I have better chops and what I initially put down is a lot better than what I used to write. It may take less editing than some people, but it’s far from perfect. That’s why I had no problem finding plenty of flaws in this editor’s own work. It can’t be helped.
There are very few people with the skill to put down a story who can edit it and have it perfect. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but let’s be real folks, most of us aren’t that good. I know I’m not.
PRINT AND READ
I know I should, but I hardly ever print a copy of my chapters and go through them before writer’s group. I edit them on the computer screen. A good example of what happens is the Monday a week ago. When I read it, I had plenty of cringe-worthy moments where I found glaring typos I should’ve caught and would’ve if I’d simply printed a copy and read it first.
WE’RE NOT IN ENGLAND OR CANADA
I still see this all the time from American writers.
Towards instead of toward.
Backwards instead of backward.
At university instead of at the university.
At hospital instead of at the hospital.
We don’t speak the Queen’s English in the good old You Ess And A.
BEGAN TO AND STARTED TO
Two of my major pet peeves, which I’ve harped on, over and over again, came to the forefront with that editor’s story yesterday. Another writer edited that same story. He added a bunch of began to’s into it. I wanted to scream!
With both of those passive phrases, my philosophy is this: Even though they’re part of the English language, they should be used sparingly! In both cases, you either do it or you don’t. Case closed! Don’t be vague!
STARTING A SENTENCE WITH AND AND BUT
As for And, it’s just plain bad English to start a sentence in the middle, and that’s basically what you’re doing with And. That doesn’t always apply with dialogue (where grammar rules are often broken). However, I even use that form of it sparingly. Overuse can be just as bad as using it in narrative which I never use.
As for But, my philosophy is this: Do you walk forward with your ass? Then don’t start a sentence with But! It’s just plain bad English. It looks bad and sounds bad. Dialogue is another story, of course.
I COULD GO ON AND ON
The list goes on and on but I’ve preached this often enough. Lately, I’ve seen those three biggies in amateur writing till I’m blue in the face (okay, now that’s a big cliché). Point being, we all need to edit edit edit.
It never ends, right until that manuscript is taken out of our cold dead hands (to quote Charlton Heston).
Happy writing!
DEMONSTRATING MY POINT
I finally found another new icky bug on the shelves. Once again, as I’ve done with most other books I’ve talked about, I won’t mention the title so not to bias you one way or the other. My point is to bring up a few issues I’ve been talking about to show how they have been ignored for good or bad.
CHARACTER EXPOSITION
The author uses the first half of the book to introduce a large cast of characters. His technique is to start each chapter with a bit of action then use the majority of that chapter to delve into the characters life story, ending with a bit of action to sum it up. This pattern holds true for eight or ten major characters and a few minor ones as well.
STORY FLOW
What he did right is that each chapter has a beginning, a middle and an end. He also has a flow. However, he develops a pattern of tedium which doesn’t change much until the second half where the real action picks up. By then, all the characterization is out of the way and the story moves.
WHATS WRONG WTH THIS PICTURE?
This could work okay in a novel, which it did for me, though I found the first half a bit tedious and repetitious. It wasn’t until the second half that the action really kicked in. To repeat a word, the real kicker for me is that this novel was originally an e-book serial! That’s right, it was originally published as a series of e-books. That means the first two mini-books in the series were basically all character exposition, with just enough action to glue it all together.
Since this book, not sure if it was the completed form or the original serial, was endorsed by Stephen King and Dean Koontz, I’m not surprised. Both authors, especially King, love to blather on and on and on with character exposition while sprinkling in just enough action to give the story a little movement. I’m no fan of King. However, at least with Koontz, he tends to move things along. His books are shorter and more to the point.
There are plenty of people out there who are big fans of character exposition, so they latched right on to the first two installments of this series. By the end, the author had enough sales to warrant a printed novel.
The author did two things I don’t recommend. He slammed the reader with way too much character exposition, and his story flow was tedious for the first half of the book. Yet he got published apparently on the merits of good e-book sales and high-end author endorsements.
It can be done that way. So far, the reviews are very mixed, like from one to four stars, so I’m not exactly off the mark, despite the endorsements. Time will tell.
I know of too many great authors that do it right and get much better reviews.
The choice is yours.
Happy writing.
THE OVERUSE OF AND
One of my writing foibles is that I like to tie sentences together by using the word and. Though technically there’s nothing wrong with that, when it comes to good prose, and isn’t such a great choice.
AN OVERUSED CONJUNCTION
We tend to find and to be the easy way out. When we have two sentences, two thoughts and we don’t want to break them down, we string them together with an and. As I’m writing, I do that all the time. That can make for sentences that come close to breaking the arbitrary 25 word sentence rule. Ever heard that one? I might have mentioned that a long time ago in a very early post called Write To A Sixth Grade Level.
You story should be a pleasure to read, not tedious work. Unless you’re writing a college text, the whole point of writing fiction is to entertain your reader. The simpler way you get from point A to B, the better.
If your sentences are too long, the reader tends to lose focus and their mind drifts. The powers-that-be ran all kinds of tests and determined that the average person’s mind tends to drift when the sentences get over 25 words, especially when they’re reading for pleasure. Of course, that rule is broken all the time including by me, but there are some sentences that are just too long! I’ll bet you find an and or two at a great place to break things down.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF USING AND TOO MUCH
And is often used in lists, which is another subject, but putting that aside, in our context, it ties two thoughts together, two sentences that could stand on their own. When you see a sentence with an and in the middle, and it’s not part of a list, that’s a red flag.
Meleena leaned over and took a sip of water from the creek and then wiped the blood off her sword.
I’m keeping things simple for illustration porpoises…
Which and would you think is the one to cut? Would you cut either?
Let’s look at that sentence re-written the way I would do it for better and more immediate prose.
Meleena leaned over and took a sip of water from the creek. She wiped the blood off her sword.
I eliminated and then and made it more rhythmic and urgent.
It didn’t take her too long to see that going down that path would be more dangerous, and listening to Grel wasn’t the best way, but if she were to go the other way and run across problems, and if the old wizard threw them back in her face, would she be able to live that down and still be able to face her friends?
Whew, is that a mouthful! 65 words. Enough to make my eyes glaze over. Maybe you have a higher tolerance than I do, but geez.
There are several places ripe for breaking this massive mouthful into manageable thoughts.
One train of thought is to try reading that mouthful. A good place to break for a period is where you’d pause for a breath.
It didn’t take her long to see that going down that path would be more dangerous, and listening to Grel wasn’t the best way, but if she were to go the other way and run across problems, and if the old wizard threw them back in her face, would she be able to live that down and still be able to face her friends?
Notice I threw another conjunction in there, a but. As many of you know, I have a pet peeve about that word also, but not usually when it’s used within sentences, only when it starts a sentence. However, in this case it’s another conjunction.
In some of those cases, you may be wondering why I picked those spots or how they could be turned into complete sentences. Also, how could it be made to not sound choppy? Let’s see.
It didn’t take her long to see that going down that path would be more dangerous. Listening to Grel wasn’t the best way. If she were to go the other way and run across problems, would the old wizard throw them back in her face? Would she be able to live that down and still be able to face her friends?
See? Not so bad.
THERE ARE NO ABSOLUTES (EXCEPT MAYBE THE VODKA)
The point is to make your story as user friendly as possible. That means use the best grammar and prose as you can. The story shouldn’t be burden but a pleasure. There are countless ways to get your point across. Readers are counting on you to put out the effort to do it correctly. If you don’t, eventually the smart ones will figure you out.
Happy writing!
HOW DOES YOUR STORY FLOW?
Next month, I’m doing a presentation for my writer’s group on structuring chapters and scenes. In part of that presentation, I mention story flow. It made me think of how important that is for me as a reader. It’s something I didn’t address directly in last week’s article.
WHAT IS STORY FLOW?
What I mean by story flow is how smoothly you get from point A to point B. Is your story a jumbled up mess, with random thoughts that go here and there that somehow coalesce into a summary? Or, does the story follow a logical, linear pace from start to finish?
THERE ARE NO ABSOLUTES
Rules, of course, are meant to be broken. A story doesn’t have to be rigidly linear from start to finish. In fact, most of them aren’t. However, there’s a fine line between comfortably loose and chaotic. The last thing you want to do is lose your reader.
BREAKING IT DOWN
Every story has a main plot, and many times, one or more sub-plots. Not only that, but there is usually a certain amount of back story. The idea is to lay it all out there so not to confuse and lose your reader. The last thing you want is for the reader to be halfway through the book, scratching their head with no idea what they’re reading!
Here’s an example of a bad one:
Prologue from 100 years in the past
Action with hero present day
Back story (about the hero)
Sub plot with side character
Bad guy development with back story
Action with hero
Second sub plot with another side character
Back story (about the hero)
Bad guy development & action
Hero has confrontation with bad guy, loses and has meltdown
Back story (about the hero)
First sub plot again
Third sub plot
More bad guy
Action with hero
We’ve just reached the halfway point. At this spot, there hasn’t been much room for the plot to move forward. All the real estate has been taken up by extraneous material, whether relevant or not. Also, a third subplot? Come on!
Here’s an example of a better one:
Prologue from 100 years in the past
Action with hero, plus a few paragraphs of back story mixed in
Bad guy action with a little background and motivation
Sub plot with action scene and introducing secondary character
Action with hero & first intermingling with bad guy
Hero has first meltdown after failing confrontation with bad guy
Notice how things are more blended and less disjointed. This is only an example and not by any means the only way to do it.
DON’T GET TOO SIDETRACKED WITH SUB-PLOTS
A certain amount of sub-plots are fine as long as they make sense and play a key part in the main plot. If they’re just extra material because you think they’re neat, or, they’re just there to create atmosphere, dump them! Everything has to be there for a reason. It’s also important that they fit a timeline with everything else. You shouldn’t dump a sub plot into the story at random. It should fit and not interrupt the flow.
DON’T DO CHAOTIC
Though you may think it’s rad, or cool or being the sensitive artiste, but throwing your story out there in random spurts isn’t the best way to win an audience. People like patterns, despite what you may have heard about how quick people get bored, how people like something different. You can do different in the content, not the pattern! However, there’s nothing wrong with varying the pattern, as long as it makes sense!
FROM HERE TO THERE
The reader is depending on you to take them on that trip from A to B. Don’t jerk them around, pull them in different directions and confuse them with unnecessary fluff that will kill their enthusiasm. Your job is to keep them interested. By setting a tone and flow, you can do that.
Happy writing.
WHAT’S IN A COVER?
One of the things we talked about at the writer’s conference was book covers. My section on What’s In A Cover discussed that a bit in my last post, but I thought this would be a good time to talk a bit more in detail
YOU CAN’T HAVE A BOOK WITHOUT A COVER
Okay. Whether your book is a tangible item or electronic, it’s going to have more than a plain brown wrapper (reminds me of how they supposedly used to ship porn!). Actually, I’ve seen books in a plain brown wrapper as a marketing gimmick. Have no idea what the book was, or if it sold.
A hard fact that seems to be borne out by many market researchers is that great covers help sell books, while sucky ones can kill book sales. I must say I have a big issue with that for one simple reason:
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Let’s take the analogy to another favorite of mine, music. I’ve always been and still am convinced that any old schmuck can go into a recording studio, fart in a paper bag, and it could be a big hit.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That’s just as true with art as it is with music.
HOW I USED TO BUY ALBUMS
Back in the day, I used to buy albums by unknown bands based on the album cover. It was usually photos of the band with some kind of background. Once in a while, there’d be some kind of artwork. What I looked for were either the ugliest, or the freakiest looking musicians, with the longest hair and bought the album, based on that. Looking back on some of those album covers today, the “artwork” would be considered pretty pedestrian, but I still love those albums. I rarely caught a dud. On the other hand, they were still art, just not paintings, per-se. Your book cover doesn’t have to be a painting either, but I digress.
Over the years, very few albums impressed me with their artwork in the artistic sense. Certain albums had great visual appeal, but I didn’t really care for the music all that much. Some of the best artwork was from an African band called Osibisa. Their first and second albums, with the flying elephants were fantastic. Their music was meh, okay “world music,” but not for me. The band Yes had some great artwork, but I couldn’t stand Jon Anderson’s voice, and he ruined some otherwise great music. At least the artwork looked great.
On the other hand, one of my top ten albums of all time was Hard Attack, by a New Yawk hard rock band called Dust. Their artwork was done by none other than Frank Franzetta. That album cover is wow! This was about a decade before that became the standard artwork for Molly Hatchet.
We used to see a band in Madrid, Spain at a local club. This band was called Greenslade. David Greenslade used to be the keyboard player in a jazz rock band I loved called Collosseum. His albums had great artwork. In fact, my wife painted their first album cover and it’s still hanging on the wall in our living room.
Whenever I look through my album collection, I can get just as much of a thrill with the album covers as the music because I can tie the two together. I’ve never been able to do that quite the same way with books. I cannot always visualize story details with book covers.
BOOKS DIDN’T QUITE WORK THAT WAY
Very few books have impressed me with their artwork except certain series. The Doc Savage series had a look to them. The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series were the same. Then there was the Andre Norton series writing as Andrew North. They had a great pulpy feel to them. Otherwise, the look of a book has very little lasting impression except in a more utilitarian way. It’s an initial attraction on the shelf for a few seconds, but once I get past that, it’s just art with writing all over it. In fact, some of my favorite covers are more technical books like several of my favorite books on telescope making, or analog synthesizers. The “artwork” is letters and a few modest graphics. However, I’m able to correlate very fond memories to those familiar words and graphics.
There are many great fictional stories I have loved over the decades since I started reading. Lots of favorites used to bog down my bookshelves. Yet when I finally had to let them go, I received a nasty surprise when I eventually found some of them reissued. Yeah… have you ever noticed that most reissues always have a different cover? It’s like either the publisher or the author never liked the original cover and “wanted to do it right” the next time, or they wanted to try and reissue, rebrand and make it seem like a different book. I don’t know for sure.
I’M NOT EVERYBODY
You, or everybody else may go totally Bozo over cover art and more power to you. I’ll say this. Something ugly or just functional isn’t going to do you any favors!
On the other hand, who is to say what’s ugly? Eye of the beholder…
You don’t have to use an intricate or artsy fartsy high-dollar cover that’s going to break your bank, if you’re in charge of that. If it’s the publisher, they’ll be footing the bill. However, if you have a say, let’s hope you can steer them a bit from something ugly. Of course, a big publisher has marketing wizzes that should know better than to defeat the whole purpose of putting the book on the shelf to sell. If you’re a shelf-publisher, the onus is on you.
The key is, it’s up to you to determine what’s good or bad, if you have a choice!
BALANCE IS BEST
A few tips.
- Make sure your cover art fits your genre.
- Make sure it stands out but isn’t too gaudy.
- If you have it in a galley proof, put it on a shelf and walk by. See if you notice it, and what it looks like next to others.
- Make sure the artwork fits with what’s between the pages (see #1).
- Finally, balance is best (goes with #2). Just the right amount of flare and simplicity so you stand out but not slap everyone in the face. You want to stand out, not annoy them!
Until next time, happy writing!
COFERENCE AFTERMATH – WHAT I LEARNED
Despite this being my ninth writer’s conference, I always pick up something new.
JUDGING A BOOK BY ITS COVER
The subject of book covers came up quite a bit. The gist was that it’s critical that the cover must be attractive and can’t be crappy. Period. A crappy cover is a great way to kill your book sales.
I’ve said before, probably more than once, that when I look for a book to purchase, the cover is probably third on my list behind the back cover blurb and leafing through it to see if it’s third-person past tense. However, I’ll qualify that and say that I’ll admit that it does have to catch my eye on the shelf before I ever get to the other stuff, so maybe there is more to it.
Jo Wilkins cited a study where a group of publishers went into a bunch of bookstores with nothing but book jackets and placed them on the shelves and watched for people’s reactions. The gist of it was that people looked for the book spine first, then the title and then the back blurb. Spine, title, back blurb. Well, the spine is not quite the cover is it?
If it were me, I, of course, would want a great cover. That goes without saying. However, depending on your publisher, you may have little control over it. If you self publish, it depends how deep your pockets are. The spine may very well be key also.
Someone also brought up the functionality of the book itself. How well it opens, how well the pages fold out and stay that way so the book can be read comfortably. That’s something most people never consider.
SELF PUBLISHING IS AND ISN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE
The market has certainly changed for self publishing. It can be done effectively and money can be made. However, it can break your bank, like it always has in the past, you can still end up with a crap product, and you can still end up with a garage full of books. The difference now is that there are a lot more and better resources to do it the right way.
Vanity presses are still out there.
Definition: A vanity press will print any old crap you give them. Period.
A legitimate self publisher, on the other hand, will hold up the bullcrap flag and tell you, “Hey, wait a minute, this isn’t right.” They won’t print the phone book if you hand it to them (a Jo Wilkins quote). They’ll take the time to tell you you’re doing it wrong, it needs editing, it needs this and that. However, keep in mind that with self publishing, everything is still on you and you alone!
The other difference is e-publishing can mitigate your losses. Now you can take the risks without ending up with a garage full of books. Instead, you’ll just have a handful of disappointment and be out a few thou on editing and a book cover if your masterpiece doesn’t take off.
POSITIVES FOR ME
On the home front, I was totally blindsided with several compliments on both my weekly articles here, my Sunday articles in Let’s Talk Nevada, and my fantasy readings for Meleena’s Adventures at the writer’s group meetings. Not only that, I got some side-handed compliments for my two icky bug novels, The Greenhouse and The Factory, which I wasn’t expecting, but sure appreciated!
Then, like I’ve been preaching the past few weeks with my pitching articles, I practiced what I preached and pitched to all four of those agents and they all asked for samples of various novels. One asked for Meleena’s Adventures (10 –pages), another asked for Lusitania Gold (50 pages), the third asked for Lusitania Gold and The Factory (both 50 pages) and the last one asked for Lusitania Gold (50 pages). All I have to do is hope the best for the follow through!
FIRST PAGE READ
We have a first page read contest where attendees can pay $5 a page to be put into a pool. During our Friday lunch and dinner, these pages are randomly drawn from the pool and read blind, no names. The panel of agents sits up on the stage and listens. When they reach a point where they’d stop reading, they raise their hands. Sometimes the reader makes it to the end of the page without any or all of the agents raising their hands. Sometimes not. The opinions expressed can be brutal as well as audience reaction.
We had some great ones and some that were not so great. My only hope is that everyone had a thick enough skin not to give up.
I’ll never enter the first page read. Even though I see the point of why we have this contest from the agent’s perspective, I have never judged a story on the first page. I can’t possibly tell a thing about a story without getting through at least a chapter. Now, the only caveat to that is sampling to see if it’s the correct POV. I’ve judged a book by the first sentence, but that had nothing to do with the content and everything to do with first-person or first-person present-tense, or even third-person present-tense. Those, folks, are show stoppers for me. Once again, that has nothing to do with the story. When the story is written in the correct tense, neither has the first sentence nor the first page ever had an effect on me, one way or the other. That also doesn’t include me leafing through each book to look for sneaky switching POVs and tenses, which is another show stopper.
On the other hand, it apparently has a great effect on agents, who look through hundreds of samples a week. Unfortunately, that’s a nasty little fact we have to live with. That still isn’t enough for me to enter the contest, just on principle alone.
IN SUMMARY
Once again, as in the past eight years, this ninth conference was a great time. I learned a few things, met some new people and ran into old friends. I got to talk shop for three days and made new contacts in the industry. I also opened the possibilities of getting an agent once again. Can’t ask for better than that.
Happy writing!
COFERENCE AFTERMATH – GREAT TIMES
It’s with a touch of sadness and a bit of relief that the 2014 Las Vegas Writer’s Conference came to an end on Saturday night, April 26, 2014. I look back on those three wonderful days and it’s hard to sum up all the happy and fulfilling feelings, as I do every year from this big event. I would hope others that attended came away with at least some of those same feelings.
With this being my ninth writer’s conference, it might seem like old hat by now. I never fail to have a great time, despite some personal tragedies that have colored these past two years (but that’s not what this is about).
EXCITEMENT OF THE SETUP
As usual, I arrived way early, though because of school traffic, I was about ten minutes later than my usual 8 AM the first day. We had to wait for the staff to unlock the doors and when they did, we were able to start setting up. By nine, more of the group showed, tables started filling and the rooms took on the look and feel of a conference. Darrah Whittaker, the conference coordinator, began his tireless and outstanding job and made himself the hero of the event. Then there was Jo Wilkins and her family including her daughter Denise Whitmore and Jo’s husband, David, who were instrumental in keeping the event running behind the scenes. There were many more people involved in this event and I’m forgetting lots of names. I dealt on a daily basis with these people.
Even though I was a full-paid attendee and have been for years, I always help at the front desk, and this year was no exception. Along with Amanda Skenadore, we passed out badges, swag bags and the schedule booklets that first day. We also gave out the initial raffle tickets and sold more (throughout the weekend) as well as other administrative tasks.
Darrah championed the usual unexpected crises that always seem to come up, and handled them with patience and grace.
MEETING AND CIRCULATING
One of the big points of attending a conference is to meet people and circulate. This is no place to be a wallflower. One advantage to working the front desk and handing out badges is that we get to meet everyone and I certainly did! This not only includes the attendees but the faculty. Of course it’s not in-depth, but at least we can put a name to a face, though with my short-term memory, it took a bit more reinforcement later for that to sink in.
As soon as the initial flood of registration took place on Thursday and the first classroom sessions started, I was able to break from the desk a bit. During that time, the initial group from Lets Talk Nevada showed up to staff their table across the aisle from the registration desk. I contribute Sunday stories to their on-line site and it was great to talk with them face-to-face instead of electronically. The second group showed Saturday and I was able to continue chatting with their friendly staff.
NOT EVERYONE WAS THERE TO GET AN AGENT
Between classes, I talked with attendees and a few staff off and on and got to know some of the people, what they wanted out of the conference… why they were there. I was glad to hear that not everyone attended just to pitch to agents. A good number of people came to learn about the craft of writing. Some didn’t have a completed manuscript and wanted more direction. This is something I’ve talked about over and over again and I see people have done just that.
A NEW APPROACH
Thursday evening, instead of just a social gathering, which in the past was an open bar with canapés, this time, our el-presidente Gregory Kompes tried something different, and for the betterment of the conference. Each table in the main ballroom had a number assigned. Each attendee had a number affixed to the back of their badge. During the social event Amanda Skenadore got on the PA and had everyone go to their assigned table. Then she told each of the faculty go to a different table. They all had a card with stuff they were required to say about themselves. In the middle of the table was a bag with statements that the attendees had to pick and say something about themselves based on what the statement said. Mine was “What special power of one of your characters would you like to have and why.” After ten minutes, all of the faculty had to rotate to the next table until they’d rotated through every table.
It was great. All attendees got to meet every faculty member. The center table question thing broke down right away. However, everyone got into a rhythm. The faculty member would sit down, give their spiel, each attendee would then introduce themselves and then the faculty member would open up for questions. It was great for me because I was able to query every agent right off and find out if they would be receptive to my genres. Turns out they were all interested in one or the other of my genres!
MORE TO COME
In the next installment, I’ll talk about some of the things I got out of this conference in particular, and the points I can reinforce from that I’ve been telling you in my past articles.
Until then, happy writing!
The Worlds Of Fred Rayworth 