Practice What You Preach

I read a lot of e-newsletters. Some give me tips on how to write better, some give me clues about markets I might submit to, and some try to tell me how to market my work, once it gets published. Most of them I can read fairly quickly. But one of them I read this week... !

I don't remember which newsletter I was reading, possibly one on marketing, because the article seemed to be on what type of website to make announcements, timing and the type of announcement. After almost every website type/announcement type that it listed, the author expanded by saying you should edit, edit, edit everything before you sent it off into the world. The reasoning was that if you make an impression on potential readers with poor grammar, spelling and punctuation, they aren't likely to look up your book and buy a copy.

I have to agree with that sentiment.

A lot of people never learned these things in school well enough to know how to follow the rules, and therefore, they don't think it's really important. Texting, when it required hitting the same button a number of times to get one letter, further eroded people's ability to spell, it seems. But as long as the idea gets across, anything goes these days, right?

No, I can't agree with that sentiment.

I have re-worked and proofread and edited enough to be pretty familiar with most of the rules of the English language. It doesn't bother me to get a text on my phone with 'u' for 'you' and 'ur' for 'your'. I consider that a kind of slang.

But when I'm reading something that purports to be informative and professional, I expect it to be well edited. This particular article in this newsletter was NOT. Here it was, expounding on the idea that everything you put out there should be edited, and the author did not appear to know the difference between [its] and [it's], or where commas belong, or how to spell.

Now I'm left in a dilemma. Do I believe this author was knowledgeable in the field and take the advice offered? Or write the article off as a waste of time because the author couldn't be bothered to take his/her own advice?

Evolving Characters

Humans are said to 'learn' and to 'grow'. This is indicated by the old sayings, "Grow up," and "Act your age." And most humans do manage to remember what they've learned so far in their life, add to it whatever they've learned lately. Putting these things together, they adjust their thoughts, their decisions and actions. They learn, grow and mature.

In writing, characters are said to 'evolve', if the writer is any good.

I'm not sure why a different phrase is used for characters, who are created as representatives of human beings.

I mean, let's look at this. Wherever the story opens, the characters have a personality, and to have that, they have a backstory ... basic life events that have formed them into the 'person' they are. The author is supposed to have that all thought out, even if s/he doesn't actually say any of it in the story.

As the story proceeds, the character is challenged, reacts, learns and adjusts. Woops, I mean, he 'evolves'.

I don't know, to me, 'evolve' means 'become something new'. That sounds like a character who starts at Personality A suddenly makes a complete change to become Personality Z. I have trouble believing people do that, even when that person is a story character.

Person or character, I have a much easier time believing someone starts at Personality A and as a result of the challenge, reaction, learning and adjusting, winds up as Personality A1. A character who does that is much more believable to me.

What do you think?

Practice What You Preach

I read several newsletters and blogs to learn how to write better; how to open a novel and grab the reader, how to involve all the senses, ... that sort of thing. One of the first things I was taught was that your first draft is not your last draft. (Took me a lo-o-ong time to learn that lesson.)

Your first draft is where you get the basic ideas out of your head and onto paper - or computer file, or whatever. Then you spend time going through that project a few times to add descriptions, select a more precise verb, make sure the reader understands what you intended to say.

And then, you polish it.

Remember back in school, when you learned about subjects, verbs, direct objects, punctuation, and all of that? That's the stuff a writer worries about in the final polish. Because as a writer, you want others to see your work in its best condition. If your work is full of misspelled words, incorrect choice of pronouns, and 'sentences' that don't make sense because you forgot your punctuation, the readers won't be able to understand what your are trying to say.

I understand that bloggers and newsletter editors have a limited amount of time, but this is a very important part of writing. Unfortunately, not every writer remembers that before they post their blog or article. And I have found some that I am thinking of not following anymore because I have to work so hard to figure out what they are trying to say. Repeated words. Extra pronouns from when they rewrote the sentence, but didn't get it completely cleaned up. Missing commas that - if they were there - would tell the reader 'I've finished that thought, now I'm moving on.'

It's sad when a group of people manage to forget the lingual necessities that they continually remind each other are so important. I hope I never get that sloppy with my blogs. If you catch me at it, feel free to call me out about it.

To Format or Not?

There are basic formatting ‘rules’ for manuscripts that please almost all editors and publishers. When I first started writing, in the fourth grade, I paid no attention to them. I was a kid, writing for my own enjoyment.

Through the decades, as I thought about sending my work out, I learned those formatting rules. They’re not difficult to employ; 1 inch margins, double-spaced, 12-pt Times New Roman, with contact information in the top left corner of page 1.

I don’t start a project with those parameters. Rough draft requires imagination, which doesn’t like to be tethered. So my initial drafts have tiny margins, 20 pt font (whichever one I feel like using) in a different pale color for each day’s work, single spaced. To me, that lets the rough draft appear ethereal, not quite set firmly and easily changed.

As I go through 3 rewrites and a polish, the margins get wider, the font gets smaller, a different type & color. When I’ve got most of the knots out of the story, my contact information is put in place, and by the end of the polish, the project is in ‘standard manuscript format’. I can send the project out to find a new home knowing that it will be judged on its merits, not on my inability to follow these standard rules.

Over the years, I’ve wondered why so many market guidelines insist so vehemently that these rules be followed, to the point of spelling them out in their guidelines, possibly several times. Now that Tommee and I have opened our slush pile, I begin to understand.

Our guidelines are minimal; all we list is ‘standard manuscript format’ sent in a .doc or .rtf file. Although we want to find new authors, we thought they would know what we meant, if they had any real interest in becoming published authors. Perhaps we were giving them more credit than they deserved. Some of them, anyway.

The 3^rd or 4^th submission came as a docx file, which meant we had to dig out the laptop to open it. (We normally only use the laptop when we are traveling, because we don’t like the keyboard.) We let that slide, and gave the submission due consideration.

Since then, we’ve had submissions that don’t have any contact information in the file, that are only partially double-spaced, the paragraphs are not consistently indented…. But we want to encourage new authors, so we considered them and included the comments ‘Not in standard format’ and ‘Please include contact information within manuscript file, in case your email gets lost.’ We hope they will learn, otherwise, we are wasting our time making comments.

But some of them are not interested in learning. One responded to our comments, breaking another guideline for new writers; “Do not respond to rejections to argue they made a mistake.” S/he did state that s/he didn’t care a fig about formatting, the fact we responded showed that her/his submitting email had not gotten lost, and that so-and-so liked her/his work.

We are not so-and-so. But we may need to follow the example of so many other publishers and summarily dismiss any submissions that cannot follow our guidelines. We are pondering that idea now.

Over and Over and Over Again

Every time I go to a science fiction convention, I try to attend some panels on writing. It might concern a new idea on how to write a rough draft, or tips on writing a query letter … There are lots of subjects dealing with writing that can be explored.

I have noticed, over the years, that some things get repeated and repeated, like submission guidelines. The speaker(s) start with the basics; the manuscript should be on normal white paper, double-spaced, normal paragraph indentations, the font should be 12 point, probably in a serif-type font like Times New Roman, and your manuscript should be absolutely error-free. Well, as close to error-free as you can possibly get it.

That was pretty much the gist of it 40 years ago, when I first started looking at the possibility of submitting something. Things were done on typewriters back then, so an occasional typo neatly corrected by pen was acceptable.

These days, the editors assume you are working on a computer, and they expect that between your rewrites, spell-checker and self-editing, there won’t be any typos. Many editors also expect you will send your manuscript via email.

For that reason, today’s speakers on how to make submissions go on to say that you should always consult that market’s submissions guidelines, and look for their particular desires in a submission’s formatting. Maybe this editor prefers Helvatica rather than Times New Roman, or wants the entire manuscript submitted in the body of your email, rather than as an attachment.

For many years, I wondered why they kept repeating the same stuff all the time. I had heard it all before, I followed their suggestions, and I always followed the instructions of the market’s guidelines. Why were they pounding on me like this?

Now that I’ve been helping Tommee work through her slush pile, I understand that those speakers were not necessarily speaking to me. The MoonPhaze Publishing submission guidelines (www.MoonPhazePub.wix.com/MoonPhaze) state that manuscripts should be sent as a .doc file (NOT .docx) attached to their email. One day, she got 2 submissions, and neither one was sent as a .doc file! One came as a pdf, the other as a .docx. So much for following the guidelines!

I’ve seen one ‘submission’ that didn’t even follow the basic guidelines for formatting. Instead, it was sent as if it were already a book; single-spaced lines, no contact info, title page and dedication.

So, I’ll still go to these ‘basic submission’ panels, in case changes are introduced. But I will no longer feel they are nagging at me. They harp on these things for the benefit of newer writers, or those writers who think they don’t need to follow a few simple guidelines.

HOT Vacation Notes

You’ve seen it in movies, read it in books; an intrepid band of adventurers (or maybe just one) must travel through a desert with the clothes on their backs and few or no supplies. As one expects in the desert, the sun beats down, and after a full day of traveling, at least one (probably only one) adventurer is ‘severely’ sun burnt. Maybe s/he falls into an exhausted sleep of fevered dreams. Maybe, if they find an oasis, someone places cool damp cloth on the reddened face. If natives come to their rescue, the tribal healer may give the burnt one an ointment to help the skin heal.

Other than those few bits I’ve mentioned above, the affliction of sunburn is not mentioned, and doesn’t affect the abilities of that person beyond the first day.

You’re not going to see sunburns treated so cavalierly in my books.

Hubby and I went to a water park during our vacation. I’ve been told all my life that I have skin like a redhead’s, and I’ve said for decades that I ‘burn at the drop of a sunbeam’. When we go to a water park, I try to find someplace I can entertain myself in the shade, with only occasional short stints in the sunlight. By the time the rest of the family is ready to leave, I hopefully only have a pink bit of sunburn to contend with.

I forgot all that, I guess. Oh, I started on the not-so-lazy river, which has large stretches of shade, but then I wandered to the ‘wave pool’. After 2 hrs in the mid-day sun, I could tell my face was burnt, so we left. By the time we reached our room, I was in PAIN! My face felt like it was on fire, my soft cotton t-shirt scraped my shoulders and back into agony. I slathered on moisturizer several times the rest of that day, and poured ice beverages down my throat, hoping to give my body the water it needed to repair this fiery damage. At least, I did those things until I developed the shivers so bad, all I could do was curl up inside a blanket on the sofa. I was still shivering when I went to bed.

The next day, I stayed indoors, continued with the moisturizer and iced beverages. And ibuprofen to fight off any more fevers. My face still burned. My shoulders, back and upper chest gave sharp protests whenever I moved an arm. On day 3, the burn on my face was pink on the lower cheeks and chin, but still red across the forehead, cheekbones and nose. The other burnt areas were much the same as Tuesday, except my back and collar bones - although still very tender - started to itch. And so my recovery continued slowly, a mixture of pain, tenderness, care and irritating itchiness. I still hadn’t gotten to the peeling stage.

And mine would not be considered a ‘severe’ case of sunburn, since I didn’t have any blisters that first day to indicate a 2nd degree burn.

All in a Dream

Authors frequently get asked where they get all their ideas from? Some people seem to think all they do is 'dream up' their stories. No, most authors go about creating their characters and plots very methodically. For the most part, dreams are too fragmented, too illogical to be of any use. But once in a while, I have a dream that... .

When I was a kid, there were two bouts of illness that produced fever-induced dreams. Both times, the dreams consisted of hearing people roller skating on the floor above, back and forth, and occasionally someone would knock over one of mom's favorite lamps, shattering it. Auditory hallucinations, I believe, because there was no floor above, nobody was roller skating, and none of mom's lamps got broke. That particular dream does not lend itself to being converted into a story.

However, a recent bout of flu that had me sleeping 12 or more hours a day while I fought through it left me with memories of several dreams that were ... interesting. Now, please understand that even these interesting dreams will not transfer, whole cloth, into good stories, but they might provide an idea, a spark, for a good story. A piece of a dream from decades ago provided the idea for the opening scene of a story I wrote way back then. It stayed the opening scene through some rewrites, but eventually, I faced the fact that it really did not fit the culture of the spaceship that was the setting, so the scene was changed beyond recognition. Possibly even yanked and replaced, it changed so much. Still, it provided the inspiration that started the story, which I might not have ever written, without that dream's scene to get me started.

In another sense of 'dream', I was notified a couple days ago, that I placed within the top 100 of my category in the 80^th Annual Writer's Digest Contest. So, several cartwheels later, it eventually dawned on me that this gives me something to put in my query letters, in that final paragraph that's supposed to tell the editor/agent something about me and my skills. Yes, it was 86^th place in my category, but if that's good enough to be considered a win by Writer's Digest, then it's good enough for me! Now, if I can just get my computer up here on Cloud 9 with me so I can keep on writing...

More Real Life

I keep coming up with ways ‘real life’ can be analogous to writing. Well, give me a break; real life has conspired to give me a head cold for the trip home, and all my thoughts are sticky with ‘head cold goo’ and won’t move around well.

So, I started out in Florida, where nobody paid attention to the posted speed limit of 70. The far left lane (of 3) was for those driving at 80+. Then I got to Georgia, where the Florida Speedway quickly became the Georgia Parking Lot – miles of stop / creep / stop / creep. I forget how many times it happened, pretty much the entire length of I75 through Georgia, except going through Atlanta. And seldom, when you finally got to the point where you could speed up, was there any clue for the jam.

Did you know that if you enter Nashville on I24, and want to leave Nashville on I24, there is no lane you can get in and stay in and stay on I24? I felt like I was playing hop scotch; skip left two lanes for a left exit, skip right one lane for a right exit, skip right another lane for another right exit, then skip left two lanes for a left exit!

Stories are kind of like that, don’t you think? If there’s nothing getting in the protagonist’s way as you tell the story, the story zips along at 80+ mph and gets done quickly, leaving the reader to wonder what all the fuss was about. If something does get in the way – whether you call them bumps, problems, challenges, or stalled trucks – the speed of the story will be inconsistent, and the tension will build. Likewise, if your story line jogs here and there, as your protagonist tries this angle, and then that path, it will help to keep your reader on their toes, wondering which way the story will go next, and will the protagonist actually get where he wants to go?

So, ‘map’ out your story line, and don’t forget to add some difficulties. Road trips never seem to go as smoothly as we expect they will, do they? A story that travels a straight line to its obvious conclusion isn’t much of a story. See ya next week. Trudy

Consistency

Just attended a big comic convention in Orlando called Megacon. Not much happening there about writing (except for comics), but lots of panels on art (mostly comics), costuming and independent film making. Surprisingly, a lot of these ‘other’ subjects still had some bearing on writing.

Let’s take an easy example: continuity. Movies, I understand, are not shot scene 1, scene 2, and so on. They will shoot ALL the scenes that happen in the living room, and then ALL the scenes that happen in the garden, and so on. They have someone who keeps track of the details, to keep the continuity consistent. So, if the story has Mary in a blue sundress and ponytail in the living room, and she goes out to the garden to cut some flowers for a vase, she doesn’t show up in the garden in a pink sweatsuit and a beehive.

I’ve seen authors who can’t seem to keep track of their own continuity. One had the protagonist picked up at the airport, taken to a grimy vehicle in the parking lot, where she and the acquaintance climb in. That’s the end of one chapter. At the very beginning of the next chapter, they are still outside the vehicle, and the protagonist – who was so dismayed by the filthy condition of the vehicle's exterior – leans her back against that vehicle as they discuss their next activity. It is boggling to my mind that not only did the author miss this in all her rewrites, but apparently, it was also missed by all her alpha- and beta-readers, her agent, her editors,…

So, some could say that I did nothing ‘writing related’ during this con weekend. I don’t agree with that, because a) I learned things, which is always good for a writer, and b) I kept figuring out how to take that info and apply it to writing.

See ya next week. Trudy

Peek a Boo

I've been doing some critiquing for an on-line critique group I belong to, and this story is about to make me pull out my hair. It looks like a rough draft; incorrect punctuation, strange sentence construction, incorrect use of pronouns, wandering verb tense ... The list goes on and on. To my mind, this story isn't ready for a critique.
I understand that sometimes people want to get someone's opinion about whether a story idea is viable. Fine. Get a friend to read it for a general impression. But don't waste the time of a critiquer on a rough draft.
In my mind, a critique will point out blunders you haven't noticed as you've tried to craft this story, and some of those blunders might be huge, while others are really tiny. But when you send out something with lots and lots of grammatical errors that you couldn't be bothered to fix, you are wasting their time, as they attempt to find a tactful way to tell you to clean up your manuscript. You have to clean up all those punctuation and verb tense problems anyway, so why not look like you are at least trying to do a professional job?
Like all those other writers who are taking the time to critique your work for you, I would really rather spend that extra 5 or 10 minutes working on my own story. I don't mind helping a fellow writer, if that writer seems willing to do a re-write by hunting down and correcting what mistakes he/she can find without my help. Think of it as a quest to turn out a perfect manuscript. If you can do that much for a critiquer, you are that much closer to having a manuscript that's ready to be seen by an editor.
My husband has joined me on vacation, so now it's two of us cramming blog posts into our occasional visits to the local bookstore with free wifi. Still, it wasn't bad this time. See ya next week.
Trudy

Only the Best

I was reading newsletters this morning, sorting through contests, calls for submissions, market listings and so on. As I looked for the ones that might interest me, I was struck by how many of these listings flatly stated, "Send us your best work."

Okay, if I were going to follow those instructions literally, each of these places would only get one piece of work from me, they would all get the same piece, and they wouldn't get it until after I died … or at least gave up writing completely. 'Best' by definition can only be applied to one.

Surely that isn't what they meant. I think what they probably mean is that whatever piece of work I send them should be the best piece of work I can make it.

That's almost insulting. I work hard at writing. I review grammar rules, study the craft, carefully consider my options when I'm rewriting a piece. Any time I send in a submission, the piece IS the best I can make it at that time.

Of course, I'm not the only one sending submissions. Maybe others aren't as careful as I am. Maybe they haven't learned as much about the craft as I have, and they are still making mistakes I have learned not to make. And, maybe I'm still making mistakes that I haven't yet learned not to make.

One thing I have learned is to be careful which word I use and how I phrase what I want to say. It is so easy to have a sentence or phrase say something that isn't exactly what I wanted. I know better than to say that I have two pieces of work, each of which is my 'best'. Each of them are the best I can make them at the time.

So make your best effort with each of your stories. Be careful what you say. I'll be back next week. Trudy

Is it Happening Now?

When I am critiquing someone else's writing, I periodically come across a story written in the present tense. This is difficult for me, as I have a bias against present-tense stories. And I always admit, right up front, that I have trouble understanding how I can be reading a story that is in the midst of happening. It's kind of like having the point of view character giving me a blow by blow account by phone as he lives through the situations. If the point of view character changes, the person on the other end of that phone line changes, too, which is more grating in present tense than in past tense. How can the author foreshadow anything that might happen, since it hasn't happened yet? I just don't get it. My mind can wrap itself around a number of complicated ideas, but that isn't one of them.

Consider this: "Joe stubs his toe on his way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. He wonders if it's broken, realizes it's his little pinkie, not the big lug, and doctors won't do anything for a broken pinkie toe, so what does it matter? Little does he know how inconvenient the pain of that toe will be in the days to come."

Okay, that was present tense, so we, as readers, were actually there when Joe stubbed his toe. Why were we in his home in the middle of the night? Why were we headed to the bathroom at the same time that he was, because if we weren't, how is he telling us about the toe as he stubs it? And the last sentence – which would make sense in past tense, and would do a wonderful job of making us wonder what's coming up – makes absolutely no sense. Of course he doesn't know how inconvenient things will be; he hasn't gone through it yet.

What do you think? Does present tense not bother you? It is frequently – and erroneously – used in common conversation, so you might be used to it. How many times have you heard someone say something like, "…And he says, 'what do you mean by that?', so I say, …" That's present tense verbs, even though the person is obviously talking about a conversation they had in the past. It grates on my nerves, but others find it normal, and if I comment on it, they stare at me in complete non-understanding.

Eventually, present tense may be the accepted norm for writing. But I'm not in any hurry to get there.

See ya next week. Trudy

Everybody has a background

Everybody has a background

When you're reading a story or book, have you ever come across a character who suddenly does something out of character? Perhaps they pick up a gun and shoot the weapon from the bad guy's hand, supposedly while panicked over their partner's death, and after refusing for 100 pages to even look at a gun, branding weapons 'barbaric and scary.' Adrenaline can accomplish a lot, but that behavior just doesn't make sense.

Characters – ones that have been carefully crafted, anyway – have a background. Just like real people, they had a childhood, people they loved and respected, various knocks and bruises that life has dealt them. So, there are two possible situations that could explain gun-shy Jill's sudden ability. The first - and far too often, the most likely – is that the writer did not create a real character. Hair color, eye color and a name do not – by themselves – make a character. So this writer tacked a few simple characteristics onto the name, like scorn for guns, and went on from there. When Jill found herself in this awful circumstance, the writer had her pick up the gun and shoot, and explained it all as 'adreneline'. That's lazy writing.

Or … Jill was taught to hunt and shoot by her beloved dad when she was just a little girl. She was good, a natural marksman, and she basked in her proud papa's approval. Then there was a horrible accident, and she accidentally shot her own father, killing him. She vowed to never hold a gun again. But when her partner – a man she secretely loves – is shot and apparently killed, she can't let that be unavenged, so she picks up his gun and shoots. The bad guy is lucky, because she wanted to kill, but her aim is rusty after all these years.

Yes, that could be the explanation, but a good writer won't spring it on the reader. There would have been some omens, some hints. First, that Jill feels more than friendship for her partner, but also that she knows more about guns than she's letting on. If those hints and omens weren't there, then the background might as well not exist. Adding a visit to Jill's mom after the shooting and having that mom explain it all just seems like the writer realizes he goofed, and so he threw together this explanation. More lazy writing.

Characters can be lazy. Writers can't be, not if they want to be good writers. They need to give their characters a previous life, an outlook on life that isn't quite like anybody else's. This is vital for main characters, becomes less important for co-workers, neighbors and others only marginally involved in the story being told. The need for a backstory pretty much peters out when you get to spear-chuckers.

Don't know what a spear-chucker is? Well, that's something to explore another day. See ya next week. Trudy