Commom Writing Errors (1)

Editors get frustrated by the amount of time they spend on easy fixes the author shouldn’t have to pay for.

Sometimes the question of where to put a comma, how to use a verb or why not to repeat a word can be important, even strategic. But most of the time the author either missed that day’s grammar lesson in elementary school or is too close to the manuscript to make corrections before I see it.

So the following is a list I’ll be referring to people *before* they submit anything in writing to anybody (me, agent, publisher, your mom, your boss). From email messages and front-page news in the New York Times to published books and magazine articles, the 10 ouchies listed here crop up everywhere. They’re so pernicious that even respected Internet columnists are not immune.

The list also could be called, “10 COMMON PROBLEMS THAT DISMISS YOU AS AN AMATEUR,” because these mistakes are obvious to literary agents and editors, who may start wording their decline letter by page 5. What a tragedy that would be.

So let's get started.

REPEATS
Just about every writer unconsciously leans on a  crutch  word.

Hillary Clinton’s oft repeated word is eager  (the committee responsible for writing  Living History should be ashamed).

Kate White editor at Cosmopolitan magazine uses her crutch word quickly over a dozen times in, A Body To Die For.

Jack Kerouac’s crutch word in On the Road is  sad,  sometimes doubly so sad, sad.

Ann Packer s in The Dive from Clausen’s Pier is weird.

Crutch words are most often unremarkable. That’s why they slip under editorial radar – they’re not even worth repeating, but there you have it, pop, pop, pop, up they come. Readers, however, notice them, get irked by them and are eventually distracted by them, and down goes your
book, never to be opened again.

But even if the word is unusual, and even if you use it differently when
you repeat it, don’t: Set a higher standard for yourself even if readers
won’t notice. I

n Jennifer Egan’s Look at me, the core word – a good
word, but because it’s good, you get *one* per book – is “abraded.”

Here’s the problem:

“Victoria’s blue gaze abraded me with the texture of ground glass.” page 202
“…(metal trucks abrading the concrete)…” page 217
“…he relished the abrasion of her skepticism…” page 256
“…since his abrasion with Z …” page 272

The same goes for repeats of several words together – a phrase or sentence that may seem fresh at first, but, restated many times, draws
attention from the author’s strengths. Sheldon Siegel nearly bludgeons
us in his otherwise witty and articulate courtroom thriller, Final
Verdict, with a sentence construction that’s repeated throughout the
book:

“His tone oozes self-righteousness when he says…” page 188
“His voice is barely audible when he says…” page 193
“His tone is unapologetic when he says…” page 199
“Rosie keeps her tone even when she says…” page 200
and so on.

“His tone is even when he says…” page 205
“I switch to my lawyer voice when I say …” page 211
“He sounds like Grace when he says…” page 211
What a tragedy. I’m not saying all forms of this sentence should be
lopped off. Lawyers find their rhythm in the courtroom by phrasing
questions in the same or similar way. It’s just that you can’t do it too
often on the page. After the third or fourth or 16th time, readers
exclaim silently, “Where was the editor who shoulda caught this?” or
“What was the author thinking?

1. As an author, don’t wait for the agent or house or even editorial consultant to catch this stuff *for* you. Attune your eye now. Vow to yourself, NO REPEATS.

And by the way, even deliberate repeats should always be questioned: “Here are the documents.” says one character. “If these are the documents, I’ll oppose you,” says another. A repeat like that just keeps us on the surface. Figure out a different word; or rewrite the exchange. Repeats rarely allow you to probe deeper.

MacKenna Sags Book Progress

It's been a while since I posted anything on my books. No I haven't given up, just haven't posted in a while. The series is about 20,000 words from completion

Book One, Dreams and Deceptions, hit the market two years ago. 

Book Two, Plots and Prophecies,  has been out for a year.

Book Three Prophecy's Diversion is at the editor and should hit the market later this year. 

Book Four, The Beguilement Ruse  (working title) I will finish reading it to my critique group next week, then off to my beta readers. 

Book Five, Aeonian Solution  (Again a working Title) is about 60% complete. This book will wrap up the series. I have come up with a last minute twists, and I'm working on flushing out the details

I also have a one off romance titled Almost A Whisper. The manuscript is with my publisher and should be out in about 18 months.

All the research and backstory for the MacKenna Saga left me with hundreds of  files on my PC  and a glimmer of an idea for another series. I've titled this one, Lives of Futures Past. This will the history of Kalen's and Mayla's family's over a 2500 year period. 

The first book I've already written. Titled Lives of Futures Past: Tyree and Marisol, I still have to run it by my publisher. 

So, that's where I'm at for now. Thanks for reading my blog. If you like any of the articles, please join and follow me. 
Facebook: Kalen MacKenna
Twitter: @mackennasaga
on the web @ www.mesatyree.com

A thought about (Politician) Lawyers

I'm not a political type person, but I received links to these three articles on the same day and I pasted them together. I do find it interesting that lawyers flock to the Dems. The party of, "Let Make A Law"


All:
God save your majesty!

Cade:
I thank you, good people—there shall be no money; all shall eat
and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all in one livery,
that they may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord.

Dick:
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

Cade:
Nay, that I mean to do.

Henry The Sixth, Part 2 Act 4, scene 2, 71–78

This sentence, “kill all the lawyers”, has had a much more memorable impact on the public psyche than the character who says it. In fact, this is one of the few memorable lines from the entire three-part Henry the Sixth cycle that Shakespeare wrote. While Cade envisions a kind of social revolution, Dick's idea of a utopia is to remove all the lawyers. Cade supports this by saying that lawyers simply shuffle parchments back and forth in a systematic effort to ruin the common people. This sentiment is rooted in a very calculated appeal to the citizens's desire to be left alone.

—Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor

Yes,  President Trump.... please read the following to understand why this 'win' is a great thing for America and for each of you and your loved ones!
It will reshape the Culture for the next 20 years or more.
Ps: We still need Term Limits!
Remember that both Clintons and the Obamas have all lost their licenses to practice law.

A LAWYER WITH A BRIEFCASE CAN STEAL MORE THAN A THOUSAND MEN WITH GUNS.

This is very interesting! I never thought about it this way.

The Lawyers' Party, By Bruce Walker

The Democratic Party has become the Lawyers Party.
Barack Obama is a lawyer.  Michelle Obama is a lawyer.
Hillary Clinton is a lawyer.  Bill Clinton is a lawyer.
John Edwards is a lawyer.  Elizabeth Edwards was a lawyer.

Every Democrat nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not graduate).

Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Bentsen, went to law school.

Look at leaders of the Democrat Party in Congress:
Harry Reid is a lawyer.  Nancy Pelosi is a lawyer.

The Republican Party is different.
President Bush is a businessman.
Vice President Cheney is a businessman.
Newt Gingrich was a history professor.
Tom Delay was an exterminator. Dick Armey was an economist.
Once House Minority Leader Boehner was a plastic manufacturer.
The former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is a heart surgeon.

Who was the last Republican president who was a lawyer? Gerald Ford, who left office 31 years ago and who barely won the Republican nomination as a sitting president, running against Ronald Reagan in 1976.

The Republican Party is made up of real people doing real work, who are often the targets of lawyers.

The Democrat Party is made up of lawyers. Democrats mock and scorn men who create wealth, like Bush and Cheney, or who heal the sick, like Frist, or who immerse themselves in history, like Gingrich. The Lawyers Party sees these sorts of people, who provide goods and services that people want, as the enemies of America .. And, so we have seen the procession of official enemies, in the eyes of the Lawyers Party, grow.

Against whom do Hillary and Obama rail?....
Pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, hospitals, manufacturers, fast food restaurant chains, large retail businesses, bankers, and anyone producing anything of value in our nation. This is the natural consequence of viewing everything through the eyes of lawyers. Lawyers solve problems by successfully representing their clients, in this case the American people. Lawyers seek to have new laws passed, they seek to win lawsuits, they press appellate courts to overturn precedent, and lawyers always parse language to favor their side.

Confined to the narrow practice of law, that is fine. But it is an awful way to govern a great nation. When politicians as lawyers begin to view some Americans as clients and other Americans as opposing parties, then the role of the legal system in our life becomes all-consuming. Some Americans become adverse parties of our very government. We are not all litigants in some vast social class-action suit. We are citizens of a republic that promises us a great deal of freedom from laws, from courts, and from lawyers.

Today, we are drowning in laws; we are contorted by judicial decisions; we are driven to distraction by omnipresent lawyers in all parts of our once private lives. America has a place for laws and lawyers, but that place is modest and reasonable, not vast and unchecked. When the most important decision for our next president is whom he will appoint to the Supreme Court, the role of lawyers and the law in America is too big.

When House Democrats sue America in order to hamstring our efforts to learn what our enemies are planning to do to us, then the role of litigation in America has become crushing.

Perhaps Americans will understand that change cannot be brought to our nation by those lawyers who already largely dictate American society and business. Perhaps Americans will see that hope does not come from the mouths of lawyers but from personal dreams nourished by hard work. Perhaps Americans will embrace the truth that more lawyers with more power will only make our problems worse.

The United States has 5% of the world’s population and 66% of the world’s lawyers! Tort (Legal) reform legislation has been introduced in congress several times in the last several years to limit punitive damages in ridiculous lawsuits such as spilling hot coffee on yourself and suing the establishment that sold it to you and also to limit punitive damages in huge medical malpractice lawsuits. This legislation has continually been blocked from even being voted on by the Democrat Party. When you see that 97%of the political contributions from the American Trial Lawyers Association go to the Democrat Party, then you realize who is responsible for our medical and product costs being so high!

The Lawyers' Party, By Bruce Walker

Tips and Traps for Effective Character Development. Part II

Traps and Tips for Effective Character Development. Part II

Continuing my post from last time here are five tips to help develop characters to draw your audience into your novel.

Character Development Tips

The Devil Is In The Details. Some writers have a tendency to throw too much at the reader all at once—to give a full physical description, tell the life story, and reveal the innermost thoughts of a character as soon as he or she is introduced. But that’s not necessarily the best approach. Think about a character you’re introducing as someone the reader is meeting for the first time. When you are introduced to a person for first time, you do take in that person’s physical appearance, but only on a fairly perfunctory level. Think about the people you met today, you don’t remember very much about them except that she had dark hair, and he wasn’t very tall. You don’t remember every detail about what they’re wearing, because you didn’t notice. If one of the people you met  was wearing a Princess Leia costume, or was dressed as Captain Kirk you would remember a lot about that person, and it would certainly be worth including in a story. So we don’t notice everything at once when we meet a new person. We do, however, notice a few details that can give us some idea of that person’s personality and life situation. Is the character well dressed? Does he or she bite their nails? It makes it easier to stay consistent too, because you have a fully developed idea of the character’s personality right from the start. The slow reveal is the best. You don’t tell the reader your character has a phobia, instead that fear comes out when he or she comes face-to-face with what they fear.

Observe Human Behavior. Another way to develop characters is to observe human behavior. You can base characters on real people you don’t know. Sit at a mall, I like the food court, and take notes. People watching is best done where multitudes congregate. You can observe them when they st thier best and worst. Pay close attention to how they talk, their mannerisms, hand gestures, what they wear, their attitudes and body language. You can pull all that into your stories. Combining gestures and habits from one or more people is another good way to build your characters.

Everybody Has A History: Our experiences determine who we are today. Life  shapes us and molds us. Even if you don’t reveal your characters’ pasts to your readers, you should know about them, at least for your primary characters. You should have complete biographies for your main characters in mind (better yet written down) so you understand what drives them. Why is this important? Because if you don’t understand a character, your readers won’t either. An example of an effective character history, is Captain Quint’s back story in the movie Jaws. In one scene, Quint, Chief Brody, and Matt Hooper, are in the cabin of Quint’s fishing boat, and they start comparing old scars. Quint has a tattoo that was removed, and Brody asks him about it. In response, Quint tells the other characters a horrific story about many of his friends on the USS Indianapolis (true WWII story by the way) being eaten by sharks, and all of a sudden it’s easy to understand Quint and his hatred for sharks. Can you imagine Jaws without Quint’s back story?

Don’t Neglect Secondary Characters. Sidekicks can be some of the most likeable and interesting characters in the story. Often, they are the readers’ favorites. One example of this is Pippin Took, from Lord Of The Rings. Pippin acts before he thinks about the consequences of what he’s about to do. That leads him into great peril, yet at the same time his brashness propels his character into a driving force of the story. Well developed secondary characters can, and will, enrich your book. They’re like the supporting instruments in a symphony. Secondary characters can be a gold mine of wit and charm, and every one serves a purpose. Some add color or assist in world building, and some act as foils for the main characters. Foils are characters who can’t stand your hero or heroine. They do nothing but gripe about them behind their backs. They can be great fun. Make sure you know a lot about your secondary characters even if you don’t end up revealing all of it to the reader.

Detail Your Villain: Pay close attention to your villain, without whom the story would not exist. Often, I hear authors tell me that the villain is their favorite character, the one they love to write about. Bad guys can be very tough to do well, and it can be even tougher to get readers to empathize with them. Whenever you write a villain, keep in mind that he or she needs to be just as well developed as your main characters. Instead of being flawed, however—because obviously all villains are flawed—the villain should be imperfectly bad. In other words, the villains should have redeeming characteristics where our heroes have flaws. In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkin’s use of Gollum is a great example. While we can empathize with Gollum, even feel sorry for him, sometimes, we have hope for him, and wish he could be redeemed. And then we loathe him, and despise him, and because he’s so annoying, we wish somebody would just cut his throat. Gollum is a character who is definitely ruled by evil most of the time, but he also a victim, an unwitting pawn of the ring’s power, so we can empathize with him. He is a great antagonist. These can be among the most difficult of all characters to create but also some of the most satisfying.

So there you have it, five traps and five tips. Whether you write good characters or poor ones will determine whether your readers stay with you to the end of the hero’s journey or abandon him or her after your first book. If the characters fail, the story fails. Hopefully this post will help you avoid that, but if it does happen, pick yourself up, write the next book, and develop more complex and complete characters. Remember, always look ahead, but learn from the past.

Tips and Traps for Effective Character Development. Part I

Traps and Tips for Character Development
Richard Draude

As fiction writers, we all have the same goal—transporting our readers inside the pages of our novel so they feel like a part of the story. Your characters are that vehicle for transporting your readers to the world you’ve created. Characters aren’t just a way of transporting the readers; they drive the story. In fact, I’ve learned to listen to them when they argue with me.

So as fiction writers, how do we develop, memorable, effective, characters? We can start with deciding what differentiates an effective character from an ineffective one. Most writers like to read, so you can probably think of characters that are particularly memorable for you and also some that you didn’t feel any connection with. Let’s look at traps that lead to ineffective characters. They are all connected, because one often leads to another, and some writers are guilty of all five: they create characters that are one dimensional, they’re stereotypical, they’re too perfect, they’re inconsistent, or they’re just plain dull.

Traps and Tips for Effective Character Development. Part I

Characters Development Traps

One-dimensional: Writers create a one-dimensional character when they don’t devote enough time to developing a character. These characters are flat, don’t seem real. Bear in mind not every character deserves or merits equal development. Every novel has its main and secondary characters. Unless you intendt to write the sequel to War and Peace, you can’t develop each and every one of the secondary characters.

One-dimensional characters are fine if that character’s role is not important. But if your character has a significant impact on your story, then by all means take the time to flesh out your character and developed his or her strengths, weaknesses, habits and foibles. For example, you have a character in your novel who is a detective, and he’s married to a woman who is described as a Southern housewife. She may be described physically, but if all we know about her past, her personality, and her motivations is that she’s a Southern housewife, that’s not very much to go on. We only know that she can cook fried chicken and chitlins. A character like that is going to fade from the stage of our memories quickly. One way or another, we’re not going to care what happens to her.

Stereotypical: Because they’re not unique, stereotypical characters are uninteresting. It’s important to note here that being stereotypical is not the same thing as being consistent. Your characters should behave in ways that are consistent with how you’ve developed them, but that’s not the same thing as being stereotypical. What would you think of a fantasy novel where all elves are haughty and all dwarfs are gruff, and they hate each other? Or a story where all the rich people in your stories are shallow, greedy, and uncaring? Or of the wealthy women are tall and extravagantly dressed, and they’ve all had plastic surgery? It’s when a character breaks free of the stereotype that he or she becomes believable and memorable. These are stereotypes. But a novel where the Elves are pot smoking hippies or the munchkins are cannibals would pull you in and make you keep reading. Real people don’t act according to stereotypes in every respect. Every one is unique in some way. You don’t want your readers to think, Didn’t I just see that character in so-and-so’s work. Only now he’s got another name and brown hair? You want your characters to be unique and therefore memorable.

All-too-Perfect: These characters tend to make reader’s eyes roll. If you’re doing a parody it’s okay to have a character who is perfect in every way. But in real life perfection doesn’t exist, so it shouldn’t exist in your writing. It’s hard to empathize with a perfect person, because none of us is perfect. Everyone, no matter how noble, is flawed in some way. For example, an effective character might be someone who is heroic in almost every way—he’s a good fighter, he’s nice to look at, he rides well and shoots well, and he’s brave and compassionate—but he’s totally indecisive, so if he has to take command in a battle, everyone’s going to die. It’s much easier for readers to relate to someone with a flaw, because they can say, “Yes, that’s just like my buddy, Jeff. He’s a great guy, but he can’t make up his mind to save his life.”

There’s also a particular kind of too-perfect character you could refer to as the Betty Jane or Gary Plain characters. They’re the kind of character that is the  writer’s idealized version of himself or herself. This character comes from humble beginnings, achieves impossible goals, ends up saving the galaxy, and then dies in the arms of the King after having become the first female knight of the realm. How is any reader going to relate to that except you, the author? This is an author living out his or her fantasies. Every writer does that to some extent, but Betty Jane is the extreme version of that kind of wish fulfillment. You need to be conscious and careful of your character.

Inconsistency In Your Characters: Nothing is more jarring and pulls your readers out of your story faster than an inconsistent character. You take the time to developed a character with certain traits. Readers will expect your hero or heroin to behave in accordance with his or her motivations and personality as you defined them. If that character behaves in a way that doesn’t make sense, your readers will notice it every time. Consistency applies to everything from small things, such as a character’s eye color, to big things like the character’s manner of speaking and important choices they make. If a character has blue eyes in chapter one, she’d better not have green eyes in chapter five. Unless you have a good reason why your hero or heroin speaks like an aristocrat one minute and uses street slang the next, its going to take the reader right out of the story. Or if a character slaughters a bunch of innocent children and then goes into a monologue about the evils of child abuse, that’s inconsistent. The fictional characters you create must feel like real people to the reader. If you don’t have a firm picture of them in your mind, they’re going to become shaky on the page. You should be able to see them and hear them speak and watch them go through their actions. And because you know them that well, they will be consistent, they will tell you when you’re stepping out of bounds for them. Do this and you won’t fall into that trap.

Just Plain Dull Characters. Of course, some characters are supposed to be dull, but in that case they’re usually foils for more interesting characters or events. If you think you might have a dull character in your book, the first thing you should ask is whether you need that character at all. Why is that character there? What is his or her role in the story? If you can’t come up with an answer, then that character is just stage dressing. Some stage dressing is allowed, but if you don’t even need the character for stage dressing, maybe it’s time to do away with that character completely. Another option is to make a dull character come alive by adding some unique traits. Perhaps your drab character has a secret fantasy life or an intriguing hobby, indicating that he or she is much more interesting than appears on the surface. That sort of thing will give a character life.

Okay, so now you’ve avoided these five traps. Now your characters are three-dimensional, unique, flawed, consistent, and interesting. My next post will be on tips that can make them even better.

Book Two Plots and Prophecies

Book two of my MacKenna Saga Plots and Prophecies hit the market for both Printer and E books. Early reviews a good. .
Both book Dreams and Deceptions and Plots and prophecies are available on Amazon Print and for the Kindle

Book Three Prophecies Diversion is back from my beta readers and is on its way to the editior. Reviews for my readers is full of praise. The best so far said one reader and full of action said another