Stick to said.

I started to write an article on dialogue, but in research, I found this article on the Reader's Digest site and I could never say it better than Ms. Trupkiewicz. This is a copy of her article on dialogue. The link to the article is:http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/keep-it-simple-keys-to-realistic-dialogue-part-ii

The following is the second in a two-part, guest blog post from Eleanore D. Trupkiewicz, whose short story, “Poetry by Keats,” took home the grand prize in WD’s 14th Annual Short Short Story Competition. You can read more about Trupkiewicz in the July/August 2014 issue of Writer’s Digest and in an exclusive extended interview with her online. In this post, Trupkiewicz follows up on her discussion of dialogue with an impassioned plea: stick to said. 

Welcome back! Part I of this two-part post talked about two key aspects of writing dialogue. First, the dialogue isn’t usually the place to use complete sentences because most people in everyday conversations speak in phrases and single words. Second, effective dialogue takes correct punctuation so the reader doesn’t get yanked out of the story by a poorly punctuated exchange.

Remember, the goal in writing fiction is to keep the reader engaged in the story. But don’t give up on writing to spend the rest of your life doing something easier, like finding the Holy Grail, just yet. There’s one more key aspect that makes dialogue effective for fiction writers.

Problem: The Great He Said/She Opined Debate

In Part I, I mentioned learning from my grade school English teacher about complete sentences. Another subject she covered in that class was the importance of using synonyms and avoiding repetition.

To this day, that discussion drives me absolutely crazy.

Thousands of budding writers all over the world heard those words and deduced that they would be penalized if they repeated the word said in any work of fiction they ever wrote. So they dutifully found thesauruses and started looking up other words to use.

I’d like to submit that thousands of budding writers have been misled. Here’s my take:

Stop!

Do not touch your thesaurus to find another word that means said.

The attribution said is fine. In fact, when readers are skimming along through a novel at warp speed, the word said is just like a punctuation mark—it doesn’t even register in readers’ minds (unless used incorrectly, and it would be hard to do that).

But if you draw attention to the mechanics of your story with dialogue like this, you’re guaranteed to lose your reader in total frustration:

“Luke,” she opined, “I need you.”

“Raina,” he implored, “I know you think you do, but—”

“No!” she wailed. “Please!”

Luke shouted, “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“You’re being so mean to me,” Raina wept.

With an exchange like that one, you might as well run screaming out of the book straight at the reader, waving a neon sign that says: HEY, DON’T FORGET THAT THIS IS ONLY A WORK OF FICTION AND THESE CHARACTERS AREN’T REAL!!!

Why would you nail yourself into your own proverbial coffin like that?

Here’s my advice. Don’t reach for the thesaurus this time. Leave it right where it is on your shelf. You might never need it again.

Instead, if you need the attribution, us said. If you must use something different for the occasional question, you could throw in “asked” for variety, but not too often.

An even better way to use attributions in dialogue is to use a beat of action instead, like this:

“I just don’t know anymore.” Mary folded her arms. “I think I’m afraid of you.”

Harry sighed. “I’m sorry.” He shook his head. “I’m not very good at this.”

That way, you know who’s talking, and you’ve even worked action and character traits into the conversation. It makes for a seamless read.

Two final thoughts:

First, dialogue cannot be smiled, laughed, giggled, or sighed. Therefore, this example is incorrect:

“Don’t tickle me!” she giggled.

You can’t giggle spoken words. You can’t laugh them or sigh them or smile them, either. (I dare you to try it. If it works for you, write me and let me know. We could be on to something.)

Of course, if you’re using said exclusively, then that won’t be a problem.

Second, let’s talk about adverbs. If a writer can be convinced to use said instead of other synonyms, then he or she becomes really tempted to reach for an adverb to tell how the character said something, like this:

“I don’t want to see you again,” Lily said tonelessly.

“You don’t mean that,” Jack said desperately.

“You’re an idiot,” Lily said angrily.

The problem with using adverbs is that they’re always telling to your reader. (Remember that old maxim, “Show, don’t tell”?)

An occasional adverb won’t kill your work, but adverbs all over the place mean weak writing, or that you don’t trust your dialogue to stand without a qualifier. It’s like you’re stopping the movie (the story playing through the reader’s mind) for a second to say, “Oh, but wait, you need to know that Lily said that last phrase angrily. That’s important. Okay, roll tape.”

Why rely on a telling adverb when you could find a better way to show the reader what’s going on in the scene or inside the characters? Try something like this:

Lily turned away and crossed her arms. “I don’t want to see you again.”

“You don’t mean that.” Jack pushed to his feet in a rush.

She glared at him. “You’re an idiot.”

Beats of action reveal character emotions and set the stage far more effectively than an overdose of adverbs ever will.

Conclusion

While a challenge to write, dialogue doesn’t have to be something you dread every time you sit down to your work-in-progress (or WIP). The most effective dialogue is the conversations that readers can imagine your characters speaking, without all the clutter and distractions of synonymous attributions, overused adverbs, and incorrect punctuation.

When in doubt, cut and paste only the dialogue out of your WIP and create one script for each character. Then invite some friends (ones who don’t already think you’re crazy because you walk around mumbling to yourself about your WIP if you still have any of those) over for dessert or appetizers sometime. Hand out the scripts, assign each person a part, and then sit back and listen. Was a line of dialogue so complicated it made the reader stumble? Do you hear places where the conversation sounds stilted and too formal, or where it sounds too informal for the scene? Does an exchange sound sappy when spoken aloud? Are there words you can cut out to tighten the flow?

And don’t give up your writing to search for the Holy Grail. While the search would be less frustrating sometimes, writing dialogue no longer has to look demonic to you. You know what to do!

Questions

In your current WIP, what sticking points and challenges do you find about writing dialogue? Is a character’s voice giving you trouble? Do you worry you’re overusing an attribution? Do you have a totally opposite opinion about adverbs? The rule about writing fiction is that there really aren’t many hard-and-fast rules, so don’t hesitate to share!

*     *     *     *     *

Eleanore D. Trupkiewicz is an author, poet, blogger, book reviewer, and freelance editor and proofreader. She writes full-length thrillers as well as short stories, flash fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Her blogs are Engraved: All About Writing (http://eleanoretrupkiewicz.blogspot.com) and Daily Poetry Prompts (http://dailypoetryprompts.blogspot.com) and you can find her on one of her websites at www.eleanoretrupkiewicz.com or Refiner’s Fire Editing (www.refinersfireediting.com). Follow her on Twitter: @ETrupkiewicz. She lives and writes in Colorado with cats, chocolate, and assorted houseplants in various stages of demise.

Like and As

Which of these sentences are correct?

1. Winston tastes good like a cigarette should. (This is a famous ad jingle?)
2. He spends money like a drunken sailor.
3. He lied on the witness stand, like one would expect a guilty person to do.
4. My cousin looks like Greta Garbo.
5. Robert likes to run his company as though he were a dictator.

Only sentences 3, 4 and 5 correctly employ the word "like."

Remember these two rules when considering the use of "like":
Rule 1: "Like" can be either a verb or a preposition but not a conjunction. Thus, we should not use it before a subject-verb combination (a clause).

In sentences 1, 2, and 3, we should use the conjunction "as" or "as if" in place of the word "like" because in each case "like" is followed by a clause. In these corrected sentences, we have bracketed the clauses and capitalized the subjects and verbs to highlight the grammatical structure:

1. Winston tastes good [as a CIGARETTE SHOULD].
3. He lied on the witness stand, [as ONE WOULD EXPECT a guilty person to do].

Rule 2: We should use "like" either as a preposition to demonstrate a resemblance between two things or as a verb to express a preference.

In sentence 2 the comparison of spending money .  In Setence 4, "like Greta Garbo" is a prepositional phrase. In sentence 5, "like" is the verb in the main clause, and "as though" is the conjunction launching the subordinate (dependent) clause.

Of course, in casual correspondence or in conversations we have more flexibility, and many idiomatic expressions using "like" are perfectly acceptable even though they do not follow these rules.  Consider also the expression "It looks like rain," which employs a perfectly acceptable idiom for the highly formal statement "It looks as though it is going to rain."

The bottom line: in formal contexts, we use "like" only as a verb or a preposition and never when we mean "as," "as if," or "as though."

Do any of these sentences correctly use the word "like"?

1. Like a man walking a tightrope, he teetered on the brink of financial ruin.
2. It looks like Arthur could become the next unit director.
3. He acts like he owns the world.
4. He carried an umbrella, like everyone should do on a rainy morning.

ANSWERS:

1. Like a man walking a tightrope, he teetered on the brink of financial ruin. [Correct because we are making a comparison.]
2. It looks as though [or as if] Arthur will become the next unit director.
3. He acts as if [or as though] he owns the world.
4. He carried an umbrella, as everyone should do on a rainy morning.

Worth Noting

Sometimes, it is worthwhile to recognize these amazing achievements:

During the 3-1/2 years of World War 2 that started with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and ended with the Surrender of Germany and Japan in 1945, the U..S. produced:


147 aircraft carriers, 8 battleships, 40+ cruisers, 750+ destroyers, 1,102 convoy escorts/destroyer escorts, 400+ submarines, 34 million tons of merchant ships,

 212,000 fighter aircraft, 153,615 bombers, 43,045 transport aircraft, 93.578 training aircraft,

227,235 tanks and self-propelled guns,  914,683 artillery pieces,  657,318 mortars, 
4,744,484 machine guns, and 3,060,354 military trucks, and about 10,000,000 tons of concrete for runways. We put 16.1 million men in uniform in the various armed services.

Invaded Africa,

Invaded Sicily and Italy,

Won the battle for the Atlantic,

Planned and executed D-Day,

Marched across the Pacific and Europe,

Developed the atomic bomb and

Ultimately conquered Japan and Germany.


It's also worth noting that during the almost exact amount of time, the Obama administration couldn't build a functioning website.

Conundrum

Free people are not equal. Equal people are not free. (Think this one over and over and it makes sense!)

The definition of the word Conundrum: Something that is puzzling or confusing.

Here are six Conundrums of socialism in the United States of America :

1. America is capitalist and greedy - yet half of the population is subsidized.

2. Half of the population is subsidized - yet they think they are victims.

3. They think they are victims -yet their representatives run the government.

4. Their representatives run the government - yet the poor keep getting poorer.

5. The poor keep getting poorer - yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about.

6. They have things that people in other countries only dream about - yet they want America to be more like those other countries.

Think about it!  And that, my friends, pretty much sums up the USA in the 21st Century.

Makes you wonder who is doing the math.

These three, short sentences tell you a lot about the direction of our government for the past 7 + years and cultural environment it has created:
 

1.  We are advised to NOT judge ALL Muslims by the actions of a few lunatics, but we are encouraged to judge ALL gun owners by the actions of a few lunatics.  Funny how that works.  And here's another one worth considering.

2.  Seems we constantly hear about how Social Security is going to run out of money.  But we never hear about welfare or food stamps running out of money!  What's interesting is the first group "worked for" their money, but the second did not! Think about it ... and last, but not least;

3.  Why were we cutting benefits for our veterans, no pay raises for our military and cutting our Army, Navy, Air Force & Coast Guard to a level lower than before WWII  but we were not stopping any of the payments or benefits to illegal aliens.

Are you among the few who are not missing something?

"If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools.�  ~Plato

Why did America drop the “U” in British spelling?

Whichever branch of the English language you are brought up with, you have to admit parts of it are an inconsistent mess. There are words that are spelled broadly the same but pronounced entirely differently—cough, bough, borough, through, brought—words that are spelled entirely differently but pronounced the same—write, right, two, too, to—and words that do the same job and have only slightly different spellings —obfuscate, obfusticate.

And of course, as with most things that are old and full of character, there’s a lot of beauty in that mess, but also a lot of room for people to argue over which aspect of the mess best exemplifies the true spirit of this living, breathing, evolving thing we all use every day.

One particularly vexatious argument concerns the lack of uniform spellings between British and American English. The simple reason for this is that England and America went their separate ways before anyone became unduly rigorous about spelling words the same way every time. The firm nailing down of language happened in earnest during the 1800s, on both sides of the Atlantic, and thanks largely to the reforming zeal of American lexicographer Noah Webster, it was with markedly different results in the U.S. than in Victorian Britain.

Seeking to wrest control of the language from the British ruling classes, Noah wrote three books that aimed to make a tidy pile of that mess we were talking about. One on grammar, one on reading, and one on spelling. His first—originally titled The First Part of the Grammatical Institute of the English Language, then The American Spelling Book, then The Elementary Spelling Book—became the standard textbook from which American teachers taught spelling for 100 years, and it was from reprints and reissues of that original text that Noah began to subtly refine words, spelling them according to how they sound.

So while British English still insists on a c in the word defense, Webster changed it to an s. Theatre and centre were simplified into theater and center. Plough became plow, axe became ax, catalogue became catalog, and flavour, honour, savour, saviour, candour, behaviour, colour, armour, demeanour, glamour, harbour and all the rest lost their u.

This was largely to differentiate those words from the ones that end in –our and sound like –ower. As in hour, flour, sour and so on. Some words still enjoy a dual existence, in that the U.S. Space Shuttle Endeavour kept its u, as it was named after Lieutenant* James Cook’s ship, HMS Endeavour. Glamour, being a Scots word, often keeps its u as well.

Ironically, the one word that Noah Webster failed in his attempts to get it spelled exactly as it rolls off the tongue is tongue itself, which he argued should be tung, but somehow this was a step too far, despite the loss of the concluding ue in words like catalog and analog.

I’d have stopped before the "e" was lopped off ax too, but it’s too late to try and graft it back on now.

*The reverse approach to Webster’s—saying things as they are spelled—can be found in this word, which the British pronounce “leftenant.”

Reprinted from a BBC America Article

http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2014/05/america-drop-u-british-spellings

Leading by Example

The light turned yellow, just in front of him.

The driver the right thing and stopped at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection. A tailgating woman behind him furious she missed her chance to get through the intersection, honked her horn, screaming in frustration. 

Still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up. He took her to the police station where she was searched, fingerprinted, photographed and placed in a holding cell. After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door, and escorted back to the booking desk. 

The arresting officer stood, waiting with her personal effects.He said, "I'm very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, giving the guy in front of you the finger and cursing at him. I noticed the 'What Would Jesus Do' bumper sticker, the 'Choose Life' license plate holder, the 'Follow Me to Sunday-School' bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated  Christian Fish Emblem on the trunk, so naturally I assumed you had stolen the car."

Retired and Bored

Retired and Bored
After I retired, my wife insisted that I accompany her on her trips to Target.  Unfortunately, like most men, I found shopping boring and preferred to get in and get out. Equally unfortunate, my wife is like most women - she loves to browse. Yesterday my dear wife received the following letter from the local Target:

Dear Mrs. Kell,
Over the past six months, your husband Larry has caused quite a commotion in our Mesa store. We can no longer tolerate his outrageous behavior and in accordance with company policy have been forced to ban both of you from the Mesa store. Our complaints against your husband, Mr. Kell, are numerous and listed below, If you have any doubts, we have them documented by our security people, on our in store video surveillance cameras.

1. June 15: He took 24 boxes of condoms and randomly put them in other people's carts when they weren't looking.

2. July 2: Set all the alarm clocks in Housewares to go off at 5-minute intervals.

3. July 7: He made a trail of tomato juice on the floor leading to the women's restroom.

4. July 19: Walked up to an employee and told her in an official voice, 'Code 3 in Housewares. Get on it right away'. This caused the employee to leave her assigned station and receive a reprimand from her Supervisor that in turn resulted with a union grievance, causing management to lose time and costing the company money. We don't have a Code 3.

5. August 4: Went to the Service Desk and tried to put a bag of M&Ms on layaway.

6. August 14: Moved a, 'CAUTION - WET FLOOR' sign to a carpeted area.

7. August 15: Set up a tent in the camping department and told the children of shoppers he'd invite them in if they would bring pillows and blankets from the bedding department to which twenty children obliged.

8. August 23: When a clerk asked if they could help him he began crying and screamed, 'Why can't you people just leave me alone?' EMTs were called.

9. September 4: Looked right into the security camera and used it as a mirror while he picked his nose.

10. September 10: While handling guns in the hunting department, he asked the clerk where the antidepressants were.

11. October 3: Darted around the store suspiciously while, loudly humming the, 'Mission Impossible' theme.
 12. October 6: In the auto department he practiced his, 'Madonna Look' using different sizes of funnels.

13. October 18: Hid in a clothing rack and when people browsed through, yelled 'PICK ME! PICK ME!'

14. October 22: When an announcement came over the loud speaker, he assumed a fetal position and screamed; 'OH NO! IT'S THOSE VOICES AGAIN!'

15. Took a box of condoms to the checkout clerk and asked where is the fitting room?
And last, but not least:

16. October 23: Went into a fitting room, shut the door, waited awhile; then yelled very loudly, “Hey! There's no toilet paper in here.” One of the clerks passed out.


Needless to say, I have been freed from the tedious shopping trips and we have stopped shopping at Target. Her new favorite place to browse is Walmart.

Deep POV and How It’s used.

Richard Draude
It and Graphics Administrator
Mystic Publishers Inc



Deep POV and How It’s used.

Deep POV is the third-person subjective taken a step beyond the normal third-person subjective. Deep POV shows your story through the eyes of one or more characters—one at a time please, avoid any head-hopping. Deep POV goes into the head and heart of a character, taking your readers beyond the action on the page. Thus allowing you the writer to help your readers understand your character’s throughs, his or her experiences, history, and feelings.

What first-person POV executes with the I narration, Deep POV accomplishes with third-person he or she narration.

Using Deep POV puts your readers inside your viewpoint character. They feel story events as your hero or heroine does. What your protagonist or antagonist sees, the reader sees. What they feel or think, the reader knows. The reader understands automatically what is being reported are the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of your viewpoint character.

Deep POV allows writers to do away with what he thought, he felt, he wondered, he saw, all those phrases that intrude into the fiction, that unnecessarily encumbers the story.

Once upon a time, such phrases were considered necessary, a way to let your readers know we were in the character’s head or seeing through his or her eyes. With Deep POV, readers are in the character’s head –almost– all the time, and no other intrusions are necessary.

A few examples of simple sentences to show the contrast—

Third-person—
He was lost, Michael thought. Lost and certain someone followed him into the woods.
I’m lost, Michael thought. Lost and certain someone followed him into the woods.

Third-person Deep POV—
He was lost. Lost and certain someone followed him into the woods.
I’m lost. Lost and certain someone followed him into the woods.

➢➣➢➣➤➢➣➢➣

Third-person—

Sherry trailed her quarry down Broadway, careful to look busy with store windows shopping on the opposite side of the street. She giggled when she watched him slip into the Big and Tall Shop and saw him hide behind a mannequin.

Third-person Deep POV

Sherry trailed her quarry—better known as her ex-husband—down Broadway, careful to look busy windows shopping on the opposite side of the street.  She had to laugh when he slipped into the Big and Tall Shop and hide behind a mannequin.

➢➣➣➢➣➢➣

Third-person—

Allen shook his head. It was moronic, he said to himself, the way Zen fawned over his wife’s parents.
Zen threw open his mouth, faking a long laugh.
A moron, Allen thought again, turning away.

Third-person Deep POV
Allen shook his head. It was moronic the way Zen fawned over his wife’s parents.
The loser threw open his mouth, faking a long laugh.
Moron.
Allen turned away.

➢➣➢➣➢➣➢➣

A first-person narrator never needs to identify his or her own feelings and thoughts as being their own. So, the third-person viewpoint character doesn’t have to tell his readers over and over what he or she is thinking or hoping or seeing or feeling. Readers understand the thoughts and hopes and visions and feelings belong to the viewpoint character.

The writer who uses Deep POV for his viewpoint character doesn’t have to use markers to tell readers what a character feels—

Melissa reluctantly stuck her hand into the pouch. She thought there was no way she could back out of the dare gracefully. She wiggled her fingers around. She felt slime ooze between them.

Melissa reluctantly stuck her hand into the pouch. There was no way she could back gracefully out of the dare. She wiggled her fingers around, wincing when slime oozed between them.

Using Deep POV rather than the traditional third-person subjective can cut your word count while keeping the intensity high. It can also keep readers deep in the fiction of the moment rather than reminding them that they are reading a story.

Markers used to remind readers a character is reporting that he’s doing something—felt, saw, watched, thought and so on—become a barrier between readers and the events and emotions of the story. They keep readers one step removed from story events and a character’s feelings.

Removing those reminders pulls your readers deeper into story’s events and deeper into the character’s mind and heart. When you remove the visual physical barrier, the psychological barrier is also separated. Then the reader dives even deeper into the fictional world.

Of course, being in a character’s thoughts and emotions for the length of a story can make readers antsy or induce a sense claustrophobia. It’s quite okay to draw back at times, to step away from that Deep POV.

When Deep POV is too much
At the opening of a new chapter, help the reader get a broad view of the scene. Allow scenes to gain perspective and provide relief from Deep POV. Go from the big-picture shot, shifting focus until your viewpoint character is again in the frame, then you can let him or her resume the storytelling.

Switching viewpoint characters lets your readers get the view from inside a different head. This gives them a break from the intensity of a single character’s point of view.

Remember, however, to switch viewpoint characters only with scene changes. And be choosy about the heads and hearts you dump your readers into. Not every character deserves to tell your story. Not every character is the right character to tell your story.

Common Writing Mistakes (4)

LISTS
“She was entranced by the roses, hyacinths, impatiens, mums, carnations, pansies, irises, peonies, hollyhocks, daylilies, morning glories, larkspur…” Well, she may be entranced, but our eyes are glazing over. If you’re going to describe a number of items, jack up the visuals. Lay out the scene as the eye sees it, with emphasis and emotion in unlikely places. When you list the items as though we’re checking them off with a clipboard, the internal eye will shut. It doesn’t matter what you list – nouns, adjectives, verbs – the result is always static. “He drove, he sighed, he swallowed, he yawned in impatience.” So do we. Dunk the whole thing. Rethink and rewrite. If you’ve got many ingredients and we aren’t transported, you’ve got a list.

SHOW, DON’T TELL
If you say, “she was stunning and powerful,” you’re *telling* us. But if you say, “I was stunned by her elegant carriage as she strode past the jury – shoulders erect, elbows back, her eyes wide and watchful,” you’re *showing* us. The moment we can visualize the picture you’re trying to paint, you’re showing us, not telling us what we *should* see..Handsome, attractive, momentous, embarrassing, fabulous, powerful, hilarious, stupid, fascinating are all words that “tell” us in an arbitrary way what to think. They don’t reveal, don’t open up, don’t describe in specifics what is unique to the person or event described. Often they begin with cliches.Here is Gail Sheehy’s depiction of a former “surfer girl” from the New Jersey shore in Middletown, America:

“This was a tall blond tomboy who grew up with all guy friends. A natural beauty who still had age on her side, being thirty; she didn’t give a thought to taming her flyaway hair or painting makeup on her smooth Swedish skin.”
Here I *think* I know what Sheehy means, but I’m not sure. Don’t let the reader make such assumptions. You’re the author; it’s your charge to show us what you mean with authentic detail. Don’t pretend the job is accomplished by cliches such as “smooth Swedish skin,” “flyaway hair,” “tall blond tomboy,” “the surfer girl” – how smooth? how tall? how blond?

Or try this from Faye Kellerman in Street Dreams:

“[Louise’s] features were regular, and once she had been pretty. Now she was handsome in her black skirt, suit, and crisp, white blouse.”
Well, that’s it for Louise, poor thing. Can you see the character in front of you? A previous sentence tells us that Louise has “blunt-cut hair” framing an “oval face,” which helps, but not much – millions of women have a face like that. What makes Louise distinctive? Again, we may think we know what Kellerman means by “pretty” and “handsome” (good luck), but the inexcusable word here is “regular,” as in “her features were regular.” What *are* “regular” features?

The difference between telling and showing usually boils down to the physical senses. Visual, aural aromatic words take us out of our skin and place us in the scene you’ve created. In conventional narrative, it’s fine to use a “to be” word to talk us into the distinctive word, such as “wandered” in this brief, easily imagined sentence by John Steinbeck in East of Eden. “His eyes were very blue, and when he was tired, one of them wandered outward a little.” We don’t care if he is “handsome” or “regular.”

Granted, context is everything, as writing experts say, and certainly that’s true of the sweltering West African heat in Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter: “Her face had the ivory tinge of atabrine; her hair which had once been the color of bottled honey was dark and stringy with sweat.” Except for “atabrine” (a medicine for malaria), the words aren’t all that distinctive, but they quietly do the job – they don’t tell us; they show us.

Commercial novels sometimes abound with the most revealing examples of this problem. The boss in Linda Lael Miller’s Don’t Look Now is “drop-dead gorgeous”; a former boyfriend is “seriously fine to look at: 35, half Irish and half Hispanic, his hair almost black, his eyes brown.” A friend, Betsy, is “a gorgeous, leggy blonde, thin as a model.” Careful of that word “gorgeous” – used too many times, it might lose its meaning.


The point to the List above is that even the best writers make these mistakes, but you can’t afford to. The way manuscripts are thrown into the Rejection Pile on the basis of early mistakes is a crime. Don’t be a victim.

Common Writing Mistakes (3)

FLAT WRITING

“He wanted to know but couldn’t understand what she had to say, so he waited until she was ready to tell him before asking what she meant.”Something is conveyed in this sentence, but who cares? The writing is so flat, it just dies on the page. You can’t fix it with a few replacement words – you have to give it depth, texture, character. Here’s another:”Bob looked at the clock and wondered if he would have time to stop for gas before driving to school to pick up his son after band practice.” True, this could be important – his wife might have hired a private investigator to document Bob’s inability to pick up his son on time – and it could be that making the sentence bland invests it with more tension. (This is the editorial consultant giving you the benefit of the doubt.) Most of the time, though, a sentence like this acts as filler. It gets us from A to B, all right, but not if we go to the kitchen to make a sandwich and find something else to read when we sit down.Flat writing is a sign that you’ve lost interest or are intimidated by your own narrative. It shows that you’re veering toward mediocrity, that your brain is fatigued, that you’ve lost your inspiration. So use it as a lesson. When you see flat writing on the page, it’s time to rethink, refuel and rewrite.

AWKWARD PHRASING
“Mrs. Fletcher’s face pinkened slightly.” Whoa. This is an author trying too hard. “I sat down and ran a finger up the bottom of his foot, and he startled so dramatically …. ” Egad, “he startled”? You mean “he started”?Awkward phrasing makes the reader stop in the midst of reading and ponder the meaning of a word or phrase. This you never want as an author. A rule of thumb – always give your work a little percolatin’ time before you come back to it. Never write right up to deadline. Return to it with fresh eyes. You’ll spot those overworked tangles of prose and know exactly how to fix them.

COMMAS
Compound sentences, most modifying clauses and many phrases *require* commas. You may find it necessary to break the rules from time to time, but you can’t delete commas just because you don’t like the pause they bring to a sentence or just because you want to add tension.”Bob ran up the stairs and looking down he realized his shoelace was untied but he couldn’t stop because they were after him so he decided to get to the roof where he’d retie it.” This is what happens when an author believes that omitting commas can make the narrative sound breathless and racy. Instead it sounds the reverse – it’s heavy and garbled.The Graham Greene quote above is dying for commas, which I’ll insert here: “Her face had the ivory tinge of atabrine; her hair, which had once been the color of bottled honey, was dark and stringy with sweat.” This makes the sentence accessible to the reader, an image one needs to slow down and absorb.Entire books have been written about punctuation. Get one. “The Chicago Manual of Style” shows why punctuation is necessary in specific instances. If you don’t know what the rules are for, your writing will show it. 

Common Writing Mistakes (2)

When you're writing, are you tempted to use adverbs to punch up your pros. Don't!

EMPTY ADVERBS

Actually, totally, absolutely, completely, continually, constantly, continuously, literally, really, unfortunately, ironically, incredibly, hopefully, finally – these and others are words that promise emphasis, but too often they do the reverse. They suck the meaning out of every sentence.I defer to People Magazine for larding its articles with empty adverbs.

A recent issue refers to an “incredibly popular, groundbreakingly racy sitcom.” That’s tough to say even when your lips aren’t moving.In Still Life with Crows, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child describe a mysterious row of corn in the middle of a field: “It was, in fact, the only row that actually opened onto the creek.” Here are two attempts at emphasis (“in fact,” “actually”), but they just junk up the sentence. Remove them both and the word “only” carries the burden of the sentence with efficiency and precision.(When in doubt, try this mantra: Precise and spare; precise and spare; precise and spare.)In dialogue, empty adverbs may sound appropriate, even authentic, but that’s because they’ve crept into American conversation in a trendy way.

If you’re not watchful, they’ll make your characters sound wordy, infantile and dated.In Julia Glass’s Three Junes, a character named Stavros is a forthright and matter-of-fact guy who talks to his lover without pretense or affectation. But when he mentions an offbeat tourist souvenir, he says, “It’s absolutely wild. I love it.” Now he sounds fey, spoiled, superficial.. (Granted, “wild” nearly does him in; but “absolutely” is the killer.)The word “actually” seems to emerge most frequently, I find. Ann Packer’s narrator recalls running in the rain with her boyfriend, “his hand clasping mine as if he could actually make me go fast.” Delete “actually” and the sentence is more powerful without it.

The same holds true when the protagonist named Miles hears some information in Empire Falls by Richard Russo. “Actually, Miles had no doubt of it,” we’re told. Well, if he had no doubt, remove “actually” – it’s cleaner, clearer that way. “Actually” mushes up sentence after sentence; it gets in the way every time. I now think it should *never* be used.

Another problem with empty adverbs: You can’t just stick them at the beginning of a sentence to introduce a general idea or wishful thinking, as in “Hopefully, the clock will run out.” Adverbs have to modify a verb or other adverb, and in this sentence, “run out” ain’t it.

Look at this hilarious clunker from The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown: “Almost inconceivably, the gun into which she was now staring was clutched in the pale hand of an enormous albino.”

Ack, “almost inconceivably” – that’s like being a little bit infertile! Hopefully, that “enormous albino” will ironically go back to actually flogging himself while incredibly saying his prayers continually.

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

Active voice versus Passive voice.

“Nothing drives me up a wall quicker than people writing in passive voice. How do you teach people to differentiate between passive and active voice and to avoid passive voice?”

The first step is to help people understand the difference between active and passive voice. Most writers believe they should avoid the passive voice, but few can define it or recognize it.

So, the first question, Active Voice how do you define it?

In an active sentence, the subject is doing the action. A straightforward example is the sentence "Al loves Michelle." Al is the subject, and he is doing the action: he loves Michelle, the object of the sentence.

The Marvin Gaye song “I Heard It through the Grapevine” is another example of active voice. The subject of the sentence "I" is the one who is doing the action. "I" is hearing "it," the object of the sentence.

What Is Passive Voice?

In passive voice, the target of the action gets promoted to the subject position. Instead of saying, "Al loves Michelle," the sentence would read, "Michelle is loved by Al." The subject of the sentence becomes Michelle, but she isn't doing anything. Rather, she is just the recipient of Al's love. The focus of the sentence has changed from Al to Michelle.

“It was heard by me through the grapevine,” is how to make the title of the Marvin Gaye song passive. You would say not such a catchy title, and you would be right.

Many people believe all sentences containing a form of the verb “to be” are in passive voice, but that isn't true. For example, in the sentence "I am holding a pen" is active voice, but it uses the verb “am,” which is a form of “to be.” The passive form of that sentence is "The pen is being held by me."

Notice that the subject, the pen, isn't doing anything in that sentence. It's not taking an action; it's passive. One clue that your sentence is passive is that the subject isn't taking a direct action.

Is Passive Voice Always Wrong?  Passive voice isn't wrong, but it's often a poor way to present your thoughts.

It is important to remember, passive sentences aren't incorrect, though often they are not the best way to phrase your thoughts. Passive voice can be awkward and at times it’s vague. Passive voice is usually wordy. Replacing a passive sentences with an active one, will tighten your writing by

When you put sentences in passive voice, it's easy to leave out the person or thing doing the action. For example, "Michelle is loved," is passive. The problem with that sentence is that you don't know who loves Michelle.

Ronald Reagan said, “Mistakes were made.” when he referred to the Iran-Contra scandal. Politicians are famous for useing passive voice. It a convenient way obscure the idea of who is taking the action. Other examples of passive voice for political reasons include, “Shots were fired,” and “Bombs were dropped.” Pay close attention and listen for examples of passive voice, when you watch the TV news reports or listen to radio news.

Also, a reader named Priscilla commented that businesses at time will use passive voice. It sounds better to write, "Your electricity will be shut off," than "We, the electric company, will be shutting off your power."


Crime Reports: Is Passive Voice OK?

Sometimes passive voice does have its advantages. For example, if you don’t know who is taking the action, then the person can’t named. It can be quite common, especially with crime reports. For example, a security guard submitting his report will write "The store was robbed," this is because, if the thief isn’t captured right away, then nobody knows the robber identity when the report is files.

Can Passive Voice Work in Fiction Writing?

Passive voice is also sometimes useful in fiction writing. For example, if you were writing a mystery novel and you wanted to highlight missing cookies because they are central to the story, passive voice is the best option. It would make more sense to write, "The cookies were stolen," instead of "Somebody stole the cookies."

The difference is subtle, but in the passive sentence “My candies were stolen,” the focus is on the cookies. In active voice, “Somebody stole my candies,” focuses the attention would be on the unknown thief.

Passive voice can be helpful if you want to create a sense of mystery in your sentence, which is also a reason that it's not usually a good choice when you're writing nonfiction and you want your writing to be clear.

Passive Voice is Recommended for Science Writing?

Exception for passive are scientists. They are encouraged to write in passive voice. It lends a sense of objectivity to their writing. Passive voice takes them, their actions, and opinions out of the experimental results. I find it odd. It feels to as if they are trying to hide that real people did the experiments.

Passive voice has its place. In fiction it’s place is in dialogue. People speak in passive voice. “I already went to the store.” or  “She was here and hour ago.” The use of any “to be” verbs, was, were, had, etc, will render a sentence passive in most cases. In your exposition or narrative, passive voice should and must be avoided. Keep your narrative in active voice and the scenes as seen through your main character’s eyes. (POV) This moves your story along and keeps your audience involved. Passive voice slows down your narrative and can take your reader out of the story.

It can turn into author intrusion. (The author telling the reader what he or she thinks the reader needs to know.) That’s a subject for my next blog,

Neverland, A Quote

"Second star to the right and straight on 'til morning." -- J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan



Neverland is an actual place. As children, whether sleeping or awake, we instinctively know the way and go there whenever it suits us. The portal to that marvelous world is available every day, through the pictures we love, games we play, the stories we read or are read to us, and the tales we tell one another.

That gateway never really closes, but life dictates we grow up. As we do, we lose the ability to see the way back or seeing it, tragically most refuse to reenter that blessed realm. Fortunately for the world, there are those who stand with one foot on each side of the rift, bridging the way for all.

For all those who wish to return, one has but to listen to the good songs of the minstrels, hear the rhyming words of the poet, study the lives of champions past or present, or read the flights of fancy from those minds and hearts who still dwell in Neverland.

If you still find your way barred, there is another gate, a back door so-to-speak. You unlock it through the pure imagination of children, be they your own, your nieces and nephews, or grandchildren, and so on. Open your heart, tamper not with their innocence, and they can, for brief moments, transport you there, and fill your soul with wonder.        

—Richard R Draude

The MacKenna Saga Plots and Probhecies

Book two of the Plots and Prophecies went into print on March 15th of this year. On April 15th the E Book went live on  the Smashworsds website.and on Kindle.

Do As We Say, Not As We Do

Attending the Las Vegas Writer’s Conference this past April made the Do As We Say, Not As We Do of the modern publishing industry very evident. Right now you’re scratching your head, wondering, What’s he talking about?
I’ll explain after I say this. Yes I am a writer and the first version of my novel was, at best, horrible and rejected numerous times. My current publisher took on the story, but required a complete rewrite. My editor beat me over the head with the rules you’ll find in the next few paragraphs. I will be expected to adhere to these standards in every book I write, going forward. No, this is not a ‘hit piece’ in retaliation for past rejections. We all get them, it’s part of the process. This blog comes in response to what is presented as the Publishing Standard versus what we see in print from established authors.
Throughout time writing styles and requirements have changed. How an author presents a story to his or her readers is determined by the publishing industry and varies from publishing house to publishing house. In the late seventies publishers required their authors to stop Telling their story, and let the reader live it through the characters’ eyes. Show, Don’t Tell,  is what all authors are expected to adhere to today.
At every writer’s conference you’ll attend, the people presenting the classes are, for the most part, agents, editors, or an acquisitions editor. They will stand in front of a group of eager writers and present material searching for the best road to publication.
Of the many tips offered these stood out to me: 1.Write in Active Voice   2. Have a Fixed POV (Point Of View)    3. No Author Intrusion (Stay out of your story)   4. Show, Don’t Tell   5. Limited Use of Adverbs. (Limited to use in dialogue not in exposition.) Some of these concepts are foreign to new writers. They take copious notes, read anything they can find on the subjects. At home they are determined to write their story or rewrite their existing novel to the accepted standards.
Later, after a lot of hard work, a writer will submit their work to a publishers. Five or six months later they receive a curt rejection note with no explanation.  They then start over submitting their novel to another publisher or agent, only to wait another five or six months to get rejected. An added note, many of the manuscripts submitted in any given year are terrible at best and warrant a rejection. Some, however, are never really given a fair shake. Legally Blonde is a good example. Turned down by most publishers as too frivolous, it became a self-published novel. The author, through perseverance,  brought it to the attention of Hollywood, and became a film with a sequel.
So where does publishers Do As We Say, Not As We Do, come in? Go to any book store and pick up a book written by an established author with a following, with a copyright/first print date after 2001 up to the present. Once you understand the concept of Write in Active Voice, Have a Fixed POV, No Author Intrusion, Show, Don’t Tell, and Limited Use of Adverbs, you will see how the rules fall away for the publishers’ money makers.
Take for example the novel Frozen Heat, by Richard Castle, ghost written by an unknown author.
I too am a huge Castle TV show fan, but I have to disagree with many of the reviewers. I looked forward to reading any of the Niki Heat novels. I picked up Frozen Heat, read the first chapter and a half, and close the book. Whoever the writer is, may be sticking to the show’s formula, but the complete overuse of adverbs kept throwing me out of the story.
“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” Stephen King.
While I can read and enjoy novels written before publishers made a big deal of the "Show, Don't Tell." standard, and limited use of adverbs. This book falls way short of either of those standards. Publishers reject a new writer's manuscript if it contains lot of tell and uses too many adverbs, yet in the first 13 pages the 15 adverbs used, are unnecessary. (I'm not counting the ones used in dialogue. Those are fine.) For example, on page 4 line 8, the ride in the elevator. "-. . . is back against the wall then SUDDENLY hers.” The use of the word 'suddenly' is ambiguous.
Anton Chekhov said, “Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
How did Niki's back wind up against the elevator wall? Did she pulled Rook in front of her, or did Rook twist her into that position for more control? Those actions would have painted a much better picture of the scene. On the same page, line 16. "He appeared at the door COMPLETLY naked." Use of the word 'completely' is redundant. If you're naked, you're without any cloths. Your nakedness is complete. This continues throughout the book. For me what was an anticipated read turned into a big disappointment.
One more noteworthy misuse of adverbs. On page 12, 2nd paragraph 5th line. "SLOWLY, METHODICALLY she ran the beam of her flashlight from right to left along the bottom edge of the case." Starting a sentence with an adverb is bad enough. Two in a row, please! Whoever the writer is, go take a creative writing class and reread the quotes above by Stephen King and Anton Chekhov. I gave this book one star because I had to give it something.
This is what Twain had to say about adverbs. 
“I am dead to adverbs; they cannot excite me. To misplace an adverb is a thing which I am able to do with frozen indifference; it can never give me a pang. ... There are subtleties which I cannot master at all--they confuse me, they mean absolutely nothing to me--and this adverb plague is one of them. ... Yes, there are things which we cannot learn, and there is no use in fretting about it. I cannot learn adverbs; and what is more I won't.”

Pick up any established writer, say Patterson for example, and you will find violation of many, if not all, of the above standards. Why? Once an author is established, he or she becomes lazy. Their publishers require them to crank out a number of novels per year. Publishers want to get another book out for cash flow and profits, so the editors let a lot go, if they edit at all. Because the author has an audience, their fans are going to buy and read a new book simply because it’s their favorite author.
When a book falls short of a publishers own self-proclaimed standards, fans and the so-called major reviewers should complain.  By offering bad reviews, we tell publishers  their established authors should have to conform to the same rules publishers expect new writes to follow. We of the reading public would be treated to stories with more depth and impact, instead of publishers’ hypocrisy along with author and editor laziness. If publishers will live up to their own standards, the bottom line will follow.

Your Book Cover

The popular idiom is "Don’t judge a book by its cover," might be true in an idealistic sense, but it usually refers to judging people by their appearance.

There is a reality for publishers and the book industry in general. For the vast majority of readers the cover of a book is a deciding factor in not only whether or not they should buy the book, but if they will enjoy it as well.

There are literally millions of books for a reader to choose from, Your cover is the first "sales pitch" so to speak. If it doesn’t catch a buyer’s eye, their imagination, or their attention, he or she will pass it over in favor of a book with more appeal on either side.

Text and Font If the title is not clear enough to read from a distance, or when it becomes a thumbnail image online, then a great sounding title will be lost on a potential customer. Your font is critical. If it’s sloppy, illegible, unappealing, or just unprofessional, such as the overly-used, you could even say abused fonts of, Comic Sans or Papyrus, it will immediately turn off most readers.

Not only is your cover a billboard for the book, it is in a sense, the first page of your story. The graphic chosen can communicate, at a quick glance, the style and mood of the tale inside. A dark cover, with lots of shadow, can suggest a danger or even horror. A bright white cover with clouds could suggest a motivational text book. Why is this important. It speaks to the emotions of the reader, engaging them on a deeper level, and thus potentially not only securing a book sale. A sale sets the stage for whether or not any reader will like the book in the first place.

A cover can also create preconceptions in a reader’s mind about what the characters or the setting look like. It is debatable whether or not this is a good thing, as the cover design may not match the author or reader’s ideas, but it could act as a visual aid where necessary. Romance and erotica obviously make good use of this fact with appealing models on the front cover, enticing readers as much as they might entice each other as characters in the story.

A reader first assurance that the book is of a high quality, is a well-designed cover. The cover can scare away a customer or lure them in. Bad covers, with pixelated images, watermarks clearly visible, text badly formatted or aligned, and so forth, suggest to the reader that the interior of the book will be equally sloppy.

A poorly designed cover, creates preconceptions in the mind of the reader, setting them in "critical" mode instead of "enjoyment" mode. With their attention already drawn to errors and sloppiness, they will more easily spot mistakes in the text, and might even go looking for them. They are also likely to be less forgiving of typos than they would of what appears to be a more professional work.

The importance of cover design Big publishers to come up with different covers for different markets, catering to the unique culture of each region. Design principles are not the same the whole world over, leading to, for example, simpler designs on many UK covers, with more frequent use of negative space, and more detailed designs on US covers that cram in more imagery, potentially speaking to different cultural perceptions of "value for money."

Thanks to different meanings of words in different countries, titles on covers can also change. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, is a classic example of this. The book was renamed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in the United States. The word "Philosopher" does not have the same connotations with magic here as it does in the England. The artwork also changed, helping reinforce the magical themes of the book. The font itself became much more mystical, ending up being the form was not only for the books, but employed for the movies as well.

Great cover designs needs to draw the reader’s attention, engage them on an emotional level, suggest the tone and style of the work, and showcase the quality of the book itself, all the while taking into consideration the potential cultural expectations of the reader. This is a monumental task, without doubt, but one that could be a deciding factor in making a book a best-seller.

The Adverb crutch.

Amateur writers wind up succumbing to at least one major pitfall, the use of adverbs in dialogue tags.  Adverbs are those pesky –ly words that modify verbs.

For example:

happily replied.

said angrily.

quickly asked.

pensively said.


In fiction, adverbs tend to weaken your writing. The general rule for fiction of any genre is to eliminate as many adverbs as possible, replacing them with stronger, more specific words.

What do we do with adverbs? (In a perfect world they would cease to exist.). With dialogue, you cannot just replace the adverb. An adverb in a dialogue tag means, in most cases,  you’ll need to rewrite the dialogue itself.

Here’s why:

Amateur writers (but not limited to them) often rely on adverbs in a dialogue tag to convey emotion and tone. That is wrong. A good writer will make that happen in the dialogue itself, and will not rely on the dialogue tag.

For example:

“I've had enough of this,” Karnic shouted angrily.

This tells us Karnic is angry. But that emotion isn't demonstrated through his actions or the dialogue itself.

Remember, dialogue tags have one purpose, to tell the reader who is speaking. Readers read right over them. You want your reader to feel Karnis’s anger, you have to show them–through the dialogue itself.

Here’s how you might accomplish that:

“You disgust me. This conversation is over,” said Karnic.

Karnic’s dialogue is stronger and his emotion is clear.  Kaenic’s words are angry, so you don’t need to rely on the adverb angrily to convey that.

Including some brief actions or descriptions to eliminate the adverb and convey the character’s emotion brings more depth to your story and power to a scene.

For example:

Kaenic shoved his chair back and slammed his fist on the table. “I've had enough!” He clenched his jaw. “This discussion is over.”

The actions and description here help show how Kaenic feels, eliminating the use of the word angrily from the dialogue tag.

Here’s what you don’t want to do, however:

“I've had enough,” Kaenic said, angry.

This replaces the adverb, but we still have the same basic problem: You are telling the reader instead of letting the reader feel the characters emotions through their actions. Don’t be fooled into thinking you’re all set just because you don’t have one of those pesky –ly word in there.

Adverbs become crutches, even for accomplished writers.  They're lazy writing and a huge red flag for agents and editors.

Here’s how good way to test your writing. Read your dialogue out loud without any dialogue tags. If the lines of dialogue by themselves don’t convey the emotion you’re trying to draw from your readers, that means you're relying on adverbs and your dialogue needs to be rewritten.

Every Rule has An Exception

Of course, there’s always an exception to every rule. Here’s the one for adverbs in dialogue tags (though a good editor will flag it and ask you to rework the sentence.). If the tone or emotion of the dialogue is confusing or unclear to the reader, you might use an adverb in a dialogue tag. This strategy is most often used when the character speaks sarcastically or ironically, jokes, or struggles to be polite.

For example, consider this piece of dialogue:

“Maybe I should come upstairs for awhile,” Martin said.

“No, thank you,” Alicia said.

Let’s assume your protagonist is at the end of an awful first date when he suggests he should come upstairs with her. Hirepliesly of,  “No, thank you.” could be taken many ways. So in this case the “No, thank you.” doesn't tell us much, of Alicia’s emotional or mental state, does it? We’d have to assume she’s politely declining. But what if the same line of dialogue were rewritten as the example below?

 “No, thank you,” she said emphatically.

Now the reader gets there’s force behind her words, she's making sure he doesn't come upstairs.

The adverb makes her tone clearer even though her words are exactly the same.
As I said. There are other ways so as to eliminate the adverb.

“No-thank-you!” she said, then turned and stabbed the elevator call button with her index finger.

Linking the words with a dashes and using the exclamation point add emotion to the sentence. The action of turning and stabbing the call button shows frustration, anger, etc.

Bottom Line

You want to use adverbs as sparingly as possible. In general, it’s better to use stronger, more descriptions and specific words to move your readers and fans.

The MacKenna Saga Book Progress

After a long uphill battle I published  Dreams and Deceptions, the first book in my series The MacKenna Saga. Then NewLink Publishing was taken over by Mystic Publishers Inc.. NewLink Publishing became a Imprint of the parent company. My book was reviewed by the staff and they requested I bring the writing up to their Standards. ( See Post Publishing Hypocrisy). I spent the next few month in a rewrite and the second edition of Dreams and Deceptions, came out in April of this year,

Book two Plots and Prophecies is in final edit and is due for release in November in time for Christmas. It picks up right were the cliff hanger ending in Dreams and Deceptions, left off

Book three tentatively titled Retribution is completed and will go in to editing later this year.

Book four is complete. Book five is 35% complete and book six is 20 % complete.

You can find Dreams and Deceptions in the following places:



Authors Page  amazon.com/author/richarddraude

Amazon Dreams and Deceptions Book Page: http://www.amazon.com/Dreams-Deceptions-2nd-MacKenna-Saga-ebook/dp/B00ZBT1QFI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1434610254&sr=8-2&keywords=Richard+Draude


Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/442360