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Post by Joxcenia on Jun 20, 2006 17:16:12 GMT -6
Beyond Basic Blunders
These big-picture writing errors might make you cringe with recognition. But shake it off: Bestselling novelist Jerry B. Jenkins will help you fix them.
Morning-routine cliché
Clichés come in all shapes and sizes. There are just as many clichéd scenes as phrases and words. For instance, how may times have you seen a book begin with a main character being "rudely awakened" from a "sound sleep" by a "clanging" alarm clock? Have you written an opening like this yourself? Wondering where to start, you opt for first thing in the morning. Speaking of clichés, been there, done that. We all have. Don't ever do it again.
Compounding that cliché is having the "bleary-eyed" character drag himself from his bed, squinting against the intruding sunlight. And compounding that is telling the reader everything the character sees in the room. What comes next? He'll pass by or stand before a full-length mirror, and we'll get the full rundown of what the poor guy looks like.
Are you cringing? I've done the same kind of clichéd scene. Resolve to leave that whole morning-routine cliché to the millions of writers who'll follow in your footsteps.
I know you want me to suggest alternatives to those hackneyed constructs, but inventing fresh ways to start a story and describe a character is your job. If an early-morning routine is endemic to your plot—say your character is wound tight and sleepless because of a crucial morning meeting—put him on the commuter train with an unsupervised child darting about. He doesn't know what she's doing amidst all the businesspeople, with their noses stuck in newspapers or laptop screens, but she points at him and says, "Don't you comb your hair?"
Mortal dread. Is it possible that, in his hurry to catch the last train that would get him to his job interview on time, our hero actually skipped a step in his personal routine? Now he has to find his reflection in the train window or the aluminum back of the seat in front of him. And then what does he do?
Answering-the-phone cliché
Another deadly cliché is how people answer the phone. This happens even in the movies or on stage. Be aware of yourself the next time your phone rings. It's such a common occurrence that we don't even think about it. But one thing you likely do not do is look up, startled. You don't turn and look at the phone. You know where it is; it's been there for years, and you've heard it ring before. You simply rise and go answer it.
If your character gets a phone call, resist the urge to have her look up, startled, then rise, cross the room, pick up the receiver and say, "Hello?"
"Hi, Mary?"
"Yes."
"This is Jill."
"Hi, Jill. What's up?"
(Or if you're a mystery writer): "Hi, Jill. Is anything wrong?"
Enough already.
The clutter of detail
Here is another problematic phone scene, from an unpublished manuscript:You get the idea. Here's my version:Give your readers credit. If you tell them Mary phoned Chester, they can assume he heard the ring, stood, moved to the phone, picked it up and introduced himself. You'd be amazed at how many manuscripts are cluttered with such details.
Even in a period piece where the baking of a cake from scratch is an engrossing trip down memory lane, the good writer gives readers credit for thinking. While she may outline all the steps the heroine goes through to make the cake, she'll avoid having her rise and stride to the kitchen or even pull open the oven door—unless there's something about that oven door novel enough to include. If the character has to use a towel to lift the iron lid, fine. But if she does that, we know she had to stand and walk first.
Skip the recitals of ordinary life
We all get dressed, walk out to the car, open the door, slide in, turn the key and back out of the driveway. If your character backs into the garbage truck, that's a story. Just say it:Don't spell it out
One of the clichés of conversation is feeling the need to explain more than once what's going on, as if the reader can't figure it out on his own. I actually read a novel in which, when a character said something quirky like "promptly, punctually and prissily" (which was actually funny and fit the personality), the author felt the need to add, "he said alliteratively."
Other writers have a character respond to a diatribe from another with "Yep," or "Nope," or a shrug. Perfect. I love to learn about personalities this way. The character is a man of few words. But too often, the author intrudes, adding, "he said, eschewing small talk."
If you create a character who backs into a conversation with tentative phrases like, "Oh, I was just wondering," or, "I don't know how to say this, but if I, well, let me say it this way," we get it. We understand this is a timid, nervous person, afraid of saying something wrong, sensitive to others' feelings. Avoid the temptation to explain. Don't follow that with, "she began nervously, unsure how to broach the subject."
Maybe the responder to that speaker says, "Is there a question in there somewhere? What are you saying?" That tells us all we need to know. You don't have to explain with, "the insensitive jerk said."
Pass on the preachiness
If your whole reason for writing is to pontificate on, for example, the dangers of certain habits or lifestyles, you risk sounding preachy. I see this problem in many manuscripts: all talk, straw men, plots contrived to prove a point but little that grabs and subtly persuades the reader. If your theme is the danger of alcoholism, simply tell a story in which an alcoholic suffers because of his bad decisions and give the reader credit. If your story is powerful enough, your theme will come through.
As you might imagine, preachiness is the bane of too much writing today (especially in the inspirational market). We're trying to make the same kinds of points, naturally, that preachers do. But preachers are supposed to preach. It's what they do. No one complains that his preacher is too preachy. That would be like saying a ballerina is too dancey.
For some reason, however, preachiness on paper offends the reader's sensibilities. If you're like me, you like to be given some credit as a reader and thinker. Even as a child, when I heard the story of the boy who cried wolf, I got it. I didn't need someone saying, "So you see, Jerry, if you lie often enough, no one will take you seriously when you're telling the truth." That's the beauty of morality tales; they make their own points.
Preachiness doesn't need to be as obvious as stopping the story to say, "And so, dear reader, as you travel down life's highway, remember... ." Sometimes obvious point-making comes when the writer of a first-person piece tries to shift gears without engaging the clutch and writes, "That was the day I learned that if that little girl could be so brave in the face of that kind of danger, I could certainly face the uncertainty of... ."
A rule of thumb? The Golden Rule. Put yourself in the skin of your reader. Read your piece to yourself and imagine how you'd feel at the end of it. Does the story or nonfiction article make its own point? Has the writer (in this case, you) added a sermonette to the end? When in doubt, cut it out.
Setting the scene
Because of the proliferation of all sorts of visual media these days, it's more important than ever that novelists write with the eye in mind. Fortunately, just as in the days of radio, what can be produced in the theater of the mind (in our case, the reader's mind) is infinitely more creative than what a filmmaker can put on the screen.
Be visual in your approach. People buy tickets to the movies or subscribe to cable channels hoping to see something they've never seen before. A good novel can provide the same, only—because of the theater of the mind—millions of readers can see your story a million different ways.
Although I'm encouraging you to be visual, I eschew too much description. I loved it when great potboiler writer John D. MacDonald described a character simply as "knuckly." A purist might have demanded hair length and color; eye size, shape and color; height; weight; build; gait. Not me. "Knuckly" gave me all I needed to picture the man. And if I saw him thinner, taller, older than you did, so much the better. MacDonald offered a suggestion that allowed his readers to populate their own scenes.
I recall an editor asking me to expound on my "oily geek" computer techie in one of my books in the Left Behind series. I argued: (1) he was an orbital character, and while I didn't want him to be a cliché from central casting, neither did I feel the need to give him more characteristics than he deserved; and (2) he was there to serve a purpose, not to take over the scene, and certainly not to take over the book.
The editor countered, "But the reader will want to see him, and you haven't told us enough. Like, I see him in his 20s, plump, pale, with longish, greasy hair and thick glasses."
What could I say? "Eureka! You just proved my point! All I wrote was that he was an oily geek, and look what you brought to the table." Every reader has his own personal vision of a computer techie, so why not let each mental creation have its 15 seconds of fame on the theater screen of the mind?
Coincidences
In real life, I love coincidences. I'm fascinated by them. In fiction, more than one in each novel is too many, and even the one has to be handled well. (In comedies, sure, coincidences are fun and expected. How many times in "Seinfeld" do the characters run into the same people they tangled with early in the story?)
Say you invent a yarn about two people who marry, come to hate each other and get divorced. Years pass, and each fails at yet another marriage. Available again, they run into each other thousands of miles from home at a bazaar in Turkey. Bizarre is more like it. People won't buy it. If the couple reconnected at their high school reunion, that would be plausible, or if they both chickened out of that event at the same time and ran in to each other at a fast food place nearby, that would be an interesting, more believable coincidence.
So you see, dear reader...oops. OK, I'm going to give you some credit for getting the point.
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Post by Joxcenia on Jun 20, 2006 17:26:47 GMT -6
I had already read this article in the magazine, and the link to it online was in their newsletter I signed up for a couple of days ago.
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Post by Joxcenia on Jun 28, 2006 12:44:12 GMT -6
Just Add Writer
You can sharpen your genre-writing skills as a work-for-hire novelist.
In the publishing community, the phrase "work for hire" often conjures images of laborers toiling in someone else's field, earning very little pay and even less recognition. The term means that you're contracted by a publisher—usually on the basis of an outline and sample chapters—to write a novel using pre-established characters and settings. These projects often are called "tie-in" work or "media-related" novels because they relate to an existing product, such as a movie, TV show, comic book or game. Authors receive advances and royalties on these projects, but the creators of the original properties—often movie and TV production companies—own the copyright to the finished work.
Work-for-hire projects are sometimes perceived as "pre-fab" creations in the publishing world. After all, if the characters and settings already exist, what's left for the writer to do? And because the writer doesn't retain rights to the book once it's completed, work for hire is seen by some as exploiting authors. But such attitudes often come from editors and writers who've never been involved with tie-in novels.
In fact, there are plenty of arguments in favor of this kind of work. I've written 10 novels: four original and six media-related tie-ins. While not every book is equally near and dear to my heart, I'm proud of them all. Let's take a look at the potential pitfalls with writing tie-in novels, as well as the often-overlooked benefits—especially for writers of genre fiction.
Playing by the rules
I find it fun and challenging to work with a given set of elements—kind of like directing a play or writing a script for a TV series. I think of the project more like creating a collage than painting; it's innovation rather than invention.
Michael A. Stackpole, an award-winning game designer and author, agrees. A writer of Star Wars-based novels and other media-related properties, he rejects the notion that his work is creatively limiting. "Every writer is limited by the constraints of the world in which he writes," Stackpole says, "be it the real world or a world he's created."
Christopher Golden, bestselling author of The Ferryman and Strangewood, has written "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"-related books, and novels based on the "Angel" TV series. He's witnessed first-hand the problems some writers—even good ones—have constructing a story within someone else's guidelines. "I've also seen a lot of god-awful tie-ins," he says, "which would seem to indicate that some writers think it's a lot easier than it actually is."
Stretching your creativity
In my own experience, licensed work-for-hire projects have helped me broaden my genres and subjects. I've written an erotic mystery, a medieval vampire novel, a sci-fi action-adventure, even a Nightmare on Elm Street novel. Only time and reader reaction will tell how well I succeed artistically, but I've gained experience working in genres that I never would've gained on my own—experience I can apply to any other projects, including my original fiction.
Stackpole likens the challenge of writing in different genres to learning how to play golf. "If you play on one course, you'll get good at that course. It's only when you head out to play others that you're going to hone skills that might not have been needed before."
Not only does writing media-related novels sharpen your genre-writing abilities, but you're also forced to think up fresh ideas for well-developed characters and situations. When characters have appeared in several TV seasons, a series of films or hundreds of comic books, says Golden, it requires focus to examine relationships and foundations existing within that property. Those efforts pay off when writing your original work, too, because you'll look at your own efforts with greater scrutiny. "As long as you're passionate about your project," Golden says, "it can take you into genres and worlds you wouldn't have otherwise considered."
Building an audience
There's a myth in the industry that there's no crossover success between tie-ins and an author's original works. But Stackpole bears witness to the results. "I've spoken with other authors who've seen the readers following them, and I've got years of royalty figures to prove it." And while the crossover might be modest, it's worth it. Stackpole pulls in about 2 percent of his Star Wars readers. While this might not sound substantial, it means an extra 15,000 readers have made the effort to read his original material.
Stackpole warns that while tie-in books can sell anywhere from four to 20 times what a beginning author could expect on an independent novel, it's wise to keep things in perspective. "Any writer who believes these expanded sales are purely because of his talent is going to get a rude awakening when his own work doesn't do as well," he says.
A writer also has to keep in mind that the audience has certain expectations. For one thing, tie-in readers are very loyal to their property. "I keep in mind that I'm writing for the reader who's wearing Star Wars pj's, sleeping on Star Wars sheets in a room covered with Star Wars posters," he says. "If I can't show that reader that I know and love the Star Wars universe as much as he does, he'll hate the book. He won't blame the publisher or Lucasfilm for the book's failure; he'll blame me and will never buy another one of my books."
Getting feedback
As with writing nonfiction articles, the proposal stage allows the writer to collaborate with editors to shape the project into something the editor wants. I enjoy this collaborative process and find it stimulating rather than stifling.
Tie-in novels go through an additional layer of editorial feedback, the complexity of which depends on how the property holder deals with things, Stackpole says. "With my Star Wars novels, I ended up footnoting the books to help with the continuity checking, which made the approval process very easy."
Stackpole recalls a couple of incidences where story questions have clearly come from someone in the legal department or someone else trying to be helpful. But by and large, he says, editors and property holders, in an effort to get the best product possible, will give you a certain amount of freedom to keep things the way they are or to find another way to get certain effects.
Finding tie-in work
Editors of work-for-hire projects are usually looking for writers who, if not necessarily well established, have published before. So before you do anything else, make sure you're writing at a professional level and have published at least some short fiction, if not a novel or two.
The best way to begin the hunt for work-for-hire projects is to identify an already-established and ongoing series that interests you—visit the publishers' website and carefully read the writers' guidelines. They'll tell you what editors are looking for, how to contact them and what sort of sample materials they might wish to see.
Also, check out local writing conferences to meet editors who handle work-for-hire projects. Larger conferences, such as Worldcon, World Fantasy Convention and Gen Con, often feature panels and workshops conducted by editors of work-for-hire projects. Attend these panels, listen attentively and learn. Afterward, don't be shy about introducing yourself to an editor and asking if she's looking for new writers to work with. Who knows, you might wrangle yourself an invitation to submit a proposal.
Publishers sometimes have special contests or open calls for work-for-hire projects. Pocket Books, White Wolf and Wizards of the Coast have done tie-in novels in the past and will likely do so again. You'll want to check their websites regularly for updates.
Once you've written your tie-in novel, it's a good idea to let a professional handle the business details. Margaret Weis, author of the Dragonvarld trilogy and co-author of the Dragonlance Chronicles, advises writers to have an agent negotiate and review any contracts. Weis also credits tie-in novels with her success. "They led me to The New York Times bestseller list!" she says.
And maybe they'll lead you there, too.
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Post by Joxcenia on Jul 29, 2006 16:55:29 GMT -6
Prose Primer
The building blocks of effective prose are simpler than you think.
You've written a wonderful story—great premise, moving characters, exciting plot twists—but it's being rejected without, you suspect, even getting a thorough reading. So what's the problem? More than likely, it's the prose. If a manuscript's hard to read, no editor will make it past Page 2. An editor needs to trust your facility with language before he's willing to read on.
To improve your chances of selling, reshape your prose so the essential story can shine through. This means crafting paragraphs that are economical, smooth, varied, accurate and muscular.
Economy—burn like sunshine Nearly two centuries ago, poet Robert Southey advised, "Be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams, the more they are condensed the deeper they burn." Prose laden with extra words can feel sluggish. Consider, for example, the following paragraph: How much bloat can you remove from the paragraph? The more effective version below has only 26 words, one-third of the original, with no loss of content. This lets the reader concentrate on what's important—the story: Try editing one of your own manuscripts and you'll be surprised at the improvement.
Smoothness—how things connect Some prose is difficult to read because its elements—phrases, clauses and sentences—don't flow together. This forces the reader to stop and ponder just what the writer means, jolting her out of the story.
There are different kinds of flow problems. The following sentence is chopped by commas into far too many short segments: "Fido, whom we adopted from a shelter, isn't, to my knowledge, a purebred, but, of course, not being an expert, I could be wrong."
Much better would be: "I don't think our shelter dog, Fido, is a purebred, but I'm no expert."
Sometimes, flow is impeded by a lack of effective transitions: "The TV was broken. I bought a new sweater."
Add a causal transition: "Since the TV was broken and I was bored, I shopped for a new sweater."
Examine this awkward setup: "June slept well. Shopping, she met Carl in the produce aisle."
Add a temporal transition: "June slept well. The next day, she met Carl in the produce aisle."
Variation—more than a "one-note Johnny" Effective prose isn't monotonous. Without a varied sentence structure, you'll end up sounding like a nursery rhyme. The following, for example, consists of only compound sentences joined by "and" or "but": By now, the reader's probably in a trance thanks to repetitious rhythm. Much more effectual would be a variety of sentence lengths and forms, like this: Other overused patterns include starting too many sentences with "-ing" participles (e.g., "Putting on my jacket..."), beginning three or four sentences in a row with "he" or your protagonist's name, and writing strings of sentences with roughly the same word count. Vary structure and length.
Accuracy—get your facts straight Credible prose is accurate prose, in fiction as well as journalism. Unless you're writing the sort of humor that deliberately distorts or exaggerates situations, check your facts and then check them again. An editor will lose trust in you if, through misapprehension or sloppiness, your protagonist walks east on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, or your young heroine wears a hoop skirt in Regency England, or your attorney hero doesn't seem to understand probable cause. The editor may not be familiar with these things, either—but don't assume anything. He reads a lot of books. Keep your details accurate.
Muscle—use the heavy lifters Powerful prose relies heavily on its strongest words: nouns and verbs. The right noun or verb can not only eliminate padding but also make your writing more vivid. Consider again our off-leash dog: "Wandered," "screeched" and "cursed" are all more vivid than the verb constructions they replaced. Nouns gain power by their specificity: "terrier," "Main Street," "macadam." Certainly there's a place in good writing for adjectives and adverbs; "tiny" and "delicately" help sharpen our picture of this wayward canine, but most of the meaning should be carried by nouns and verbs.
After you've finished a first draft, revise your work with the five characteristics of good prose in mind. Because it can feel overwhelming to consider all this as you write a first draft, concentrate initially on telling your tale and developing characters. Plan on a careful revision to bring your prose up to the level of your story—and you just might have a sale.
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Post by Joxcenia on Jul 29, 2006 17:11:31 GMT -6
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