First Page Critique: Managing Mood, Metaphor and Jargon

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By PJ Parrish

We’ve got an interesting First Page submission this morning. One caveat about your critic here: I am pretty inept when it comes to new technology. If they gave out certificates for technophobia, I’d have one framed on my wall. So I will need you nerdo-types out there to help me out with this one — let me know if I’m being too hard or too soft with our dear writer.

Here’s our submission. BRB FLASH. (I trying…I really am).

UNTITLED

Monday hit like bad coffee: bitter, necessary, unavoidable. Steam curled off my mug and threaded through the air. Across the kitchen, Zach leaned against the sink, tie loosened, expression caught between amusement and dread, the face before a meeting that’ll eat your soul.

“Ready to charm another nest of executives?” He crossed the kitchen, moving like he owned half my life already.

“I was born ready to confront middle management about trust exercises and weaponized slide decks.”

His mouth twitched. “Workplace Solutions. Nobody calls us when things are healthy.”

We’d been partners, professional and otherwise, for a year and a half. Corporate threat assessment paid the mortgage. Noticing what people tried to hide came with the job.

Our bungalow smelled of coffee and deadlines. Tug, our small golden retriever, snored at my feet like a broken motor.

For once the week started without a fire to stomp out. No terrified client calling at dawn, no red-flag emails waiting to detonate. Zach brushed his knuckles along the back of my shoulder on his way past, a small touch that carried the weight of every night we’d fallen asleep in our clothes after a crisis debrief. I leaned into it without thinking, grateful for a morning when my pulse didn’t sprint ahead of me. Maybe we’d earned a stretch of easy cases. We might even sleep in the next weekend, no alarms, no threat assessments, blankets tangled around our legs while Tug nosed in for space.

My phone lit up on the table. Carly. Windblown hair, fierce grin, camera strap slashing across her shoulder. The photo punched light straight through my chest before the ring even finished.

“Morning, sweetheart—”

Her voice came raw, splintered. “Mom, turn on the TV. I’m on my way.”

The air went brittle. I grabbed the remote.

The screen flickered, then locked onto a news crawl:

BREAKING: TIERNEY ROURKE, FOUNDER OF PIVOT POINT NETWORK, SHOT OUTSIDE DOWNTOWN HOTEL.

My heart slammed hard enough to skid my vision.

Sirens bled through the speakers. Police tape snapped in the wind. A reporter leaned into the gale, shouting over it.

Zach set his mug down hard. Coffee sloshed.

The feed rolled clips: Tierney onstage at Northwestern, then on a Milwaukee dais. A tall woman moving with a commanding glide that silenced a room. Then laughing softly on a late-night couch, calm eyes, measured voice, coppery hair caught the light…

_______________

BAK! I’ve made my return. Now, again, I usually don’t like stories that are heavy on tech-stuff. Computers and everything connected with them are like cars to me — I like them user-friendly, devoid of bells and whistles and I just want them to get me where I need to go. BUT…

That shouldn’t be a deterent to me liking a tech-oriented book. I am reading Andy Weir’s The Martian right and man, this thing reads like a NASA launch manual. Does that negate my enjoyment? No, because first, Weir makes me care about the hero and his perilous circumstance. And second — and this is key to my critique here today — Weir is very good at explaining the technical stuff, translating scientific gobbledigook into terms I can grasp.

This is a craft sleight of hand for any writer who is dealing with any kind of arcane subject matter. It’s like handling foreign languages in your book. Yes, you can use French dialogue but you have to find a way to make the reader understand it in context. Example:

“Tu vas me manquer,” she said.

“I’ll miss you, too,” he said.

Thus, if you are writing a story dealing with any kind of modern technology, with jargon, situations, and procedures, you have to be really careful how you handle it. So how did our writer today do?

This is a good submission overall. And the writer does three things well: Gets the dramatic ball rolling quickly with a break in the norm — the phone call about a dead woman who has some connection to the narrator, who I assumed is the main character. Second, the writer doesn’t overwhelm readers too early with information about the character’s tech job. Thrid: In just 400 words or so, the writer gets in a lot of basic plot information:

  • The (unammed) narrator is working hard lately on some kind of project to please the corporate suits.
  • She is in a relationship with Zach but it is implied things aren’t all lovey-dovey.
  • She has a daughter she loves who is a photographer.
  • Someone important whom she knows well just got whacked outside a hotel.

Not a bad start. No throat-clearing or background info-dumps. So I think the writer is on the right track. But, as with all of us, there are some things that could be better. Let’s start with the opening paragraph — the coffee metaphor.

You guys know how much a love metaphors. But they are the nail gun of the craft toolbox. They must be handled with the greatest care or you get bump-firing (too many metaphors), uncontrolled recoil (cliches and mixed metaphors) or maybe a barbed rivet in your ring finger (the dreaded tortured metaphor).

I don’t mind that the writer used bad coffee as a metaphor for her mood. We can all relate to that. But the metaphor here goes awry because it is impersonal and confusing.

Monday hit like bad coffee: bitter, necessary, unavoidable. Steam curled off my mug and threaded through the air. Across the kitchen, Zach leaned against the sink, tie loosened, expression caught between amusement and dread, the face before a meeting that’ll eat your soul.

The coffee metaphor needs to relate directly to the character. And can coffee be “unavoidable?” Then we get steam curling and threading, which is soothing, a contradiction of the first line. Also confusing mood: The first paragraph compares this Monday to bitter coffee. Yet later, the heroine thinks that for once, it has been a nice quiet Monday.

Then we get Zach coming out of nowhere with an expression that is amused and yet dread-filled. Again, confusion. Plus, in this CRITICAL OPENING PARAGRAPH — who gets named first and thus steals the spotlight? Not our heroine.

I took a whack at writing a coffee metaphor opening that roughly follows what I think is happening in this scene:

The coffee looked like I felt. Bitter and dark.

And what were all those black flecks? I flipped open the Mr. Coffee lid. Zach had used a paper towel as a filter and the pot was filled with grounds. What a way to start this Monday morning.

I dumped the paper towel of grounds in the sink, put in a real filter and grounds and  stabbed the the brew button. Coffee in my morning — especially this morning — was not a luxury. It was a neccessity. Work at had been overwhelming lately, my days as a cyber threat assessor filled with talking clients off cliffs and ironing the suits in the boardroom. Zach and I had started Work Solutions five years to protect some of biggest companies in the world from data breaches, ransomware, and hacking. Today, I couldn’t even get a damn cup of coffee going.

Zach came into the kitchen, and I could see from his slack face he hadn’t slept.

Now this might not even represent the mood the writer wants to convey for both the heroine and her relationship with Zach. I only show this to demonstrate that the coffee metaphor HAS TO MEAN SOMETHING. Michael Connelly, quoting Joseph Wambaugh, calls this THE TELLING DETAIL. One image, one small thing, can tell volumes about your character. And second, I delayed Zach’s entrance so we could start empathizing with the heroine first.

Small but important aside, dear writer: You must find a way to tell us her name in these first pages. This is a common problem in first person POV. Maybe you do it with dialogue from Zach wherein he addresses her by name?  Maybe her job requires a name badge? Or she can have a thought about it?

The box of business cards was still on the counter where Zach had left them last night, beside our empty champagne glasses. I pulled a card out and stared at the embossed text:

WORK SOLUTIONS

Zach Phillips

Kendra Bradley

The champagne had been to celebrate our first anniversary going into business together. The business cards? That had been my idea. It still bothered me that my name was second.

Again, this is just an example. But note that this sort of “telling detail” of the order of names also illuminates character and her relationship.

One more thing before I shut up. As I said, I am tech-challenged and it took me too long to try to figure out what this woman does for a living. I figured “corporate threat assessment” probably had someting to do with cyber-security. But when I looked it up, I found out it’s an incredibly varied profession. Schools have threat assessments to create active shooter drills. Police departments have threat assessment people to deal with hostages and even domestic abuse. Personnel departments have threat assessment teams to look for potential workplace violence.

So, dear writer…take a moment to go into her thoughts and tell the reader, a little more explicitly, what exactly she does in her work. Nothing long or drawn out, no info-dump. Just a line or two that clues us in.

There’s a new good book called Dead Money by Jakob Kerr. It is about a woman who is an “unofficial solver” for Silicon Valley’s most ruthless venture capitalists. She’s an expert at wrangling rich tech bros but the hotttest CEO has just been murdered, leaving behind billions in “dead money” — frozen in his will. The investigation is going nowhere so the heroine has to step up and find the killer from a suspect list that reads like a who’s-who of Valley players.

I started reading it this week and it reminds me a little of this submission. The murder is handled in a prologue and the heroine is introduced in Chapter 1 with this line:

In MacKenzie Clyde’s experience, there were exactly two ways of dealing with a rich asshole.

Dead Money won the Edgar last week for best first novel.

Addendum: For the writer, I am tacking on a quick line edit (my comments in red). Not alot of line editing is needed. But my takeaway, dear writer, is that you’re on the right track. Lots of good stuff there. So keep going!  And thanks for letting us read your work.

Monday hit like bad coffee: bitter, necessary, unavoidable. Steam curled off my mug and threaded through the air. Across the kitchen, Zach leaned against the sink, tie loosened, expression caught between amusement and dread, the face before a meeting that’ll eat your soul. Bring Zach in later after we’ve connected with your heroine. Never let a named character hog the spotlight. And you have to pin down the MOOD of this scene better — Zach is imparting both casualness, affection AND dread. (of what?) 

“Ready to charm another nest of executives?” He crossed the kitchen, moving like he owned half my life already.

“I was born ready to confront middle management about trust exercises and weaponized slide decks.”

His mouth twitched. “Workplace Solutions. Nobody calls us when things are healthy.” This is your first use of dialogue. Dialogue is precious. Don’t use it for idle morning chitchat, especially this early in your story. And I don’t understand this line: moving like her owned half my life already.  Is she pissed off? Resentful? Again, the mood feels oddly unfocused.

We’d been partners, professional and otherwise, for a year and a half. Corporate threat assessment paid the mortgage. Noticing what people tried to hide came with the job. Use her thoughts to be more specific about what exactly she does for a living. TEACH your readers about what threat assessment is. But keep it short. You can SHOW us in later chapters what it means thru her actions.

Our bungalow smelled of coffee and deadlines. Tug, our small golden retriever, snored at my feet like a broken motor.

For once the week started without a fire to stomp out. So it’s so far so good Monday? No terrified client calling at dawn, no red-flag emails waiting to detonate. Zach brushed his knuckles along the back of my shoulder on his way past, a small touch that carried the weight of every night we’d fallen asleep in our clothes after a crisis debrief. I leaned into it without thinking, grateful for a morning when my pulse didn’t sprint ahead of me. Maybe we’d earned a stretch of easy cases. We might even sleep in the next weekend, no alarms, no threat assessments, blankets tangled around our legs while Tug nosed in for space. Not a bad personal graph here. So things are GOOD between them? Then why earlier did you give her that strange thought that he moved like he owned half her life already? Again, inconsistent mood.

My phone lit up on the table. Carly. Windblown hair, fierce grin, camera strap slashing across her shoulder. The photo punched light straight through my chest before the ring even finished.

Good job upcoming on jacking up the pace of your writing — short punnchy — to match the action!

“Morning, sweetheart—”

Her voice came raw, splintered. “Mom, turn on the TV. I’m on my way.”

The air went brittle. I grabbed the remote. The screen flickered, then locked onto a news crawl:

BREAKING: TIERNEY ROURKE, FOUNDER OF PIVOT POINT NETWORK, SHOT OUTSIDE DOWNTOWN HOTEL.how about HILTON MILWAUKEE CITY CENTER. Or wherever this takes place. That way you’ve gracefully slipped in where this book takes place. 

My heart slammed hard enough to skid my vision. Not sure what “skidded vision” looks like.

Sirens bled through the speakers. Thru the TV? Police tape snapped in the wind. A reporter leaned into the gale, shouting over it.

Zach set his mug down hard. Coffee sloshed. Keep the focus on the TV for now. He can come up to TV later.

The feed rolled clips: Tierney onstage at Northwestern, then on a Milwaukee dais. A tall woman moving with a commanding glide that silenced a room. Then laughing softly on a late-night couch, calm eyes, measured voice, coppery hair caught the light. Nice…good way to tell us the narrator knows this victim, not just professionally but personally. Ups the ante. Well done.

 

 

 

 

 

”

 

 

 

 

 

I think the writer needs to find a way to make the character’s job more interesting. Because I am going to assume that what she does for a living is somehow connected to Tierney Rourke’s death, and I am going to hope that what she does for a living is INTERESTING!

Right now, I am not getting this. What we know so far about what the heroine does isn’t all that interesting. She has to please some executives. (who doesn’t?)

 

New Research Tool for Writers

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Pat’s excellent post last week got me thinking about a new-to-me research tool to help writers “write what you know.” Though I agree with Pat’s advice to contact a consultant, this tool can help when you’re unable to find one and/or help you understand what they tell you.

First, a quick story about how I discovered this tool.

I found myself in a quandary of needing to learn Associated Press (AP) Stylebook, like, yesterday. Google didn’t help. Neither did Siri. The differences between AP Stylebook and Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) cannot be discovered by a quick search. I needed to dig into AP Stylebook and discover the differences for myself. But how? Buy the style guide and read it with my highlighter? Maybe later, not now. As I mentioned, I needed this knowledge as soon as possible.

For those unfamiliar with AP Stylebook…

The Associated Press (AP) Stylebook was created specifically for journalists to ensure consistency, accuracy, and clarity in news writing. First published in 1953, it originated from earlier internal guides designed to help Associated Press correspondents standardize spelling, punctuation, and usage across media outlets. It is considered the Bible for reporters, editors, and photographers, focusing on concise and clean writing.

While designed for news reporting, AP Stylebook has evolved into the leading industry standard for public relations, marketing, and corporate communication. Most organizations and company blogs also use AP Stylebook now.

For me, if I didn’t learn it, I could kiss goodbye a high-paying, permanent writing position that aligns with my passion to help animals and allows me plenty of free time to write fiction. To “fake it till I make it” was not an option. Too much at stake.

At this time, a dear friend was cramming for a test to obtain another job-related license. When I saw him studying on his phone, I said, “Do you have the three-ring binder in ebook form?”

He said no. “It’s Quizlet.”

“Quiz what?”

“Quizlet. It’s a learning app.”

“For just your field?”

“No. For any field.”

The proverbial lightbulb blazed on.

I brought up Quizlet.com on my phone. Sure enough, they offered several courses in AP Stylebook. They also offer courses in CMOS, if any of you need to brush up on grammar, comma usage, abbreviations, punctuation, or how to handle things like professional titles, expertise, or rank. Even with an editor, the writer should know our industry standards.

Quizlet

Created by Andrew Sutherland in 2005 (released in 2007) to help him study for a French vocabulary test, Quizlet has grown into a widespread education company.

Quizlet is a leading global learning platform and app that offers AI-powered study tools, digital flashcards, and interactive games to help students practice and master various subjects.

See where I’m going with this as a research tool?

Used by millions, Quizlet enables users to create custom sets or utilize millions of existing, user-generated materials, including study guides, practice tests, and spaced repetition.

When you go to the site, type in whatever it is you want to learn. Scroll down the list. Often, there are several types of courses in that field. Click on the course that covers what you need.

In my case, I didn’t need hardcore reporting rules in AP Stylebook. Because I’ve had CMOS drilled into me, I really only needed to discover how AP handled punctuation, titles, and comma usage. I studied a lot more than that to be safe — no one will catch me under-prepared — but a lot is similar.

Does your main character have a unique skillset or profession? Take a Quizlet course so you can write with some authority.

Need to add fingerprint analysis to your scene? If you can’t attend Writers Police Academy or find a consultant, both of which I highly recommend, take a Quizlet course.

Or maybe, you’ve always wanted to learn a different language for an upcoming vacation.

Quizlet works because it’s global. The site is packed with information on just about every topic. What I love most is the positivity. If you answer a question incorrectly, up pops a message, “That’s okay. You’re still learning.” Then it’ll give you the same question later. When you answer correctly, the message reads, “Way to go! You got it this time!” And it will continue to give you that question until you answer correctly a few times. After which, you’ll see, “You’re really getting this!” or “You’ve got this now!”

The messages lift you up and make you want to keep studying, but Quizlet will also tell you to take a break, drink water, and stretch, if you’ve studied too long.

Key Features and Study Modes

Flashcards: Digital, interactive cards that support images and audio.

Learn: Adaptive study plans gauge how much you know about the topic. Check “Yes” you know that already or “No” you don’t. And it will build your study plan and flashcards from there.

Test: Once you feel ready, take a test to gauge how well you’re doing.

Study Games: I haven’t used this feature. Evidently, it’s an engaging, fast-paced game like “Match.”

AI Integration: AI tools generate study guides and explanations from user-uploaded notes. On something I continued to answer incorrectly, I asked for an explanation. Wasn’t impressed with it, so I looked it up myself. Quizlet’s explanation was, in fact, correct. It just didn’t give me enough information to connect the dots in my mind.

Quizlet Live: A collaborative, multiplayer classroom game. I’ve never gotten involved (not my cup of tea), but maybe you’d enjoy it.

All in all, I love Quizlet. It’s a fantastic tool for those of us who love to learn.

Past Predictions and Current Conundrums

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Way back in November, 2009, I wrote a piece for TKZ about the ebook/self-pub explosion, and what it portended for the future of the publishing biz. That month it felt like there was an eruption of chatter about the pace of developments following the intro of the Kindle (Nov. 2007) and the self-publishing platform it provided. At this time there were several previously unpublished writers making nice bucks pubbing their fiction for 99¢ (e.g., Amanda Hocking); also trad pubbed authors diving fully into indie (e.g., Joe Konrath, Barry Eisler).

Agents were in a dither, present and potential clients would go rogue. “Don’t do it,” they warned. “You’ll kill your career!”

And there was a controversial move by a big publisher, who started a fee-based self-pub service (better known as vanity publishing), which carried their logo on it. You can read about that controversy here. Other major publishers soon followed.

Looking back, the brouhaha over Kindle and self-publishing had the same feel as the AI cataclysm happening now. I thought it might be instructive to review what I wrote back then, and reflect on what’s happening now. Here are clips, followed by my comments:

First, the very pace of change in our world is now such that major developments happen almost as fast as chair throwing incidents on Jerry Springer. 

Okay, Boomer. Jerry Springer?

Talk about pace! The Kindle Wild West days seem almost serene compared to today’s AI pandemonium. Each week seems to bring another “advance” that we may—or scarily, may not—control.

And humans naturally feel anxious about change until we can catch up and figure out what’s going on. But we always seem to feel a few steps behind these days.

That was true then, it’s truer now—on-steroids. Back then it was about the future of publishing. Now it’s about the future of the human race. Just the other morning I read about Anthropic’s Mythos, which has its tentacles reaching into biology. “[T]hat means AI may soon grant people extremely dangerous powers: to synthesize viruses, generate novel neurotoxins or assemble omnicidal ‘mirror life.’ Such dangers are the dark side of AI’s wonderful promise to democratize intelligence. It is even conceivable that an AI could give a misanthropic loner the power to end humanity.”

Anxiety, anyone?

How fast are things moving? Already there’s talk that the Kindle is on the way out. Authors and publishers are even now embedding links to websites and YouTube for added content in digital novels, links which can be accessed on, say, an iPhone but not a Kindle. There’s even a name for such digi-novels: Vooks.

Well, Vooks did not take off, nor did “added digital” content. Readers, it seems, prefer to get caught up in a story without pausing to find or endure added “stuff.”

Which leads to the technological changes that seem poised to alter the paradigms we’ve lived with for centuries, such as books on paper being paid for by readers.

Yes, many prognosticators opined that physical books were on the way out. It made some sense at the time. I’m still blown away that I have the complete works of Dickens on my Kindle, and can read Martin Chuzzlewit on my phone.

But print has proved resilient. Indeed, I wrote back then:

I’ve pointedly spoken to several twenty-something readers over the past few weeks, and was gobsmacked when none of them liked eReaders. They were paper people! Astonishing.

My two predictions from November of 2009:

1. People are still going to want good stories to read.

What I meant was that a self-publishing author has to be good, not just prolific. This is being tested now, big time, as AI makes it possible for an author to churn out dozens of “novels” a year, of mediocre quality. I still optimistically hold that quality writing from a human being is the best way to find a loyal readership.

2. They’re not going to pay as much money to get them.

This was the major concern of Big Pub at the time, that a “tsunami” of inexpensive ebooks would erode their biggest slice of the publishing pie—hardcover editions. Well, hardcovers still sell (if they are by “brand names.”) Trade paper (with its more attractive price point) sells more.

Yet voracious readers, like any consumer, will seek out the best deals for their habit. Good indie authors selling their work for $2.99 – $5.99 (the current “sweet spot”) have a big market out there.

I concluded that fiction writers will always be around, because the world needs us. Maybe now more than ever.

Still true.

Want to make any prediction about the future of reading, publishing, or humanity? The floor is yours!

Your Books Should be in Google Books, the World’s Largest Library

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The World’s Largest Library Is Hiding in Plain Sight (And Your Books Should Be In It)

Why your books should be in Google Books, the world's largest library

Imagine a library 100 times larger than the Library of Alexandria. A library with millions of books in every language, stretching back centuries. A library where a reader can search almost any topic and instantly discover a book about it. Cool!

That library exists. It’s called Google Books. And if you’re an author , it may be one of the most powerful discoverability and marketing tools you’re not using yet.

What Is the Google Books Library?

Think of Google Books as a massive digital card catalog for the world’s books. When a book is listed there, Google stores key information about it, including:

• title
• author
• publisher
• publication date
• genre
• description
• cover image
• preview pages

Readers can search the library and read a sample of the book directly inside Google.

Here’s what my book looks like on Google Books.

The Game Changer: Google Books also provides this information through a public API, meaning other systems can access it. Which systems love structured book data like this? AI systems.

Large language models frequently use Google Books as a verification source to confirm that a book exists and to gather details about it. In one analysis of AI-generated book recommendations, nearly all the books recommended had entries in Google Books.

In other words, if your book is in the Google Books Library, it becomes part of the knowledge layer of the internet.

Why This Matters for Authors

⭐Google Books is not just a library. It’s a discovery engine.

When your book appears there, it can surface when people search for:

  • Your name
  • Genre
  • Story elements
  • Tropes
  • Themes
  • Topics related to your story

Because the database contains structured metadata, it makes your book easy for search engines and AI systems to understand. For authors thinking about Generative Search Optimization (GSO), this is huge.

⭐Your book becomes searchable. Your story becomes easier to find.

How Your Book Gets Into Google Books

The good news is that many authors are already there without realizing it.

  • If you publish wide and distribute to Google Play Books, your book is automatically added to the Google Books Library.
  • Even if your ebook is in Kindle Unlimited and exclusive to Amazon, your print edition may still appear if it is distributed through Amazon expanded distribution or Ingram Spark.
  • Google often scans print books from library collections and adds them to the database.

To check if your book is listed, simply search inside Google Books for your book title, name, and ISBN.

What If Your Book Isn’t There?

No problem. You can add it yourself. You simply create an account with the Google Play Books Partner Center.

From there you can upload your book and choose one of two options:

From there you can upload your book and choose one of two options:

  1. Sell the ebook on Google Play: Your book becomes available for purchase through Google’s ebook store.
  2. Offer a preview only

If your ebook is exclusive to Kindle Unlimited, you can still upload it and allow readers to see a preview in Google Books and let the AI get to know you without selling the ebook through Google Play.

Typically, about 20% of the book is visible as a preview. That preview alone is enough for Google to index the book’s content and metadata. And that’s where the discoverability magic begins.

The Big Takeaway

If you want your work to be discoverable in the AI-powered search era, you need to think beyond traditional bookstores.

Every writer should ask one simple question:

Is my work in the world’s largest digital library? If the answer is no, upload them stat!

thepitchmaster.com/resources

Reader Friday-And Did You Know?

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Today is a special day. What? you ask.

Military Spouse Appreciation Day, that’s what.

May is traditionally the month that our esteemed military is celebrated. Here is a link you can follow, or just read the excerpt I included below.

https://www.military.com/spouse/military-spouse-appreciation-day

From the website:

“You don’t need a dedicated Military Spouse Appreciation Day to make sure you acknowledge the military spouse in your life. Service members know that their spouses are the ones who keep the home fires burning. And military spouses know that those around them also walking through military life are more than just friends and neighbors: They are family.

What is Military Spouse Appreciation Day?

Military Spouse Appreciation Day is a day set aside for us to pause to recognize the military spouses around us who have the greatest impact on our lives and our military communities.

When is Military Spouse Appreciation Day?

The Friday in May before Mother’s Day, this special day was first recognized by President Ronald Reagan in 1984. The sitting president typically issues a proclamation in recognition of the holiday, while celebrations are held on and near U.S. military bases around the world.

May is also host to a series of other military holidays, including Military Appreciation Month, established in 1999; Victory in Europe (VE) Day, commemorating the end of WWII in Europe on May 8, 1945; and Armed Forces Day, designated in 1949. Memorial Day, the only official federal holiday in May, is celebrated the last Monday of the month.”

***

There you have it. We probably all have military folks in our lives, so let’s make sure they know we appreciate their service, either in the field or on the home front.

Comments welcome!

***

I’ll be MIA (do you see what I did there?) for a few weeks, rehabbing from surgery. A huge “thank you” to those from the Best Team Ever who are filling in for me. I’ll be lurking and reading, though, never fear!

🙂

 

 

 

Write What You Know

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Write what you know. We’ve all heard that line so many times that it’s become a cliché, and we usually take it to mean writing about things we personally know and understand. Except…using that definition would stop me in my tracks since I write about villains who kill others, and I have no knowledge whatsoever of murdering anyone.

My personal take on the phrase is to write the emotions I know and research the rest. Then let the research settle in my mind so I can pull it out when I need it. A good example of this is when I sat down to start my first Natchez Trace Park Ranger novel. I stared at the blinking cursor on the blank page for a good two days. It was as if everything I knew about writing had suddenly deserted me.

I paced a bit, got a cup of coffee, thumbed through a couple of craft books, and then remembered, write what you know. Okay, what did I know and what did I need to know about the story? Before I can begin any story, I have to know my characters, since they drive the plot.

That’s where I started — fleshing them out. And hit a wall. My heroine is a law enforcement park ranger, something I only know about from observing from afar. I have no personal information about the job. But I do know how to interview park rangers. I stopped at the nearest headquarters and met the top Natchez Trace Park law-enforcement ranger, and we talked a good while. I learned that all NTPRs were LEOs, and that meant a significant change in the story. She gave me her email address, and we communicated back and forth until I felt I had a handle on my heroine.

My hero is in the undercover Investigative Services Branch of the National Park Service. Since there aren’t many of them, I went about my research a little differently. Again, I went the interview route (don’t be afraid to ask for interviews — people love to talk about what they do). I interviewed a couple of retired undercover cops with the Mississippi Narcotics Bureau and read the bio of another two undercover agents.

When you know nothing about a subject, find someone who does or a book they’ve written.

Then there was the setting. I had never been to Natchez, so that meant a trip. Natchez is one beautiful small city. I stayed long enough to know the routes I needed and to photograph different places where crimes would occur. I also ate at all the local restaurants, including Jughead’s and Fat Mama’s Tamales — you know those places show up in the series.

So far I’m only writing what I’ve researched. Where does what I already know come into play?

The real meat of writing what I know comes into play with my characters’ emotions. Like I said earlier, I’ve never killed anyone or even plotted to kill someone, although I have had fantasies have plotted to get my own way about something. Haven’t you?

When I was much younger, I thought I knew what was best for almost everyone, and proceeded to plan the details. It’s only in looking back that I can see how wrong I was. But I vividly remember my single-minded focus to get my way. Creating characters with that blind ambition works for your protagonists as well as your villains.

Another thing that helps is remembering how it felt as a child or teenager to get caught doing something wrong, or the emotions I went through when I covered up my wrongdoing. How I justified what I was doing and rationalized it even to myself. These are emotions we are all familiar with, and can pour into our characters. And not just antagonists—let your protagonists wrestle with blind ambition. They’re also flawed, after all.

In writing what you know, remember your own greatest desires and fears. Maybe you’re afraid of spiders—you can infuse that fear into a character. I was locked in a closet once and didn’t like being in enclosed places as a kid. Still don’t. My heroine hates being in a place she can’t easily escape from. It was easy describing how she felt because I knew it.

I still remember as a child when we had indoor plumbing installed in our house and lying in two inches of water in the new bathtub, thinking that when I grew up, I was going to fill the bathtub to the rim. My dad’s reason for only two inches? More water costs more money, something we didn’t have much of. That desire drove me for a lot of years. Give your characters that kind of drive.

Dig deep and take your experiences, your hurts, your fears, your desires, and write them into your characters. Then, you will have believable characters that readers can identify with. Even your villains. That’s where writing what you know comes into play.

 

Cruising Along

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Cruising Along

Terry Odell

view of red paddle wheel on American West river boat

Today, if all goes as planned, I’m going to be climbing the 164 steps to the top of the Astoria Column while on a Columbia & Snake River vacation, cruising on a paddle wheeler. Oh, and I’ll have to get down, too. I wouldn’t be too concerned if not for my annoying gluteal tendinopathy, which has been creating new challenges in doing things involving walking, stair-climbing, and the like. Age ain’t for the faint of heart.

Astoria column against a blue sky and green pine trees

But (and I’m writing this well before we leave), I’m looking forward to having some FUN on this trip. To that end, I figured why not have some fun here at TKZ today. Hope you get a few smiles.

Hope you got at least one smile from these. Any of them stand out for you?

And, before I leave you, here’s a brain teaser, taken from Tom Scott’s “Lateral” podcast.
What do the following have in common?

    • Bar soap
    • Acoustic guitar
    • World War I

Talk amongst yourselves. I’ll check in when and if I can. Have a great day.

Find me at Substack with Writings and Wanderings

Deadly Ambitions
Peace in Mapleton doesn’t last. Police Chief Gordon Hepler is already juggling a bitter ex-mayoral candidate who refuses to accept election results and a new council member determined to cut police department’s funding.
Meanwhile, Angie’s long-delayed diner remodel uncovers an old journal, sparking her curiosity about the girl who wrote it. But as she digs for answers, is she uncovering more than she bargained for?
Now, Gordon must untangle political maneuvering, personal grudges, and hidden agendas before danger closes in on the people he loves most.
Deadly Ambitions delivers small-town intrigue, political tension, and page-turning suspense rooted in both history and today’s ambitions.

Terry Odell is an award-winning author of Mystery and Romantic Suspense, although she prefers to think of them all as “Mysteries with Relationships.”

First Page Critique – Digging Up the Dirt

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by Debbie Burke

Today let’s welcome another Brave Author who submitted a first page for critique, genre described as “Comedic (Cosy – not so cosy) Crime.” Please read and enjoy then we’ll open the discussion.

Title: Digging up the dirt

‘Some secrets won’t stay buried.’ Myrtle’s mouth twitches, not quite a smile; there’s a malicious glee in her delivery.

Some secrets won’t stay buried — and I’m looking at the person most likely to make sure of it.

Her words land like a promise.

She’s itching to unearth what’s been hidden. To watch what crawls out and enjoy the look on everyone’s faces when it does.

She’s insane to believe that by betraying us she won’t expose herself.

Why couldn’t our investor, predator, blackmailer — call her what you like — have been Bob? Someone with the temperament of a Labrador, willing to please for a mere pat on his head.

Myrtle’s opportunistic and slippery as a catfish hauled from our Riviersvalleij river.

‘When did Constable Maritz take Sylvie away?’ I ask.

‘This morning.’ Her smile deepens.

I control the urge to slap her smug face; demand back the purloined shop keys and replace the locks.

She crams a fat wedge of Sylvie’s banana-bread into her mouth, then swigs back the dregs of a cappuccino. Both of which she’s helped herself to after letting herself into our shop.

I look around, spying the basket of homemade nougat wrapped in silvery cellophane, its ends twisted by Sylvie’s deft hands. The nougat has the same stretchiness as the Prestik that glues my scribbled genre labels on the shopworn bookshelves. Our combined distinctive minutiae are everywhere. How dare Myrtle think she’s welcome to claim part of our bookshop cafe.

It’s ours — mine and Sylvie’s.

Her earlier threatening suggestion that Sylvie’s doomed to spend time behind bars and I’ll be grateful for her help has lit an inferno inside me. The old me might have wilted, but she’s underestimated the power of our bond. If we’re going down, I’m bloody well dragging Myrtle with us.

Constable Maritz has carted Sylvie off to confiscate a sample of our dog food. Someone complained food isn’t fit for consumption.

This batch is to have ‘Happy belly – Healthy heart’ as a tagline. Sylvie’d conjured that up based on the resveratrol found in red wine. This time, the, shall I call it meat, lay marinating in a vat of wine for seven days. Let’s pray Sylvie didn’t claim the meat to be pork or horse, or whatever’s usually used in raw dog food. That would be a misrepresentation.

It’s the source of the meat that’s the problem.

It’ll land us in jail.

~~~

Kudos on a flash-bang first sentence! Great job beginning the scene in media res. The conflict is immediately shown without any backstory dump. Myrtle’s character is quickly established as gloating, threatening, and manipulative.

I suggest a slight rewrite:

‘Some secrets won’t stay buried.’ Myrtle’s mouth twitches, not quite a smile; there’s a with malicious glee in her delivery.

Some secrets won’t stay buried — and I’m looking at the person most likely to make sure they’re uncovered of it.

Repetition is not needed and dilutes the impact of the compelling first sentence.

The following line packs a lot into a few words:

“She’s insane to believe that by betraying us she won’t expose herself.”

This describes the situation (an apparent conspiracy), the stakes (if their secrets are exposed, they’re at risk), and a serious rift among characters. Good job! 

The voice is humorous and snarky with high tension lurking just below the surface. The author classified this story as “Comedic (Cosy – not so cosy) Crime” and that accurately nails the tone.

However, the next paragraph lost me.

“Why couldn’t our investor, predator, blackmailer — call her what you like — have been Bob? Someone with the temperament of a Labrador, willing to please for a mere pat on his head.”

Investor, predator, blackmailer is an excellent summation of Myrtle that explains her involvement.

But who the heck is Bob?

That distracted and confused me. My mind went off on a tangent wondering what role Bob plays and even thinking he might be the dog.

Then the focus shifts back to Myrtle who’s as “slippery as a catfish hauled from our Riviersvalleij river.” Wonderful description but it feels overdone, coming right on top of the comparison with the eager-to-please Lab.

At this point, the author needs to slow down a bit and let the reader catch a breath. Give them time to become grounded in this world.

Too much backstory slows pace, but too little confuses the reader.

I suggest cutting the paragraph about Bob and saving it for later. For now, keep the focus on Myrtle and the narrator.

The next paragraphs do a fine job of slipping in the setting without stopping the action, but tend to be a bit too complex in places.

“I control the urge to slap her smug face; demand back the purloined shop keys and replace the locks.”

That requires the reader to shift chronological gears mid-sentence. In the present, the narrator wants to slap her. In the past, it’s implied Myrtle has stolen the keys and let herself in. In the future, the narrator plans to change the locks.

Those details are good because they further build Myrtle’s character, as well as establish the narrator’s resentment. But I had to reread the sentence a couple of times to understand it. I suggest simplifying the chronology and getting rid of the semicolon.

Here’s another sentence that’s hard to comprehend: 

“Her earlier threatening suggestion that Sylvie’s doomed to spend time behind bars and I’ll be grateful for her help has lit an inferno inside me.”

I suggest breaking this into shorter sentences:

Myrtle’s threats light an inferno inside me. How dare she imply Sylvie could go to prison, then expect me to be grateful for her help? 

The next two sentences effectively summarize the narrator’s character, relationships, motivations, and goals:

“The old me might have wilted, but she’s underestimated the power of our bond. If we’re going down, I’m bloody well dragging Myrtle with us.”

Well done!

Then the author reveals a provocative detail: the mystery meat used to make dog food sold by the shop is illegal.

Hmm. I can’t help but think of the barbecue in Fried Green Tomatoes.

I’m curious about the setting. The use of single quotes for dialogue and the spelling of “cosy” signals British or Australian. “Prestik” is a rubber-based, reusable, adhesive putty made in South Africa. Eventually I’d like to know more about the location but the plot is intriguing enough that I’m willing to wait.

A dynamite first sentence grabs the reader’s attention. The situation unfolds quickly with blackmail, betrayal, and potential criminal charges. As a reader, I want to learn answers that may turn out to be gruesome.

Brave Author, I really enjoyed the dark, humorous tone of this page, but I suggest you slow down a bit and simplify some sentences. You pack in so much detail that, at times, it becomes overwhelming and a little confusing.

Overall, it’s well written and intriguing. 

Thanks for submitting!

~~~

TKZers: what is your impression of this first page? Do you want to dig deeper in the dirt?

~~~

 

“Authors of any genre will benefit by using this book to take a deeper dive into the antagonist of their story.” — James Scott Bell

“You will certainly find insight and inspiration to make your villains leap off the page and haunt your readers’ dreams.” – Christopher Vogler, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers

 

 

Build multi-dimensional antagonists who fascinate and frighten readers in The Villain’s Journey – How to Create Villains Readers Love to Hate. 

Buy at Bookshop.org

Also in paperback and hardcover at 

Amazon

Barnes & Noble 

News: Authors Guild Releases Model Contract Clauses Re: AI

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(Kay DiBianca is currently on hiatus)

Over at Authors Guild:

“The model clauses below cover important aspects of AI uses of author’s works: specifically, prohibiting AI use of an author’s work without the author’s consent; licensing specific AI uses as subsidiary rights with fair compensation; protecting audiobook and translation rights from AI uses without the author’s approval; and governing the author’s permissible use of AI in submitted manuscripts as well as the publisher’s use of AI in connection with the work. Authors and agents may request that publishers use any of these clauses, and publishers are free to adopt them.”

Re: Authors:

“Author shall disclose to Publisher if any AI-generated text is included in the submitted manuscript, and may not include more than [a de minimis/5%] AI-generated text.”

Re: Publishes:

The Authors Guild is concerned about reports that some publishing professionals are uploading manuscripts and authors’ personal information into public, consumer-facing AI systems for uses such as generating summaries, assessments, and marketing copy without permission from the authors or adequate guardrails to ensure that the manuscripts are not used by AI companies for training.

Uploading or inputting a copyrighted work or an author’s personal information into public, consumer-facing AI systems without permission may constitute a violation of the author’s copyright or right of privacy, and it puts the author’s intellectual property and personal information at risk. Editors, agents, and others in the industry who have access to authors’ works should not upload their manuscript to or otherwise prompt consumer-facing chatbots with any author’s works without first getting the author’s written permission. Further, where consumer-facing chatbots are used in workflows, publishers and other industry professionals should ensure that they opt out of having the work used for training. All of the common chatbots provide this option. Publishers should also take care that any internal AI systems are sandboxed models with guardrails to prevent the manuscripts or author information from being used as inputs for training.

Publisher shall not upload the Work or any of Author’s personal information to consumer-facing AI systems for purposes such as generating summaries, assessments, or marketing copy without written permission from the author or as otherwise agreed to hereunder; and when such permission is granted, it shall ensure that the manuscript is not used by third-party AI companies for training, such as by opting out of allowing training in user settings.

And:

To prevent injecting any AI-generated text into an author’s work, publishers should not use AI to substantively edit manuscripts, with the exception of basic spelling and grammar- checking applications.

Publisher agrees and warrants that it will not use AI to substantially edit a manuscript (excepting the use of basic spelling and grammar-checking applications).

In Defense of How-to-Write Books and Blogs

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Every now and again I hear some author putting down how-to-write books. “You can only learn to write by writing,” they’ll say. “Don’t waste your time studying writing. Write!”

Which strikes me as making as much sense as saying, “You can only learn to do brain surgery by doing brain surgery. Don’t waste your time studying brain surgery. Just cut open some heads!”

Excuse me if I show a preference for a sawbones who has studied under the tutelage of experienced surgeons.

The writer I know best—me—absolutely learned to write by reading how-to books. I had been fed the bunk that “writers are born, not made” while in college, and I bought it, in part because I got in a workshop with Raymond Carver and couldn’t do what he did. (I didn’t know at the time that there was more than one way to “do” fiction. Carver was a literary guy, and I wanted to write thrillers.)

Years went by with me believing that I didn’t have what it takes to be a successful writer. I added to society’s woes by becoming a lawyer.

When I finally decided I had to write, even if I never got published, I went after it the way Jack London went after inspiration—“with a club.” I started gobbling up books on writing. I joined the Writer’s Digest Book Club and read Writer’s Digest religiously (especially Lawrence Block’s fiction column). I also wrote every day. Living in L.A. it was required that I try screenwriting first, so I wrote four complete screenplays in one year, giving them to a film school friend, who patiently read them and told me they weren’t working. But he couldn’t tell me why.

Then one day I read a chapter in a book by the great writing teacher Jack Bickham. And I had an epiphany. Literally. Light bulbs and fireworks went off inside my head, and I finally got it. Or at least a big part of it.

So I wrote another screenplay, and that was the one that my friend liked. The next one I wrote got optioned, and the one after that got me into one of the top agencies in Hollywood.

Now, Hollywood is the only town where you can die of encouragement. My million-dollar payday did not come through, so I decided to try my hand at writing a novel. Amazingly, it sold. Then I got a five book contract, and I was on my way as a working novelist.

In great part because of something crucial I got from a how-to book.

And that’s the reason I’ve written how-to books of my own, and posts here at TKZ. I want to give new writers nuts-and-bolts that will help them construct saleable fiction. I am gratified when I hear from people who have sold books and given me partial credit. One of them is the wonderful Sarah Pekkanen, who gave me props (along with Stephen King and Donald Maass) a year before her debut novel came out. Today she’s the #1 New York Times bestselling author of fifteen solo and co-authored novels. (No, I’m not saying I’m responsible for her massive success, only that I and two others were there for her at the right time; her work ethic and talent did the rest.)

How did the writers of the past learn? Many of them had a great editor, like Max Perkins. Some had an older writer who read their stuff and suggested ways to make it better. Some, like the great writer-director Preston Sturges, learned from the how-to books available in his day. (In Sturges’s case, it was the books of Brander Matthews.)

So a good how-to book is like an editor or teacher. Is there not some value in that?

Now, it is quite true you can’t just read how-tos and get better. You have to have a certain felicity with sentences and the sound of fiction. That’s why the best writers were readers from a young age, piling up the sounds of great sentences in their heads. But they also had help learning the tools to make things better. And of course they had to write, and apply what they learned.

If you do that, the things that work become part of your writing “muscle memory.” Like a grooved golf swing. Then you can go out there and play to win. As Tom Sawyer says in Fiction Writing Demystified:

Writing fiction takes knowledge about basic storytelling. Again, some of us have an instinct for it. A feeling for it. But if you sense that you do not, don’t give up. Much of that part is craft, and it is learnable.

Behind me in my office is my shelf of writing books. I review them from time to time, reading the parts I highlighted. My philosophy has always been that if I can find even one thing in a how-to that helps me, that elevates my writing and makes it stronger, it’s worth the effort to find it.

Do you agree?