The Love Sandwich

By Elaine Viets
          My condo looked like someone had a frat party in the living room. I’d barely said hello to my husband in a week. But I finished “Final Sail,” my Dead-End Job novel, on time.
          Newly married private eyes Helen Hawthorne and Phil Sagemont investigate two cases undercover. Helen works as a stewardess on a 143-foot yacht to find an emerald smuggler. Phil signs on as estate manager for a trophy wife, Blossom, after her  80-something husband, Arthur Zerling, died suddenly. Arthur’s daughter is sure her father was murdered.

          When I turned in “Final Sail,” I knew I’d written the perfect book. All I had to do was wait for the editorial letter to confirm it.
          In the novel business, the editorial letter is the in-depth evaluation of your work. You only get one if your editor cares about your work.
         Two weeks later, the letter arrived. “As usual you’ve written another fun, witty installment in the Dead-End Job series,” my editor wrote.
         Yep, I thought. I’m a pro.
         “Even though Helen and Phil have started their own agency, they’re still getting involved in plenty of dead-end jobs. Who would have known stewardesses go through so much on those yachts? Makes me want to cruise myself one day (but certainly not as ‘the help!’).

         “Of course, as one of your first readers, I do have a few thoughts/suggestions on revision.”
          Uh-oh. I had a sinking feeling.
          “As always, take what I say with a grain of salt,” she wrote. “If it doesn’t resonate with you, don’t feel compelled to use it.”
          That’s New Yorkese for “fix it.”

          I was hit with a boatload of improvements:
         Clarify the cause of rich old Arthur Zerling’s death.
         Find a better motive for the trophy wife, Blossom, to kill her young lover.
         Explain why Blossom killed her old husband in the first place.
         Could I also intermingle the two cases? Oh, and that couple on the yacht – the fat, cigar smoking gambler and his blond wife – tone them down and “redefine” their relationship.
         Wait! One more thing. Could I “strengthen the end of the book.” Switch the sections so it ends on a happy note? 

       “So now it’s just a little more revising,” my editor wrote.  “I think your readers are so going to enjoy this book!”
         She’s served me a love sandwich – two warm, tasty chunks of praise wrapped around really tough meat.
         I had two weeks to tear up my perfect book and revise it.
        I knew most editors don’t give novels in-depth criticism. I knew I was lucky mine cared.
 So how did I react?

          Like someone who’s just heard she has a fatal disease. You know Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief? I went through them all: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and  acceptance.
           First, denial. There’s nothing wrong with this book, I told myself. It’s good. No, great. My editor is ruining it. I won’t do it. So there.
           I wasted a whole day in denial, before I switched to anger. Now I was furious. What does my editor know? She lives in New York. She doesn’t even know any real people. She hasn’t been to Florida in years. I live here.
          Next came depression. I reread her note and realized how much work I was looking at.
          After two days of this war raging in my head, I reached acceptance.
          Maybe she’s right after all. Better to have her criticize my novel than let the reviewers rip it.
          I now had twelve days to rewrite “Final Sail.” The more I worked on the rewrite, the more I saw my editor was right.
 I finished the rewrite on deadline.

 And the New York Times reviewed it.
 “One way for a fugitive to hide in plain sight is to work at low-wage jobs,” Marilyn Stasio wrote, “which is what Helen Hawthorne has been doing in Elaine Viets’ quick-witted mysteries.”
 Thanks to my editor, I have this terrific Times quote for the jacket cover. That turned out to be a delicious love sandwich.

15 Tedious Tasks for Writers

Nancy J. Cohen

Lately my mind has been a blank when it comes to writing blogs. It could be due to the influx of out of town visitors we have been hosting this month that makes it difficult to concentrate. Or it could be due to my WIP revisions on a book that’s over 104,000 words long. This might sap my mental energy. Regardless of the reason, it’s a good time for some mindless activity in between polishing the prose or escorting visitors around town. Here are some photos of the activities that have been leading me astray (not to mention gaining another pound).

I look a bit too relaxed there, don’t I?

Consider these tasks when you feel brain dead, too distracted or too tired to think straight. Here’s a list of jobs to do when you want to be productive without much mental effort.

• Organize your Internet Bookmarks/Favorites and verify that the links are still active.
• Verify that the links you recommend on your Website and your Blogroll are still valid.
• Update mailing lists and remove bounces and unsubscribes.
• Back up your files to the Cloud or to other media.
• Clean out and sort your files on the computer and in your office drawers.
• Convert old file formats to current ones.
• Delete unnecessary messages from your email Inbox.
• Eliminate duplicate photos stored on your computer.
• Delete old contacts from your address book.
• Unfollow people from Twitter who are no longer following you.
• Delete friends from Facebook who have deactivated their accounts.
• Sort your Twitter friends into Lists.
• Post reviews of books you’ve read to Goodreads, Amazon, Shelfari & Library Thing.
• Get caught up on a tax deduction list for your writing expenses.
• Index your blog posts by date and subject so you have a quick reference.

What else would you add?

Fun Tip of the Day: Google Authorship

Have we talked about Google Authorship here before? I just enabled this neat little feature, which causes Google to display your picture and a profile box during searches on your name.

Here’s a screenshot of doing a search with my Google Authorship profile enabled. When I begin typing my name in Google’s search box, my picture appears along with the various search result options.

And here’s a picture of the search results. A box highlights my profile information, including a photo.

It’s hard to get everything on one screen to show you, but my Google Plus profile information also appears in a box with a photo. The example below shows Basil Sands’ picture instead of mine. Why, I’m not sure. Basil’s an IT guy, so maybe he can tell us, lol.

I just did a random sampling of searches on the TKZ bloggers’ names. The results indicate that most of us, but not all, have already set up a Google Authorship profile. Google Authorship is an incentive to get more familiar with Google Plus, which is much less popular as an outreach tool among authors compared to, say, Facebook.

So, have you been using Google Authorship as part of your Google Plus identity? Do you have any user tips or best practices you can share?

Write Who You Know (?)

By Clare Langley-Hawthorne

I’ve often been asked whether I have any characters in my novels based on real-life people It used to seem strange to me that many would-be writers seemed so concerned about real people suing them over characters in their novels. This is probably because I’ve never overtly based a character on anyone I actually know. Until now…

To be honest I’m still pretty nonchalant about the whole issue. It’s not like I’m incorporating anybody famous or likely to sue for defamation. From what I’ve heard from many writers, even when they did write a character based on someone they knew, that person didn’t recognize it was them anyway! All too often people who know you either erroneously assume they are one of your characters or fail to see the glaring resemblances to those who you do include:)

In my latest WIP I do have a character drawn from a person I actually know  (someone who basically would have made a good Nazi…) but I am creating a fictional composite nonetheless. Although there are some core (evil) traits which have caught my eye, I am conscious that I am writing a novel not a memoir and so the real life person really provides only a jumping off point for my character to develop. (Nonetheless I am looking forward to this character coming to a ‘sticky end’ in the book – call it a kind of karmic catharsis that cannot be achieved in real life!).

I think when including characters based on actual people, writers should probably be aware/think of the following:

  • Be mindful that you may run afoul of defamation laws if what you have done is so obvious that most readers would recognize the person and think less of them in real life (there are of course a myriad of laws/cases and exceptions and a discussion of the complexities of the law is beyond what this post requires:). Usually the person would have to be pretty well known and have a reputation that could be compromised by what you write (and I’m guessing that most people’s Aunt Maud or Cousin Loopy wouldn’t fit this bill).
  • Consider the consequences of including any characterization that is instantly recognizable as someone you know (be it friend, family member, colleague) carefully. You need to understand you could cause offence and/or alienate people as a result.
  • Understand too that many people close to you will assume (correctly or incorrectly) that they must be a character in your book and will scour the pages trying to identify who they might be. You should plan on how to respond  because 99.9% of the time they will be totally wrong. 
  • Other than that, recognize that everyone creates characters based on their own experiences, memories and the people they have known. It is therefore inevitable that some aspects of people’s lives or characters will pop up and inhabit a writer’s imaginary world.  

So have you ever consciously included a character in one of your books based on someone you know? Were they ever the victim or perpetrator? Did anyone ever recognize themselves as a character in your book and if so, were they right? 

My Favorite Movies About Fathers

James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell



In honor of Father’s Day, I thought I’d share (with help from my film scholar son) ten of my favorite movies about dads.
FATHER OF THE BRIDE           
(1950, Dir. Vincente Minnelli)
The great Spencer Tracy plays the father of the gorgeous Elizabeth Taylor, who has decided to get hitched. What follows are the stages of a bride’s father that seem as inevitable as the stages of grief: testing the young man about his financial future; meeting the in-laws; trying to keep down wedding expenses; surviving the emotional shakeups. The comedy is as fresh today as it was in 1950, and being the father of a daughter myself, I cannot help tearing up at the end. Top of the list.
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
(1962, Dir. Robert Mulligan)
Gregory Peck isAtticus Finch, the widower raising his two children in Depression-era Alabama. He is a paragon of decency, honor and the values that make one a compassionate human being. One of those times when the perfect role met the perfect actor for that role. It’s also, I think, the perfect movie score.
PARENTHOOD
(1989, Dir. Ron Howard)
Steve Martin plays Gil, the flustered father of an overanxious son, who also happens to have a less than perfect dad himself (Jason Robards). The movie is spot on about the various types of parents and their quirks, with the underlying message: you never stop being a parent. Highlight for me (and most dads, too) is when “Cowboy Gil” saves his son’s birthday party from utter ruin. 

KRAMER VS. KRAMER
(1979, Dir. Robert Benton)
One of the first movies, based on the novel by Avery Corman, about single fathers. Dustin Hoffman captures the spirit of the times, a 70s guy who thinks he’s got everything . . . until his wife leaves him. Hoffman and the son, played by Justin Henry, make it on their own for awhile, and then the ex-wife (Meryl Streep) returns and demands custody. This was the first male two-hanky movie.
SHANE
(1953, Dir. George Stevens)
One of the great American films of any kind, Shane is sometimes mistaken for a typical Western, with a gunslinger and bad guys. In reality, the movie is about the father, played by Van Heflin, trying to eke out a living as a homesteader with his wife and young son. Shane (Alan Ladd) comes into his world to help. It’s all mythic, and Jack Palance is one of the great villains in cinema history. But once Shane has done his work, he tells the boy to grow into a man just like his father, “strong and straight.”
LOVE FINDS ANDY HARDY
(1938, Dir. George B. Seitz)
When Lewis Stone stepped into the role of Judge Hardy, father of the irrepressible Andy (Mickey Rooney), neither he nor Louis B. Mayer thought he would become the Ward Cleaver of his generation. Stone is the quintessential father, who knew when to let Andy take responsibility for his own actions, and when to cut him some slack and teach him lessons about life. So popular were these movies that Stone and Rooney filmed short subjects for MGM, which were sort of public service announcements. The studio brass figured no one had more parental authority than Judge Hardy. You’ll even find them immortalized in the great Warner Bros. cartoon Hollywood Steps Out (1941). Of course, Judy Garland and a young Lana Turner are in this one, too.
The following films are provided courtesy of Nathaniel Bell (M.A., Film Studies, Chapman University):
THE KID
(1921, Dir. Charles Chaplin)
Chaplin’s “Little Tramp” rescues an abandoned baby boy (later to grow into the adorable Jackie Coogan) and teaches him how to survive in the slums. The ensuing comedy-drama reaches a sentimental pitch worthy of Dickens. Images of Chaplin caring for the youngster in his pathetically ramshackle apartment, cutting diapers and cooking breakfasts, are the very picture of fatherly devotion, demonstrating that love, not money, is the greatest gift a father can bestow.

THE CROWD
(1928, Dir. King Vidor)
In this silent masterpiece, a young man with grand ambitions is humbled—first as a husband, then as a father—by the struggle to earn a living in the Big City. Witnessing the change from a carefree and naive youth to a man brought low by misfortune is a pungent reminder of the responsibilities that come with being a family man and provider. The gritty details are almost oppressive (this may be the first film to actually show a toilet), but it’s worth enduring for the powerful scene in which the father is pulled back from the abyss by his five-year-old’s innocent declaration, “I believe in you, Pop.”

TARZAN FINDS A SON!
(1939, Dir. Richard Thorpe)
Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller) and Jane (Maureen O’Sullivan) discover the infant survivor of a jungle plane crash. Naming him “Boy,” they adopt the tot and return with him to their treetop abode, where Tarzan passes down his best vine-swinging techniques. Later, when the inevitable search party comes to reclaim Boy, Tarzan’s fatherly instincts—powerful as a gorilla’s—kick in full force. For all its creakiness, this 1939 potboiler is probably one of the best demonstrations of that primal paternal impulse to defend your children at all costs.
THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN’S CREEK
(1944, Dir. Preston Sturges)
Sturges brings his withering satirical sensibilities to bear on the American small town in this WWII screwball classic. The entire cast is brilliant, but it’s William Demarest who steals the picture as Edmund Kockenlocker (the name alone, as James Agee once suggested, places him firmly in cartoon strip country), the trash talking, pipe smoking town constable whose protection of his two teenage daughters verges on the psychopathic. His favored technique for fending off potential suitors is taking a wild kick, missing the mark, and falling flat on his back.

Happy Father’s Day! Enjoy!


Become a Better Writer!

By Mark Alpert

It’s simple. If you want to improve your writing, you should read great books. And study them.

I just finished an amazing novel that was published last year, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain. It’s set in the not-too-distant past of the Bush era, when the war in Iraq was raging and the airwaves in America were full of over-the-top patriotic extravaganzas. The U.S. Army has organized a Victory Tour for a squad of infantrymen whose combat heroics were caught on video and broadcast on the evening news, making instant celebrities out of the young, rowdy soldiers. Billy Lynn is the baby of the squad, a 19-year-old who won the Silver Star for his valor during the firefight but can barely remember what happened. He’s overwhelmed and exhausted by all the fawning attention he gets from armchair warriors during the Victory Tour, which culminates in a farcical halftime show at the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium on Thanksgiving Day. And he even toys with the idea of deserting, because the Army is planning to send him and his fellow grunts right back to Iraq as soon as the football game is over.

Reading the book is pure pleasure. Fountain is such a good writer, his sentences make you shake your head in wonder. Here’s the opening of the scene describing Billy’s brief visit to his family home in Texas:

Billy went to Stovall, to the three-bedroom, two-bath brick ranch house on Cisco Street with sturdy access ramps front and back for his father’s wheelchair, a dark purple motorized job with fat whitewalls and an American flag decal stuck to the back. “The Beast,” Billy’s sister Kathryn called it, a flanged and humpbacked ride with all the grace of a tar cooker or giant dung beetle. “Damn thing gives me the willies,” she confessed to Billy, and Ray’s aggressive style of driving did in fact seem to strive for maximum creep effect. Whhhhhhhiiiiirrrrrrr, he buzzed to the kitchen for his morning coffee, then whhhhhhhiiiiirrrrrrr into the den for the day’s first hit of nicotine and Fox News, then whhhhhhhiiiiirrrrrrr back to the kitchen for his breakfast, whhhhhhhiiiiirrrrrrrto the bathroom, whhhhhhhiiiiirrrrrrrto the den and the blathering TV, whhhhhhhiiiiirrrrrrr, whhhhhhhiiiiirrrrrrr, whhhhhhhiiiiirrrrrrr, he jammed the joystick so hard around its vulcanized socket that the motor keened like a tattoo drill, the piercing eeeeeeennnnnhhhhhh contrapuntaling off the baseline whhhhhhhiiiiirrrrrrr to capture in sound, in stereophonic chorus no less, the very essence of the man’s personality. “He’s an asshole,” Kathryn said.

I love that long sentence with the sound effects. When I encounter a sentence this good I like to read it over and over, sometimes even try to memorize it. Or simply copy it word for word, as I’ve done here. It’s an attempt at sympathetic magic. I’m hoping that some of the author’s skill will rub off on me.

The novel is also brilliantly structured. It starts with the limo ride to the Cowboys stadium a couple of hours before kickoff and ends with the same limo picking up the soldiers after the game. In between we get to see the football players suiting up in the locker room, the team owner’s luxurious suite, the equipment room, the drunken fans, and of course the fabulous Cowboys cheerleaders. There are some flashbacks, but not too many. The only really extended one is the description of Billy’s depressing homecoming. I was expecting the author to eventually describe the heroic deeds of the infantrymen in the firefight in Iraq, but that expected flashback never arrives. We just get a few bits and pieces of it: Billy’s despair as one of his comrades dies in his lap, his sergeant’s pride in Billy’s heroism (expressed, jarringly, as a painful kiss after the battle). The omission is disappointing in a way — we want to know what happened there! — but it fits with the theme of the novel. The soldiers themselves don’t want to think about what happened. And when the fawning armchair warriors bombard them with thoughtless questions, asking them what they felt during the firefight, the grunts can’t respond. If you weren’t there, you can never really understand.

Best of all, the book is funny. The soldiers defy their hopeless fate by constantly goofing around. When one of them passes out drunk in the stands and a woman in the next row offers to spread a blanket over him (it’s a cold November day), his buddies protest:

“Oh, ma’am, don’t worry about him,” Crack assures her. “We’re infantry, that’s kind of like being a dog or a mule, we’re too dumb to mind the weather. He’s fine, believe me, he don’t feel a thing.”

“But he could freeze!”

“No ma’am,” Mango chimes in. “We punch him every once in a while to keep his blood moving. See, like this.” He delivers a sharp whack to Lodis’s bicep. Lodis snarls and throws out his arms, but his eyes never open.

“See?” Mango beams. “He’s fine. He’s happy. He’s like a cockroach, you can’t kill him!”

In short, I urge you to read this novel. There’s no better way to learn how to write fiction.  

TV Shows I’m Addicted To

Jordan Dane
@JordanDane

I have my DVR set up with countless shows I record. My husband also knows my interest in the strange and peculiar NOVA Science shows or historical documentaries. As a writer, anything can stir your imagination and you never know what small tidbit can fuel a book or series. I once did a whole proposal after seeing a science show on venomous snakes.

Here are a couple of my fav TV shows adapted from books:

Hannibal – OMG! I am giddy for Thursday nights now because of this show. This is an adaptation of Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, but it is a prequel where FBI BAU profiler, Agent Will Graham, is brought in to consult with his old boss, Jack Crawford, and hunt serial killers. We meet the infamous Hannibal Lecter in the wild, before he gets caught. Will is good at his job, depicted as closer to Asperger’s & sociopaths, and can visualize himself as the killer. This puts him in need of therapy, as you can imagine, but his boss picks Hannibal Lecter as his psychiatrist. This is graphic stuff, but the tongue in cheek dark humor is over the top and the psychological trauma worsens in Will, as we see him falling apart and under the care of Lecter. It’s mesmerizing to watch. Hugh Dancy is yummy as Will Graham and Mads Mikkelson as Hannibal redefines the role, big shoes to fill after Anthony Hopkins.

This show is beautifully shot and the acting is amazing, but the reinvention of the Red Dragon book, in such a creative way, has me coming back every week. I went back to read the book and got even more out of the show. 

Justified – This show’s season has ended, but it gets better each year. Writer Elmore Leonard is the guy behind this show and the writing is superb. The characterizations and the dialogue are worth every minute of your time to watch this show. One of my favorite things to do is tweet my fav lines as the show is one. Many of my writer friends do this. Marshal Raylan Givens and criminal childhood friend Boyd Crowder are two characters to watch. The season that just ended was my favorite (and that’s saying something). Pure Rayland and Boyd.

Cable Shows I Have Recently Become Addicted to:

The Borgias – Jeremy Irons is damned sexy as a Pope. And his son, Cesare Borgia, has me spellbound…especially when he’s naked. Family scandal and treachery in enticing scenes.

Game of Thrones –I hadn’t watched this show until I recently caught up in a marathon of recordings, but I got totally hooked. Some of the recent storylines left me so sad though and it reminded me how emotional our stories have to be to grip readers.

What are some of your favorite guilty pleasure TV shows…and why do you like them? Do you get something from them that helps your writing? Are you addicted to any of the shows I watch?

CHECKLIST FOR ADDING SUSPENSE & INTRIGUE

Today I welcome back to TKZ my friend and editor, Jodie Renner, to share her checklistJodie_June 26, '14_7371_low res_centred on adding suspense and intrigue to your story. Enjoy!

Jodie Renner, editor, writer, speaker  

We all know that thrillers and other fast-paced popular fiction need lots of tension, suspense, and intrigue. But so does any other compelling story that’ll create a buzz and take off in sales. No matter what genre you write, it’s all about hooking your readers in, engaging them emotionally, and ensuring they keep eagerly turning the pages.

Here’s a handy checklist for ratcheting up the tension and suspense of your novel or short story. Use as many of these elements and devices as possible to increase the “wow” factor of your fiction.

Plan and set up a riveting story:

__ Give readers a sympathetic, charismatic, but flawed protagonist they’ll identify with and start worrying about.

__ Create a nasty, cunning, believable villain (or other antagonist) to instill fear and anxiety.

__ Devise a significant, meaningful story problem, a serious dilemma for your hero, preferably a threat with far-reaching consequences.

__ Make it personal to your protagonist. She and/or her loved ones are personally threatened.

Bring your protagonist and story to life on the page.

__ Use close point of view (deep POV) and stay in the head of your protagonist most of the time, for maximum reader engagement.

__ Show your main character’s reactions to people and events around him.

__ Evoke all five senses – what is she seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting?

__ Show his inner fears, anxieties, anger and frustrations.

__ Use occasional brief flashbacks in real time to reveal her secrets and fears, deepen characterization, and strengthen reader involvement.

__ Use alternating viewpoints – put us in the head of your protagonist and antagonist (or, in a romantic suspense, the female and male leads).Give them each their own scenes or chapters, so readers find out what the antagonist is thinking and planning, too. But stay mostly in your protagonist’s POV, to keep us bonded with her.

Pile on the problems:

__ Keep raising the stakes for your protagonist. Just as he solves one problem, he’s confronted with an even worse obstacle or dilemma.

__ Hamper your hero or heroine at every turn – the gun is jammed or falls into the river, the door is locked, the cell phone battery is dead, the car runs out of gas, there’s a roadblock ahead, …

__ Give her tough choices and moral dilemmas. The right decision is the most difficult one; the morally wrong choice is the easy way out.

Set the tone with style, mood, and pacing:

__ Show, don’t tell. Don’t intrude as the author, and minimize explanations and backstory.

__ Write tight. Make every word count.

__ Vary your sentence structure to suit the situation and mood.

__ Use distinctive, vivid verbs and nouns rather than overused, generic ones, like “walked” or “ran.”

__ Use strong imagery and just the right word choices to set the mood.

__ Vary the pacing and tension level. Nonstop action can be exhausting.

Pay attention to chapter and scene structure:

__ Don’t spend a lot of time on lead-up or wind-down. Start chapters late and end them early.

__ Make sure every scene has some conflict and a change.

__ Use cliffhangers frequently at the end of chapters – but not always.

__ Employ some jump cuts – end a chapter suddenly, without resolving the issue, then start the next chapter with different characters in a different scene.

__ Show all critical scenes in real time, with tension, action, reactions, and dialogue.

__ Skip past or quickly summarize transitions and unimportant scenes.

Experiment with these devices to increase suspense and intrigue:

__ Sprinkle in some foreshadowing – drop subtle advance hints and innuendos about critical plot points or events.

__ Withhold information – use delay tactics, interruptions at critical points.

__ Stretch out critical scenes – milk them for all they’re worth.

Surprise or shock your readers:

__ Add in a few unexpected twists. Put a big one in the middle and another big one at the end.

__ Use surprise revelations from time to time – reveal character secrets and other critical information the reader has been dying to know.

__ Have your main character experience at least one epiphany – a sudden significant realization that changes everything for them. Try putting one in the middle and one near the end.

__ Write in some reversals of feelings, attitudes, expectations, and outcomes.

Keep adding more tension. Increase the troubles of your protagonist by using these plot devices:

__ Ticking clocks – every second counts.

__ Obstacles, hindrances – keep challenging your hero or heroine.

__ Chases – your protagonist is chasing or being chased.

__ Threats or hints of more possible danger ahead.

__ Traps and restrictions – your character becomes somehow trapped and must use all their resources to get out of the situation.

Create a memorable, satisfying ending.

­Writing a Killer Thriller_May '13__ Design a big showdown scene, an extremely close battle between the hero/heroine and the villain.

__ Write in a surprise twist at the end.

__ Leave your readers satisfied – the hero wins by a hair, the main story question/conflict is resolved.

Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction editor and the award-winning author of three craft-of-writing guides in her series An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: Captivate Your Readers, Fire up Your Fiction, and Writing a Killer Thriller. She has also published two clickable time-saving e-resources to date: Quick Clicks: Spelling List and Quick Clicks: Word Usage. You can find Jodie at www.JodieRenner.com, www.JodieRennerEditing.com, http://jodierennerediting.blogspot.com/ and on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

Lessons Learned

By Boyd Morrison

After four months of living in Los Angeles, taking acting classes and learning about the business side of Hollywood, I head back to Seattle today full of new energy and knowledge. What’s surprising to me is how much of what I learned about acting can be applied both to writing and to life in general.

I’d like to share some of the best words of wisdom I heard while I was in LA. Many of them come either directly or indirectly from my instructor Howard Fine at the Howard Fine Acting Studio. I wish I could take every single class the studio offers, but the foundation I got will serve me for years to come.

I thought about explaining these quotes’ origins and meanings, but I’d rather let them speak for themselves. I hope you find a few that make you look at your life or your writing in a different way.

“I have time.” (Said to yourself before taking on a new endeavor)

“The way you do one thing is the way you do everything.”

“If you can’t change one thing, you can’t change anything.”

“We judge ourselves by our intentions, but we judge others by their actions.”

“Control is a false god; do not pray to it.”

“Creativity does not live in the thinking mind.”

“It’s not who you know; it’s who knows you.”

“The tell of a lie is that the body has no muscle memory.”

“If a relationship is unimportant, the scene is unimportant.”

“Scenes are not about our emotions, but what we can do about our emotions.”

“Desire trumps everything.”

“Characters are in crisis at crossroads in moments of critical decision.”

“Comedy comes from one-hundred-percent investment in a silly issue.”

“Most people ask a question and want an immediate answer; an artist is willing to discover it.”

“You don’t need to be other than who you are, but all of who you are.”

“How we speak is conditioned by how we think we’ll be listened to.”

“You can’t make a mistake by caring too much. You can only make a mistake by not caring.”

“We care about the character in direct proportion to how much the character cares about anything.”

“Nobody wants less investment. The more you invest in the scene, the more the observer will be drawn in.”

“When you are interested, you become interesting.”

“You become self-conscious when your attention is on yourself, not on the other person in the scene.”

“If mistakes humiliate you, you will never create.”

 “Those who are the most present and have the most charisma are the ones who are most alive in their senses.”

“What becomes our truth is a story we tell ourselves over and over.”