Category Archives: #writetip

Six Tips for a Book Party on a Shoestring

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By Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

Art at Tao

In 2018, I was privileged to crash a party in Manhattan hosted by Blackstone Publishing to celebrate their new book launches during an extraordinarily successful year. My pal Susan Purvis was one of Blackstone’s debut authors with her memoir Go Find, and I was graciously included as her guest.

The event took place at the trendy Tao Downtown Nightclub with an open bar and sit-down dinner.

The crowd consisted of publishing industry luminaries, agents, editors, and celebrity authors including the delightful M.C. Beaton.

M.C. Beaton and me

A long stairway led from street level to the nightclub. After a couple of drinks, you could almost see the ghosts of Truman Capote, Maxwell Perkins, and Jacqueline Onassis descending the stairs from a bygone era when publishing was a glamorous business.

It was fun to have a glimpse inside that rarified world but, in reality, most publishers, let alone authors, can’t afford lavish promotion. As an indie author, my budget is on such a short shoestring that a mouse couldn’t hang itself.

 

Nevertheless, I wanted to host a celebration for my new thriller, Deep Fake Double Down.

The good news is a successful book party can be done without spending a lot of money. It takes DIY work, a little ingenuity, and lots of help from good friends. Here are six tips I learned along the way.

  1. Find an inviting venue that’s low- or no-cost.

Authors and bookstores go together like peanut butter and jelly. The business carries our books. Our events draw new customers. We support each other. Win-win.

Stephanie Pius recently bought The BookShelf in Kalispell. She is eager to build her customer base and offered her shop as a free venue. We decided on a Friday afternoon, 4 to 6 p.m. when people were getting off work and downtown foot traffic was good.

Stephanie dove right in to help, running ads about the party on the store’s social media accounts. The corner location has windows on two streets and she put up posters in all  windows. On the sidewalk in front, a sandwich board invited passersby to meet a “local author.”

She provided tables and folding chairs, and even rearranged heavy, book-laden shelves to make room for seating.

Financial agreement: I delivered books. Stephanie tracked inventory and handled sales, including credit cards. She received 40% of the list price, with 60% to me, which is fairly standard for indie publication.

With a traditional publisher, terms may be different and the bookstore generally orders books from the publisher.

  1. Promotion. 

I printed invitations and handed them out at Zumba classes, at meetings, to the clerk at the post office who helps me mail books.

Additionally, I sent invitations by email. On your guest list, include friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, book clubs, writing colleagues, local media personalities, etc.

Publicize on social media and ask friends to share on their accounts.

Print color posters advertising the event and post them at libraries, coffee houses, and of course at the bookstore.

Send press releases to local online events calendars and newspapers.

Seek out unconventional (and free) outlets for publicity. Montana’s electric co-op magazine features a community events calendar and is sent to customers throughout the state. Surprisingly it has drawn out-of-town attendees to my events.

None of these promotions cost money except for paper and ink.

Here’s where years of connections, networking, and good friends in the writing community paid off.

Renee and Regi drove almost 200 miles from Helena.

My friends rallied round me with support that warmed my heart. They pitched in with planning help, spread the word on social media, helped set up, tear down, clean up, etc., etc.

By fortunate coincidence, a week before the party, a local glossy magazine, Flathead Living, featured a story about the Authors of the Flathead that mentioned me as one of the founders. That was great exposure to readers beyond my immediate sphere.

In another stroke of good luck, I ran into the editor/publisher of Montana Senior News in the check-out line at Costco and invited him. He showed up at the party, had a great time, bought several books, and promised to publish a review of Deep Fake Double Down.

Truthfully, I think it was the butterscotch chip cookies that got to him. (See recipe below.)

Cold promotion is hard for introverted writers. But inviting people to a party shifts the focus from “buy my book” to “come celebrate with me.”

  1. Refreshments! Nothing attracts people like free food and drink.

Critique partners Marie Martin and Betty Kuffel help me set out food.

Wine and cheese are always popular. If feasible, feature a food or beverage from your book, for instance, tea for a cozy mystery, or coffee and donuts for a police procedural. If the setting is a different country, ethnic specialties are fun.

For the hot July evening, I bought bottled water and flavored fizzy drinks and brought an ice-filled cooler. I cut up watermelon, honeydew, and pineapple for fruit platters. (Note: For health/sanitary considerations, provide toothpicks to avoid hands touching food. Remember hand sanitizer, too.)

I baked three batches of cookies. Here’s the recipe the editor liked:

To-Die-For Butterscotch Chip Cookies – makes 3-4 dozen

Stir together 2 ¼ cups flour, 1 teas. baking soda, 1 teas. salt. Set aside.

Mix together 1 cup soft butter, ¾ cup granulated sugar, ¾ cup packed brown sugar, 1 ½ teas. vanilla. Beat until creamy. Beat in two eggs. Add flour mixture and mix well. Stir in 1 to 1 1/2 cups butterscotch chips. Drop by teaspoonfuls on greased cookie sheets. Bake at 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Cool on rack.

Tying into my book title, I also baked “Deep Fake Cakes.” I decorated two sheet cakes with tube icing and added a sign that read, “Calories are an illusion!”

Who got into the cake before I took a photo???

On your shopping list, include paper plates, napkins, cups, disposable cake pans and platters, utensils, etc. They are inexpensive at Family Dollar, Dollar Tree, or similar stores.

 

 

 

 

4, Freebies! Readers love giveaways.

My novella Crowded Hearts had initially only been available in ebook because it was less than 100 pages. But a significant percentage of my readers prefer physical books so I’d ordered a small stock of POD (print on demand), cost under $5. When book clubs bought multiple copies, I threw in the novella as a bonus. That went over well so I did the same for the party. Anyone who bought two or more books received a free novella.

Quite a few attendees happily took home an extra freebie.

  1. Prizes! People love a chance to win. 

Prize gift packages

Here’s where I really lucked out. Thanks to the generosity of our own Steve Hooley, the prizes were beautiful custom wood pens. Steve handcrafts the pens using salvaged lumber from historic buildings that were torn down or undergoing renovation. The wood dates back to the 18th and 19th century. Here’s the link to the “Legacy Pens” on his website.

Steve even came up with a clever tie-in to Deep Fake Double Down: in the book, a secret Yogo sapphire mine is a treasure worth killing for. Steve designed a limited edition “Deep Fake Sapphire” pen, finished in the same luminous blue as Yogo sapphires.

At the party, I explained the history of the pens, which fascinated people. They eagerly filled out entry forms, signing up for my newsletter for a chance to win a unique pen. That resulted in a number of new subscribers.

Oh yes, I kept busy signing books with my own Deep Fake Sapphire pen.

I can’t thank Steve enough.

Other possible prize options: a signed book, a gift certificate from the store that hosts the party, a package of gourmet coffee, a bottle of wine, a sampler of specialty candy.

  1. Entertainment! Make the party interesting as well as fun.

Engage guests with a short talk about why you wrote the book, along with Q&A. Readers enjoy peeking behind the curtain into the writing process. Relate an interesting anecdote or share a surprise you encountered while doing research. Mention unexpected problems that popped up. Raise curiosity to entice them to buy the book.

Readings can be popular…as long as they’re brief. I confess I’ve slipped out of a few book signings where the author droned on far too long.

But no one sneaked out of this party during the reading of Deep Fake Double Down, thanks to the stellar performance of another good friend, stage actor and audiobook narrator Eve Passeltiner.

Award-winning audiobook narrator Eve Passeltiner emphasizes a dramatic moment.

Eve is recording my series and graciously agreed to read a chapter during the party. Except read isn’t the right word. She brought the characters to vivid, dramatic life, blowing away the audience, as well as the author!

~~~

How did the party go?

Turnout: During the two hours, about 40 people came into The BookShelf, including curious passersby who stopped to see what was going on.

Stephanie’s cut from sales made the evening worthwhile for her, plus she welcomed new customers and became better acquainted with existing ones.

Cost: $75 for food, beverages, decorations, gift packaging—well within my shoestring budget.

Time expended: approx. 30 hours in promotion and preparation.

Results: 25+ newsletter signups; 27 books sold that evening plus five novellas as freebies to purchasers of multiple books.

Verdict: The party was a success that guests enjoyed. A local small business reached new customers. Book sales more than covered costs and are continuing a nice steady climb.

Me with critique buddies, Betty Kuffel and Kathy Dunnehoff

 

 

And I had a terrific time, surrounded by friends and supporters who are dear to me.

Susan Purvis and me

All accomplished on a shoestring budget.

~~~

TKZers: Have you attended book signings/parties? What made the event special? If you were bored and left early, what made it a dud?

Any ideas for future parties?

~~~

Deep Fake Sapphire Pens, handcrafted by Steve Hooley

 

Here’s another chance to win a limited edition Deep Fake Sapphire pen. Join Debbie Burke’s reading group at this link and your name will be entered in a drawing for the pen (postage costs limit mailing to US addresses only, please).

The Rhetorical Triangle for Writers

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rhetorical triangle for writers Photo of a cute donkeyThe rhetorical triangle is a concept that rhetoricians developed from the Greek philosopher Aristotle’s idea that effective persuasive arguments contain three essential elements: logos, ethos, and pathos.

Its purpose? To inform, persuade, entertain — whatever the author wants the audience to believe, know, feel, or do.

All forms of communication use the tools of rhetoric to some degree. Though the rhetorical triangle sounds like it’s geared toward nonfiction writing, novelists can use it as a literary devise.

Logos

Logos establish reliability. We want readers to believe our main character. By using factual information and logic, we’re building connections in the reader’s mind.

An example of logos:

Facts: Mr. Duke owns a tea shop. He talks about his passion for tea.
Logic: Mr. Duke has liquid in a teacup. Because of his passion for tea and the fact that he owns the tea shop…
Conclusion: The liquid in his teacup must be tea.

Are we jumping to conclusions too soon? Maybe. Is any other information available? Does Mr. Duke slur his words? Then maybe there’s alcohol in that teacup. Or he has a medical issue. Given the social constructs and the available information, the reader concludes he’s drinking tea.

Logos do get more complicated, but it always retains these basic parts. And we, as writers, need to recognize the order in which readers draw conclusions. By doing so, we can manipulate the narrative to suit our needs.

Ethos

Ethos boils down to one burning question: Can the reader trust you? If you write nonfiction, citations from reliable sources help build trust. Or you consistently share reliable information, leading your audience to trust what you say is true.

In fiction, ethos may simmer in the background, invisible to the reader. The MC shows the audience they are trustworthy through actions, reactions, and the choices they make.

Pathos

Pathos is the emotional pull. Authors use pathos to evoke certain feelings from the reader. For our purposes, pathos is a literary device rather than a rhetorical one. Pathos establish tone or mood or make the reader feel sympathetic toward a character. By using pathos, we can trigger readers to feel happy, sad, angry, passionate, inspired, or miserable through word choices and plot development.

Pathos is a Greek word meaning “suffering” that has long been used to relay feelings of sadness or strong emotion. Adopted into the English language in the 16th century to describe a quality that stirs emotions, it’s often produced by real-life tragedy or moving language.

Pathos became the foundation for many other English words.

  • Empathy — the ability to understand and feel the emotions of others
  • Pathology — the study of disease, which can cause suffering
  • Pathetic — something that causes others to feel pity
  • Sympathy — the shared feeling of sadness
  • Sociopath — causing harm to society
  • Psychopath — suffering in the mind

Pathos is the basis for the art of persuasion.

Ever watch commercials for pet adoptions? The sad puppy dog eyes plead for a forever home. They rip your heart out, right? That’s pathos at work.

Most readers want to feel something when they crack open a novel. An emotion pull connects the reader to the characters, immerses them in story, and keeps them flipping pages. Pathos also explains why some stories are unforgettable — because we lived it with the characters! We feared for their safety. We cried over their heartbreaks. We cheered over their victories. The characters became our friends, maybe even family, and we miss them as soon as we close the cover.

Since it’s easier to spot pathos in music lyrics…

God Bless the USA by Lee Greenwood: “And I won’t forget the men who died who gave that right to me…”

Nothing Compares 2 U by Sinead O’Connor: “It’s been so lonely without you here, like a bird without a song.” Or “All the flowers that you planted in the backyard, Mama, all died when you left.”

To start your week off on the right foot, I’ll embed Happy by Pharrell Williams. An obvious pathos is: “Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth.”

Anyone who can sit still during this song might be dead inside. 😉

Did you spot other pathos in the video? Have you heard of the rhetorical triangle? What other ways might we use logos, ethos, and pathos?

How to Measure Writing Progress

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Photo credit: Eskay Lim – Unsplash

By Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

Recently my computer spent a couple of days in the shop. No social media? No problem! But no internet and no email—that was difficult.

Unable to write or research, I cast around looking for a project to fill normal writing hours. My gaze fell upon the two-drawer filing cabinet crammed with writing stuff.

For years, I’ve invented delays to avoid going through those files: I’ll organize them as soon as I finish this book; as soon as I finish beta reading a colleague’s manuscript; as soon as I give that PowerPoint presentation; as soon as I meet this article deadline; and so on and so on…

Embarrassing confession: The last time I purged writing files was in 2003. Twenty years ago!

Lately, though, it had become increasingly difficult to stuff even one additional sheet of paper into the crammed Pendaflex dividers. Searching in the folders not only caused bleeding paper cuts but bruises on the back of my hand. The two drawers of the filing cabinet haven’t been able to close completely for quite a while.

With the computer in the shop, it was finally time. No more excuses.

I yanked out a stack of files and spread them across the dining table. The top drawer was supposed to contain current work that I need easy access to—ISBN numbers, income and expenses, marketing, recently published articles, WIPs, classes I teach, etc.

Also priority items in the top drawer are Merriam-Webster’s Pocket Dictionary, Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, and printouts of Jodie Renner’s editing tips.

Each book in my Tawny Lindholm Thriller series has its own folder of research, notes, beta feedback, etc. I’ve finished eight books—why are there only seven folders? Oh yeah, #8 is on the kitchen counter because it couldn’t fit in the drawer. Also on the counter are marketing to-do lists for #8.

Farther down in the pile were files from classes and conferences I attended. For 30+ years, I’ve been involved in planning our local Flathead River Writers Conference. Did I really need to keep notes of organizational meetings for all those years? Flight schedules of guest speakers I picked up from the airport? Menus and budgets? Nope. Into the trash.

But then I started reading the copious notes I took from the presentations.

And remembering.

That’s where this cleaning-out business gets tricky.

Pretty quickly I wandered down memory lane into a twisting rabbit warren of education and experience. Easy enough to discard handouts of social media tips from 2013 because that’s changed so much. But what about the 2016 Pikes Peak Writers Conference, a major turning point in my writing career?

For sure, I had to save my notes from Kevin J. Anderson, bestselling author of spin-offs for Star Trek, Dune, and X-Files. He gave a fabulous talk about world-building and illustrated the process with vivid sensory details about growing up in a little Wisconsin town that’s the sauerkraut capital of the world. His descriptions of smells are still imprinted in my memory. In a one-hour presentation, he literally revolutionized the way I work setting into my stories.

That triggered another recollection from later during the same conference. In a room packed with 100 attendees, there was a first-page read-aloud session. Kevin, along with another author and an agent, read the first page of my then-unpublished novel, Instrument of the Devil. Kevin heaped glowing praise on it.

THE Kevin J. Anderson, mega-million bestseller, was intrigued by my first page. I still remember sitting in a chair in the third row, overcome by feverish blushing that made me feel as if I were melting.

Also in that same folder was the certificate awarded at the banquet that night. IOTD won the best thriller/mystery category.

Gotta keep that and the warm memories from the conference that led to my first published book.

Next was a folder marked “TKZ.” It contained emails starting in 2015 between Kathryn Lilley and me where she invited me to guest post for the first time. More emails and more guest posts. Then, while we were at a vacation condo in Florida, I remember breathlessly reading Kathryn’s message out loud to my husband when she asked me to be a regular TKZ contributor.

Another major turning point in my career.

Gotta save those emails.

I time-traveled deeper into the past, uncovering drafts from 2007 of my tenth “practice” novel (the previous nine “practice” novels went out in the 2003 purge). Nice comments from my critique group but I barely remembered the mystery and tossed it without a twinge. Not compelling then and even less so today.

Found a stack of different-colored index cards from an even older mystery. The manuscript was gone so why did I keep the cards? Then the memory came back—I’d struggled with that timeline. A wise teacher suggested the index card system: write a single scene on each card then lay the cards out on the floor. Rearrange, add, or subtract scenes until the timeline makes sense. This was long before the invention of software that allows scene rearrangement onscreen. Wish I could remember who taught me the trick because I owe them thanks.

Buried even deeper in the pile were pages of 13-column ledger paper from the 1990s where I tracked submissions. Hundreds of them. To agents, editors, magazines, newspapers. One column recorded the dates of rejections. Early on, those outpaced acceptances tenfold. Later, acceptances increased, and rejections decreased.

Other columns logged dates of publication and payments, if any. Sometimes payments were simply copies of the magazine, if it survived long enough to publish. I personally take credit for putting at least 20 little literary magazines out of business in the ’90s.

Back in snail mail days, the process moved slowly. From the time of submission to the magazine hitting the stands could stretch six months, a year, or even longer. Payment was sometimes upon publication, other times after publication.

But gradually the acceptances increased. I found emails from editors who contacted me offering assignments that paid $25, then $100, then $400 plus mileage.

In the back of the drawer were three-ring binders full of published clips also dating back to the early 1990s. In those days, you saved “tear sheets”—actual pages of published articles torn from magazines or newspapers. When querying, you’d send them as samples of your work for the editor to judge.

By now, you’re wondering if I’ll ever get to the point of this post.

This is it.

Writing has never been a profession that delivers immediate gratification.

Measuring one’s writing progress is tough to quantify. In a regular job, a paycheck every week or two proves the worker’s worth and skills.

In writing, months and years may go by without a “paycheck.”

Even when your career reaches a point where you receive advances and royalties, the income probably won’t support you in the style you’d like to become accustomed to.

If you can’t measure your writing progress in a tangible monetary way, how do you know if you’re improving?

Your best yardstick is yourself.

Look back at what you wrote six months ago, a year, five years, or 20 years ago. Have your skills improved? Have you learned new craft techniques?

Did a class or workshop change the way you create characters, or handle action scenes, or infuse emotion into your stories? Has your pacing improved? Did you head-hop in the past but now you’ve finally mastered point of view (POV)?

Do readers and other writers notice improvement in your work?

Do you waste less time floundering around trying to find a story? Do you have more focus and better concentration when you write? Do you feel more confident about showing your writing to others?

Do you have goals? Have you achieved some of them? Then do you set higher goals?

Writing is a ladder without end. No one knows everything about writing. We all need to work continuously to improve our craft, master more complicated skills, and produce more words.

When I finished clearing old stuff from the file drawers, the discards in the wastebasket weighed about 50 pounds. I filled one banker’s box with conference highlights, published articles, old references I might someday need, and mementoes. That box went into storage in the spare bedroom.

The bottom drawer of the file cabinet now contains only the past three years of published articles and the first seven novels in my thriller series. Deep Fake Double Down, #8, is in the top drawer while I’m actively marketing and promoting. The top also contains daily business files and current to-do projects like uploading my books to Ingram Spark.

No more writing files on the kitchen counter. Whew.

Now the cabinet has plenty of room for new projects, including a nonfiction book proposal I’m working on. I can slip my hand between folders without tearing off layers of skin.

Cleaning out the files gave me the chance to reassess the progress of my writing career. I reviewed lessons learned during this never-ending apprenticeship.

photo credit: Vincent Van Zalinge, Unsplash

My goals back then were different. Did I achieve my dream of winning an Edgar for “Best First Novel”? Nope. A few friends earned six-figure advances for debut books. Did I? Nope. And that’s okay because, sadly, their careers went downhill after their initial one-hit wonders.

Today’s goals? Would I like to publish as many books as Nora Roberts? Sure. Make as many sales as James Patterson? Absolutely.

Photo credit: Aron Visuals, unsplash

Will I ever achieve those goals? Probably not. But I’ll keep plodding along like a tortoise, creating more words and stringing them together in better sentences and stories.

Those old files showed slow, steady progress through the decades.

That’s not glamorous or exciting but it is satisfying.

 

~~~

TKZers: How do you measure your writing progress?

What are your goals for the next year?

~~~

For my new thriller, Deep Fake Double Down, Steve Hooley created a custom Deep Fake Sapphire collector’s pen. Visit my website to enter a free drawing for the pen and a signed book.

Deep Fake Double Down is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

Good Luck and Good Advice

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By Elaine Viets

What a week of ups and downs. I broke my collarbone. My right collarbone and I’m right-handed. I wish I had a good story to go with it, like I was outrunning the cops in a high-speed chase, but I tripped and hit a wall. Yep, tripped.


The brakes failed on my husband Don’s car in our condo parking garage. (That’s it above, leaking on the garage floor.) The car hit a wall and was totaled. Don walked away without a scratch, and no one was hurt. A minor miracle, and we’re both grateful.


My car (the green one with water up to its hubcaps) survived the great Florida flood and it’s ready to drive. Except I can’t drive it because of the busted collarbone.
But along with this steaming pile of lousy luck, there is some good news. Very good news.

The Malice Domestic mystery conference is honoring me with the Lifetime Achievement Award for Malice 36 April 26-28, 2024. Malice Domestic is an annual fan convention in Bethesda, Maryland. I’m thrilled to be part of a star-studded line-up next year.
Lori Rader-Day will be Toastmaster. She’s nominated for the Edgar Award, and won the Agatha, Anthony and Mary Higgins Clark awards. The award-winning Sujata Massey, who writes historical and mystery fiction set in Asia, is Guest of Honor. Noted blogger Kristopher Zgorski of BOLO Books, will get the Amelia Award. There’s more, much more, but there always is at conferences.
I learn a lot by talking to other writers and readers. At the recent Malice Domestic convention, we were talking about the good career advice we received. Many of these tips have been discussed in TKZ, including the importance of persistence at all stages of your career. And, don’t quit your day job.
But the most helpful advice for me, now that I have 34 books out, came from my current agent.
He had me re-read all my books, from the beginning to the current novel, and report back to him.
The results were enlightening. Novels that I thought were my best had major flaws. I repeated certain catch phrases. In some, I waited too long to start the mystery. There were good things, too. But I learned a lot.
I recommend this for every writer. If you only have one or two novels, take time to analyze them. If you have several unpublished novels, do the same thing. Analyze your body of work.
I probably won’t be stopping by today because I’ll be in St. Louis for a book signing, busted wing and all.
Tell us what writing advice works for you, TKZers.

############################################################################The Dead of Night, my new Angela Richman, death investigator mystery, is available in book stores and online:
Buy from Bookshop.org, and your purchase will help support local bookstores: https://tinyurl.com/yet7h56d
Barnes & Noble: https://tinyurl.com/2wdzhjh5
Amazon: amazon.com
PLEASE NOTE: Prices for e-books and hardcovers vary. Please check that you have the lowest.

How Critical Distance Improves Writing

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The conversation about critical distance doesn’t come up often in writing circles. If someone does raise the point, critical distance is usually mentioned in passing as though other writers should inherently know what it is and why it’s important. Let’s change that today.

What is Critical Distance?

The phrase stems from researchers who lost all subjectivity in their analysis. To regain clarity (critical thinking), they had to step away from the project for a while.

Practitioner researchers have often been criticised for a lack of critical distance from their work often leading to conclusions which can be, in the field of objective research, critiqued for a lack of creditability and validity (Saunders, 2007). Also inherent in this type of research is the fact that the types of practitioners who come to this kind of research often have been thinking about the research topic for several years bringing with them a host of assumptions and ideas of what they want to find out and usually already having a theoretical stance for the project (Drake and Heath, 2011; Wellington and Sikes, 2006).

—Michelle M. Appleby, University of Derby

 

  • Surgeons aren’t allowed to operate on family members.
  • Cops aren’t allowed to investigate a family member’s murder.
  • Judges aren’t allowed to preside over a loved one’s case.

These rules are in place because the surgeon, cop, and judge cannot be objective if a personal connection exists.

What’s more personal than writing?

While drafting, we wear love goggles. We’re so wrapped up in our characters, we lose all objectivity. It’s only after we’ve gained distance that we can view the story through the proper lens. Also, we may miss plot holes or leave threads dangling while drafting.

I’ll give you an example…

When I wrote the first draft of Restless Mayhem, one of my anti-heroes mentioned two characters from a previous book. I’d originally planned to have these two characters play a critical role in the story, but then the plot twisted and turned and my original plan changed. Well, I forgot to change the conversation at the beginning of the book. Even though I read the manuscript a few times, I still missed it. After I set it aside for a month, those two names popped right out. And I thought, gee, why are they there?

At that point, I couldn’t recall what my characters did with that information, so I left myself a note and continued on. Guess what? No one ever mentioned those two names again. Never. Whoops! I ended up changing the names to two characters who did play a vital role in the plot. But what if I hadn’t set the manuscript aside? I’d have a lot of confused readers.

Does your character have an accent in chapter two that disappears in chapter twenty?

Does someone have green eyes that turn brown by the end of the book?

Did you name the cat Henry and then change it to Harry?

Did your character have a left arm injury that moved to the right?

Even though most of the above you’ll include in your story bible—you made one, right?—we can still miss seemingly insignificant details if we forego the critical distance stage. I know you’re excited to release your new book baby, but that puppy will shine even more if you allow it to sit a while. I’m amazed by what I find once I return to the manuscript.

How can we view our creations through an objective lens?

After you’ve written the first draft, set it aside for x-amount of weeks. The length of a break varies between writers. For some, two or three weeks may be enough. Others may need a month or more. There’s no right or wrong answer here. Whenever you’ve gained enough distance that you don’t recall every scene. The best way to do that is by working on a different project while the draft cools.

Benefits of critical distance…

  • Easily fix writing tics.
  • Catch typos and grammatical errors.
  • Seal plot holes.
  • Tie-up dangling threads.
  • Swap weak verbs for strong ones.
  • Correct passive voice.
  • Fix clunky words, awkward sentences, and/or phrases.
  • Deepen characterization.
  • Better ground the reader in the setting.
  • Strengthen your theme.
  • Make your writing more expressive.
  • Paint a more vivid mental picture.
  • Infuse more emotion.
  • Change body cues (1st drafts often include obvious or less-than ideal body movements).
  • Convey emotion better.
  • Rewrite to remove some dialogue tags.

Do you let the manuscript rest once you complete the first draft? How long do you let it sit?

Amidst a rising tide of poachers, three unlikely eco-warriors take a stand to save endangered Eastern Gray Wolves—even if it means the slow slaughter of their captors.

Preorder for 99c!

*Please note: 99c sale is only available on Amazon.

Restless Mayhem releases in ebook and paperback on April 26, 2023. Can’t wait!

 

Prologue or Chapter One?

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By Elaine Viets

TKZ has had many discussions about whether you should start your novel with a prologue. Readers and editors both have mixed feelings about prologues. My editor prefers first chapters, so that’s how I write my mysteries.
For my new novel, The Dead of Night, the first chapter could have been prologue. It was about the Legend of the Cursed Crypt. The entire book is built on this story.
Please note: I am NOT saying all prologues are bad, just that I made this prologue work as my first chapter.


To start, here’s how the legend would have been as my novel’s prologue:

The Dead of Night Prologue
The Cursed Crypt was a story of love gone wrong. What started as ordinary adultery unleashed two hundred years of plague, fire, floods and, finally, murder at Chouteau Forest University. The school was founded in 1820. The first president, Hiram Thaddeus Davis, was a grim, grave man with a grizzled beard and unforgiving eyes. He promised a well-rounded education in Latin, Greek, history, the Classics, mathematics and “moral philosophy.” Nobody knew what that was, but it didn’t seem to matter. The school was immediately successful. By 1822, the fledgling university was housed in a fine red-brick building and needed another professor.
Davis hired a brilliant scholar with a European pedigree, Eugene Franco Cortini, to teach Latin, Greek and biology. Cortini was devastatingly handsome, with thick black hair and sculpted features. He spoke five languages. He discovered two new species of American wild flowers – and named both after himself.
Cortini championed the theory of evolution long before Darwin. He wrote that Native Americans were really the lost tribes of Israel. And he preached that monogamy was “not a natural or healthy state for the animal kingdom.”
Cortini demonstrated his theory by having a passionate affair with Dolly, President Davis’s eighteen-year-old wife. Poor, balding Davis caught his curvy blonde wife in flagrante with Cortini, running her fingers through the professor’s thick black curls. Never mind where his hands were.
Cortini was fired on the spot, and banished from the campus. Before he left, he cursed the school on a dark windy night. Cortini stood in a circle of stones in front of the school, his hair wild and his black coat flaring, and shouted over the wind, “My Italian grandmother was a strega – a witch – and I inherited her powers. I am a streghone, a warlock. As long as I am banished from this school, death and disaster will fall upon it. As long as I am on the school grounds, it shall be safe.”
President Hiram Davis laughed while the pregnant Dolly Davis, imprisoned in her room, wept bitter tears. After cursing the school, the romantically handsome Cortini left for St. Louis, some forty miles east.
Two days after Cortini left, yellow fever struck the campus, carrying off six of its twenty students. Each month, another disaster hit the campus: lightning destroyed the huge oak in front of the school building. Disease killed the school’s milk cows. Chouteau Forest Creek flooded the fields where the school grew its crops.
Each time, President Davis dismissed these occurrences as unfortunate events and proudly declared that he “refused to give in to superstition.” He was a man of reason – until a fire broke out in the stables and killed his favorite black stallion.
That’s when President Davis invited Eugene Cortini to return to the campus. Cortini could no longer teach, but he was given a brick house to live in and conduct his research. The school flourished for seven years, and expanded to two buildings and a new dormitory.
Then Cortini died suddenly at age thirty-seven in 1845.
President Hiram Davis was taking no chances. He decreed that Cortini must be buried on campus, but he didn’t want the man’s grave on display. Cortini was buried in a crypt under the steps of the Main Building. His final resting place was hidden by a heavy iron door, but Cortini wasn’t forgotten. Students and staff whispered about the late Eugene Cortini, and noticed that Hiram Davis’s oldest son had thick black hair. Both his parents were blond.
Shortly after Cortini was in his crypt, President Davis died. But his school lived on, and so did the legend of Mean Gene Cortini. Every seven years, a disaster struck the school. The school tried to placate Cortini’s restless spirit by lining his crypt with marble. In 1857, a Victorian administration added a marble divan with a tasseled marble pillow, guarded by two weeping angels. A marble slab on the wall proclaimed the tomb was “Sacred to the memory of Eugene Franco Cortini, scholar, teacher, and researcher.”
These improvements didn’t work. The seven-year disaster cycle continued. While the school prospered, the legend lingered like a cloud over the campus.

When I turned the prologue into Chapter 1, the legend became an efficient part of the mystery. It introduced my character, death investigator Angela Richman, and told readers about where she lived and worked, Chouteau County, Mo., home of the one-percent. The last few paragraphs showed readers how the fat cats made money off two hundred years of tragedy. Thanks to this first chapter, the novel was ready to unfold in Chapter 2.
The parts I added to the prologue to make it into Chapter 1 are boldface. The first bold paragraphs introduce the young Angela Richman and show you her place in local society. She’s an outsider, and will stay that way.
At the end of the chapter, the bold paragraphs bring the legend back to the present day and tease what’s going to happen.
See what you think.

 

The Dead of Night Chapter 1

Like everyone who grew up in Chouteau Forest, Missouri, I knew the legend of the Cursed Crypt. The crypt was at Chouteau Forest University, one of the oldest academies in Missouri. The stories claimed that the restless spirit of a professor nicknamed Mean Gene Cortini had been causing death and destruction in the Forest for two centuries.
I’m Angela Richman, and I learned the legend of Mean Gene and the Cursed Crypt the same way many local teens did: around a campfire in the woods that gave the town of Chouteau Forest its name. When I first heard the tale, I was a gawky fifteen-year-old, the daughter of servants who worked on the Du Pres estate. I didn’t get many invitations to mingle with the cool kids, so when I was asked to join them, I sneaked out of the house one Saturday night to drink beer in a secluded part of the Forest.
It was a chilly March night, and the bare tree branches scraped together like old bones. I hated the bitter taste of the beer, but I wanted to adore my crush, high-school linebacker Danny Jacobs. The firelight turned Danny’s blond hair molten gold and highlighted his six-pack – the one under his tight T-shirt.
Alas, the only sparks that flew that night were from the crackling fire. Danny was devoted to the glamorous head cheerleader. He told us an ancient tale of adultery and betrayal, and we shivered in fear. All except the cheerleader, who was snuggled in Danny’s strong arms.
Here’s the tale, distilled from a thousand nights around local campfires:
The Cursed Crypt was a story of love gone wrong. What started as ordinary adultery unleashed two hundred years of plague, fire, floods and, finally, murder at Chouteau Forest University. The school was founded in 1820. The first president, Hiram Thaddeus Davis, was a grim, grave man with a grizzled beard and unforgiving eyes. He promised a well-rounded education in Latin, Greek, history, the Classics, mathematics and “moral philosophy.” Nobody knew what that was, but it didn’t seem to matter. The school was immediately successful. By 1822, the fledgling university was housed in a fine red-brick building and needed another professor.
Davis hired a brilliant scholar with a European pedigree, Eugene Franco Cortini, to teach Latin, Greek and biology. Cortini was devastatingly handsome, with thick black hair and sculpted features. He spoke five languages. He discovered two new species of American wild flowers – and named both after himself.
Cortini championed the theory of evolution long before Darwin. He wrote that Native Americans were really the lost tribes of Israel. And he preached that monogamy was “not a natural or healthy state for the animal kingdom.”
Cortini demonstrated his theory by having a passionate affair with Dolly, President Davis’s eighteen-year-old wife. Poor, balding Davis caught his curvy blonde wife in flagrante with Cortini, running her fingers through the professor’s thick black curls. Never mind where his hands were.
Cortini was fired on the spot, and banished from the campus. Before he left, he cursed the school on a dark windy night. Cortini stood in a circle of stones in front of the school, his hair wild and his black coat flaring, and shouted over the wind, “My Italian grandmother was a strega – a witch – and I inherited her powers. I am a streghone, a warlock. As long as I am banished from this school, death and disaster will fall upon it. As long as I am on the school grounds, it shall be safe.”
President Hiram Davis laughed while the pregnant Dolly Davis, imprisoned in her room, wept bitter tears. After cursing the school, the romantically handsome Cortini left for St. Louis, some forty miles east.
Two days after Cortini left, yellow fever struck the campus, carrying off six of its twenty students. Each month, another disaster hit the campus: lightning destroyed the huge oak in front of the school building. Disease killed the school’s milk cows. Chouteau Forest Creek flooded the fields where the school grew its crops.
Each time, President Davis dismissed these occurrences as unfortunate events and proudly declared that he “refused to give in to superstition.” He was a man of reason – until a fire broke out in the stables and killed his favorite black stallion.
That’s when President Davis invited Eugene Cortini to return to the campus. Cortini could no longer teach, but he was given a brick house to live in and conduct his research. The school flourished for seven years, and expanded to two buildings and a new dormitory.
Then Cortini died suddenly at age thirty-seven in 1845.
President Hiram Davis was taking no chances. He decreed that Cortini must be buried on campus, but he didn’t want the man’s grave on display. Cortini was buried in a crypt under the steps of the Main Building. His final resting place was hidden by a heavy iron door, but Cortini wasn’t forgotten. Students and staff whispered about the late Eugene Cortini, and noticed that Hiram Davis’s oldest son had thick black hair. Both his parents were blond.
Shortly after Cortini was in his crypt, President Davis died. But his school lived on, and so did the legend of Mean Gene Cortini. Every seven years, a disaster struck the school. The school tried to placate Cortini’s restless spirit by lining his crypt with marble. In 1857, a Victorian administration added a marble divan with a tasseled marble pillow, guarded by two weeping angels. A marble slab on the wall proclaimed the tomb was “Sacred to the memory of Eugene Franco Cortini, scholar, teacher, and researcher.”
These improvements didn’t work. The seven-year disaster cycle continued. While the school prospered, the legend lingered like a cloud over the campus.
More than a hundred years later, Chouteau Forest’s crafty one percent figured out how to make money out of the ancient tragedy. In the 1980s, the University Benefactors’ Club started auctioning off “A Night in Mean Gene’s Cursed Crypt.”
The money went to benefit Chouteau Forest University, which soon had a fat endowment.
The prize was a big one: if any auction winner could stay the full night in the Cursed Crypt, they would be granted membership in the elite Chouteau Founders Club, which ran the Forest. The winners’ future in the Forest would be guaranteed.
So far, only one person had stayed the night in the gloomy crypt.
I was forty-one now, long past drinking beer while listening to ghost stories. I worked for the Chouteau County Medical Examiner’s office as a death investigator. That meant I was in charge of the body at the scene of a murder, an accident or an unexplained death. It had been more than a quarter of a century since I’d first heard the legend of Cursed Crypt in the night-struck woods, and I didn’t believe a word of it.
Until I saw the bodies.
© Elaine Viets and Severn House

The Dead of Night is hot off the presses as an ebook and a hardcover. Here are three ways to buy it:
(1) AMAZON. https://tinyurl.com/4846s7jr
(2) BARNES & NOBLE. http://tiny.cc/a876vz

(3) BOOKSHOP.ORG. Save $2 on The Dead of Night at Bookshop.org and support independent bookstores: https://tinyurl.com/2p8p9ze4

I’d love for you to buy my books, but please check the e-book and hardcover prices at each bookseller. Prices for both change.

 

 

Subtext – Guest Post by Karen Albright Lin

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By Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

 

Karen Albright Lin

Back in the 1990s, author/editor Karen Lin and I met at the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Conference. We hit it off immediately and have remained good friends even though we rarely see each other except via Zoom.

Karen is the author of American Moon, a moving saga about the immigration of her Chinese in-laws, and MuShu Mac & Cheese, a humorous mash-up of Julia Child and My Big Fat Chinese Wedding.

She also teaches writing online, at conferences, and even on cruise ships–a tough gig but somebody’s gotta do it!

The following is an excerpt from a two-week class on Subtext that Karen will teach beginning April 10th through Scribophile. Membership to the huge online critique group is free.

Subtext is an advanced technique that adds depth and resonance to writing. I invited Karen to share her excellent tips with TKZ.

Welcome, Karen!

~~~

Subtext in Dialogue /Body Language — Gestures/Posture/Mannerisms/Actions/Facial Expressions

Photo credit: Pexels

 Simply stated:

If dialogue is about what the dialogue is about, you’re in trouble.

People don’t always say what they mean outright. In fact sometimes the words are in direct opposition to body language. Body language includes gestures, facial expressions, posture, mannerisms, and actions that communicate without words.

Subtext can come in the form of understatement, sarcasm, or a witty punchline, a result, often, of backloading your sentence. That means putting the most powerful word at the end of the sentence, or sentence at the end of a paragraph, or paragraph at the end of a chapter. Backloading is powerful for narrative also. It makes your words lean forward into the next thing. It teases and says to the reader, “Come along with me on this adventure.”

I mentioned punchlines; I should also warn you about them. If they aren’t really great and cleverly pulled off, they can fall flat.

Comedy is all about subtext turned inside out. A joke says what we’re all thinking. Comedic details are the key. Outlandish adjectives and sarcastic barbs right in the middle of a monologue are fun examples.

Dialogue can mask the character’s desires and necessities, but it still leaves clues about what is really meant behind the words. Sarcasm, Freudian slips, unexpected words, and irony are all techniques that can be used to hint at the truth.

Let’s look at an example of emotionally charged dialogue in the movie Carol, Cate Blanchett’s character doesn’t come right out and ask if Therese finds her pretty.

Carol asks, “Were those pictures of me you were taking at the tree lot?” (Subtext: “You find me beautiful?”)

Therese replies, “Sorry, I should have asked.” (Subtext: “Is it OK for me to be attracted to you?”)

Carol says, “Don’t apologize,” (Subtext: “You don’t need to ask for permission to be attracted to me, even though I’m a woman”)

On the surface it is a conversation about photos. It is actually about their sexual desire for each other. The secondary message doesn’t tell it directly.

Use vernacular to tell us about a person. Is he educated? Irish? a braggart?

The most common flaw I see in dialogue is when the characters speak in robotic information-load rather than how real people talk. It suggests the reader wouldn’t get it otherwise. Trust your reader. The challenge is to NOT write “on-the-nose” dialogue, while still revealing important information to the audience. Resist spelling everything out in an expository way. You encourage the readers to come to you BECAUSE you are giving them credit.

For the perfect lesson on subtext in dialogue watch Annie Hall, written by Woody Allen. As Annie and Alvie talk, the subtext in their discussion is written on the screen with subtitles. Their verbal discussion is about photography. In the subtext she’s wondering if she’s smart enough for him. He’s wondering if he’s too shallow. She wonders if he’s a shmuck like other men. He wonders what she looks like naked.

Woody Allen teaches us that characters can talk about anything as long as the true message comes across, as long as the scene accomplishes its purpose. First understand the intention of the scene, then write the dialogue with rich subtext to fulfill that need.

In a real conversation and excellent dialogue (with no subtitles for comic effect) ideas are not spelled out directly, every thought, every feeling stated. Good dialogue reveals without doing that.

Does a person’s private life and public life look the same? Will they say the opposite of what they mean to disguise who they are?

Dialogue was never intended to replicate real speech. It represents attitudes and what the character wants, an outpouring of secrets the character wishes not to disclose.

If you want to study good dialogue, study successful plays. Imagine a middle-aged couple arguing over whether to outfit their new bedroom with two single beds or their old double bed. On the surface the fight is over beds. But in subtext, they reveal their whole marriage, facing what has happened to their lives and love over so many years.

Here are two bits of dialogue. This conversation is between two wealthy friends, one unsure about his future. Which version draws you in as a reader? Which one spells out too much, unsubtly, doing all the work for the reader?

Jack lined up another shot as Kyle looked on. “Dad wants me to take over his backup generator company.”

Vincent smirked as Jack’s ball spun down into the billiards pocket. “So? What’s the problem?”

“Everything! I know he wants to keep it all in the family but I just graduated from CU with honors. I want to make my way in the world on my own.”

Now read this version:

 Vincent looked on as Jack pummeled a ball into the pocket. ”Something bothering you, man?”

“Four years gone.” Jack frowned. “And for what? Okay, it was fun, but…”

“At least Daddy’ll give you a nice office.”

The reader must infer information in the second version. In the first version the writer outright states it upfront in an on-the-nose way. It can be a tough skill to master. When reading a good quality novel, notice how a character is revealed through dialogue and how short and sharp most conversations are.

As suggested by our parents and kindergarten teachers, often actions speak louder than words. Experiment with this. Don’t state your point.

In Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities a character volunteers to be beheaded. That is how he says “I love you.” Much more powerful, right?

Some things go without saying. They are inferred rather than spoken. Don’t discount the powerful sound of silence.

Body Language

Photo credit: Pexels

That brings us to the subject of body language. Just as in real life, one can say a lot through their gestures, posture, actions, facial expressions, and mannerisms. Think of it as coded language.

These are also fun ways to create dynamic dialogue tags. You could use a plain simple tag:

“You don’t really care about my headache,” she said.

Or you could try:

“You don’t really care about my headache.” She turned, tempted to throw a few pieces of fine china at him.

In Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn’t say, “Watch your back. I’m still a threat to you.” Instead he says, “I’ll be back.” (The subtext: remember I’m a threat as you learned from my previous actions and dialogue) These three words add tension, raise questions about the future, and make the audience hungry for more, especially into the sequel. You want to do that with your novel, especially if you are writing a series.

The dialogue is snappy and indirect. If it had been on-the-nose, it wouldn’t be as powerful. It would have spit the meaning at the audience rather than engaging them. “I’ll be back” stayed one step away from the actual meaning.

In The Great Gatsby we have this slice of dialogue:

“I’ve got a man in England who buys me clothes.  He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall.”

Is this really about clothes? No. It is about wealth.

Another example:

A 4th grade boy trudges his way to the front of the room and slips his paper onto Ms. Garcia’s desk.

After looking through two pages, she asks, “Are you sure you want to turn this in?”

What’s the subtext?  What’s the trudging mean? What does the teacher’s dialogue mean?

~~~

Karen, thanks for guesting and for giving TKZ an advance peek!

~~~

TKZers: Do you use subtext in your writing? How do you avoid on-the-nose dialogue?

Writers Beware: Here’s what readers really hate

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By Elaine Viets

Does the novel you’re writing have a long dream sequence? And it’s in italics, to enhance the ethereal effect? How about sizzling sex scenes? And, for comic relief, a talking cat who solves crimes and a wisecracking kid who’s five going on forty?
Uh, you may want to rethink that work in progress.
Ron Charles, the Washington Post book critic, “asked readers of our Book Club newsletter to describe the things that most annoy them in books. The responses were a tsunami of bile.”
Here are some things that Ron salvaged from the tsunami.

(1) Readers hate dream sequences.
Yes, I know dream sequences are a staple of literature. In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov has guilty dreams, including one about a whipped mare. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the Boy Who Lived is deceived by thoughts implanted by a bad guy. Winston in 1984 worries his dreams will get him in trouble with the Thought Police. A Christmas Carol is a long life-changing dream. And then there’s Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
So why should we be wary of dream sequences?
Raging readers told Ron Charles this:
“‘I absolutely hate dream sequences,’ writes Michael Ream. ‘They are always SO LITERAL,’ Jennifer Gaffney adds, ‘usually an example of lazy writing.’”
Aha! So readers hate lazy writing and literal dream sequences. Writing coaches caution writers to avoid cheap tricks, especially the old “and then I woke up” dodge. They say you can use dream sequences if the dreams are premonitions, illustrate an important inner conflict, or help a protagonist realize something major. In short, the dreams must advance the plot. So craft your dream sequences carefully.

(2) Readers hate historical anachronisms and factual inaccuracies.
The Washington Post says, “Karen Viglione Lauterwasser despairs over errors ‘like calling the divisions in a hockey game “quarters” or having a pentagon-shaped table with six chairs.’ Deborah Gravel warns authors that taking a cruise to Alaska is not enough to write a novel about the Last Frontier. Kristi Hart explains that when your characters are boiling maple sap to make syrup, they should not be stirring it. ‘You just boil it until the sugar content is correct, and then you’re done.’”
My pet peeve includes the treatment of black people in historical novels in the first half of the Twentieth Century. With some exceptions, until the late 1950s or 1960s, black people were not allowed to eat in most white restaurants or sit at lunch counters with whites. Nor could they stay at white hotels, go to white schools, use white toilets, or even drink out of white people’s water fountains.
In 1968, I encountered my first segregated water fountain, on a trip through Mississippi. In the local courthouse, the white people drank chilled water from a modern metal fountain. Black people had to drink warm water from a dinky white porcelain fountain. At a Catholic church in the same state, my family arrived late for the service, so we sat in the back. An usher told us that section was for black people (actually, he said “Negroes”) and we had to move.
Encountering this segregation was shocking, but it existed, and to deny it in novels is to deny the shame, hurt and humiliation black people suffered – and still do.
(3) Readers hate typos and grammatical errors.
This is also bugaboo for TKZ readers and writers, and we’ve written often about how to catch typos, while understanding those slippery little devils slip into the best books. But typos seem to be getting worse, especially since traditional publishers are cutting back on copy editors and some indie authors don’t hire them.
The Washington Post noted: “Patricia Tannian, a retired copy editor, writes, ‘It seems that few authors can spell “minuscule” or know the difference between ‘flout’ and ‘flaunt.’ Katherine A. Powers, Book World’s audiobook reviewer, laments that so many ‘authors don’t know the difference between “lie” and “lay.’” TKZ’s Terry Odell wrote a helpful blog on that subject. Read it and sin no more. https://killzoneblog.com/2023/03/are-you-lying-or-laying-around.html

Personally, I wish writers would know the difference between grizzly and grisly murders. While it’s true the Cocaine Bear and some bears in the wild do kill humans, in most mysteries humans performing those grisly murders.
And please realize that the South American country is spelled Colombia, not Columbia. There’s more, but it’s not a good idea to get me started.
“While we’re at it,” the Washington Post wrote, “let’s avoid ‘bemused.’ Bemused ‘doesn’t mean what you think it means,’ says Paula Willey.”
And please, please learn how to use “chute,” as in where you toss your dirty clothes. I’ve seen major writers call it a “laundry shoot,” which can put holes in clothes.

(4) Readers hate bloated books.
According to the Washington Post, “Jean Murray says, ‘First books by best-selling authors are reasonable in length; then they start believing that every word they write is golden and shouldn’t be cut.’ She notes that Elizabeth George’s first novel, A Great Deliverance, was 432 pages. Her most recent, Something to Hide, is more than 700.
“But it’s not just the books that are too long,” the WashPo says. “Everything in them is too long, too. Readers complained about interminable prologues, introductions, expositions, chapters, explanations, descriptions, paragraphs, sentences, conversations, sex scenes, fistfights and italicized passages.”
(5) Readers hate long italicized passages.
“‘Long passages in italics drive me nuts,’ Susan Spénard told the Washington Post.
“‘Cormac McCarthy does entire chapters in italics,’ adds Nathan Pate. ‘Only the rest of his writing redeems that.’”
(6) Readers hate when writers don’t use quote marks.
“‘Sometimes you have to reread a passage to determine who is speaking,’ one reader said.
Quick now, a few more complaints:
(7) Readers hate “gratuitously confusing timelines.”
“‘Everything doesn’t have to be a linear timeline,’ concedes Kate Stevens, ‘but often authors seem to employ a structure that makes the book unreadable (or at least very difficult to follow). There seems to be no reason why this is done other than to show off how clever they are.’”
(8) Readers hate two kinds of show-offs.


“Unrealistically clever children or talking animals . . . are deeply irksome in novels — along with disabled characters who exist only to provide treacly inspiration.”
Some cozy readers adore talking animals who solve crimes, so this objection doesn’t apply to everyone.
(9) A few more things readers hate, according the Washington Post:
– “Susan C. Falbo is tired of ‘protagonists who have had a hard day, finally stagger home and take a scalding hot shower.’” My protagonists sometimes do that, so I guess the key here is to not overdo it.

– “Connie Ogle and Susan Dee have had it with ‘lip biting.’ Ogle explains, ‘If real people bit their lips with the frightening regularity of fictional characters, our mouths would be a bloody mess.’
– “Gianna LaMorte is tired of seeing ‘someone escape a small town and rent a large house, get a job at a local paper or make a living gardening.’” The person who flees to a small town and makes a living writing for a newspaper gets my goat. Especially if they have their own office and come and go as they please. Small town newspapers barely pay enough to keep reporters in cat food. And editors want to know where they can reach you at all times.

And I’m with Tobin Anderson, who wrote, “Vomiting is the new crying. I think it’s part of the whole hyper-valuation of trauma — and somehow tears seem too weak, too mundane. But imagine a funeral filled with upchuckers.” I’m seeing a lot of barfing on TV these days, and watching folks toss their cookies while I’m eating in front of the tube makes me want to . . . well, you get the point.
So, TKZ readers, what are your pet peeves?

Pre-order my new Angela Richman, Death Investigator mystery, The Dead of Night, to be published April 4. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1448310350/ref=ox_sc_saved_image_3?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

 

 

Five Most Influential Resource Books for Fiction Writers

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For a fiction writing seminar I’m part of this weekend, I’m presenting to the class five resource books that influenced me the most over the years. I’ve got a lot of material stashed away on shelves, in boxes, and under the bed (not to mention what’s cached on my computer). It wasn’t hard, though, to fish out the best which I’ll share here on the Kill Zone.

1. Think & Grow Rich.

This gem isn’t everyone’s birthstone. The original version, published in 1937, is written in an old-style masculine tone that reeks of misogyny. There are current versions published in a gender-neutral, more modern tongue but setting that aside author Napoleon Hill identifies seventeen core principles of personal achievement: Definiteness of Purpose, Mastermind Alliance, Applied Faith, Going the Extra Mile, Pleasing Personality, Personal Initiative, Positive Mental Attitude, Enthusiasm, Self-Discipline, Accurate Thinking, Controlled Attention, Teamwork, Learning From Adversity and Defeat, Creative Vision, Soundness of Health, Budgeting Time and Money, and Developing Strong Positive Habits.

Napoleon Hill published two earlier editions of his research. One was titled The Science of Personal Achievement. The other was called The Philosophy of Success. Both sounded too heady, so Hill rebranded a condensed version into Think & Grow Rich. From over four decades of being a Napoleon Hill student, I can confidently say the main theme in T&GR is not money. It’s about wealth gained from the satisfaction of accomplishment like writing and publishing a book.

2. On Writing — A Memoir of the Craft

Stephen King originally released On Writing in 2000 when he had only like a zillion books out, nothing compared to the spazillion he’s penned out today. The first half of On Writing deals with his personal story of depression, addiction, and chronic pain. The remainder is pure adrenaline to any writer, regardless of genre or slotting.

King does not wash words. He doesn’t choke back the F-word, and he gives you straight goods like, “There is a muse but don’t expect it to come fluttering down into your writing room and sprinkle creative fairy dust on your typewriter.” How about, “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the tools to write. Simple as that.” Or, “Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enrichening the lives of those who will read your work, and enrichening your own life, as well.”

3. The Elements of Style

No kid should graduate high school English without passing an exam on this primer originally released in 1935 by William Strunk Jr. It was revised by E.B. White (author of Charlotte’s Web) somewhere in the 50s or 60s, and I have a copy of the fourth edition circa 2000. A well-worn, underlined and highlighted fourth edition.

In 104 pages, The Elements of Style is a Cliffs Notes of my 1500+ page The New Lexicon Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language. It’s broken into five short parts covering Elementary Rules of Usage, Elementary Principles of Composition, A Few Matters of Form, Words and Expressions Commonly Misused, and an Approach to Style (With a List of Reminders). There’s a lot of power in this little book.

4. Wired For Story

Lisa Cron subtitled her book The Writer’s Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence. If you haven’t watched Lisa’s TedxTalk, do not miss out on her message. It’s vital fiction writers have a basic understanding of brain science as it applies to storytelling.

I just opened my paperback version and read this passage that I transposed from the text and printed on the inner jacket. “The goal is not to write a story that focuses on the plot. Rather, a plot that forces the protagonist to come to grips with the inner issue that’s keeping her from solving the story question and attaining that goal. Her inner struggle is her real problem, and the reader’s question isn’t will the protagonist solve the mystery, it’s what will it cost her emotionally to solve it”. Wired For Story is full of this stuff.

5. Self-Editing for Fiction Writers / Thanks, But This Isn’t For Us

I said I was going to list my five top writing resources and I had to tie two fiction editing books that I’ve carved up. The first must-read is by Renni Browne and Dave King. The second must-know is from Jessica Page Morrell. Although they cover the same subject—self-editing your fiction work to make it more saleable—the authors take two different and interesting approaches to delivering what could be boring matter.

Brown and King subtitle their work How to Edit Yourself Into Print, and they do an excellent job of fiction instruction such as explaining core rules of show &tell, characterization, exposition, dialogue, and a lot more. Morrell, who subtitles hers A (Sort of) Compassionate Guide to Why Your Writing is Being Rejected, writes more from a critical editor’s point. Both resources are keepers, just like I’d never part with the other writing treasures listed here.

Kill Zoners — Let’s get a discussion going. Who has read any or all six of the five on this list? If you were writing this piece, what are the top writing resources you’d recommend? (That can include websites, seminars, or whatever you think can help us up our game.) And if I can ask you to be bold, who’s written and published a writing resource they’d recommend to this gang?

What Do Ringtones Say About Your Characters?

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One of my favorite ways to play with characterization is to assign my main character a ringtone.

In my Mayhem Series, Shawnee Daniels started with “You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morissette. Two books later, she switched to ZZ Ward’s “Put the Gun Down.” And now, she has “Ironic” also by Alanis.

Even without any other information, I bet you’ve already formed a visual of who she is, based on her ringtones.

If you guessed snarky and badass, you’re right. 😉

In my Grafton County Series, I used ringtones to show my main character’s emotional wellbeing. Sage Quintano has no designated ringtone for herself, but she constantly changes her Sheriff husband’s ringtone as a form of silent communication. She’s done it so many times, I doubt I could list them all, but let’s go through a few to show what she’s saying to her husband.

  • “Here Comes Goodbye” by Rascal Flatts

Considering this is a psychological thriller series, not romance, Sage used this ringtone to indicate fear.

  • “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You” by Michael Bolton

This ringtone showed Sage’s gut-wrenching devastation when their child was abducted.

  • “Just Once” by James Ingram

This ringtone showed Sage’s sadness about a rough patch in their marriage.

  • “Tonight I Wanna Cry” by Keith Urban

This ringtone indicates Sage’s sadness, too.

  • “Live Like You Were Dying” by Tim McGraw

Though this is an uplifting song, Sage used the ringtone to show a ticking clock on her life.

  • “If I Die Young” by The Band Perry

Sage used this ringtone to show fear.

  • “Let it Hurt” by Rascal Flatts

This one still gets me every time. Sage used this ringtone to show her devastation over an incident involving Ruger, one of her beloved dogs. Don’t worry. He survived. 😉

  • “All of Me” by John Legend

Sage used this ringtone to show her husband she’s feeling frisky.

  • “Only Women Bleed” by Alice Cooper

Sage used this ringtone to show her fear while being stalked by a killer. The killer also sent her this song, so it worked two-fold.

  • “Hurt” by Christina Aguilera

If you know, you know. This song shows soul-crushing sadness, and Sage used it to portray exactly that.

  • “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” by Elton John

Sage used this ringtone to show panic. If her husband didn’t hurry, she may die.

To add validity to this post, I ran a search to see how other writers might use ringtones. Couldn’t find what I was looking for, but Forbes had an interesting article.

Research indicates that people do judge mobile users based on their ringtone. In 2005, U.K.-based carrier Tesco Mobile surveyed 1,000 customers and discovered that 21% of them thought having a standard ringtone was “uncool.” The survey also concluded that people who use their own recorded voice as a ringtone are self-obsessed, and that users who constantly change their rings might be flighty and unreliable.

No rocket science, that. But there’s no doubt that ringtones have become big business because people want to say something personal about themselves. So we wondered, what does your ringtone say about you?

If your phone plays a classic rock tune, you’re showing your age, but you get points for figuring out how to change the ringer, Gramps.

If your phone is still playing “Jingle Bell Rock” in July, you’re not going to impress people with your productivity.

If your ringtone is a current hip-hop or R&B hit, you’re young at heart, but you’re not particularly original. Hip-hop ringtones accounted for more than half of the $300 million U.S. market in 2004.

If your phone plays the sound of an old mechanical phone bell, you’re not as funny as you think you are.

If your phone plays the theme song to a television show, you’re not going to impress anyone with your intellectual acumen. Perhaps a Mozart or Beethoven ringer would do some damage control.

If your phone never leaves vibrate or silent mode, you may be the kind of important person who can’t afford to waste time answering a phone call right now. Or maybe you just think you’re that important. However, you may also be considerate and respectful, the kind of person we’d like sitting behind us in a movie theater.

Unfortunately, we tend to get saddled with seatmates whose phones play the popular “Crazy Frog,” the clucking chicken, or any number of other annoying animal noises. If you’re one of these folks, you may be a sociopath.

Hope this post gives you some fun ideas on ways to use ringtones for your characters!

Have you ever used ringtones in your writing? Please explain how/why.

Do you change your own ringtone? Share the song!

If you had to choose one song to describe you, what would it be?