Category Archives: writing advice

Guilty By Gutterball

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By Joe Moore

Yesterday, Kathryn gave us ten things not to do if you want to get published. I’d like to build on her theme with 8 tips on writing a strong query letter.

For writers, the query letter is probably the most important letter you’ll ever compose. Unlike an email to your mom or BFF, you must spend a great deal of time molding and shaping it into the same caliber of perfection as your manuscript. In fact, it’s even more critical than your book. If you sell your book, it will eventually get into the hands of an editor to be further refined and cleaned up. Your query will not.

So here are a few points to keep in mind before you seal the envelope and lick the stamp or press the send button in the case of an email query.

Length. Agents and editors are busy professionals. They have little time to read long query letters. It’s important that you make your case in one page or less. If you can’t, the agent might assume you won’t be able to grab a reader in the first page of your book, either. So don’t ramble on, just cut to the chase.

Attitude. Don’t come across as arrogant or condescending. Humility can go a long way to gaining respect. You should give the impression that you would be easy to work with. Listing your credentials and credits is part of the query process, but it should be done in a business-like manner and only the ones that contribute to your writing qualifications. No need to mention that you’re president of the local bowling league unless your protagonist is a professional bowler solving a string of murders committed with bowling pins and your book is called Guilty by Gutterball.

Poor punctuation, grammar and spelling. Check, recheck and check again. Let someone else check it. Let 5 people check it. Bad grammar and misspelled words are not a sign of a professional writer. If your query contains mistakes, you’re just making it harder on yourself to gain the attention and respect of an agent.

Unprofessional presentation. There are countless reference guides and writing manuals on how to compose a proper business letter. Query letters are business letters. Showing a lack of knowledge on how professionals communicate will not score you any points.

Be brief. As stated earlier, the agent or editor has a few seconds to devote to your query before moving on to the other dozens she received that day. Get to the point, and do it fast. Identify yourself. What is your desired outcome of the letter? Why did you choose that particular agent? What is your book about? Why would someone want to read it? Why are you qualified to write it? Close with a thank-you and offer to send more. Each of the above items can be stated in one or two sentences. The entire letter should be on one page. And if it’s an email query, it should still be about the same length as a physical letter.

Be ready for the follow-up. Are you prepared to supply the agent whatever she requests; full manuscript or sample chapters, short synopsis or complete outline? If not, you may not be ready to start the query process. And assume that each agent will ask for something different, so have all variations ready to go. Follow the submission guidelines on each agent’s website. Don’t be surprised if they might differ somewhat.

Identify your genre. You must know the genre into which your book falls. Know the difference between a thriller or mystery, cozy or procedural, or any of the other dozens of sub-genre. And please don’t refer to your work as a fiction novel. ALL novels are fiction. Using terms from the department of redundancy department screams amateur.

Billboard. Your query letter is a single-page billboard advertising your book. It very well could be the only shot you’ll get at SELLING yourself and your manuscript. It must be perfect. Just like your story, every word has to count. You may not get a second chance. And just like that billboard on the highway you see as you speed by, the agent has just about the same amount of time to devote to your query letter. Give yourself a fighting chance and make it perfect the first time.

How does your query compare to these points? Any other query letter tips out there?

Character Development

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Today, our guest is my friend and fellow South Florida writer Nancy Cohen. Nancy is the author of 15 novels including futuristic romance and mysteries. For many years, Nancy and I have served as beta readers for each other’s work.

nancy-cohen I like to discuss story development because despite all the advance plotting we do, fiction writing still remains a magical process.  My agent is marketing a new mystery series proposal of mine.  Here are some insights on how the story developed.  It may help you with your own mystery.

I’d written the first 20 pages but then I came to a halt.  I was nearly to the point where I had to introduce the suspects, but I needed to know them better first.  I’d made a list of the people who were family or acquaintances of the victim.  Next, I gave them each a dirty secret so they all appeared to have a motive for murder.  The next step, and one at which my subconscious came into play, was to connect the suspects to each other.  This is when the story really starts to get more defined.  Think of the Milky Way and how the planets swirl in a big sweeping motion around the central core of our sun.  They start to condense, tighten, draw together.  That’s what happens in my head.  The story comes into focus. 

Here is where personal experiences come into play as well.  An acquaintance told me she sells an anti-aging product, and she handed me a flyer.  Cool.  One of my characters, a pharmacist, will be a snake oil salesman who markets a false product he claims is derived from water beneath the Fountain of Youth in St. Augustine.  That’s where he lives, and I’d already planned to go there on a research trip.

Then I overheard a conversation in our beauty salon.  Marla Shore, heroine/sleuth of my Bad Hair Day series, would have been proud of me.  One lady spoke about how someone was running down ducks in her neighborhood and the cops were trying to catch him.  The police would arrest him on charges of animal abuse. I gave this nasty act to another one of my suspects.  It shows his perverted character.

For my people’s occupations, I used a book called The Fiction Writer’s Silent Partner by Martin Roth.  This reference is a great source of inspiration. It lists all kinds of things related to character background, plotting, slang, genre conventions, and more.

Once I had the bare bones of my suspects, I searched for pictures to represent them.  Here I plowed through my character file, where I keep photos I’ve cut out from magazines.  I wait for that “Ah ha!” moment when the person’s face matches my character.  This inspires the physical description and maybe adds more background on the individual’s personality. 

Each suspect gets a page in my notebook with their picture and a brief description.  The heroine/sleuth gets a full page with what I call my Character Development Tool. This includes physical traits, strengths and weaknesses, short and long term goals, dark secret, etc.  See Debra Dixon’s book: GMC: Goal, Motivation, & Conflict for excellent advice on this topic.  Besides the suspects and victim, then I have to develop the recurrent characters: the sleuth’s friends, family, colleagues, and love interest.  Book one requires laying the groundwork for the entire series.

Once the character development is done and the relationships defined, the plot takes shape.  Then I can write the synopsis.  At this point, the words are ready to spill out on paper.

Do you develop your characters before plotting the story or vice versa? Or are you a pantser rather than a plotter?

SilverSerenade Nancy J. Cohen is a multi-published author who writes romance and mysteries.  She began her career writing futuristic romances. Her first title, CIRCLE OF LIGHT, won the HOLT Medallion Award.  After four books in this genre, she switched to mysteries to write the popular Bad Hair Day series featuring hairdresser Marla Shore, who solves crimes with wit and style under the sultry Florida sun.  Several of these titles made the IMBA bestseller list. PERISH BY PEDICURE and KILLER KNOTS are the latest books in this humorous series. Active in the writing community and a featured speaker at libraries and conferences, Nancy is listed in Contemporary Authors, Poets & Writers, and Who’s Who in U.S. Writers, Editors & Poets. Nancy’s new release, SILVER SERENADE, is a sexy space adventure and her fifteenth title.

Open Tuesdays

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[image4.png]It’s time for another Open Tuesday while our blogmate, Kathryn Lilley, is on medical hiatus. Bring us your questions, comments and discussions. If you have a question about writing, publishing or any other related topic, ask away in our comments section. We’ll do our best to get you an answer.

And don’t forget you can download a copy of FRESH KILLS, Tales from the Kill Zone to your Kindle or PC today.

First page critique of IMPERFECT JUSTICE

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By Joe Moore

I had an author approach me at ThrillerFest to say how much he enjoyed visiting and reading TKZ. He also asked if I would post the first page of his WIP for a Kill Zone critique. So here we go.

“Oh God.”

I stood for a moment in shock not only from the horrific scene, but the fact that I had verbally reacted. I never express my thoughts in words, but what I saw would crack the resolve of even the strongest individual.

My usual response is to smile and say nothing, or more likely, release a torrent of smartass comments. I guess I use humor to release the pressure of stressful of situations, but in this case I couldn’t think of anything even the slightest bit ironic, or remotely funny.

I felt the bile rising in my throat, and grit my teeth to maintain some measure of composure. I knew I should call for help, but when I pressed the transmit button on my shoulder mounted microphone, the words wouldn’t come out. It was as if I couldn’t force air through my vocal cords. I swallowed hard and shoved my emotions as far as I could below the surface, but it didn’t help and my vision blurred as mist began to form in the corner of my eyes.

I hadn’t actually expected a body to be here. The last few calls like this had been mistaken identity. Some moron saw a pile of clothes next to a dumpster and assumed it was a dead body. I had no reason to think that this situation would be any different, but when I turned the corner to the address given to me by the police dispatcher, there was the bloody mess. Instead of seeing a homeless person sipping on a bottle of cheap wine, there was a body with an ear to ear gash across her throat.

Along the edge of the cut, a stain of blood traveled down the front, and left dark streaks on her once tan blouse. On the ground, the twin headlight beams of my cruiser sparkled off the surface of pools of blood on each side of her. Since the blood hadn’t yet dried, that meant one thing, this had just happened.

The first thing I would do is delete everything after “Oh God.” down to the paragraph that starts with “I hadn’t actually expected a body . . .” All the stuff about how the cop normally reacts is unimportant. What we want to know is how he reacts now. We can learn all the other info later if it’s really important.

I would have liked to read the cop’s radio chatter inserted right after the “Oh God” reporting the discovery of a body. If he believes the murder was just committed, shouldn’t he approach with gun drawn in case the killer is still there? Shouldn’t he call for backup?

This piece starts off a bit too soft for me. Raise the excitement with dialog, actions, reactions. Those elements will tell us so much more about the character than exposition. Let him tell the dispatcher that this one is REAL, not one of the previous false alarms. It may be routine for a cop to discover a murder victim, but it’s not for the reader. Outside of a funeral home, most people have never even seen a dead body. Pull the reader into the scene and explain the inner thoughts later. Overall, this first page needs a shot of literary adrenalin but I’d be interested in reading on a few more pages.

What do you think? Is opening with the discovery of a dead body unique or cliché? Would you like to see more action and reaction? Would you read on?

Open Tuesdays

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image It’s time for another Open Tuesday while our blogmate, Kathryn Lilley, is on medical hiatus. Bring us your questions, comments and discussions. If you have a question about writing, publishing or any other related topic, ask away in our comments section. We’ll do our best to get you an answer.

And don’t forget you can download a copy of FRESH KILLS, Tales from the Kill Zone to your Kindle or PC today.

I Ain’t Got Time To Bleed

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By Joe Moore

From the movie PREDATOR:

Poncho: You’re bleeding, man. You’re hit.
Blain: I ain’t got time to bleed.

image You love to write. You think about it all the time and believe there’s a book in you. Everyone thinks your story ideas are great. You’ve written a few chapters. Your spouse likes them. Your dog likes them. But you never seem to have enough time to get serious about your writing. You keep saying that if you had the chance, you could be a great writer. You just need the time.

Does that sound familiar? Don’t think you’re alone. Most of us felt the same when we first started. We had an overwhelming desire to tell a story. We couldn’t wait to sit down at the keyboard and let the ideas flow. But we couldn’t sustain the routine. Every time we tried to write, life got in the way. The day job that pays the bills. The chores. The errands. The family issues. Shopping. TV. A million distractions. So how does a wannabe writer find time to produce that first manuscript? How can he or she manage to get it done?

Usually the first big roadblock to staring a writing routine is to take on too much. If you have a day job and a family and a thousand other responsibilities, writing is probably not your first priority or second or third. It’s not smart for you to sacrifice those responsibilities by trying to write. Doing so just might cause a negative reaction with your family and friends who suddenly feel that you’re ignoring or slighting them. The goal is to schedule your writing time so it has the least amount of impact on the rest of your life.

First, carefully review your daily routine and find where you can find some time for writing. And here’s the secret. Keep it small to start with. Like I said, don’t try to take on too much. Make it reasonable. For instance, if you determine that there’s only 30 minutes each day just before you go to bed to write, then that’s your writing schedule. It’s not how much time you have available, but how you maintain and manage your schedule. This brings us to the second point.

Let everyone know your writing schedule. All those affected by the schedule must be aware that it exists. Family, business associates, neighbors, friends, whoever. Let them know that the designated time is your time to write. Lay down some rules that you are not to be disturbed during your official writing time. Eventually, they will accept it and the schedule will become part of their daily schedule, too.

Third, you need to stand by the rules and your schedule. Aside from emergencies, don’t break the rule. If it becomes obvious that the rule is not really a rule, you’re doomed. You might as well not have a schedule in the first place.

And fourth, make sure YOU stick to the schedule. The first time you give in to temptation and do something else besides writing, it will be easier to give in the next time. Pretty soon, you’ll be back to wishing you had time to write but don’t know how to work it into your busy schedule.

Always remember that at some point in his or her life, every published author had to find time to write. No one I know was born with endless amounts of hours to write books. We all had to make the time. When I first started writing, I would get up at 4:30 each workday and write for two hours before showering, breakfast and off to the day job. That’s how bad I wanted to be a writer.

Four years ago, I quite my day job to write full time. You can do it, too.

Now that you’re “hit” with the writing bug, find the time to bleed. It’s worth it.

How did you find time to write your first book?? What was your schedule? If you’re just getting started, what are you doing to find the “cracks” in the day to write?

First Page Critique: A Pearl of Great Price

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by Joe Moore

We continue our first-page critiques with the anonymous submission: A Pearl of Great Price.

“Fug,” Jasper Moore muttered under his breath.  It felt good.  He hadn’t worked himself up to saying the real f-word, but he would.  It was damn hard to get past all those years of living with Prissy Miss Minnie.  If she’d even heard him say “fug,” she’d look like she was passing a pig from her butt.

He looked down at the bulging gut hanging over his dungarees, his hairy freckled arms, his fingernails dark with grease.  That was who he was.  His damn job kept him hovering over dirty engines twelve hours a day, this damn house always needed something fixed, and his damn wife wouldn’t even let him say “damn.”  Don’t forget the damn church was sucking him dry and scaring the pee out of him.  And those awful snake dreams.  Snakes crawling all over him, sticking their long fangs deep in his arms.  It was enough to make a man run screaming for his life.

He looked down at the large grease stains on the garage floor.  This was the only place in the house that was his.  Minnie had claimed everything else with lace doilies, prim little pink flowerdy furniture, and pictures of that pansy-assed Jesus.  Christ on a barbecue.  Except it was him, not Christ, that was roasted—every single goddam day.

Reaching past the canvas tarps covering a five-gallon bucket, he grabbed a hot Budweiser, dragging it out through the empties.  A man couldn’t even drink in his own home.  Had to hide it from the little woman who said drinking was a mark of the beast.  Well, he’d show her who the beast was when she got home from that stinkin’ church.  The Tabernacle of the Children of the Only Real Living Lord with Signs Following.  Huh.  One of these days he’d tell her just what that damn Tabernacle was all about.  One of these days.  He took a gulp of the hot beer and wiped his mouth his left hand.

A creak from the back door startled him.  A man stood against the light from outside, so Jasper couldn’t make out who it was.  The only light in the garage came from the open doorway and the grimy window above his workbench.

“What the heck?”  He didn’t like anybody to sneak up on him.  His heart pounded in his chest.  The man was about the size of his stinkin’ father-in-law, the man who made it clear that Jasper wasn’t anywheres near good enough for his precious daughter.  Hell.  He was too good for that little tight-assed prude.  Then, Jasper realized the man hadn’t said nothing.  He had to hold tight to the Bud to keep it from slipping out of his hands.

“What you doin’ here?  Ain’t good manners to sneak up on a man quiet-like.”  Still nothing.

“Now, looka here.  Just what the heck you want?”  Jasper felt a weight in his chest. “Why, Jathper, we gonna have uth a little talk.  You know the kind.”  The man’s calm voice spooked Jasper, who recognized that lisp from the Tabernacle and the trips the took to the beach. Only one man talked like that—Flembo Reeves.  He held a large wooden box in front of him, one like the snake-holding boxes the Tabernacle used.  Weird rattling and bumping sounds came from the box.

Jasper’s heart thumped even harder.  You coulda called, you know.  I’m busy right now.  Got stuff to do here.  And what you doin’ here with that box anyway?   Them things belong in the Tabernacle, not in a person’s home.”  He looked down at the Budweiser in his hand.

“Oh, I coulda called.  But I wanted to thurprithe you.  Juth like I have.  Don’t you like thurprithes, Jathper?”  Jasper’s hands shook, as he crushed the beer can in his hand.  Damn Flembo scared him like the snakes did.

I have mixed feelings about this one; I want to like it but I don’t. What I do like is that it contains an interesting voice with an edgy taste of humor, but the humor is walking a tightrope between appealing and raw. Like so many of our first-page submissions, this one is top heavy with exposition. I feel like I’m being forced to like Jasper. And like many other submissions, I believe the writer has started in the wrong place. As Jim previously stated, start with your character in motion, then drop back and explain. Or as he also puts it: Act first, explain later.

Possibly a better place to start would be somewhere around the fifth paragraph; A creak from the back door startled him. Of course, the writer would have to massage it a bit, but that would be my call.

Also, there are missing quote marks, missing words, and a couple of typos. Here’s a tip: proofread your submission before you send it to anyone; agent, editor, whoever.

Finally, be VERY careful using colloquialisms and characters with speak impediments. Strange or unusually spelled words will stop the reader’s eye cold. They are the equivalent of roadblocks placed in the sentence to cause the reader to slow down, pause or stop altogether. Never make the reader work at reading. There are too many other books out there that that your reader can choose from. Is it really so vital to THE STORY that you let the words get in the way?

I think with a little bit of work, this could be smoothed out. I would strive to let that unique voice come through that right now seems to be hiding just below the surface.

Other’s reactions? Would you keep reading?

Coming up short with word count

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By Joe Moore

“I’ve cut this rope three times and it’s still too short.”

image Despite the corny old carpenter joke about miss-measuring, it’s something that does happens from time to time when writing a book. You’re under contract to deliver a 100k-word manuscript and your first draft is 10k short. What do you do? Do you “pad” the writing—go in and add a lot of stuff just for the sake of word count. Padding usually involves “staging” or additional extraneous actions by your characters as they move around the “stage”. But doing it too much will call attention to the padding and wind up getting sliced out by your editor. Intentional padding is not the answer. But there are some legitimate ways to increase word count without bloating your story.

One suggestion is to build up your story’s “world” by conducting additional research and adding a few bits and pieces of atmosphere throughout. Let’s say your scene takes place in Miami Beach. Your character is having breakfast on the balcony of her hotel room overlooking the Atlantic. Without slowing down the story, add a few lines about the history of the hotel. Since most of the hotels on Miami Beach have been around for decades, certainly something might have happened years ago at the same local that could reflect on or be pertinent to the story’s plot or situation.

Another method is to utilize your character’s five senses. Are you making good use of them? Sitting on that balcony, your MC must be able to smell the fresh sea breeze and hear the gulls calling from overhead. Or she notices the ever-present container ships slipping along the horizon in the Gulf Stream. Could be that she can feel the film of salt coating the arms of her chair. How does her freshly squeezed OJ taste? You don’t want to use all 5 in every scene, but engaging the senses is a great way to expand the prose and take advantage of an opportunity to further develop your character.

The skill in expanding a manuscript is to do so without appearing to pad the writing. And you want to avoid going down a new rabbit hole and suddenly winding up with too many words such as introducing a new subplot. Always consider the two basic criteria for any additional words: they must either advance the plot or further develop the character. Otherwise, they don’t belong.

What about you? Have you ever come up short on contractual word count? How did you expand the story without it becoming blotted or obviously padded?

Is #2 more important than #1?

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By Joe Moore

image Here’s a question that popped up recently on a writer’s forum: has being published made it easier for agents and editors to accept your future work? Are they more lenient because you’ve already been published or do they give your writing the same level of scrutiny that unpublished submissions?

There are many factors here that can affect the publication of a second or third book. Obviously, the success of book one will certainly help getting a contract on the next one. But just because you had the first one published is no guarantee contracts will be issued on follow-ups.

I think that being published through traditional, legitimate methods means that you’re writing on a professional level. And people who write at a professional level usually have an easier time at getting published. Publishing credits do help in getting read, but there’s no substitute for a great book.

I also believe that the most important book you’ll ever write is your second one. Number 2 is THE book. It’s far more important than the first or the third, perhaps the most important of your career. Many folks can write one book, but the number declines when it comes to that second novel. It’s the one that can make, damage or even destroy a future in fiction.

What do you think? Did you feel it was easier to get that second book published after the first hit the shelves? Do you think #2 is critical?

Don’t forget to download a copy of FRESH KILLS, Tales from the Kill Zone to your Kindle or PC today.

The Edge

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Let’s do another first-page critique. This one is the prologue from a manuscript submitted anonymously called THE EDGE:

Emma is five years old in the nightmare.

She’s huddled in the V-berth of the sailboat she’s called home her whole life. She wonders what’s gone wrong. When her mommy tucked her into bed the ocean had been calm, the moon was a beacon of light. Now her little home is lurching and rolling on an angry sea. The sails crack like whips as the wind shrieks. The night is a black monster that wants to swallow her.

She hears her mommy rush up on deck and scream. She’s screaming for Emma’s daddy. “Ivan. Where are you? Ivan?” Why doesn’t he answer? The boat’s so small, there’s no place to hide. When Emma plays hide and seek, she always knows her mommy will find her. Where is daddy hiding?

Then everything in Emma’s dream goes silent, like a movie with the sound turned off. She sees huge waves crash over the cabin windows. She watches her mommy’s feet appear, first on one side of the boat, then the other. Fast. Her mommy is so fast.

Hold on tight, Mommy. Emma wants to call out but no words come. She feels sick. The boat plunges and bucks. She vomits in her bed. The smell makes her sick and she vomits again.

Emma wants her mommy to come back inside and comfort her. Her body bumps and thumps against the walls of the berth as if she’s a ragdoll. She clutches her bear and closes her eyes as the boat does a slow tumble over on its side.

This is a tough call. As we’ve discussed here before, prologues can work for you and against you. In this case, we’re starting with someone named Emma having a dream. Unfortunately, this first page tells me absolutely nothing about Emma and the book. All I know is she has bad dreams. The first question that comes to mind is: who cares?

I know it sounds crass, but it’s a legitimate question. Having read just this much, I have to ask, would the reader care? Would the agent or editor? Would anyone care enough to read on? There’s no grab or hook. Nothing happens. The dream is probably something that could be utilized later in the story since I’m sure there’s a reason for it and for the mommy-daddy-boat-on-troubled-waters thing. But as it stands, this might be a turn-off for an agent unless it was preceded by the greatest query letter and synopsis in the history of literature. My advice: ditch the prologue and get on with the story.

Download FRESH KILLS, Tales from the Kill Zone to your Kindle or PC today.