The Top Ten Tactics for Writers Using ChatGPT – Without Losing Your Voice

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As writers, we’ve all seen, heard, tasted, felt, and smelt the buzz around AI tools—particularly ChatGPT—being able to crank out content at lightning speed. But that’s not what serious writers care about. We don’t want robotic fluff, and we sure as hell don’t want our voice flattened into some generic echo of internet-speak.

What we do want is to write better, write smarter, and keep our voice intact.

I’ve been working closely with ChatGPT for around two years now—really working with it and producing content for the film industry—and what I’ve found is that it’s not a threat to creativity. Used right, Chat is a force multiplier. A powerful thinking partner. A digital editor that never sleeps. And if you do the dance right, it’ll help you waltz out some pretty awesome moves—without anyone guessing a machine was in the lead.

What Exactly Is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a large language model (LLM) computer and algorythm machine developed by the OpenAI company based in Silicon Valley. It’s a general pre-trained transformer (GPT) programmed on massive amounts of digital text—books, websites, conversations—to predict what words logically come next in a sentence, a paragraph, or an entire volume of works. That’s the stupid version.

The smart version? Chat is a tool that can:

  • Outline your stories
  • Research topics instantly
  • Draft articles or posts
  • Suggest creative titles
  • Assist with your novels
  • Build your characters
  • Punch up dialogue
  • Analyze your plot
  • Summarize chapters
  • Rephrase clunky paragraphs
  • Ask tough questions you hadn’t thought of
  • And most importantly, learn your unique voice over time

But here’s the kicker. ChatGPT doesn’t know truth. It doesn’t “think” like we do. It’s not sentient. It reflects probabilities and recognizes patterns from information or prompts fed into it. Which means you have to be the discerning human in the loop.

That’s your job. To guide it. Train it. Push back. Sharpen it into something useful.

With that, let’s get real about how to effectively exploit this big, bad, and beautiful bot.

Ten Real-World Tactics to Use ChatGPT Like a Pro Writer

These aren’t tips you’ll get from a “101 Ways to Prompt ChatGPT” article. These are hard-learned, field-tested tactics I use every day.

1. Feed It Your Work. Literally.

Want ChatGPT to sound like you? Give it samples of your writing. Paste in 2–3 blog posts or several book chapters and say: “This is my writing voice. Learn it. From now on, respond in this style.” It will. And it gets better over time. In fact, it can be downright spooky.

2. Talk To It Like a Writing Partner.

Don’t treat it like Google. Have a back-and-forth. Ask it what’s missing from your argument. What’s weak. Where the tension drops. “What’s the most compelling way to open this post?” “Challenge this idea. Where could I be wrong?” It becomes a live writing room, not a vending machine.

3. Use It for Reverse Outlining.

Paste in a rough draft and ask: “Summarize the structure. What’s the logical flow?”
This reveals hidden structure—or lack thereof—and shows where to tighten or reorder.

4. Rapid Rewriting at Scale.

Stuck on a paragraph? Ask: “Rewrite this in plainer English.” “Make this sound like Hemingway. Or like Garry Rodgers.” Use what works, ditch what doesn’t. It’s a revision shotgun.

5. Create Better Metaphors.

ChatGPT is surprisingly sharp with metaphor. Ask: “Give me three metaphors to describe the writing process.” You’ll be amazed what turns up—and one might be gold.

6. Simulate Your Audience.

Ask it to act like a reader of The Kill Zone or your novel’s target demographic. “What would a thriller reader think of this twist?” “What questions might a new writer have after reading this post?” It helps you pre-empt confusion.

7. Build a Persistent Memory.

If you’re using ChatGPT-4o with memory turned on, it can remember your preferences, style, and ongoing projects. This makes it less like a tool—and more like a silent writing partner who gets you.

8. Run “What’s Missing?” Checks.

Paste your article in and ask: “What ideas did I leave out that would make this stronger?” It’ll surface blind spots you didn’t know you had.

9. Draft Titles and Hooks on Command.

Don’t burn out trying to come up with snappy titles or email subject lines. Ask: “Give me 10 strong, punchy titles based on this content.” Keep the good ones, toss the rest. No ego involved.

10. Never Let It Publish Without You.

This one’s crucial. ChatGPT can help you draft. It can help you edit. It can even ghostwrite if you really want. But never hit “publish” until you—the writer—the human element—have done the final pass. Use your judgment. Your voice. Your standards. The machine assists, but the mortal decides.

Final Word

Writers who embrace this technology—without surrendering to it—are bound to outpace those who ignore it or fear it. AI won’t replace us. (At least not yet.) But writers who know how to use AI well will inevitably rise above, and possibly replace, writers who don’t.

Treat ChatGPT like a sharp, tireless apprentice. Not a ghostwriter. Not a gimmick. But a collaborative tool to help you write with more clarity, more insight, and yes—more you.

Kill Zoners—What do you think about ChatGPT and AI in general? Do you use an AI bot such as Chat in your research and writing? And who do you think wrote this post—ChatGPT or Garry Rodgers?

Can A Dream Be More Than A Dream?

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By John Gilstrap

Just to set the stage, I consider these Killzone posts to be a corner of the social media universe. It’s different than Facebook and X in that the topics are more focused, but it’s still an opportunity to address people with whom I would otherwise not normally interact. In the social media universe I am the John Gilstrap I choose to project, which is often a shade different than the John Gilstrap that actually is.
For example, I am always healthy and happy on social media. By any reasonable assessment, I live a blessed life, both professionally and personally. As a player in the entertainment business (which is what this writing gig really is), my job is to entertain–to be interesting, insightful, maybe even amusing from time to time. The last thing people want to hear from me are everyday life problems. Folks have plenty of those in their own lives.
Sometimes, though, a personal problem is worth sharing. So, here we go . . .
My back has been a mess for decades–some of it due to overzealous firefighting in my youth, some due to heredity, and some due (dammit) to the fact of getting older. Back in 2019, I had three levels of my cervical spine fused to take care of lightning bolts shooting down my arms. That procedure was very successful, but my lumbar spine continued to trouble me.
If you’ve had sciatica, then you know the torment of the nerve pain in your legs, and of that invisible ice pick in your buttocks. For years, the pain would arrive for a week or two and then go on hiatus for months. For the last six months or so, the pain took up residence and partied daily. It got to the point where I couldn’t walk more than 20 steps without having to stop and try to recover.
My MRI showed nothing but bad and worse news. Worst of all was severe stenosis at L4 and L5. In essence, this meant that bits of bad discs, bone spurs and fluid were directly impinging on the nerves of my lower back.
Time to see the neurosurgeon.
On June 4 (last week), the neurosurgical team at the Berkeley Medical Center successfully performed a two-level laminectomy and microdiscectomy on my lumbar spine. The minimally invasive procedure took about two hours. The medical miracle workers removed a part of my backbone to gain access to the nerve roots, and from there Roto-Rootered all that crap away and removed the pressure that was causing all the pain. The instant I awoke, I knew that the procedure had done its job. All the nerve pain was gone.
There remained, however, the fact that they’d stuck a knife in my back and pulled all those muscles aside to gain access to what they needed to do. The muscles respond with a tantrum of spasms because that’s just what they do. Plus, there’s the discomfort caused by cut-away bone and the steel surgical staples they used to close the wound. A lesser man would call that pain. I just dropped a lot of F-bombs.
(As an aside, note that the autonomic nervous system–your fight-or-flight instincts–don’t recognize the difference between a friendly surgical wound and a tiger attack. It reacts with a pulse of adrenaline and healing chemistry and energy. Now you know why you’re so tired after even a minor medical procedure.)
They sent me home with pills–Oxycodone every 6 hours for the pain and Tizanidine three times a day for the muscle spasms. I was to be a junky for three days. Cool beans.
Except . . . Among the side effects of Tizanidine, listed right there on the bottle, “Might cause hallucinations.”
Which brings us to the real meat of this post. Boy howdy, did I hallucinate! Only at night, and maybe when I was asleep, but if they were dreams, they were some wild, vivid dreams. Three dimensional dreams, if that even makes sense. On the morning after my surgery, when I woke up in bed, I asked my wife if she was real, because the first time I’d done that she’d not been. Whoa.
At Surgery Plus Two, the hallucinations took a turn that give me a chill even as I write this today. I was lying on my back and the bed had become some kind of floating vessel, moving down a river as I looked up to a starry sky through the silhouettes of leafy trees. It was very peaceful, very comforting. Extremely vivid. Then came the faces of relatives who have passed. They floated by one or two at a time, all of them smiling. These were not family photograph images. Uncles, aunts, cousins. I didn’t even recognize some of the faces, but they projected an embracing warmth that I don’t know how to describe. My dad’s was the only face in full color, dressed in his Navy uniform.
I panicked enough to awaken and say a prayer for me and for my family–concerned that this was somehow my version of the “bright light” that people report from near-death experiences. I wasn’t ready to go.
Immediately, sleep returned (or did it?) and instead of seeing the sky and my relatives, I was looking down on myself in a boat as I was cut free from a mooring and allowed to float away.
I awoke again with a feeling of great peace, then sleep returned.
In the morning, I sobbed as I relayed the story to my wife. To be honest, I’m not doing all that great as I write it now.
I don’t know what to make of this. A vivid imagination is an occupational hazard, so I have to acknowledge that the whole river sequence was merely the creativity factory working in overdrive. But I think I choose otherwise. I think there are many aspects of life and living that we just don’t understand, and I choose to believe that love transcends everything we think we know.
I don’t think my family had gathered to tell me it was my time, but rather to tell me that they were at rest and that when my time comes–may it be many, many years from now–I’m going to be embraced when I arrive.

Destination Reading:
Books To Bask In

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By PJ Parrish

I am home. But my heart is still elsewhere. Call it jetlag or maybe just Post-Paris Depression. All I know is that is always takes me a while to come back down to Earth after vacation.

We’ve been to Paris many times, but this time was a little special. Maybe it was because we didn’t do much. We’ve been to all the museums and seen all the sights, so this time we did things differently. The Italians have a great expression for it: Il dolce far niente. The sweetness of doing nothing.  The closest French phrase is l’art de ne rien faire. The art of doing nothing. Which really is an art in a city where the Louvre is two blocks away and everyone else is running around trying to keep to their Chatgpt schedules. (Oh geez, gotta hurry, Mildred. The Eiffel Tower sparkles at 10 p.m.!)

We ate. We drank. We walked our dog Archie in the Palais Royal gardens. We did a Seine dinner cruise for my husband Daniel’s 80th birthday. We went inside the refurbished Notre Dame. While I dog-sat, Daniel and my bestie Linda went to the French Open (outside court access only for 30 euros…we’re not rolling in dough. But we did watch Coco’s great win on TV). That was about it.

Except we read. A lot. This is where I always catch up on my to-read list. But I always take books that are set in the country or city where I am visiting. This time, I started out with The Paris Widow by Kimberly Belle. It won the Edgar this year in Best Paperback Original. It’s a solid thriller, redolent of the city. I took it to lunch with me at Bistrot Valois.

The Abbey Bookshop: A Treasure in the Latin Quarter | Bonjour Paris

Finishing that, I headed over to The Abbey Bookshop to pick up some used books. I don’t use an E-reader so this bookstore, run by Canadian Brian Spence, is always on my itinerary. I picked up and devoured The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George, a beat-up copy of Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal (because I love the movie) and Georges Simenon’s The Yellow Dog (because I have one).

Reading a book while you’re actually in the book’s world doubles the pleasure, I think. It deepens your appreciation for the culture and history. It connects you emotionally. And it enhances your memories once you leave.

That said, I did not read Under the Tuscan Sun when visiting there. Seemed a bit too spot-on, you know? In Rome, I brought a copy of Ross King’s Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling because we intended to visit the Sistine Chapel. Didn’t make it due to a mild illness, but I am STILL plugging away at this one. Dense but very interesting book. Maybe, like the pope implores Michelangelo, I will finally make an end of it one day.

So, crime dogs. Good to be home and among you again. Ready to get back to planting my tomatoes, walking around my lake, and trying not to miss duck confit and fresh-squoshed orange juice. Tell us, if you will, what books made your vacations more memorable. In the meantime, indulge me while I share a snap I took of Archie. It was 6:30 a.m. and raining. We were on our way to the boulangerie to pick up our daily croissants. We had the Louvre to ourselves.

Millennial Slang for Writers

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A friend told me a millennial at work couldn’t understand the clock on the wall. I’ve heard many stories involving rotary phones and cursive writing, but the clock surprised me.

Even after GenXers explained the hour and minute hand, the young man still couldn’t tell time.

Made me wonder how physicians and specialists would change the screening test for cognitive deficits, particularly in neurological disorders and dementia.

If the patient doesn’t understand an analog clock, never mind be able to draw one, what object could providers substitute for the Clock Drawing Test (CDT)? Or would the CDT become obsolete?

Generational Differences

Generational differences crack me up, but I probably wouldn’t have researched Gen Z slang if I hadn’t been the recipient of a millennial rant about her dating woes — and felt about 100 years old by the end of our conversation.

All generations have their own slang. Back in the day, GenXers used wicked, awesome, mint, rad, fly, sick, and mad to indicate something’s cool. Some even used tubular, groovy, and funky. Millennials use dank, lit, drip, dope, and fire.

When I converse with the younger crowd, I can usually keep up by considering the context in which the slang is used. Not this time. My head spun during my latest conversation.

The young woman used words like:

Benched

DTR

Orbiting

Cloaked

Cuffing season

Breadcrumbed

Love bomber

After this baffling conversation, I looked up millennial slang and found several other words I’d never heard before. If you have a millennial character or a young person in your life, this list may help. Keep track of how many are familiar to you.

Romance writers, take note. 😉

Pocketing

When someone pockets you, they’re keeping your relationship secret from family and friends.

Benching

When one romantic partner likes the other enough to keep dating but not enough to have a serious relationship with them. The term comes from sports, where a coach might keep a player on the bench rather than letting them play in the game. In the context of dating, it means giving someone just enough attention to keep them interested without fully committing to a relationship.

DTR

Acronym for Define The Relationship. Gen Z prefers to ease into a relationship. The first stage is the Talking Phase, where potential romantic partners chat online or via text. The talking phase can last for weeks or months before anyone even suggests an actual date, which typically leads to a situationship. Because dating can be confusing as the couple grows closer, one partner might ask the other to Define The Relationship. Are they building an exclusive relationship that may someday lead to marriage? Or do they prefer to keep it casual and date other people, as well?

Situationship

I like this one. It’s clear and to the point.

Situationships occur when two potential partners have ongoing communication, and it’s acknowledged, either directly or indirectly, that they are interested in each other. Super casual and low commitment, it’s a gray area where the two lovers might act like a couple but haven’t explicitly labelled their situationship or agreed on exclusivity.

Sus

Short for suspicious. Something doesn’t sit well for one partner. Anything can be sus. It’s not exclusively for dating.

Ghosting

One partner disappears from the other’s life, but with a twist. In the mid-20th century, we’d ask a family member to answer the phone and say we were sleeping, in the shower, or not home. Then never return the call.

With the invention of the answering machine in the mid-to-late-20th century, we could screen calls by waiting to hear who was calling. In the late ’80s/early ’90s, it became easier to screen calls with caller ID. Today, because smartphones have a “read receipts” option, ghosting is also called R-bombing: You know the person has read your text, but they don’t reply.

Ghostbusting

A ghostbuster is someone who continues to text and call after being ghosted.

Haunting

When an ex won’t return your call or reply to a text but will keep tabs on you through your social media posts.

Orbiting

Orbiting is a bit like haunting but strictly digitally based. After ghosting you, the orbiter stays in your life by orbiting your social media world, liking posts and watching your Stories and/or Reels.

Caspering

This is the kinder way of ghosting someone. They tell their partner they’ll disappear from their life — essentially a breakup, just not in person.

Submarining

When someone has ghosted their partner, they re-emerge later as if nothing had happened. Similar slang is zombieing, because like a zombie, they come back from the dead and re-enter your world without warning.

Cloaking

The harshest form of ghosting, to be cloaked means your partner not only stood you up for a date with no explanation but also refuses to respond to your calls, texts, and has blocked you on dating apps and social media—anywhere you had previously communicated.

Cuffing or Cuffing Season

This refers to the phenomenon where people look to couple up or enter a serious, often exclusive, relationship during the colder months.

Breadcrumbing

Breadcrumbing is the new “leading someone on.” It occurs when someone gives another person just enough attention or communication to keep them interested, without any intention of committing to a genuine relationship. The term “breadcrumbing” comes from the idea of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs, giving the impression of progress or interest while the trail leads nowhere.

Love Bomber or Love Bombing

Love Bombing is used by individuals to gain control over their partner. It involves overwhelming someone with excessive attention, affection, flattery, and gifts early in the relationship to make them feel special and dependent. The aim is to create a strong emotional bond quickly, making it harder for the targeted person to recognize red flags or leave the situationship.

Fishing

Casting many messages out on various dating apps to see who bites.

Simp

A simp is the classic nice guy who will do anything for the girl he likes, only to be sanctioned to the “friend zone.”

Cushioning

Another dating strategy, where someone maintains a roster of potential romantic interests, or “cushions,” while being in a primary relationship. This practice is done to soften the blow or cushion the emotional impact in case the main relationship fails. It involves flirting, texting, or even casually dating multiple people without any serious commitment to them, providing a backup plan to fall back on.

Dry Dating

The days when young people relied on alcohol for liquid courage are long over with more millennials choosing to go stone-cold-sober on a first date, perhaps even for several dates.

Beige Flag

You’ve heard of red flags and even green flags, but a beige flag is the newest slang on the Gen Z dating block. It’s described as something that’s neither good nor bad but makes the other person pause for a minute when it’s noticed and is usually something odd.

Cookie-jarring

The opposite of benching, you see someone regularly, but she hasn’t Defined The Relationship (DTR). The reason is that she’s also secretly seeing someone else. You are being cookie-jarred in case the relationship with the other guy doesn’t work out.

Kittenfishing

A less severe form of catfishing, kittenfishing is when you’ve been fooled into believing the lies a potential date tells you about who he/she/they is. Lies are usually about age (using an old photo), job, height, etc. As soon as you meet in person, the truth is revealed.

Rizz

Rizz is defined as how successful someone is at attracting or flirting with a potential date due to their charismatic personality or silent charm.

Slow Fade

Like ghosting, but in slow motion. The slow fader first becomes less responsive to texts and calls, starts canceling plans, and eventually stops making new plans.

Curving

In Gen Z dating speak, curving describes the act of politely rejecting someone’s advances without explicitly saying “no.” Instead of directly rejecting the person, they respond in a way that subtly signals disinterest or avoids commitment, often through vague or evasive responses.

Catch and Release

Much like fishing, the playboy likes the thrill of the chase but is no longer interested once they have caught the object of their desire.

Serendipidating

This term combines the concepts of “if it’s meant to be” with “the grass is always greener.” Thus, serendipidating means you are putting off a date just in case someone better comes along.

Tuning

Flirting for the sake of flirting without any interest in any type of relationship.

Marleying

Coined by the dating site eHarmony, Marleying is when you are zombied during the Christmas season, specifically. The name comes from the character in A Christmas Carol, Jacob Marley, who haunted Scrooge. Evidently, according to the dating site’s survey, 1 in 10 singles have been contacted by an ex during the holidays.

Flexting

Flexting is defined both as the act of digital flirting as well as the act of “digital boasting.” A flexter exaggerates about who they are, what they do, or how they look. According to market research, men flext more than women, with 63 percent of women who date online saying they’ve met a flexter versus only 38 percent of men.

Peacocking

This is a courtship term used by animal behaviorists: To get a female’s attention, a male peacock displays its elaborate feathers (other animals do this as well). Peacocking means one person shows off to get another’s attention, dressing up in attention-grabbing clothes or colors, shows off musical talents, or throws around money.

Freckling

Think of freckling as a summer fling. As summer turns to fall and your freckles fade, so does your summer romance.

Mosting

Like love bombing, the moster only loves the thrill of the chase and the act of coming on strong. The moster will likely end up ghosting you once he or she has expressed their undying affection.

Devaluing and Discarding

A process used by toxic and abusive people, it’s a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation. The relationship is a roller-coaster of kindness followed by cruelty, abuse, and toxicity, followed by kindness again. During the relationship, they break down their partner’s confidence, then discards them, leaving them depleted and confused, wondering where things went wrong. First, he devalues, then he discards.

Hoovering

When a toxic or abusive person wants to get back into your life by offering an empty apology.

Flying Monkeys

A Wizard of Oz reference, a flying monkey is recruited by an abuser to help debase their victim. In the movie, the flying monkeys did the dirty work for the Wicked Witch of the West.

Fauxbae’ing

Fauxbae’ers pretend to be involved with someone when they aren’t even dating. It’s a 21st-century concept because the pretending happens online, over social media.

Stashing

Pretty much the opposite of fauxbae’ing, stashing is when you are dating someone, but they keep you a secret from their friends and/or family, and don’t post about you on social media.

Micro-cheating

Cheating… a little. Whatever that means.

Shaveducking

A young woman’s concern that her attraction to someone was simply because she liked his beard.

When I first read this one, it sounded superficial. But then, I realized I’ve been guilty of shaveducking. Hey, chemistry is a fickle beast. You meet a man with a beard. He’s had it for months, and you love his signature style. Then one day, he shaves and doesn’t look anything like the man you’ve been dating.

Sidebarring or Pubbing

When you’re on a date but spend more time looking at your phone than engaging with your date.

Thirst Trap

A thirst trap might involve one partner intentionally posting seductive or flirtatious photos on social media with the aim of garnering attention or arousing jealousy from their significant other. It could be a way to test their partner’s level of interest or to seek validation and reassurance about their attractiveness and desirability within the relationship.

How many did you know? What slang did you use back in the day? Do you use slang in your books?

If you have a Gen Z character, only use one or two slang words in dialogue. Never in the narrative. Caution: using generational slang will date your book and may confuse some readers. If you venture down this path, make sure the context is clear.

Grammar Still Matters, Don’t It?

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

What does a grammatically correct owl say? “Whom, whom.”

We all know the language, and the uses thereof, have fallen on hard times. Don’t U feel it 2? Texting, combined with the loss of grammar studies in schools, have set us on the slide toward becoming the Eloi, that docile future race in the The Time Machine who barely talk and are easy prey for the Morlocks.

Sites like X are rife with mistakes, of course, due to dull thinking and quick typing. I recall one of those innumerable back-and-forths dripping with vitriol, where someone ended with this zinger: Your ignirance is not a good look. That used to be called being “hoist on your own petard.” (Now it’s a “self own.”)

In the golden age of newspapers, you had reporters who pounded out stories that were examined by crusty, eagle-eyed editors with blue pencils and cigars, who put the writers through their paces.

What great wordsmiths we had then. I grew up reading the L.A. Times when it was owned by the Chandlers, and had columnists like Jim Murray, Jack Smith, and Al Martinez. And then there were the syndicated writers like Art Buchwald and Jimmy Breslin; and for laughs, Erma Bombeck.

Not to mention the workaday reporters who wrote clear, concise, and factual (remember factual?) stories.

As the publisher Joseph Pulitzer (for whom the prize is named) said of newspaper stories: “Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it, and above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.”

Did you notice the word whom in the above parenthetical? That’s because I learned the trick of saying the sentence using him or them, and noticing the m, which means you use whom.

But today, with instant digital publishing and the lack of educated editors, we get the “mistake creep” that threatens to become epidemic. Here are just a few examples I’ve collected over the years:

The trick play gave Georgia a 14-0 lead, while the Michigan defense looked lost on defense on consecutive drives. (Where else would a defense look lost?)

Which doesn’t quite jive with Sunday’s piece. (I’m as much a fan of jazz as the next guy, but jibe is the word.)

I don’t know if the victory that’s already been had will get the attention commiserate with its significance. (Um, commensurate.)

Both real estate agents were reticent in not requesting an amendment to the contract of sale at the time the buyer made the statement. (Reticent means reluctant in speech. The word should be negligent.)

Besides being an alumni at the university, Smith revealed that the young woman also attended the graduate school. (The singular for a female graduate is alumna, but that’s another can of worms. Worse is that the object of the first part of the sentence is the young woman, not Smith. That’s a common error following the comma in a prepositional phrase. See the next example.)

As someone born in 1985, Reagan was long gone from the national scene when I came of age politically. (A neat trick to serve as president before you’re even born.)

I didn’t like it when my beloved English teacher, Mrs. Bruce, made us parse sentences. But I learned. Today, students do that homework by typing, “Grok, parse this sentence for me.”

I’ll quickly add, however, that AI can check your writing like one of those old-time editors, and that’s a valuable tool. Just be sure to ask for notes, not a re-write. Preserve your voice and your humanity. And know that AI may skip aspects of your writing that could be sharpened, so keep on learning your craft. That’s why I keep a copy of Strunk & White and Jan Venola’s Write Right! by my desk. And every so often review my heavily highlighted copy of William Zinsser’s On Writing Well.

An article from Writer’s Digest (Aug. 2002, written by Becky Ohlsen) contains some solid advice on avoiding grammar and stylistic pitfalls.

Lose the flab, modifiers that say nothing, e.g., really, truly, very.

Sentences that start with “There was” or “There are.” Rewriting makes the sentence stronger.
NOT: “There were three people dancing in the street.”
THIS: “Three people danced in the street.”

Do a search for adverbs, words ending with -ly. Find a stronger verb.
INSTEAD OF: “He ran excitedly down the hill.”
THIS: “He bounded down the hill.”

Replace vague adjectives with actual description.
INSTEAD OF: “His shirt was quite loud.”
THIS: “His shirt was iridescent chartreuse with an orange quilted collar and 16 whalebone buttons.”

And learn the differences between homophones (words that sound alike). Two common mistakes:

Affect vs. Effect. A retired managing editor once explained it this way: The verb affect means to influence; the noun effect is the result of the influence. Example: How you spell will affect (influence) your pay. The effect (result) of poor spelling may be a pay cut.

Principal vs. Principle. A simple trick is to remember that principle is like a rule (both words end in –le). A principal is a main thing (the –a in main reminds you of the –al in principal).

Yeah, it’s work. But do you want your prose flabby or firm? Do you want readers putting your book down (at The End, mind you) with the feeling they especially enjoyed that ride, even if they can’t identify why? Do you want them anxious to find more of your work, or have them muttering, Meh, it was okay…

Up to you.

By the way, my favorite movie about a crusty but benign newspaper editor is Teacher’s Pet with Clark Gable and Doris Day.

So what is your relationship with grammar? Any common goofs you see out there that chap your hide? 

Weaving Tapestries

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I have a world of stories filed away that may never get used in my novels. Some are significant recollections waiting to be used, based on coincidences, while others are the seeds of ideas planted for future use.

My folks are from the country, survivors of the Great Depression, who lived in Red River bottoms, the border between Texas and Oklahoma. Chicota was a community of farmers who raised most of their own food, cows, and kids, along with the crops that fed the rest of this country.

When those old men (who were younger than I am today) took time off, it was for church, town on Saturdays, and to fish on Sunday afternoons. That meant throwing a line in the Red, or pools which were often full of crappie, the best eating.

Thinking about those fish reminds me of a natural spring pool about four miles from my maternal grandparents’ farmhouse. It was one of the few remaining springs in the area that once boasted dozens, if not more than a couple of hundred seeps, bubblers, and gushers.

When I mentioned the word pool above, I meant what some might call a pond, or tank (in West Texas). It was large enough to launch the Old Man’s vee-hull boat and motor, so it was of some significant size. He took me there several times, to fish, and to see the underwater beauty of such a natural wonder.

When the Old Man wasn’t around with the boat, my younger Cousin and I rode up on our bikes to enjoy something highly unusual in our part of Northeast Texas, clear, running water.

The gin-clear water in that pool, the fish of all sizes, and its shady banks still call to me, because most pools, creeks, streams, rivers and lakes in our part of the world are muddy. Which brings us back to my original discussion, clear water.

Several years ago, Cousin (who was much rounder in his later years) and I went looking for that unnamed spring lake. The years degraded our memories, and the land was different. The pastures were gone, and houses hunkered in the woods like ugly weeds.

“Posted” signs warned us away from the original trail we’d used over fifty years ago, so we followed blacktop roads to our estimated destination. A gray-haired gentleman was outside his house, working on a truck when we pulled up in his drive and waited for his dog to stop barking.

He rose, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. “Howdy boys. What can I do for you?”

I took the lead. “We’re looking for a spring lake that used to be around here.”

“Well, I’ve only lived here about ten years. Haven’t heard of a lake.”

Cousin was interested. “Where’d you move from?”

“Prosper, Texas.”

I shook my head in wonder at such a small world. “That’s where my wife grew up. Did you know the Reynolds family?”

His smile became genuine. “Sure enough. Robert and Robbie were good friends.”

Such a strange coincidence created an immediate bond and we visited for half an hour before getting back around to the reason we were there. Our new friend pointed. “The only pool around here is that little muddy puddle over yonder on someone else’s land that stays wet year-round.”

We looked where he pointed, and my recollections of the area superimposed themselves on the “muddy puddle.”

“Good Lord.” My spirits fell, and Cousin’s face mirrored my own.

He rubbed his bald head. “They’ve killed the spring with all this construction around here.”

The sweet water that once flowed fast enough to fill a small, three-acre-pool struggled to survive as a mud hole. Disappointed and saddened, we left, thinking about such a strange coincidence that I would meet friends of the War Department’s dad and brother in my ancestors’ community, and how “progress” was killing such wonderful, natural resources.

Here’s another. A few years ago, when I drove a dually pickup–––Let’s pause here, because I had to explain duallys to one of my city-dwelling editors who’d never heard of a six-wheeled truck. After explaining the concept, that individual still misunderstood, thinking there were three in a line on each side. I wrote back again, sending a link so that person could see there were four on the back and two in the front.

Because a dually is hippy, it won’t fit into most garages, especially the one at our old house, so I parked it on the street the entire time we lived there. Unfortunately, someone broke in one night and stole whatever wasn’t nailed down, (including my Juicy Fruit gum) and that included a pair of prescription Oakley sunglasses. I sincerely hoped they wore them while driving into a bridge abutment one night, but it didn’t happen.

They took tools, OTC drugs (antacids and allergy pills I kept in the cab because my former son-in-law was dangerously allergic to stings), and the Bride’s little pocket camera she used for work with the Frisco ISD, but forgot to take out that night.

Figuring all was lost, we filed a police report and went on about our lives. Somewhere around six weeks later, she got a call from the local PD.

“Mrs. Wortham, we have a report here about a burglary of a motor vehicle.”

“It was my husband’s truck. He filed the report. I’m surprised you called me.”

“Well, it’s an interesting story. We busted a vehicle burglary ring and found a digital camera in a house full of stolen items. There was a photo of the front of a school, and when we went to that location, they remembered you came by with your camera. We have the couple who broke into his truck. The guy is cooperating, but the female is a war horse, so I’d like to know if you’d like to press charges.”

She laughed. “I’m sure my husband will.”

I did.

Now here’s one last story I can draw from, but haven’t yet found the place. When we were still in that same house, the Bride came home for lunch and called me a few minutes after she left. “Hey, there’s a car in the alley right behind the house. It’s running, but no one is in it. I wonder if they have some kind of trouble. You might want to go look.”

I walked out to find an old car idling a few feet from our drive. No one was behind the wheel, and when I glanced inside, the back of my neck tingled. A screwdriver protruded from the steering column.

“911. What’s your emergency?”

I told dispatch where I lived. “There’s a running car behind our house and no one is in it. I think it’s stolen.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because there’s a screwdriver in the ignition, for one thing.”

Her voice changed. “What kind of car is it, and can you see the license tag?”

I told her.

“Sir, get away from the car and go in the house now. Officers are on the way.”

Following such direct orders, I did as she said and waited. Two minutes later every cop in the city was at our location, looking for the bank robbers who’d used that vehicle as a getaway car, dumped it in the alley, ran through the yard between our house and the neighbor, and drove away in another vehicle parked on our street.

But one lighter moment was when several young officers showed up to search the area, they insisted on checking our back yard, only to find my nineteen-year-old daughter sunning beside the pool. They checked the backyard several times until I asked her to come inside, even though our premises was the safest place in town.

So with those in mind, (and I confess none of these images are real by the way),how many of you writers draw from old memories and or unlikely events to use in your manuscripts? Do you have stories of police work you can weave into a future work, but haven’t done it yet? Do you have real life adventures or coincidences, or pet peeves and disappointments that can enrich your works?

I still have more, but these will have to do at this writing.

 

 

Reader Friday . . . D-Day

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Today is D-Day. No, not Deb’s Return to The Killzone Day. I am glad to be back, though! Thank you to those who filled in on Fridays during my hiatus.   😊

Now, let’s talk about the real D-Day.

We often usurp the term D-Day to describe events of lesser import—such as work assignment deadlines, bills due, even personal stuff, like weddings or maybe divorces finalized.

But the real D-Day back in 1944 was (and still is) a day to remember. Because it was a day that sealed the fate of one of the real enemies of mankind.

According to my D-Day research, “Operation Overlord was the code name for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful liberation of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 (D-Day) with the Normandy landings, Operation Neptune.” (From Wikipedia)

Many books have been written, and many movies have been created about this period in history. I happen to be one of those movie-goers who would choose a war movie over a romance every day and twice on Sundays. But what’s important is in the next paragraph.

I will be forever grateful for those brave men and women who fought these battles, and for those who gave their lives on this day. Which brings to mind a 102-year-old gentleman, the father of a friend of ours. Still spry, with a sense of humor and a knack for the flirt, he is one who thankfully returned to his family.

Many Americans, along with our allied forces and their families and loved ones, however, gave their all so that I can sit here writing this post for you to read. Sometimes I just can’t wrap my head around that. I ask myself, if I’d been in that generation, would I have been willing to sacrifice myself, or a husband or child?

Think a moment. Try to imagine what our world would look like if this day had never happened, and those enemies had not been defeated.

I think, maybe, our world would be much different.

Comments welcome.

 

Dual Protagonists

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Dual Protagonists

Terry Odell

two knights with swords facing each other

PJ Parrish did a wonderful post not long ago about secondary characters, and in response to one of the comments, she said “Someone here should do a post about dual protagonists.” Well, here I am, and I’m going to give it a shot.

Early in my writing endeavors, I was talking to another newbie, and he asked about the protagonist in my manuscript. I told him there were two, and he said, “no, your main protagonist.” As I tried to explain that the two characters were on equal footing, and they each had their own arcs, and then there was the addition of a mystery plot, he rolled his eyes, mumbled something, and walked away.

Although I thought I was writing a mystery when I played with creating something resembling a novel, my daughters pointed out it was a romance. I’d never read one, so I didn’t know how I could be writing one. But, apparently I was. Then I discovered romantic suspense, which was closer. Since I was always reading mysteries where the protagonists had lives outside solving their cases, it wasn’t too much of a stretch.

For the record, anyone who thinks that when they have a free weekend, they’re going to crank out a quick romance and make a bunch of bucks—think again.

In a romantic suspense, you’re juggling three stories. The hero and heroine each have their own character arcs, and there’s the mystery plot as well. If you’re writing a straight mystery with dual protagonists, you don’t have to deal with the pesky relationship culminating in at least the promise of a Happily Ever After. But each protagonist has to be developed in the same way you’d develop a single protagonist.

Given my stumbling into romance, I learned from Deb Dixon and her Goal, Motivation, Conflict approach. What does each protagonist want? Why do they want it? What’s standing in their way?

Then, throw in how they’re going to have to work together in the book. Are they working to solve the same crime? Are they in competition? What’s in it for each of them? A reward? Bringing someone to justice? Self-satisfaction? Do their individual goals, backgrounds, life circumstances create more conflict?

I write in deep POV, but there’s no reason you can’t have two POV characters regardless of the POV choices you make. Often there are more than two, but usually those are secondary characters, not protagonists. Since PJ’s challenge said “dual protagonists” I’m sticking with two, which is how I prefer to write.

My preference—and again in a romantic suspense, you’re tied to reader expectations and genre conventions—I will introduce hero and heroine in their own opening chapters. (That means you’re effectively writing TWO Chapter Ones with all the challenges that entails.)

In my earlier books, I wrote two scenes per chapter, alternating protagonists. With the current trend of short chapters, I now write each protagonist’s scene as a separate chapter. As with any scene or chapter, we strive to end it with a page-turning moment.

Now, when the reader turns the page, they’re going to find they’re in another character’s head. My position is that you have to ground the reader in the who, when, and where for every scene or chapter change. Because—heaven forbid—the reader might have put the book down and might be coming back to it hours, days, or weeks later. I’m not fond of chapter headings, because as soon as the reader turns the page, they’re gone.

This holds true regardless of how many protagonists you have, but if there’s a single one, the ‘who’ is generally understood.

If your protagonists are working together and have been in the same scenes, once you set up the reminder of whose head you’re in, you can move the story along.

If they’re apart, it’s more of a challenge, because now you have to make sure the reader gets back into that character’s timeline. The opening paragraphs will have to work harder to establish what’s going on, but without info dumping.

In the spirit of Show, Don’t Tell, here are a couple of examples from Danger Abroad, my most recent release.

Chapter 3 is a Maddie POV scene. She’s arrived at her new lodgings in the Faroes and is having tea and cake with the landlady, who’s asked what brought her to the island. It ends like this:

As Maddie mentally composed her reply—the reasons she’d given when she’d requested a room—a banging on the door, accompanied by “Open up. I know you’re in there,” shattered the moment.

Chapter 4 is a Logan POV scene, and he’s somewhere else, working on his own task, which is finding Maddie, but he’s in San Francisco and she’s in the Faroe Islands. When his chapter ends, how do I draw readers back into Maddie’s story?

Chapter 5 is back to Maddie, and it opens like this:

Maddie’s tea sloshed into the saucer. Who could possibly know she was here? She’d done everything right, covered her tracks. Hadn’t she? She set her tea on the coffee table and studied Hanna, who didn’t seem alarmed—or confused—by whoever was outside.

Same thing goes for the POV chapters/scenes of the second protagonist. Bring the reader back to the who, when, and where.

As for PJ’s concern that readers might find one protagonist more attractive? I say it’s unlikely that every reader will like every character in a book equally. In reality, most romantic suspense books, although they have two protagonists, they’re not completely equal. It’s more like a 49/51 split. One of them will have a slightly stronger role, so yes, it’s quite possible a reader will prefer one over the other. If the reader’s goal, as it usually is when reading a mystery, is to see the crime solved and the bad guy brought to justice, do we care which protagonist they prefer?

In any genre, every time you add a POV character, you risk the reader not liking that character or the plot thread they’re commanding and skimming or skipping those parts. With only two, it’s less likely to happen, but yes, it’s possible.

I hope I’ve touched upon some answers to PJ’s question. If you have more, fire away. Feel free to share your experiences, either as a reader or writer, with dual protagonists. My brother’s visiting, so I might not be around to reply to comments right away, but I’ll check in when I can.

New! Find me at Substack with Writings and Wanderings

Danger Abroad

When breaking family ties is the only option.

Madison Westfield has information that could short-circuit her politician father’s campaign for governor. But he’s family. Although he was a father more in word than deed, she changes her identity and leaves the country rather than blow the whistle.

Blackthorne, Inc. taps Security and Investigations staffer, Logan Bolt, to track down Madison Westfield. When he finds her in the Faroe Islands, her story doesn’t match the one her father told Blackthorne. The investigation assignment quickly switches to personal protection for Madison.

Soon, they’re involved with a drug ring and a kidnapping attempt. Will working together put them in more danger? Can a budding relationship survive the dangers they encounter?

Available now.

Like bang for your buck? I have a new Mapleton Bundle. Books 4, 5, and 6 for one low price.

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

Multi-tasking

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The secret to multitasking is that it isn’t actually multitasking. It’s just extreme focus and organization. —Joss Whedon

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The term “multi-tasking,” sometimes called “multi-processing,” has become part of the lexicon of modern writers. Multi-tasking implies doing two or more things at one time.  Although it’s not possible to have the brain consciously working on two different problems at the same time, many of us say we’re multi-tasking when we think about the plot of our next book while doing brain-free activities like household chores, etc.

In the world of computers, the term “multi-processing” means there are two or more processors, now called ‘cores,’ working inside the computer. Neither of them is doing more than one job at a time. However, since there are multiple cores, they can accomplish multiple tasks in parallel.

The term “multi-programming,” however, describes a single processor that works on one thing at a time, but may swap tasks to be more efficient. For example, if one process has issued a print command, the processor may initiate the print, then return to the original process to continue or even start another process. It may appear that it’s doing multiple jobs at the same time, but it really isn’t.

So multi-tasking for writers where concentration is involved is more like multi-programming. We each have one brain and can only process one thing at a time, but we can swap tasks in and out to maximize our efficiency.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I’m in the midst of a multi-tasking hurricane. My husband and I are moving to another home, and even though we thought we had pared down all the stuff we own, we seem to have acquired more! I’m sitting in the middle of dozens of boxes, mostly books, with more to be packed. And then there are all the other things that need to be taken care of when moving from one place to another.

In addition to all that, my first middle grade novel, Another Side of Sunshine, launched a couple of weeks ago and requires some attention in the marketplace. The next book in the series is in the final stages of editing, and I’ll need to spend some time reviewing the entire manuscript and running text-to-speech on it. Then there’s the second book in the Lady Pilot-in-Command series which is partially written but needs significant hours of work. Email requires attention, and there’s always a need to post on social media, run a promotion, communicate with other authors, and of course, write a bi-weekly TKZ post.

In order to accomplish all these tasks and retain a modicum of sanity, I need to multi-program – swap from one task to another in the most efficient way possible. I’m finding that spending 30 minutes to an hour on one thing, then switching to another works pretty well. Refocusing turns my attention to the matter at hand and gives the boys in the basement a chance to continue working on all the other tasks.

I’ll be at the new home today and not sure how much connectivity I’ll have there, but I’ll check in when I can.

* * *

So TKZers: Even without moving from one home to another, there are dozens of writing-related tasks that we have to keep up with. How do you manage them all? Do you divide your day up into time slices? Any secrets you want to share with the rest of us?  

* * *

 

Cryptic clues, the elusive Mr. Shadow, and the promise of a hidden treasure combine to give the Reen & Joanie Detective Agency their first challenge. But they can’t multi-task. They have to solve the clues in a sequence, and they only have three days to find the treasure before time runs out. Can they do it?

Click the image to go to the Amazon detail page.

Fond Memories of Joe Hartlaub

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by Debbie Burke

Over the weekend, I received a punch-in-the-gut email. Joe Hartlaub, longtime TKZ contributor, had passed away suddenly and unexpectedly during a heart procedure.

Joe had been a beloved member of TKZ’s crew, going way back to 2010. His stories were always witty, wise, and warm. While reading his posts, my computer screen suffered many coffee snorts from his killer sense of humor.

He made fun of himself but not of others.

I hope he’s chuckling at today’s tribute to him because I used both “suddenly” and “unexpectedly”, which came to mind after reading his 2020 post about the sudden, unexpected death of a friend.

Joe wrote about anything and everything and we eagerly read his stories, recollections, observations, and insights. He wrote about:

Fats Domino;

Pizza;

His beloved granddaughter;

A feral cat;

Alcoholism;

When his neighbor was murdered.

He wrote about writing, books, movies, and music.

In going back through his posts, I found many first page critiques where his comments clearly but diplomatically explained what the anonymous author needed to do to improve the submission.

One first page critique from 2017 stayed close to my heart cuz it was mine. Joe’s gentle suggestions were mixed with praise that gave me hope my work might someday be published. His encouragement kept me going through many disappointments and setbacks.

Joe said goodbye to TKZ in 2021 with this post and more than a few tears were shed by readers.

This 2020 post is how I want to remember Joe.

RIP, Sweet Joseph.