Editor and Editing Words of Wisdom

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Last week I finished the draft of my latest 1980s library cozy, Fine Me Deadly, which clocked in at 72,389 words. The drafting process was longer than I’d bargained for—chalk that up to a complicated situation and plot and my own doubts about being able to pull it off, as well as perfectionism in the first draft, something I normally do better in ignoring.

My usual procedure after finishing a novel draft is to immediately dive back in and begin revising, but this time, I decided to put the book in a virtual drawer for a while and work on something else, to give myself some distance so when I return to Fine Me Deadly, I can hopefully look at it with fresh eyes. This is a technique a number of TKZers use and it is high time I give it a try.

Today’s Words of Wisdom is a grab-bag of editor/editing insights. Joe Hartlaub looks at putting the editor out of your mind when drafting, while James Scott Bell takes advice from an editor to help your book develop into the best it can be, and Terry Odell gives us five tips to help with the final edit. There’s much food for thought here and, as always, I hope you’ll weigh in with your own thoughts.

I believe it is a given that those of us who aspire to write are also vociferous readers. A reader is a wonderful thing to be; however, I have come to the conclusion that sometimes this state of mind and being can be an impediment to an author aborning.  Reading a novel by James Lee Burke or Karin Slaughter or John Connolly or Chelsea Cain can inspire a reader to think, “I want to do that.”  Yet it can also be discouraging; one reads BLACK CHERRY BLUES by Burke and thinks, “I can never be that good; why bother?”  The fleeting dream is set aside, sometimes permanently. Part of the reason for this state of affairs is that in the case of a book (or a film, or a painting, or a music project) we rarely see what came before, the early stages that led to the final result.

Such does not hold true with respect to a construction project, to name but one example. We recently had the opportunity to watch an all but vacant shopping center in our area be transformed over a period of several months into a wholly done, over, remodeled, commercially successful unit. It was fun to watch. Readers generally do not get to watch the process by which their favorite author transforms a few hundred blank pages into a cohesive, occasionally unforgettable, experience. So it is that the novel, upon publication, seems to have sprung from whole cloth, seemingly effortlessly. We know better, of course. But it is difficult sometimes to fully appreciate it without seeing the ultrasound ourselves.

I hit an emotional low point this past week for a number or reasons that aren’t really important to this discussion; what is important is what brought me out of it, at least so far as creativity is concerned. I happened across an article in Slate entitled “Cormac McCarthy Cuts to the Bone.”  You can find the article here. It is an extremely interesting piece which, among other things, reveals that McCarthy’s classic novel BLOOD MERIDIAN was a far different book at publication than it was at conception. What really attracted me to the article, however, was the reproduction of two pages from McCarthy’s original draft.  They are instructive, even if you have never read a word that Mr. McCarthy has written or alternatively would not reflexively grab your copy of BLOOD MERIDIAN or THE ORCHARD  KEEPER if confronted with a fire and the resultant dilemma of what to save.  BLOOD MERIDIAN did not flow out of McCarthy’s mind without deep and dark consideration. If you’re having trouble getting your words out of you and onto the page, don’t let it be because you in your own mind aren’t “good enough” or “as good” as your favorite author. When your favorite author started writing, they weren’t good enough either. It takes several drafts, several cement pourings, if you will, before things solidify and become right. Don’t put your handprints and your initials into your work and ruin it before it is dry. Purge yourself of what playwright John Guare so brilliantly called “tiny obnoxious editor living in your head,” the one who tells you that you will never be as good as Stephen King or Elmore Leonard or whoever. Then let the construction begin.

Joe Hartlaub—November 9, 2013

 

Some time ago veteran editor Alan Rinzler posted on Writer Unboxed about “issues” writers today are facing. While the post itself was solid, I was more intrigued by one of his comments. Rinzler was asked a question in the combox by none other than super agent Donald Maass. Don wanted to know what the #1 shortcoming Rinzler, as a developmental editor, saw in manuscripts. Rinzler’s answer was:

I see disorganized stories of excessive complexity… intrusive narrative voices that come between the reader and the story by inserting ongoing commentary, explanation, and interpretation…a failure to research and do the homework necessary to come up with something truly original and not reinvent the wheel… two-dimensional stereotype characterization…dialogue that all sounds like the same person.

I like this list. Let’s take a look at each item:

  1. Disorganized stories of excessive complexity

I once picked up a bit of screenwriting wisdom that applies here. The best movies (and novels) consist of simple plots about complex characters. That is, while the plot may contain mystery and twists (and should), it is, at its core, a basic story with understandable motives. The real meat and originality comes from putting truly complex characters into those stories. The secret to originality can be found in the limitless interior landscape of human beings.

  1. Intrusive narrative voices

Learning how to handle exposition, especially when to leave it out entirely, is one of the most important and early craft challenges. So get to it. Revision & Self-Editing for Publication has a whole section on this, but here’s one tip: place exposition seamlessly into confrontational dialogue. Instead of: Frank never wanted to have a baby. Not until he was a success as a writer. But Marilyn thought his quest was foolish. After all, it had been five years since he left his job at AIG. Marilyn dearly wanted him to try to get his job back.

“You never wanted a baby, Frank.”

“Shut up about that.”

“All because of your stupid writing obsession!”

“I’m not obsessed!”

“Oh really? What do you call five years of typing and no money to show for it?”

“Practice!”

“Well, practice time is over. Tomorrow you’re going to beg AIG to take you back.”

  1. A failure to research  . . . to come up with something truly original

Rinzler is talking about the concept stage here, which is foundational. Hard work on fresh concepts will pay off. And remember, freshness isn’t just a matter of something “unfamiliar.” All plot situations have been done. It’s how you dress them up and freshen them that makes the difference. Remember Die Hard? After it became a hit, we had Die Hard on a ship (Under Siege) and on a mountain (Cliffhanger)and so on. Take a standard rom-com about a writer struggling with writer’s block and set it in Elizabethan England and you get Shakespeare in Love. Heck, take an old dystopian cult plot like Deathrace 2000 and put it among kids and bingo, you’ve got The Hunger Games.

  1. Two-dimensional characters 

We all know that flat characters are a drag on an otherwise nice plot idea. Such a waste! As Lajos Egri put it in his classic, Creative Writing: “Living, vibrating human beings are still the secret and magic formula of great and enduring writing.”

My favorite book on characterization is Dynamic Characters by my former colleague at Writer’s Digest, Nancy Kress.

  1. Dialogue that all sounds like the same person

Ah! One of my sweet spots. In my workshops I always say the fastest way to improve a manuscript is via dialogue. It’s also the fastest way to get an agent or editor to reject you, or readers to give you a yawn. When they see good, crisp dialogue, differentiated via character, it pops. It gives them confidence they’re dealing with someone who knows the craft.

The place to start, then, is by making sure every character in your cast is unique. I use a “voice journal” for each, a free-form document of the character just yakking at me, until I truly “hear” them in a singular fashion.

James Scott Bell—April 6, 2014

We want to submit the cleanest possible manuscript to our editors, agents, or wherever you’re submitting. By the time most of us hit “The End”, we’ve been staring at the manuscript on a computer screen for months. We probably know passages by heart, we know what it’s supposed to say, and it’s very easy to miss things.

What we need to do if fool our brain into thinking it’s never seen these words before.

Tip #1 – Print the manuscript. It’s amazing how much different it will look on paper.

Tip #2 – Use a different font. If you’ve been staring at TNR, choose a sans-serif font. In fact, this is a good time to use the much-maligned Comic Sans.

Tip #3 – Change the format. You want the lines to break in different places. I recommend printing it in 2 columns, or at least changing the margins. That will totally change the line scan, and it’s amazing how many repeated words show up when the words line up differently.

Tip #4 – Read away from your computer. Another room, or at least the other side of the room.

The above are all “Fool the Brain” tricks. Moving on to my basic process.

Tip #5 – Read from start to finish.

As I read, I have a notepad, highlighters, red pen, and a pad of sticky notes. This pass isn’t where I fix things; it’s where I make notes of things to fix. I don’t want to disrupt the flow of the read by stopping to check out if the character drove a red Toyota or a green Chevy. I have a foam core board by my chair, where I’ll post my sticky notes. Also, because it’s a hard copy, there’s not simple “Find” function.

When repeated words or phrases jump out, I note them on a sticky for a future search-and-destroy mission. I’ll circle or highlight words that could be stronger, or places where I might be able to come up with a metaphor that doesn’t sound writerly.

I’m also critical of “does this move the story?” as I’m reading. The beautiful prose might not be all that beautiful when reading it in the context of the entire novel. Don’t be afraid to use that red pen. On the flip side, you can also note where a scene needs more depth, or something needs foreshadowing. Are characters behaving consistently? Or do their personalities change because the author needs them to do something for the plot.

Another thing I look for is named characters. Naming a character tells the reader “this is an important person.” Do they play enough of a role in the story to earn a name? Can they be deleted, or referred to generically?

Once I’ve reached the end, I’ll go back to the computer and deal with the notes I’ve made.

Terry Odell—January 6, 2021

***

  1. What do you think about Joe’s point about keeping the editor away while drafting? For those of you who start your writing day by first editing what you wrote the day before, any tips on switching from editing mind to creative mind?
  2. What do you think of Jim’s list of editor insights? Any additions?
  3. Do you have any tips to add to Terry’s on getting yourself into the editing mindset?

Reader Friday-Goodbye To A Friend

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I hope a little indulgence is in order on The Killzone today.

6/18/2014-1/14/2025 . . . Play hard, sweet Hoka

We lost a good friend on Tuesday, January 14th. Her name was Hoka, the smartest German shepherd in the universe. It happened quickly. The vet thinks it was a stroke. She would have been eleven in June, and we’d kept company with her for nine years and one month.

We’ve had other dogs, but none as human as Hoka.

A little history: She was rescued from the local shelter by our daughter, who was able to be her mom for three months. When she moved to San Diego, she couldn’t take Hoka with her. She was named after Jessica’s favorite running/hiking shoe, and was her companion on the trails.

Jessica brought her to us to get acquainted, and it was love at first sight. When she came to live with us she was about a year and a half old, give or take. It was like a toddler moving in with gramma and grampa.

Let the games begin!

She had two speeds . . . fast and stop. She liked to chase cars along our rural dirt road—from inside our fence line, of course. Our neighbor once clocked her at 32 mph.

She had a human vocabulary of about twenty or so words and phrases, she was scared of gunfire, loved harassing our neighbors’ cats and cows from across the fence, and was always ready to jump in the Jeep and go to town with us. And, believe it or not, she could tell time. She knew when it was bedtime, and she knew–at 7am every morning–it was time to trek over to the west side of our property to chase away any of the neighbor’s cats who dared stray over our fence.

We walk the orchards around us every day and she went with us. The last few days, I’ve even taken pictures of her paw prints around our property and out in the orchards.

And my Dad. We took her three times a week to see him, and he loved her as much as we do. Many of the other residents in his facility  insisted on petting her. She was everybody’s dog, and she knew it.

There’s not a square inch of our house and five acres that her paws did not touch. She watched out for us as much as we took care of her. Every part of our daily schedule–now ten days without her–included her.

First, we learned to navigate life with Hoka; now we must learn to steer ourselves without her.

It’s going to be a long journey before we can let her lie without tears, but I know she’s getting acquainted with the other three dogs we’ve buried.

Hoka, keep running. We’ll come and play with you some day.

 

* * *

 

Thank you, TKZers, for listening to me and understanding why I had to write this post. Many of you have shared your pets with us, so I know you “get it”.

 

Your comments and memories are most welcome.

 

 

First Page Critique – MURDER, MYSTERY AND MISDIRECTION

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by Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

Today let’s welcome a Brave Author who submitted the first page of a humorous cozy mystery with fantasy elements including a talking cat.

Please enjoy the read then we’ll discuss on the flip side.

~~~

“Peekaboo!” I burst through the front door, Ryan in my wake. I stopped in the hallway and looked for any sign of the orange cat who was currently on my sugar (I don’t like to swear) list. It only took a moment before the little creature stepped primly into the hall.

“I was napping,” the grumpy feline said, shooting me a gold-eyed glare. She waited for me to continue.

“I acknowledged them,” I said, deadpan.

“Oh.” Peekaboo’s snooty manor fell away, and she lowered those gold eyes.

“That’s all you have to say?” I stood, arms crossed, my eyes shooting daggers. Ryan, my boyfriend, stood mutely watching. He couldn’t hear Peekaboo.

But I could. Oh, boy, could I. My sweet little inherited orange cat bestowed on me, by way of tripping me on my way down the front porch steps, the “gift” of being able to communicate with her. Oh, and see ghosts. To be fair, her motives were pure. She needed me to have a near-death experience so I’d wake up and be able to listen to her.

Maybe I should back up, so you know what I’m talking about.

I used to live in Los Angeles. When I was twenty-one, I broke up a mugging and saved a dear little old lady. She was so grateful that seven years later she left me her estate in her will.

In addition to a house, an SUV and a large amount of money, I inherited Peekaboo, the talking cat. Of course, I didn’t know she was a talking cat at the time. After glaring at me for a few days, she apparently thought I was hopeless and pushed me down the stairs. So, I woke up in the hospital and saw a doctor with a clipboard walk through a wall. But that’s really immaterial to my story. My neighbor, who found me splattered on the porch steps, had called 911. When I was released from the hospital, Elsie, the neighbor, told me I’d flatlined and it took ten minutes of the paddles to bring me back to life.

As I hobbled into my house after Elsie brought me home from the hospital and made sure I was alright to be left alone, subject cat started talking to me. I thought I must have a brain tumor…somebody get me back to the hospital! I grabbed the fireplace poker and used it to keep her at bay. I think she may have rolled her eyes at me.

Then, before I was comfortable that she was talking…and I could understand her…she trotted out the ghost of Alice, the sweet little old lady who’d left me her house. Apparently, this whole episode was so I could see Alice and solve her murder.

That little task resulted in me, and my best friend Susie, and my boyfriend Ryan, who wasn’t my boyfriend at the time…he was the homicide detective I had to convince to help me solve said murder…and DC, a PI that Peekaboo had led me to…I didn’t mention that she’s psychic, did I? That’s how she knew I wouldn’t die when she tripped me on the stairs. Oh, brother….

~~~

Let me confess upfront: fantasy is not a genre I’m very familiar with. I don’t know the tropes and conventions so I hope more knowledgeable readers will chime in about this piece.

What did strike me immediately was the voice. It was humorous and conversational, which I enjoy. It felt like a friend relating a story after a few drinks…quite a few drinks.

Jumping back and forth in time on the first page is risky. The reader is not yet grounded in the story and can easily be confused. Too many events told out of order with too many characters being introduced all at once may frustrate the reader.

But that herky-jerky conversational tone is important to the humor. So, it’s a tightrope walk between smiles and irritation.

What I do know about fantasy is that world building is an important element. The author introduces an unfamiliar universe governed by its own rules. Those rules are different from the reality most people know. Readers need certain information to understand the imaginary world they’re stepping into. However, not all those elements need to be presented at once. Allow them to unfold during the course of the story.

But this example feels more like being hit with a firehose—too much information too soon. I’d be more interested and engaged if I understood a few ground rules.

My suggestion is to quickly establish a world in which only the narrator can hear a talking cat. Something like:

Peekaboo is a sweet orange cat I inherited from a dear little old lady named Alice I had saved from being mugged when I was 21. Seven years later Alice died, and to my great surprise, she left me a large sum of money, an SUV, a house, and Peekaboo, the talking cat.

You’re probably saying “Oh brother!” and I don’t blame you. I’m the only one who can hear Peekaboo, making it hard to convince people I’m not crazy.

Did I forget to mention the cat is psychic? And she wants me to solve Alice’s murder?

Let me back up a bit to when Peekaboo pushed me down the stairs (on purpose—the little brat) and knocked me out, so you understand how all this happened.

 

Regarding craft and word usage details:

Manor should be manner. The preferred spelling for alright is all right. Otherwise the manuscript didn’t have spelling errors. Good job.

Nice, smooth way to establish the narrator’s age (21 plus seven years later makes her 28).

Splattered sounds like blood or brains, and is not accurate for the scene described.

“I acknowledged them,” I said, deadpan. I have no idea what this sentence means. It  has no relation to the sentences before or after it. Who or what does “them“ refer to?

Run-on sentences are tricky. They can convey humor but can also be confusing.

That little task resulted in me, and my best friend Susie, and my boyfriend Ryan, who wasn’t my boyfriend at the time…he was the homicide detective I had to convince to help me solve said murder…and DC, a PI that Peekaboo had led me to…I didn’t mention that she’s psychic, did I?

In a 55-word-long sentence, the reader is introduced to three characters (Susie, Ryan, DC), two professions (homicide detective and PI), the history of the romance (at first Ryan wasn’t her boyfriend), a problem (how to convince the detective/boyfriend to help the narrator solve a murder), and Peekaboo’s psychic ability.

Please slow down, Brave Author. Introduce the characters and establish their relationships to each other. Layer in the problem of solving a murder. Then add the punchline that Peekaboo is psychic.

The narrator’s disjointed thoughts have a curious logic that’s all her own, rather like listening to someone with early dementia. Obviously, the intelligence is still present, but connections keep shorting out.

That wacky voice can endear her to the reader but becomes frustrating and annoying if overdone. Preserve the humor and delete the babbling. 

Brave Author, the concept of a talking, psychic cat is humorous, charming, and intriguing. If you don’t confuse the reader, you have the potential for a delightful mystery. Thanks for sharing this first page with us.

~~~

TKZers: What elements of this first page appealed to you? What turned you off and why?

If you read humorous-cozy-fantasy genre, please educate those of us who are not familiar with it. What are reader expectations? Does this story meet those?

Writing In Slow Motion

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By John Gilstrap

The crazy lady held a carving blade from the knife block on the kitchen counter, and she vehemently expressed her desire to hurt me with it. The year was 1990, plus or minus three. We were in her double-wide. The driver of my ambulance was in urgent communication with the EOC–emergency operations center–police were on the way, and the crazy lady (you got the CRAZY part, right?) stood between me and the door. I was armed with a radio and maybe a stethoscope. I suspect that drugs may have been involved because the crazy lady repeatedly sought counsel from someone only she could see. And apparently hear.

This was not my wheelhouse. We volunteers had no training for talking unstable people out of their murder weapons. While she seemed moved by my arguments that I had a young boy at home who needed me, the invisible sonofabitch had a convincing counterargument.

The confrontation ended without nuance. Crazy Lady had left the door open and when a critical mass of cops had arrived–I’ll stipulate that it took less than the seven hours that it felt–they hit her with the subtlety shown to a quarterback who fumbles the snap.

Happy ending. For me. I don’t know how it ended for her. Or her imaginary friend.

I’ve never written of this incident until right now, largely because it exposes me as a moron. Can you articulate the error that nearly got me killed? Read to the end for the reveal.*

Let’s turn this into a writing lesson.

For me, action scenes–fight scenes–are the hardest scenes to write. They’re also the easiest scenes to screw up.

My interaction with Crazy Lady involved countless thoughts, decisions and observations, all of which transpired simultaneously and in the space of a heartbeat.

In fiction, a heartbeat on the page can be a paragraph or a chapter. In Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge,” that length of time takes up a whole short story.

The secret to fast action is to write slow.

Let’s imagine a scene we all know: The Old West duel in the street. For my example, imagine that we’re past the build-up and the dread–think “High Noon” or “Firecreek”–and dial straight into the ditry deed of draw-and-fire.

The reality of the action will transpire over the course of a few seconds–five, at the most–but a one-sentence gunfight squanders drama and cheats your reader out of and exciting, engaging scene. So, how do we make it engaging?

Choose your POV Characters carefully, remembering that both shooters have something to prove or defend.

Arguably, the easiest POV characters for the scene are the shooters themselves–the guys (it’s always guys, right?) who are presenting their hearts and spines for penetration at 900 feet per second.

Are they concentrating on not being killed, or on killing the other guy? There’s a huge difference. Think about it: The best chance to score a kill shot means squaring your body across the target for a stronger stance that allows for better aim and trigger control. That also means making yourself a bigger target. Alternatively, you could blade your body to the target to make yourself harder to hit, but also creating a less stable shooting platform. What does it say of a character who thinks this way?

Are you presenting both POVs or just one? What are they thinking? What are they looking for?

Now, suppose that (one of) the POV character(s) is the 12-year-old child of one of the shooters. What does that do to your narrative? Okay, and the 12-year-old’s best friend is the child of the other shooter. Are they watching the duel together? What are their older or younger siblings doing?

Every element of story is about character.

If you write thrillers, your job is to make your audience scream for mercy. That means setting up seemingly irreversible collision courses for your characters. If one of my stories presents a comfortable moment for you to go to bed–or go to the bathroom, for that matter–I have failed.

In our street duel example, why didn’t Good Guy Greg just pop Bad Guy Bart in the back of the head and be done with it? Or the other way around? Did they consider it? Are their hands shaking?

In the real world, all of these thoughts and feelings and considerations whirl at the speed of synapse, but as the recorder of fact in the fictional world, it falls upon you to reveal these instinctive reactions in a way that feels fast yet is still discernable.

*Humiliating tactical error: I allowed Crazy Lady to block my access to the exit. If I could have left and gone to safety, the police response (God bless them!) could have been far less kinetic.

Clichés: Avoid Them Like The…
Well, You Know

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By PJ Parrish

You can learn a lot about writing fiction from watching football. I figured this out recently after bingeing on both the NFL and college playoffs. (Yes, I have no life but it’s really, really cold here right now. Plus it gives me an excuse to eat potato chips and drink Dr Pepper spiked with Southern Comfort before five, so don’t judge me).

What you can learn from football is pretty simple:

  • Always keep moving downfield. (Don’t keep rewriting chapter 1)
  • Have a good game plan. (Outline your story. ie be a wily plotter)
  • If you don’t have a good game plan, be quick on your feet and don’t be afraid to just chuck the rock downfield and see what happens. (Go where the story takes you. ie be an artful pantser)
  • Run north and south, not east and west. (Don’t get distracted by subplots)
  • Surround yourself with good guys. (Character developement is everything)
  • If you drop the ball, get up and get back in the game. (you painted yourself into a plot corner. Your character sucks. Boo hoo. Get back in there and fix it.)

But maybe the best thing I’ve learned from watching football that’s helped me in writing is this:

Stop with the clichés, already!

I watch a lot of sports, but I have to say football has to be the worst when it comes to really stale commentary. While watching the playoffs, I started to write some of the bad ones down. From my list:

  • They haven’t got all their weapons. (too many injuries).
  • You gotta go with what’s working. (not sure what that means)
  • He’s hearing footsteps. (the receiver got spooked and dropped the ball)
  • They get points the old fashioned way — up the middle. (they run alot)
  • It’s gonna come back to haunt them. (missed the extra point)
  • He’s got alligator arms. (wide receiver didn’t make the catch)
  • They beat themselves.

And the saddest one:

  • There’s no tomorrow.

I actually heard Tony Romo use that one. I did hear one phrase I liked that I had never heard before. Vikings QB Sam Darnold fumbled and a Rams rookie defender scooped the ball up and ran it 57 yards for a TD. The commentator said, “He got a room service bounce.”  Your eggs Benedict is here, sir.

All right, all right. I hear you. No more football talk. Okay, so I will talk about the book I am reading right now. It’s been on my to-read shelf ever since I brought it back from the Edgars a couple years ago. It was a nominee and it’s pretty good. But then things started to go, well, south. (cliché!)

I began to notice there were clichés creeping into the narrative. Like this: “It was a perfect storm of bad investigative techniques and lazy-assity.”

Now, I kind of liked the lazy-assity thing, but “a perfect storm?” A couple chapters later, he referred to a suspect roundup as “picking the low hanging fruit.” After that, I got distracted because I started to search for more clichés. And they came: eagle-eyed,” “burning question,” “at the crack of dawn,” “sick as a dog,” “uphill battle.”

Now, these are all sort of venial, the kind of everyday phrases we all slip into. Nothing as bad as “When they sprayed the Luminol, the room lit up like a Christmas tree.” But they aren’t fresh, and when it comes to fiction, shouldn’t we all be asking more of ourselves?

I have to stop and make a distinction here. Sometimes, it’s okay to toss in a cliché in dialogue. Characters have to talk like real people, and having a guy SAY he woke up “sick as dog” may not be the most sparkling dialogue, but it has a place, if you’re trying to show the character isn’t the…pardon me…sharpest knife in the drawer. But in narrative, I can’t give writers a pass for stuff like “He was ready to take the plunge.”

I’m going to finish reading the book because the plot is tight and I like the anti-hero protag. But I wish this writer had worked just a little harder on the small potatoes. (cliché!) It’s not his first book and it won’t be his last, because he’s talented. Which is why I am asking for more from him.

Being original is maybe the hardest thing we have to do in writing. Keeping all the plates spinning in the air is hard — plot, voice, character, dialogue, pacing, subplots, secondary characters, sense of place, description. This is why using metaphors and similes is darn difficult. All the good ones have been taken already!

  • “The pain just increases like a violinist going up the E string. You think it can’t get any higher and it does–the pain’s like that, it rises and rises…” — John LeCarre.
  • “His smile was as stiff as a frozen fish.” — Raymond Chandler
  • “Sit down, Montag. Watch. Delicately, like the petals of a flower. Light the first page, light the second page. Each becomes a black butterfly. Beautiful, eh?” — Ray Bradbury.

The good ones aren’t all taken, not really. You have good metaphors and similes in you that not one other soul on earth can imagine. When you write, don’t settle for the dust on top. Dig deep to find what is unique in the way you see the world

But creating effective metaphors and similes is a topic for another day. I was going to write about that today but this post ran long. So let’s start with the easy stuff. For now, just go back into your work and find your little sins. Kill your not-so-darling cliches.

Get back in the game, crime dogs. Don’t leave anything on the field. Because there’s no tomorrow. Actually, for us writers there is, thank God. But don’t tell Tony Romo that.

Three Easy Fixes for Common Craft Problems

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Photo credit: Public domain

by Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

Author and professor William Kittredge once told me good writing should be like water—invisible. It should flow so smoothly that a reader becomes engaged in the story and forgets that they are reading.

Minor details can disrupt that flow. These small craft issues aren’t usually fatal, but they’re annoying to readers.

Often, the problems are unconscious habits the writer isn’t even aware of. The same habits tend to pop up all the way through a manuscript.

Fortunately, once the writer becomes aware of them, they’re easy fixes.

Today, let’s discuss three issues I run across frequently as a freelance editor.

  1. Attributions – Starting a scene or chapter with dialogue can work well to pull the reader into the story quickly. But often writers neglect to indicate who’s speaking until several lines (or longer) into the paragraph.

“The heist is in three weeks. We need to hack into their computer for the guard schedule, confirm the inventory, and decide which crates to take. The truck has to be rented using a fake ID. But that requires a commercial driver’s license. We also need someone who can operate a forklift,” John said to his teammates, Paul, George, and Ringo, who were gathered around the table.

 

If you begin with dialogue, place the attribution at or near the beginning of the passage. The reader shouldn’t have to wait a half page to find out who’s talking.

Attributions are especially important in scenes with multiple characters. Don’t make the reader guess which character is talking.

Said or asked are quick efficient tags that don’t draw attention to themselves. An action tag also works well to identify the speaker.

But don’t overdo it—use either a dialogue tag or an action tag, but not both.  

“I don’t like this one bit,” George said and shifted in his chair. “A commercial license is harder to fake.”

John stretched his arms over his head and said. “Well, figure it out because that’s how it’s going to be.”

“I can drive a forklift,” Ringo said.

Paul snorted. “You ran it into a wall last time.”

 

  1. Sentence chronology – By chronology, I’m referring to actions that don’t flow in a natural order.

The following example is understandable but far from clear. It requires the reader to jump back and forth in time to follow what’s happening.

Breathless and worried that something weird was going on, Joan flopped in a chair, weary from having climbed three flights of stairs after showing her ID to the security guard when she entered the office building. He had stared at her strangely.

She had asked, “Don’t you recognize my face by now? I’m here every day.”

Because the actions are out of chronological order, the reader must pause to mentally rearrange what happened and when it happened. For a second or two, the reader is distracted and pulled out of the story.

Revision with actions in order:

Joan entered the office building and started to pass the security desk.

“Wait.” The guard rose and blocked her way. “I need to see your ID, please.”

“Don’t you know me by now? I’m here every day.”

He stared at her, one eye squinted, hand extended.

She gave him her badge, but he barely glanced at it before giving it back.

Unsettled, Joan climbed three flights of stairs, growing more breathless with each step. In her cubicle, she flopped into a chair and gasped for air. Did the guard really not recognize her or was something weird going on?

 

  1. Summarize or dramatize.

Years ago in my critique group, a friend was writing her family’s history. She did extensive genealogical research that was interesting but not compelling.

One day, she read an excerpt to us:

My father was buried near the airport where he had crashed the plane.

That was it. No details.

We stared at her open-mouthed. “What crash? When? How?”

“Oh, he didn’t die then. He was on a test flight after an overhaul and a cable pulled loose. The plane went down but he walked away. He died years later from cancer. The cemetery just happened to be near the airport.”

She’d left out the meat of the story by summarizing two major life events into a single sentence.

We all laughed about that bare-bones summation. When she returned with a revision a few weeks later, she had dramatized those incidents into full-fledged scenes.

Recently I read a manuscript about a couple whose 15-year-old daughter has disappeared. The passage is about 20 pages long and I’ve summarized it here:

For years, Marsha and Phil have clashed about how to handle their daughter, who displays peculiar behavior. The girl has run away in the past. But this time, she’s been gone for weeks. They put up posters, contact police, register her with Missing and Exploited Children, etc. Months pass with each parent blaming the other for the daughter’s disappearance. The strain on their marriage becomes unbearable. Then…

When Phil told Marsha that he was moving out, she was relieved.

That’s all the author wrote. She summed up a huge turning point in one declarative sentence.

She had included more details about photocopying posters and the places where they nailed them up than about this sea change in their relationship.

Photo credit: public domain

Writers frequently describe day-to-day minutiae because they believe activities like tooth brushing and making toast bring the character to life. But too many insignificant details are boring. Elmore Leonard’s wise advice is to leave out the parts readers skip over.

The opposite problem is too little detail, like the plane crash example above.

Writers often rush through critical events that radically change the story’s direction.

As we review our stories, we need to identify important events or revelations.  

Dramatize those in scenes.

 We also need to identify unimportant events that fill pages but are only incidental to the story.

 Summarize those.

Summaries work well as transitions to move the story forward to the next turning point. Instead of a blow-by-blow explanation of what happens in the meantime, try summarizing it.

Marsha and Phil spent the next three months searching fruitlessly, making follow-up calls to numerous authorities, and nailing up hundreds of posters around town. They alternated between noisy arguments and silent recriminations. At night, Marsha paced the bedroom while Phil paced downstairs.

One April morning, Phil appeared in the bathroom doorway as Marsha was brushing her teeth.

“I’m moving out,” he said then walked back to the bedroom.

Toothpaste drooled from Marsha’s mouth as she stood frozen and numb, staring at the water-spotted mirror.

A few moments later, Phil reappeared in the reflection, suitcase in hand. “On my way out, I’ll put bread in the toaster for your breakfast.”

Footsteps thudded down the stairs, followed by a brief clattering of dishes. The kitchen door opened then closed.

Marsha was startled to realize her first conscious thought was, Thank God!  

 As you rewrite, keep an eye out for misplaced attributions; sentences that are not in chronological order; scenes that are summarized but should be dramatized, and overwritten scenes that can be reduced to summaries.

These small but significant differences make your writing flow like clear water.

~~~

TKZers: What small, annoying details irritate you when you read? What bothersome, unconscious habits pop up in your own writing?

~~~

Cover by Brian Hoffman

 

Clear waters turn murky when a greedy billionaire covets a cherry orchard on pristine Flathead Lake. Can investigator Tawny Lindholm and attorney Tillman Rosenbaum save the orchard owner after he’s accused of arson and murder?

Debbie Burke’s latest thriller Fruit of the Poisonous Tree is FREE on Kindle Unlimited.

Link

It’s Still and Always Will Be About the Book

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

“The beautiful part of writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.” – Robert Cormier

***

So there were these two authors back in the 1990s. The thriller market was exploding. An unpublished writer named Bell was studying the business and found stories about these authors. He decided to keep an eye on their moves. Maybe he could find out how to be a success at this game.

But the two writers did not experience the success they were looking for.

One of them spent a big bundle of his own money to jump start sales. But they didn’t jump. Reviews were tepid. His publisher let him go. Lesson learned: Gobs of promotion money wasn’t the magic key.

The other writer undertook a mammoth, self-planned tour of bookstores, with his car loaded with books. By this time young Bell had a couple of books out and signings set up with some stores close to home. At one store he found several of the energetic author’s books on the shelf. So he asked the manager how they were selling.

“Meh,” he said.

Lesson learned: A) human energy poured into hand selling is not the magic key; and B) “Meh” is not the response you want to hear.

The biggest takeaway should come as no surprise: Word-of-mouth is always the most important driver of success in the book business. Yes, even today, in the era (or should I say final day) of TikTok, it’s the book itself and how it lands with readers that is the key, magic notwithstanding.

A recent article in Jane Friedman’s Hot Sheet (subscription required) discussed the challenge of navigating book promotion in the “influencer age”:

Media fragmentation and the waning effects of the book review have entirely changed publicity. In its coverage of 25 Years of Changes to Book Publicity, Publishers Weekly wrote that, “For most of publishing history, there was one dominant mode of literary publicity: the book review.” For years now, book review outlets have disappeared, and the remaining professional reviews have declined in importance. In fact, a reporter for the New York Times has stated that a review in their pages doesn’t reliably sell copies. (One exception remains children’s books, which continue to rely on reviews.)

The challenge is particularly acute with fiction:

Although every publicity campaign is different, says Brittani Hilles, co-founder of Lavender Public Relations, “Generally, with nonfiction, you can bring media folks into the fold with the topic alone, while with fiction it often comes down to having media contacts trust your taste enough to dive into the read.”

There are some things that never change:

  • Your mom’s Wi-Fi password. She’s had it since 2010 and refuses to change it, even if the neighbors are stealing it.
  • That one coworker who “forgets” their wallet at lunch. They’ve been “forgetting” for years, but somehow always remember dessert.
  • The one sock that goes missing in the laundry, a universal mystery that not even quantum physics can explain.
  • The speed of the checkout line you choose. No matter what, it’s always the slowest.
  • The way your pet acts like it’s never eaten before. Despite being fed at the same time every single day, they’re convinced they’re moments from starvation.

And for books, as Celina Spiegel, co-CEO of Spiegel & Grau, explains, “The book has to be a book that people actually want to read. And no one can make someone like a book.”

So yes, market away to the best of your cost and ability and ROI. Even if you hate it. But most of all, every day, work on getting better at your craft. Surgeons do. Plumbers do. Bomb defusers most certainly do. Why should writers think they’re exempt?

Can you think of a reason?

Looking Out My Window

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Wearing sensible shoes and a dress with the hem only a few inches above the floor, stuffy old Mrs. Murphy stepped from behind her desk and scanned the room full of bored high school juniors. I figured she couldn’t see me, because my buddy Gary Selby and I practiced the now lost art of Classroom Invisibility.

We developed that carefully honed skill by sitting still as posts in our fifth grade math class seven years earlier, and wishing ourselves invisible for an hour a day, every day, in the hope that Miss Exum wouldn’t call on us to work a New Math problem on the blackboard. After the authorities abandoned arithmetic the year before, I was a lost soul wondering exactly how letters and symbols forced themselves into simple and understandable numbers and fractions.

Each time Miss Exum called our fellow inmates to the board for their fair share of torture, Gary and I remained perfectly still and willed ourselves to blend into the back of the room. We became one with the scarred, wooden desks so old they had inkwell holes in the upper right-hand corner of the writing surface.

In fact, at the end of that year when we rose to leave math class on the last day of school, Miss Exum was shocked to see that the desks had been occupied at all.

This camouflage worked just as well years later in English class, and Miss Murphy’s eyes skipped across the room. “Now that we’ve completed this section on Emily Bronte, your assignment for the weekend is a five-page report on the topic assigned specifically for each of you. Write these down please as I read the titles. Carolyn Anderson, your paper is entitled, A Discussion of the Victorian Themes in Jayne Eyre.”

Since my name was spelled and pronounced differently than Carolyn, and I had no idea what she was talking about, I drifted off into anticipation of a squirrel hunt I’d been promised for the next day. As imaginary bushytails scampered through my empty head, Miss Murphy went through her alphabetical list of tortures until she finally came to the last two.

“Gary Selby. Social Class Separation in Wuthering Heights.”

He groaned beside me. “I only read the comic book version.”

She frowned at the two empty desks in the back and finally located him. “Selby, have you been here all this period?”

“All semester.”

“You’re out of order on my rolls.”

“Wish I could help.”

She glowered in our general direction. “That just added a page to your report, mister.”

I grinned. “Smooth move, Ex Lax.”

She heard me and checked her class roll again. “Humm. Wortham.”

We made eye contact for the first time that year. “Yes ma’am.”

“I don’t recognize you.”

“It’s me. Five foot two. Brown hair and eyes.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell. Maybe you should do something to make yourself distinctive.”

“I’ll grow a handlebar mustache.”

“That would work.”

I went to work on it as she considered her notes. “Your paper will be titled, The Significance of Windows in Wuthering Heights. All right class, I’ll need those on my desk when you come into class on Monday.”

The bell rang and we disappeared like puffs of smoke.

I went hunting the next morning with the Old Man and finished Saturday off by hanging out with my cousin. Sunday arrived and I squirmed beside my grandmother on a hard church pew, vaguely remembering I had something else to do.

It was about six that evening and our black and white TV was tuned to reruns of Disney’s Wonderful World of Color when I remembered I had a paper due. I found the scrap I’d scribbled on and panicked at the title.

There were windows in Wuthering Heights???

I dug out my copy from underneath a pile of Louis L’Amour and Mickey Spillane paperbacks and flipped through the chapters. Yep, the author talked incessantly about windows.

I glanced out the similar opening in my bedroom and had an idea. I wrote, “Wuthering Heights was a good book. The windows in Wuthering Heights looked outside at the sky and moors that are big fields of grass that are not like the grass in the yards we have on my street….”

It drifted on from there and writing as large as possible, sometimes only five words to a sentence, I scratched out the assignment. Mom kept that paper for years, (along with the next year’s particularly well-written ten-page research project entitled, Voodooism), but it somehow vanished through the years.

We know today that windows in Emily Bronte’s work represent the barriers in that society, and I can go on about trapped emotions, Catherine’s memories, good and evil, life and death, and how Heathcliff symbolically let Catherine’s spirit inside by opening a window, but I wonder if Emily had all that in mind as she penned the manuscript.

I’ve always maintained she just wanted to write an entertaining story about her world. What do you think?

Like Miss Emily, tell your story and let the academics hash it out later.

 

Reader Friday-Let’s Go to the Movies…Again!

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My last post of 2024 was a fun discussion of favorite movie lines.

Today, let’s flip that and share the Worst Movie Lines Evah! The problem with this flip is that if a movie is bad, bad, bad, we tend to let it slip out of our memory banks. And often it’s the dialogue that makes the movie forgettable so we may have, well, forgotten those lines.

But there’s one that sticks out to me, and it’s been mentioned before over the decades.

Jenny, in Love Story: Love means never having to say you’re sorry…

Really? Love means always having to say you’re sorry…even when you’re not!  🙂

Now it’s your turn, TKZers…and if you have trouble remembering those forgettable lines, just google “worst movie lines”. I did!

 

What Makes a Book Good?

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What Makes a Book Good?
Terry Odell

woman in front of library shelves reading a book.

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

It’s done. But not really. Yes, I reached “the end” of the manuscript, which is a major part of the writing process. I wrapped it up at around 76,500 words.

Now what? I have 16 days before I have to send it to my editor. I print it in my ‘fool the eye’ (and save paper) format. Different font, single-spaced, two columns, print on both sides of the paper. I also have my board of sticky notes to go through.

lined paper with blue writingAnd I really created extra work for myself this time around, because I didn’t write chapter summaries and time stamps as I finished each chapter. My bad. So, as I’m reading and marking up my printouts—and adding more sticky notes as I run across things that need elaboration or deleting—I’m also writing my chapter summaries. Longhand. I hope I can read them when the time comes!

But getting ready to deliver the best manuscript I can to my editor always makes me wonder if it will be good enough. Will she send it back after three chapters and say it’s not going to work? Or will she say it’ll work if you change your characters, move the setting, cut this thread, add another one. All of which made me think about what makes a book good. Eventually, it’s in the hands, eyes, or ears of the reader. Which then led me to thinking about a recent read. I’m not mentioning title or author, or the overall story, because I don’t think it’s fair to the author, and that’s not the point of this post.

I belong to a neighborhood book club. To pick what we read, each month, someone suggests about 4 books, we vote, and majority rules. The vast majority of the selections are not what I’d choose on my own, but I have found some books I’m glad I read. A couple, I’ve even bought to add to my bookshelves. (Mostly, I get the books from the library—yay libraries—because I don’t like spending money on something I’m not likely to keep.)

Usually, the books would be categorized as literary, women’s fiction, or—who knew this was a genre classification?—book club books.

This month’s read had me befuddled. It was classified as a mystery/thriller/crime novel in reviews, so I thought I’d like it. It came in at almost 500 pages, and at least 300 of them were superfluous. I finished it, because I kept waiting for it to live up to the bazillion accolades and awards from sites like the New York Times, Time Magazine, New York Public Library, Washinton Post, Boston Globe, NPR … the list goes on.

I went to Amazon. The book ranks in the top 25 in the overall Amazon store. Not too shabby. I scrolled down to see what readers thought. What I generally do when I look at reader reviews is zero in on the 3 stars and under to see what people didn’t like about the book. For this book, the feedback from those matched my thoughts perfectly.

I’ve already returned the book to the library, so I can’t go back and count the POV characters, but I’d estimate at least 10. If not that many, it sure felt like it. There was one I sort of liked. The others weren’t worth the ink on the page as far as I was concerned. Nothing to like about any of them.

Then there was the overall structure. Some POVs were written in 1st person, others in 3rd. I don’t think there was a JSB ‘mirror moment’ for any of them. If so, it was buried so deeply that I never noticed.

Chronology? The book covered several decades in time. The author had a list of the decades/years as chapter headers, and the “now” for that chapter was in bold. (I confess, it took me a while to figure that out, and even if I had, my brain couldn’t put things in chronological order to keep track of the story. I’m a linear writer and reader.) If you could keep things straight and remember them, you could follow character arcs, but I don’t want to work that hard when I’m reading fiction. Or take notes.

Overall, I got to the end—which wrapped things up, but seemed silly and contrived. Book club meets next week, and I’ll be curious to see whether anyone else was bothered by the same things I was. The writing was fine. The overall story, had it been written in a more linear fashion, with fewer POV characters (and pages!), was fine. But the book, to me, was anything but fine.

Which, in the end, reminds me that not everyone likes every book, and once mine is the best it can be, I should let it go and move on.

What about you, TKXers. What turns you off in a book that others say is fantastic?

New! Find me at Substack with Writings and Wanderings

Double Intrigue
When your dream assignment turns into more than you bargained for
Cover of Double Intrigue, an International Romantic Suspense by Terry Odell Shalah Kennedy has dreams of becoming a senior travel advisor—one who actually gets to travel. Her big break comes when the agency’s “Golden Girl” is hospitalized and Shalah is sent on a Danube River cruise in her place. She’s the only advisor in the agency with a knowledge of photography, and she’s determined to get stunning images for the agency’s website.
Aleksy Jakes wants out. He’s been working for an unscrupulous taskmaster in Prague, and he’s had enough. When he spots one of his coworkers in a Prague hotel restaurant, he’s shocked to discover she’s not who he thought she was.
As Shalah and Aleksy cruise along the Danube, the simple excursion soon becomes an adventure neither of them imagined.

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.”