Boring writing

My friend Irene Watson and I would have long conversations about writing and the publishing industry. (She has passed now.) I found one of her posts that I want to pass on to everyone about boring descriptions.

First, (or firstly if you speak British English), whether or not you've taken writing classes at uni, you have some sense of pacing. It happens in everyday conversation, music (tempo), and even how we walk.

In writing pacing is driven by telling and showing. It is demonstrated by the length of the sentences and paragraphs, and even chapter length.

One of the most common edits that I do to an ms is cut the wordiness and make the sentence content straightforward.

Here are a couple of examples:

• Some 20 or 30 feet away... change that to one or the other number of feet and delete "some."
• It was about 9:00 pm...change that to it was 9:00 PM.

You get the picture. Most writers have pet words that get infused into the writing too often. They are vague words that keep the writing from being crisp and fluid.

Every word and every sentence needs to be purposeful. If it doesn't move the story forward, then cut it. The same is true of characters. If they don't serve a purpose to move the story forward, they need to be in some other ms.

Anyway...check out Irene's blog.

http://www.bloggingauthors.com/blogging_authors/2012/7/15/writing-description-without-boring-readers.html

(I'm not sure why that didn't turn into a clickable link. It is worth copying and pasting into your browser. Give it a try.)

Plot/Storyline

Often I use the term, 'storyline,' when referring to mss. The recognized industry term is 'plot.' Plot is more than a beginning, middle and end. It is more than the outline from which the story is built.

Plot is the most important element of fiction writing. The plot has to deliver for the reader to feel satisfied with the story. There are style expectations for each type of plot. The reader expects those elements and it's the writer's job to deliver.

First time writers who haven't studied writing often forget about the reader's expectations and the industry demands while in the midst of the feel-good high of writing. I would submit that there is a bio-chemical/emotional high to writing that is as addicting as the one people who exercise feel.

The point of writing, the craft of it, is the reader and the integrity of the art. Much like photography where anyone can take a snapshot with their phone, that doesn't make it a professional photograph (and don't get me started on photoshopped images).

Just so you know how this all fits together, the second important, nearly equally important, element is character. Characters have to have dimension. In one of the first writing classes I took, one assignment was to categorize a list of characters in a story [we read] as flat or round. The character's action and words (dialogue) fill in the life breath to make them real for the reader. By the way, there needs to be a balance of both types of characters in the story.

If there is no plot, the story is simply a collection of words that recount an event in part or in whole. That is largely why I'm not a huge fan of memoirs. Unless well done, they are [to me] much like reading a history book and it isn't a shared history, so why should I [as the reader] care?

There are lots of books on the subject of plot development, here is one I recently read: 20 Master Plots and how to build them by Ronald B Tobias, published by Writer's Digest Books. If you're looking for writing resources, check out Writer's Digest Books. Most of their books are pretty good. A few, I found to be dry reads. Also, shop around and price compare. I found substancial discounts by doing that. Be warned, though, their book list is like sending a kid to a candy store with $10 in their pocket.

Just to cover the legal requirements, I have not been compensated monetarily or in kind to mention the book, author, or publisher in this post.

O'dark thirty

Translation: It is entirely too early for "them" to be out there on the golf course mowing before 5 AM. Who can possibly love golf enough to welcome the intrusion into their sleep hours? (Not me!) Yesterday morning they were out with gas powered saws trimming the trees at the crack of dawn. Really, guys?

It isn't all that different to get caught up with writing the next Great American Novel and not think about anything else.

Here are some things to think about. If you're going to write a historical novel, study the time period. That means do more research than read other historical novels.

There is something to be said about the maxim, write what you know. Several years ago, someone was writing a novel set in Southern California - my neck of the woods, so to speak. They had never been to America. The story premise was interesting, but it should have been set somewhere the author knew.

One thing about the beach scenes in Kathryn's Beach that strikes universal is the inclusion of the spray and the gritiness of being on the beach. (Go to the video page of http://www.nadinelamanbooks.com/ and watch both videos.)

When we lived in the Midwest, we would watch movies set in the western desert. I always perked up when I saw areas in the Mojave Desert in California, because I spent equal amounts of my childhood in that high desert region. It is much different from the Sonoran Desert of Arizona.

Besides setting, switching to dialects or nationalities requires attention to detail. Consult a local person to read your ms for authenicity. The homeless woman in Kathryn's trilogy speaks with an Appalachian drawl. Did I get it right? It isn't critical because that was her street persona, not the real person she was. But it is believable enough to pass inspection until her real identity is revealed.

Basically, don't get caught up in the rush of writing and forget that someday someone will read it. And if that someone is not your mother, lover, or best friend, they are going to notice things like the moon rising at 2 AM or the slight misspeaks your characters do.

There are thousands of people with laptops ticking out a novel. If you want published, you have to get it right because someone else out there is determined enough to pay attention to the details. The Cactus Rain team notices this stuff.

If you want to get ahead of everyone else, print your ms (yes, on paper) and read it aloud. Yes, ALOUD. You can be sure I will do that to your ms before offering a contract to publish.