Avoiding 5 Writing "Mistakes"

I recently finished editing New Bohemia: Just One Night and am waiting to get it back from the first beta reader. Waiting for those comments is always nerve wracking. Instead of obsessing, I thought I'd share some editing tips I've learned from my "mistakes" along the way. The list below contains some of the things I check my work for before I end the first stage of editing.

1. Don't have disembodied body parts.

I owe my education on this one to Celina Summers, Head Muse at Musa Publishing. It was something that I'd never considered before she pointed it out. Now I can't ignore when it happens. I tend to make this "mistake" when I'm trying to vary sentence structure and not constantly start the sentences with a pronoun or proper noun.

What do I mean by disembodied body parts? When there's no person attribution and the writer uses only the unattributed body part to function as the sentence's subject. 

So, the sentence, "Fingernails scraped across the chalkboard" falls into this category. Really, the nails did it by themselves? They weren't attached to fingers and those fingers weren't attached to a hand? Unless, you're reading a zombie novel and the parts really can act without being attached to someone, it's probably better to write "Her fingernails scraped across the chalkboard." 

2. Watch out for unintentional distancing in the narrative.

My first editor at Musa, Jennifer Ayers, pointed this out to me. It was one of those face-meet-palm moments because it's brilliantly simple once you know what you're looking for.

One of the main benefits of a third person point of view (POV) is it creates a connection between the reader and the character. When we create distance between the reader and the character we run the risk of losing the reader's interest and having her put the book down. Unintentional distancing is a type of POV violation or redundancy.

You create distance with a sentence like: "Bob felt the coarse texture of the rough spun wool under his fingers."

Why? Because we're already in Bob's POV. So telling me that "Bob felt" takes me a step back. A "better" sentence might be "The coarse texture of the rough spun wool abraded his fingers." Why do I think that's better? The precatory language "Bob felt" is gone. Also, the second sentence is more interesting because it tells me more about Bob and the feel of the material.

3. Avoid talking heads.

There are days I wonder if I should have been a screenwriter. My first draft of a scene is generally mostly dialog. I don't fill in the character movements or blocking fleshed out. While "talking heads" scenes are fine in a first draft, there needs to be more detail before the first beta reader gets a look. Long stretches of dialog needs to be interrupted by action, even if that action is as simple as standing up,.

4. When you limit weak verbs, characters rarely just "stand up" or "walk."

Speaking of standing up, motion gives you a chance to show character. Whether a character eases down into a seat, perches on the edge or extends his left leg out straight ad stiff when he sits tells a lot about who he is or his emotional state.  There's a difference between a character who "danced" across the street, and another who "lumbered" across it. The words "dance" and "lumber" evoke different mental images. Did you see a female moving for "danced" and a male for "lumbered"? I did.

Verb choices matter.

5. Remember the setting.

I just finished reading 20 storied for Flash Fiction Online's slush pile. At a guess one quarter of those stories suffered from the White Room Syndrome. It is almost never appropriate to ignore the setting. It is almost never appropriate to set a scene in a white painted room with white furniture. Yawn. I've seen a character waking up in a fully white room work once in a story. Once. And that character woke up in a hospital cell in a futuristic Center for Disease Control Center.

Also, keep in mind that POV matters when describing setting. An interior designer will notice more and different details than a 5 year old when looking at the same room. But both will notice and mentally, at least, comment on the space.

I hope this was helpful, or at least interesting. Now I'll go back to waiting. Sigh.

Release Day Contest - Jack Gorman Got Cut By A Girl

Today is the release day for Jack Gorman Got Cut By A Girl. You can find it here on the Musa site, and here on Amazon. I'll update the link for Barnes and Nobles once it goes live.

When Celina Summers gave us the task of writing a story about a drunk who gets cut by a girl, and a deadline for submission, the question became "what to write?" As I've said in other posts, the only limitations on the story were that Jack must be cut by a girl, could not get laid, and could not be killed (although one story does stretch this restriction). I figured if one girl with a sword was Jack's nightmare, a bunch of chicks in chainmail with very large swords would be his seventh level of hell. My idea was a hapless Jack would stumble into an all female Society for Creative Anachronisms ("SCA") group while they were practicing. I even had the first few lines.

This was not the story I wrote.

Why?

As I thought it through, there wasn't any real "there" there. The storyline would be predictable and staid. So, that idea was out. But the initial kernel - Jack having to deal with a trained women warrior stuck. If I couldn't drop him into an SCA meeting, where else could I dump him with a lot of women who just happened to have swords (or daggers, knifes, you get the point)? None of the restrictions said I had to stay contemporary?

What about a post-apocalyptic Earth where the men were mostly wiped out? A start. How about we take this off world too? Better? An off-world matriarchal society where Jack should be prized for his maleness and still can't cut a break or get laid? Ohh, I liked that.

I needed magic. After all, how was Jack going to get to this world and then get out to the next story since I wouldn't know where my story fit in the anthology until after it was written? The post-apocalyptic world crept back in and mixed with Stonehenge. Magic became a fusion of technology, long forgotten by most, and traditional magic. So my wizard has electric lights but also alchemical paraphernalia. She also became a minor antagonist and the Raven's, main character's, relationship character. Jack's own inept attempts to get himself home and interact in this brave new world made him the primary antagonist.

The result was Through the Stone Circle, and I hope you enjoy it.

Now for the reason you've scrolled down, the Contest.

CONTEST:

In honor of Jack's and his inherent talent to behave badly, I want your best "boys behaving badly" or drunken story. Leave them in the comments. The funniest, in my opinion, will win a copy of Jack Gorman Got Cut By A Girl and Shots at Redemption. The contest will remain open until July 28th and I'll announce the winner on this site on July 30.


Excerpt - Jack Gorman Got Cut By A Girl:

Two days later, the Sheriff’s Deputy came by our house. He is a big man, not easily flustered.

“I’ve got a few questions about the report you sent in,” he said, holding up a printout of my email.

“Yes sir,” I said, all cooperation, and launched into a recount of my misadventure. I had barely got to the part where I encountered the unfriendly drunk when he stopped me with a wave of his hand.

“Wait, wait, wait,” he said, shaking his head. “You mean to say this happened here?”

“Uh, yes?”

“And… it was you with the sword?”

“Yes…”

The deputy slapped the email printout against his thigh in frustration. Shaking his head, he said: “That Jack Gorman, I’m just sick of him. He came to me, you know, saying he was attacked by a gay guy with a sword outside the Waterwheel!”

I remained silent. The Waterwheel is a bar almost a mile away. And I am most definitely not a guy.

My mother, who had been listening from the front door, came out and stood behind me. “Um, no,” she said. “It happened here, on our front porch. I heard it.”

“Yeah, yeah, I believe you,” said the deputy, rubbing his face. “Look, clearly you did nothing wrong, but the fact that he filed a report—even if it’s a false one—means I may have to confiscate that sword as evidence. You’ll get it back,” he assured me, “don’t worry.”

“That’s okay,” I said, grinning. “I have two more as back up!”

Ultimately, even though my sword was confiscated, I had the last laugh. Walking the dog a few days later I was stopped by my neighbor and asked what the commotion was last Saturday night. I told them.

“Aw man, Gorman messed up bad.” he said. “He’s been going around bragging about how he got attacked by a man with a sword. I’ll never let him hear the end of this: he got cut by a girl!”

What I didn’t tell him, what got left out of the email and my official statement, is what I did after I wrote that original report.

Before I went to sleep that night (and it was a difficult thing to do), I cast a little spell. I had never tried to cast a spell before. I have a friend who is a witch and she tells me I am probably a witch too, just untrained.

So that night I cast a spell. A spell to make sure that if this Jack Gorman was ever going to cause trouble again, anywhere, any time, there would be a girl with a sword (or something similar) to stop him. I also imagined him going away—preferably far away. I imagined him, very clearly, walking away down a dark and deserted road, toward a door made of light, and a sound like a sword being wiped clean with a cloth.

Shing.

It probably won’t work, I thought as I went to sleep. But one can hope, right?

Braiding Stories

One of this Friday's releases from Musa Publishing, Jack Gorman Got Cut By A Girl, is a "braided" anthology. Writing one poses its own special challenges and benefits. Before we go too far, let's pause for my definition: a "braided" antholofy is a group of interlocking stories with either a common event or character. Rashomon is a braided story. In Rashomon, four characters tell their version of a rape and murder. The stories are knit together by this common event.

In this case, the anthology title, Jack Gorman Got Cut By A Girl, tells you the common threads: Jack, and he's cut by a female in every story. With those very loose guidelines, and two additonal ones (Jack could not get laid, or be killed), the six writers went to work. Months later, Celina Summers, our editor and head Muse, sent us the first draft of the anthology. Celina had the unenvyable task of taking six very different visions (three contemporary stories with various levels of magic, a steam punk story, am alternate world fantasy story and a science fiction story), and come up with a plausable storyline. She is so amazing that she made this daunting task seem easy.

The next hurdle was making the "Jack" character consistent across six stories. This took several Skype chats.

But what did we do?

First, there were the small tweaks. Variations in Jack's physical description were voted on and standardized (subject to point of view issues)- an easy fix.  We also needed to make location or event references consistent. As an example, Heidi Berthiaume's story (Kzrma Coyotes), the second in the anthology, had Jack staggering out of a bar. In this round of edits, we substituted the name of the bar she'd used for the one in Goldeen Ogawa's story. We decided the type of beer Jack would buy. Several of the stories were adjusted for this. If Jack carried an item out of a story, that item had to be dealt with in the next or, if an item was needed in a story, we had to show the reader how Jack acquired the item in a previous story. Some of these tweaks were minor, some required new sections to ensure internal consistancy.

We also had to have the same method of moving Jack in to and out of the stories. This discussion required some help from Celina. Once we understood her rational for the story progression and vision of what was happening, this detail fell into place. Again, we all needed to add to our stories to incorporate this common element.

What I had the most fun doing, however, was standardizing Jack's many idiosyncrasies. We created a list of Jackisms (some of the sayings I've been Tweeting for the last week), and then needed to decide if our Jack would really say that. There was a lively discussion about whether Jack would say "piss" or "whiz." (FYI - We went with "piss.")  The merits of "silly boy" versus "sissy boy," and keeping the "g" in words ending with '-ing" were discussed.

In three stories, Jack quoted from movies or television shows. This quirk we wanted to keep, but there was a hitch. Sometimes Jack quoted the movie correctly, or mostly so - "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore" - and sometimes he butchered the quote - “Ooh, watch out, Toto. I think we’re in Narnia.” We decided that having Jack  misquote was funnier. So now, Jack references the "Ruby City" instead of the "Emerald City." Of course, once we made these decisions, some more rewriting was in order.

Small details like which profanity Jack would use bring the stories to life, but they also make the six very different tales a complete whole. This braided anthology borders on collaboration. The interweaving of the story elements made Jack Gorman a lot more work, but a lot stronger. And from a personal prospective more fun.  

I would definately participate in another braided anthology. If I could convince Celina to edit it, or any of my co-authors on Jack Gorman to write again, I'd be there before the sign-up sheet was posted.  I hope you enjoy reading about Jack's exploits as much as we did writing about them.

Blurb:

Jack Gorman would rather spend his time swilling brewskies, scoring with the babes, and watching football. Instead, he's been cursed by sword-bearing girl he harassed while on a bender.

Now, karma is dragging Jack's sorry ass across time, space, and alternate histories. The curse can be broken if Jack manages to learn his lesson, but Jack is nothing if not consistent. From small California towns to a steampunk past, a magical future, and a space odyssey of narcissistic proportions, Jack flirts and drinks his way across reality only to discover that girls with blades are everywhere.

Will Jack ever break the curse? Or is he doomed to an eternity of getting cut by girls? Regardless, Jack still can't get a break. As he learns the hard way, karma kicks ass in all timelines.

Jack Gorman Got Cut By A Girl

Strike While The Iron Is Hot - The Jack Gorman Project

The Jack Gorman Project, an anthology coming from Musa Publishing in July, 2012, was born out of a Dog End dinner at the World Fantasy Conference in October, 2011. For those of you who haven't attended a large conference, the Dog End Party is what happens the night the conference officially closes, and while most attendees are still around. At World Fantasy this includes parties to consume the last of the Hospitality Suite's, and anyone else's, for that matter, food and drink so it doesn't get thrown out or dragged back home.

So, I went to dinner with 14 women, some of which I knew and some I met as others invited them, that night. Critical to this story is Celina Summers, the chief editor and head goddess at Musa was part of the group.

During dinner, Goldeen Owgawa told an amazingly funny story. You'll have to read the anthology (and check my updates here on the blog) to find out more about that story. But it probably took a good 15 minutes before we stopped laughing. When Celina could finally draw a breath said she hadn't laughed that hard in a while, and the story really should be published. A moment later, she said, "Oh the heck with it. I'm a publisher. I'm going to publish it. We're going to do an anthology."

The Jack Gorman Project was born.

Everyone at the table was invited to participate. Not submit. But actually participate in a published anthology.

Celina agreed to be the editor. So, the head of a new publishing house had not just offered to publish us, but also to edit us to her standards. Talk about an amazing opportunity. She then gave us a deadline for submissions.

I struggled with my day job, family and other writing commitments and got a story, Through The Stone Circle, submitted.
What surprises me is not that the opportunity arose, but that of the 12 writers (one of the women was an editor) at the dinner only six of us submitted.

Six.

Six people (50%) turned away from a guaranteed writing contract.

I'm not telling you this story to criticize the women who didn't submit. I understand that life intervenes, and often yanks us to where it wants us to be rather than where we planned. After all, that's what life's all about. I'm in the middle of one of those life yanks now. But I digress . . .

I'm telling you this story because writing professionally is often about taking advantages of opportunities that "fall" into your lap or "striking while the iron is hot" to borrow an old phrase. I quoted "fall" because often those opportunities exist because of steps you've taken in advance. For me, those steps included attending the Superstars Writing Seminar, meeting Colette Vernon there, staying in touch with her through the SWS Facebook page and Fictorians, attending World Fantasy and rooming with Colette. She, as I've mentioned before, introduced me to Celina at World Fantasy.

Whether in writing or in any other aspect of your life, when at all humanly possible take advantage of the opportunities that come knocking. You never know where they might lead.

And stay tuned for more about The Jack Gormon Project coming from Musa Publishing on July 20, 2012.

Guest Post - Celina Summers - Different Publishing Routes

As few as five years ago there was only one route to fiction novel publication- traditional publishing. Now writers are presented a host of publishing options. I've been lucky enough to have stories under contract with Musa Publishing http://www.musapublishing.com. I asked Celina Summers, one of Musa's founders and chief editor (i.e. all around Musa Goddess) what she thought the differences, and pros and cons between traditional publishing, e-publishing and self-publishing Here's what she said:

It's a great thing to be able to tell your family and friends that you're published. After all, you've achieved a lifetime goal. Millions of people have written stories or novels without any of them seeing the light of day. But in the last couple of decades, the publishing industry has changed significantly. With the onset of digital publishing, self-publishing—once an outlet only the financially well-endowed could consider—took off. According to The Bookseller (http://www.thebookseller.com/news/publishing-proliferates-thanks-pod-and-digital.html): Nielsen 2010 book output figures show that 151,969 new titles were published in 2010, a leap of 14% on the output number given this time last year. The figure is derived from the number of ISBNs Nielsen issues over the year. However, the 2009 figure, of 133,000, has since been increased to 157,039 because of the late addition of digital titles in that year, a factor that may also further increase the 2010 figure. It means that year-on-year book production fell 3.2%, though the trend shows that output has soared: since 2008 it is up 13%, and since 2001, the market has risen by close to 40%.


Once upon a time, there was one way to get published. You wrote your novel, typed it up, sent it to an agent, the agent loved it and submitted it to a traditional print publisher, who bought it and then published it. But now, things are a lot more complicated. E-publishing has taken off, with thousands of young publishing houses releasing digital-only content. At the same time, self-publishing has exploded, with authors publishing their own books directly to the reader. And of course, lurking around the sewers of the industry, vanity presses are always eager to prey upon the uninformed author.

But these four terms are not synonymous. There's a lot of difference between traditional publishing, electronic publishing, and self-publishing. (And vanity publishing is, at its heart, a scam) Where this becomes a problem is when the writer announces "I'm published!" but doesn't distinguish between the different types of publishing. Because unless your self-published book sells millions of copies, chances are that an agent or book industry exec isn't going to be interested in that publishing credit—or a bookstore. Regardless of what folks might think, there is a big difference between landing a multiple book deal with Random House and self-publishing a book through Lulu. So in order to avoid trouble down the line, it's important for an author to self-represent correctly—and, more importantly, to use the different avenues in publishing wisely, to build a foundation for a writing career.

So, let's take a look at each term separately.

Traditional Publishing—Print. To most writers, this means New York. These are books that are represented by agents (most likely) and subsequently published by a major house—known as the Big Six—and any of their imprints. These books are released in paperback. Some come out in hardback. These books (usually) are where the legitimate bestseller lists originate. The author receives an advance for her book(s), and her titles are found in brick and mortar bookstores. In the past couple of years, the Big Six have jumped on board and begun to digitally publish their titles—at much higher prices and a much smaller royalty rate.

Let me interject that there are hundreds of legitimate, reputable, outstanding small presses out there—independent publishers that have nothing to do with New York or the Big Six. Indie presses are a fantastic place for a young writer to start out, especially genre writers. I'm going to put indie publishers under the traditional publisher title because they, too, publish primarily in print.

E-publishing—These publishing houses are digital first. They publish e-books primarily, although some are moving into POD(print on demand) availability for their books. An e-publisher is a genuine small house, following the same submissions, acquisitions, and editing processes as traditional publishing. Five years ago, e-publishing wasn't considered a legitimate publishing credit by agents and New York publishers. That mindset is changing as the popularity of digital books increases.

Self-publishing—This is when a writer circumvents the publishing industry and releases his work himself. That also means the writer is completely responsible for making sure the book goes through all the proper processes—editing, typesetting, cover art, formatting, uploading, publicity and marketing. Unfortunately many self-published authors don't do this. They release the book and then wait for the millions of dollars to roll in, which, unfortunately, rarely happens. For every self-published author like Amanda Hocking, there are tens of thousands of authors who never sell more than ten copies of their book.

Vanity publishing—Where an author pays to be published. Any time a publisher (or agent) asks for money up front, run away. Run fast. Yog's law: money flows TO the author.

In the past six months, I can't tell you how many people have told me their book was e-published, attempting to hoodwink me into thinking that another publisher had signed their book, put it through the processes, and released the book—only to find out later that in fact, the writer had self-published. (And no, making up a publishing company that only publishes one author's work really doesn't fool a publisher. If you're self-published, just admit it.) Some come to me only when their book didn't make money and they want to try again. Usually, those writers don't know why. I do know why.

You see—there's a reason for the 'gatekeepers' in publishing. The agents, the slushpile readers, the acquisitions assistants all have the same goal in mind: they are looking for publishable books. Books that are strong technically, that are engaging and entertaining. In other words, books that people want to read. When I am reading through submissions, I might ask to see one manuscript out of fifty. That's not because the stories are bad, but because the story is not publishable in its current condition. Occasionally, however, I will be tempted to put more work into a manuscript because of the writer's publishing history—her resume. And this is where the correct publishing types really makes a difference.

In publishing, as in any profession, people need to be accurate and honest about how they present themselves to others. If a writer's book was self-published, it does no good for that writer to claim they were e-published. Sure, the author electronically published his book, but the book never went through any kind of evaluation, most probably wasn't edited (because many self-published authors wish to retain all creative control over their book) and more than likely didn't sell more than a hundred copies. If that book was e-published, to me that means that the author is familiar with the publication process—namely editing. And that right there predisposes me to look upon that submission more favorably, because I know that I won't be having to drag an unwilling writer through the process that will make that particular book better.

And of course, once you start talking traditional publishing, unless your books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies, it doesn't matter very much if you're e-published or self-published or published-by-your-Uncle-Vinnie-in-Des Moines published. To a traditional publisher, it might as well be your first book. However, among the gatekeepers to traditional publishing, e-publishing is no longer considered the red-headed stepchild of publishing. I
asked an agents' panel three years ago if they considered e-publishing a legitimate publishing credit. About 70% said yes.

Since we opened Musa Publishing, agents are now submitting to us.

It makes sense, after all. With e-publishing's higher royalties, lower overhead and international availability thanks to e-tailers like Amazon, authors and agents are intrigued by the possible financial rewards of a popular e-published success. Publishers like Musa Publishing are able to create a high quality product that readers enjoy, at a price readers appreciate. A lot of writers are making the same decision I made too—to begin my writing career in e-publishing. I could make better, immediate money while learning my craft and improving my work.

And the readers are reaping the benefits, as anyone with a fully stocked Nook or Kindle will tell you.

So there are sizable differences in the different types of publishing currently available, and it behooves the author to self-identify correctly. As a writer, it's important to understand the differences—and to use those differences wisely as you plot out your career.