by James Thayer
“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once,” Albert Einstein said. New writers often feel they have to fiddle with time in their fiction. So they hurry time, and pause it, and explain it, rather than let time reel out naturally. As a result, the story ends up having a herky-jerky quality, as if the action were seen under a strobe light.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
Do you know the difference between anxious and eager? They both describe how you might feel while looking forward to something. The main difference between them is the element of fear. If you don’t want that thing to happen, you are anxious about it. If you are looking forward to it, you are eager to have it happen. Even people who aren’t aware of the distinctions between the two words can tell one from another.
Read Moreby Erin Brown
There are many pros and cons to signing with a huge publishing house or a smaller press, the least of which is the size and snazziness of the conference rooms and if you’ll be offered Dunkin Donuts or caviar when you visit your editor (who in their right mind would truly choose caviar over a hot, chocolate-covered bear claw?) But putting these inconsequential issues aside, there are several things to consider when choosing whether to plant your pride and joy with a small or big house.
Read MoreFeaturing Jane Porter
I’m normally a very positive person, but I had a bit of the blues this past weekend, and didn’t understand why until I woke up this morning dreading that it was Monday. Not because it’s Monday, but because I had to write.
Ah, yes. Fear and dread, close companions of the working writer. We fear rejection. We fear failing. We fear the hard work itself.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
When I was in my early twenties, I had gone back to college to study art and was working at a photography gallery as part of a work-study program. My boss was the owner of the gallery, and often seemed worried. I will call him "Mr. Anxiously Concerned."
One day he told me to wrap up a package and mail it, so I collected all the necessary things and set to work. Mr. Concerned approached and watched, his breath linked in some inexplicable way to each movement I made, his sense of well being suspended as I went about wrapping the package in brown paper.
Read Moreby James Thayer
Santa Claus chuckles and the Fairy Godmother’s eyes twinkle, but almost no other characters in fiction should chuckle, twinkle, saunter, or snigger.
Some words are just too much. These words—often verbs—sound like kitchen pots banging together to the reader. They suggest the writer wanted to be writerly—to do a little literary strutting—and so reached for the thesaurus.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
We’ve already examined the mysteries of apostrophe placement, so this is just a little reminder because we have so many holidays coming up that totally confound advertisers.
You’ll see all sorts of interesting apostrophes floating about or missing entirely as 2009 progresses, so let’s examine them one at a time.
Read Moreby Erin Brown
After almost a decade in New York publishing houses, and now as a freelance editor, I keep seeing the same writing, ahem, “issues” cropping up again and again. Now you’re probably thinking, “But I knoooooooooow all of these. Duh.” Well, maybe not “duh” as that saying went out in 1987. However, the fact remains that I see these concerns over and over and over, in manuscript after manuscript, which leads me to believe that these lessons have not been imbedded into every first-time author’s brain. So let’s review so that you can save your revision time and energy for more important things, like fixing “it’s” versus “its.”
Read MoreFeaturing Jane Porter
It’s a new year, and appropriately I’m starting a new book even as I do revisions on a book turned in late December. I’m most excited about the new book because I’m not really writing it yet, just thinking about it a lot, and thinking about what I’m going to write is in so many ways more satisfying than what I’ll actually write when I start the real writing next week.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
Once my youngest son and I were talking, and I suggested that at school, instead of running around pretending on his own during recess, he might try inviting another child to play with him. I made this suggestion believing that connecting more to children at school might help him feel better about going.
He responded: “I . . . don’t do that - that’s not my kind of thing. That’s not what I do.”
Read Moreby Paula Margulies
In “Manhattan,” one of my favorite Woody Allen movies, there’s a wonderful scene at the end of the film where the main character, Isaac, a neurotic, divorced television writer, finds himself at home on the couch, holding a tape recorder. His teenage girlfriend Tracy has left him, he’s blown a relationship with a woman his own age, he’s lost his job and apartment, and he’s discovered that his fears about his health were unfounded.
Read Moreby James Thayer
We have a terrific scene figured out. Lots of action and suspense. We sit at our desks, our hands on the keyboards, and picture the action in our minds—each movement, step by step--and we write it just as we see it. And we end up with: He drew his legs in and rose from the chair, then took several steps to the desk, and then reached out and opened his hand, then put his right hand around the pistol’s grip and closed his fingers. He lifted his arm and brought up the pistol.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
We have to talk about verbs, folks. Those lively words that tell the actions your characters take, like run, jump, kiss, sleep. They have magical properties that allow them with just simple changes to tell the exact time that something was done. Look at the difference, for example, between “He has run around Green Lake before” and “He had run around Green Lake before.” Subtle, but a world of difference.
Read Moreby Erin Brown
Now, is that really too much to ask? A fantastic, unputdownable, stays-with-me-long-after-the-final-page, full of memorable characters, sparkling dialogue, a unique premise, end all/be all novel. Either that or those diamond studs that I’ve been leaving pictures of all over my husband’s desk. Either one will do.
Read MoreFeaturing Jane Porter
Having a book out is huge.
Having a book get turned into a movie is well, nothing short of miraculous.
Not every book gets optioned, and of those that do, very few actually go into production. The fact that Flirting with Forty was published in July ’06, and by July ’08 it was already a film in post-production waiting for its December premiere blows my mind. It all happened so fast that I still find it hard to absorb. But in the two years of activity highlights spring to mind:
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
I was twenty-five years old and had gone back to college to study art, after receiving my first bachelors’ degree in fiction writing. I was insecure about my technical facility for drawing and was in a semi-constant state of trying to prove myself – if not to others, then to myself. Even though I had come to art school to LEARN, I remained anxious about the potential of producing something unimpressive or worse, just plain bad.
Read Moreby Paula Margulies
From the time I was old enough to hold a book in my hands, I’ve been a huge fan of public libraries. Some of my earliest and best memories are of trips with my mother to our local library, where I could pick up to seventeen books at a time (the maximum allowed then) to take home and read. I was seven years old when I got my first library card, and I still remember my initial selections: a couple of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries, a Zane Grey novel (pushed on me by my mom), a collection of Greek mythology, and what was to become one of my all-time favorite books, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.
Read Moreby James Thayer
Shave and a haircut, two bits. This little jingle is the key to ending a scene.
Above all things, the end of a scene should make the reader want to read the next scene. How do we do that? By asking a question at the end of a scene, rather than answering a question. By leaving things unsettled, rather than settled.
Try singing Shave and a haircut, two. . . , leaving off bits. It’s almost impossible. The brain demands that the jingle be finished. The mind wants completion, to go forward to the payoff.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
Enumerated lists that follow colons have some rules you might like to know. First, if you have a list, whether enumerated or in bullets, you must have at least two items. Every 1. must have a 2.; every A. must have a B.; every bullet must have a companion bullet. Next, the first word of every listed item must begin with a capital letter. Also, all the listed items must be in parallel construction—either all complete sentences, similar fragments, or the same parts of speech.
Read Moreby Erin Brown
If you watch the tickers at the bottom of CNN, MSNBC, and FOX and yell at the screen, “It’s ‘Obama campaigns in Canton, Ohio, in front of 30,000’ not ‘Obama campaigns in Canton, Ohio in front of 30,000!!!!’ God, can’t you people hire someone that knows about comma placement? Sheesh!”...you might be an editor.
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