Write Your Novel!

Self publishing: where do you begin?

2009-04-23T10:15:00.004+09:30

The process starts with a book that is finished, and edited to perfection.

You're sure of several things:

The research on which the fiction or non-fiction narrative is based is beyond reproach;
The style in which the book is written is appropriate to the material;
The spelling, punctuation and grammar are all spotless;
There's a decent market for this kind of book (doesn't have to vast, just viable);
You're tired of waiting for publishers and agents who're not going to cooperate;
You have the time and energy to learn how to publish and market yourself;
You have a few hundred dollars, minimum, to invest.

If you're certain about each of these points ... it's showtime. But where in the world do you put a toe into the water?

A good place to begin is with the image in your mind's eye. How do you SEE the book? Because every part of the process, from design to printing to marketing, will be your shot to call! You're the publisher now -- as clearly distinct from the writer.

So we'll take a quick look at the job of publishing as a whole, before we look in-depth at the process via which you'll turn your manuscript into a book.

It’s no accident that “coffee table monsters” from the major publishing houses look as if they’ve been designed by a team of computer geeks who also have degrees from a fine art college. The art and craft of the page designer encompasses both of these fields: the team (or individual) responsible for laying out professionally-published books will begin with a concept ... a sketch in coloured pencils or inks ... and then the magic happens in the computer.

Perhaps you can’t expect to be quite up to the task of laying out the Encyclopedia Britannica on the desktop, but most of the techniques are within the reach of self-publishers, and your self-published book need not look plain.

It all begins with a clear idea in your mind: what is the book going to LOOK like? When you're flying solo (not working with a vanity, subsidy or joint venture outfit) no one can decide for you how things are going to appear. People can help with their advice, or provide clipart, photos, fonts and so on, but the bottom line -- the decisions about what goes where, and how big, and what colour -- all this is down to the publisher. And that’s you.

Don’t underestimate the job you’ve taken on. It’s complex, and there’s a learning curve! The trick is to enjoy the process of learning. You’ll find ways to unleash your creative nature which you might not have previously imagined. The craft of laying out a book is just as artistic, and almost as demanding, as the craft of writing and illustrating the book.

In fact, when you’ve decided to be a self-publisher, you’ve made a commitment: you’re about to make yourself a Jill (or Jack) of All-Trades. You must be...

The writer, without whom no book would ever make it into print
The editor, without whom every book will be rough around the edges
The proofreader, without whom every book will be strewn with errors
The illustrator, without whom no book would have pictures; or
The executive in charge of choosing the artwork, which is just as important
The layout designer, without whom every book would look like a manuscript!
The marketing and sales department, without whom all books would be pulped...

The list of jobs the self-publishing writer has taken on is daunting ... but which writer does not relish a challenge? The very act of conceiving of, beginning, and finishing a book is such a challenge, there can be nothing new about our list here. It’s just another group of skills to learn. If you’ve already learned how to structure a novel or nonfiction work, and how to perform the global-edit and copy-edit, to produce a thoroughly professional text worthy of publication, then the rest is one more learning curve to climb.

To master the above suite of skills will take time. When you're ready to publish, however, the hardest jobs are already behind you. If you've developed into a good, solid writer with excellent editing skills, the task of learning book design on the desktop is easy by comparison.

There are rules to learn and follow ... and you'll need the right software. Relax: it's inexpensive these days, and although there's a learning curve, recent software systems are better designed and very intuitive, designed to be user friendly.

Book design -- the rules to learn and stick to -- is the topic of the next post in this series: we're going to go hands on. Be on the mailing list, or subscribe via RSS, and stay up to date!

Last chance to chicken out: be sure!

Still, self-publishing is a huge step, a massive decision to make -- be sure you want to go this way! You’ve tried to make contact with agencies in New York and London, and drawn a blank. You’ve moved heaven and earth, and invested a ridiculous amount of money in mailing out reading copies of your manuscript. Perhaps you got as far as a publisher reading and liking your work, only to have it subsequently trashed by the “reader” to whom it was passed.

The who? After an editor at one of the major publishers has read and liked your (for example) fantasy novel, your manuscript will be passed on to a fantasy-specialist reader, who is an at-home booklover who gets paid by the company to read genre works and tell the publisher if, in his or her estimation, this is a good novel.

Now you get to the subjective part of the process. A fantasy reader who loves Tolkien above all authors may easily have very little patience with Conan the Barbarian, and a million-copy money-spinner will be rejected out of hand. A reader to whom the epitome of SF is the technical reality of Arthur C. Clark may have no patience with tongue-in-cheek space opera, and yet space opera is an evergreen among SF fans. Your book is rejected right here, though the editor liked it. The editor has just been told the book is “not good fantasy,” or “not good SF,” and a rejection letter will be issued. Some purportedly conciliatory encouragement may be included, along the lines of “The writer is promising and should be encouraged to continue.” (As an experiment, a professional writer with eight published novels under his belt put this system to the test and received exactly this response!)

Having drawn a blank everywhere, and yet still having faith in your work, you’ve decided to self-publish. You’ve already climbed the learning curves associated with writing ... editing ... copy-editing ... proofreading. You’ve looked into marketing: where you can find people to buy your book, and how many of them there are. You know the sales are out there.

It's time to talk to a printer.

You’ve reached a threshold where the worlds of the publisher and the printer meet, like the meniscus between air and water.

In today’s digital world, the line where printer and publisher meet can often blur in both directions, and eBooks complicate the issue even further: publishers “print to software,” even though there is no printing process ... neither is there a bookstore!

If you’ve made the decision to self-publish, it is time to talk to a printer; but before you do, enter into the scene with a clear idea of what a printer is, and what the printshop does; and what kinds of printshops are out there. Some can help you ... some can’t. Some will cost you an arm and a leg, others will save you and your project.

Next: we go hands on, and turn that manuscript of yours into a book!

Self publishing: why would you do it -- and how?!

2009-04-21T11:10:00.016+09:30

If you're thinking seriously about self-publishing, your mind is probably bursting with questions. How much will it cost? Which of the many options should you take? What will be expected of you? What can you expect from your printer? How do you get the books to market? Can you hope to break even -- or make a profit?

The reasons for self-publishing are many and varied, but by far the most common one is sheer frustration. You're not a new writer. You've spent five or ten or twenty years honing your craft; you're edited to perfection; you have something to say ... and to save your life, you can't connect with an agent or publisher.

This could be because you're writing in a marginalized niche where potential sales don't warrant a full-size printrun from a publishing house. It could be because you live so far away from the locations where the appropriate publishers are that you can't "do lunch" with them, or meet them at conventions. Or because you can't afford to travel to London or New York, take an agent to lunch, dressed in the kind of glad-rags that're mandatory for such meetings.

Perhaps you're hoping to earn enough through writing to fix the car, buy the kids new jeans, get broadband, so you can work properly ... sound familiar? This describes 80% of writers -- professional writers, not just the aspiring hopefuls! Very few can afford to take plane or train to the Big Smoke, dress like a business professional and pick up the tab for an extremely expensive lunch. It would blow a large hole in five hundred dollars -- in which case, the kids are certainly not going to be getting new jeans this month! And most people put the "necessaries" before the "pie in the sky" stuff, like wooing agents into maybe representing us. The worst news is that you might have to "do lunch" a dozen times to land a proper agent who will work hard to find you a proper publisher, who'll offer a proper contract ... but results are not guaranteed. You can spend years on this treadmill, spend a great deal of money and end up holding a handful of smoke.

At some point along this road, almost every writer will consider self-publishing. The ones who have begun to find the treadmill too expensive, too infuriating, or just too long (above seven years on the hunt, you must start to consider alternatives) will begin to study the craft of self-publishing --

And the first thing you learn is ... it's not a cake walk.

Detractors and doomsayers talk about self-publishing as if anyone can do it. They run down the craft as if it's so easy, and in fact -- it's not!

At least, not if you want to do it properly, with the object in mind of building a business and a career as a writer.

It is true that if you're largely without talent, and wholly without the commitment and integrity necessary to learn the writer's trade, you can self-publish at Lulu.com or CreateSpace.com, click a button and -- wham! You're on Amazon.com ... that easy.

It is also true that your book will be among the Greatest Literary Disasters of this century (and the century has already seen some horrors; you're in nasty company here).

Few readers are stupid. In fact, most are getting extremely savvy. To get a sale, you'll have to make a chapter or three available for free (10% of the whole work as a sample is a good idea), and in those pages you'll give away every secret. If you don't know how to spell or punctuate; if you don't know how to copy edit for repetitions and a blizzard of confusing pronouns -- all this will be apparent to the reader. You won't get a sale.

Here is the inescapable fact: your job is to become an excellent writer before you pick up the publishing challenge. If you're good enough as a writer, and after years trying to connect with an agent or publisher you're still working alone, going broke on the hunt, and getting gray hairs as five years turns into ten --

It's time. Pick up the gauntlet.

Self-publishing offers so many options these days, it's confusing. The first thing we're going to do is take some of the confusion out of the field.

Right here, we’ll assume your book is finished, and exhaustively edited. Think about this! It’s too late to find the grammatical and typographical errors, once the book has been printed, bookbound and delivered, ready for transshipment (forwarding though to your associate bookstores). If you’re not 100% sure of your editing and proofing, the time to fix the problems is now. Remember, the printer won’t proofread for you!

It’s a wise idea to look at the difference between all the various printers and publishers you’re likely to meet in your endeavors. Today’s market is a complex place, and it’s going to become more complicated as the traditional kinds of printers and publishers are joined by the electronic, digital and e-versions.

When most people think “publisher,” they have in mind a company such as Harper Collins or Random House, but this is far from the only option; and when most people think “printer,” they have in mind a massive workshop churning out tabloid printing — but once again, this image is becoming increasingly stereotypical.

Let’s take a quick look at who printers and publishers are likely to be in this century ... at what they do, and what they don’t do!

The major publishing house...
...is a multi-million dollar corporation with offices in London and New York, and other centers around the globe. These are the top-end, mass-market publishing houses. They don’t usually look at work which is not first ‘screened’ by an agency. If they accept your work, they do everything for you: even if you’ve already edited it to your satisfaction, the chances are they’ll edit it again. Everyone has a different opinion about what passages are critical and which inspire yawns, and when they’re paying you (which is to say, you’re on contract), they call the shots. They’ll do the layout and design, the printing and binding, and the marketing.

You get royalties at the end of the day. Accounts are settled every three or six months (depending on the publisher), and you usually get paid after a further six months, for copies which were sold in the “accounting period.”

How much you get paid depends on the publisher. A standard royalty contract is something like 10% Net. Net Price is the part of the retail price which is returned to the publisher, and is a fraction of the Gross, or RRP, Price. Net Price is largely what the publisher negotiates for. It can be as little as 10% of the gross price, if the book is proving hard to market ... it can be as much as 40%, if the publisher owns the distribution company too! If you sign with a small press (as many new writers do), a safe bet is, Net Price = 25%. So your royalty will be 10% of one fourth of the RRP.

If the book retails for A$19.95, Net is about $5 and your royalty will be in the order of 50c. You might get paid an advance of up to two-thirds of the book’s expected income ... but remember, the book then has to sell enough copies to recover the advance before you get paid again. You’ll only get paid for sold copies. Shop soiled returns, review copies and remainder copies don’t earn royalties. If you’re with a major publisher and the printrun is 20,000+, you can do quite nicely. If you’re with a small publisher, and the printrun is 3,000 - 5,000 it’s not quite so lucrative, even though the thrill of being in print remains the same.

The small publisher, or small press...
...is a small business, or perhaps even an individual who can be publishing out of a home office. By far the largest body of listings in any of your Writers’ Marketplace-type directories are small publishers. The downside is, they sometimes only do two books in any one year, and their printruns can be under 2,000. The upside is, they’ll look at your work when the big companies at the high end of the industry won’t. The small press is still a fully professional publishing house: they don’t charge you a penny in fees or commissions ... they do pay royalties. And most importantly, they’ll give you a start when no one else will. Many writers start here, though it remains a minefield. Small publishers begin to grow and are often taken over, “absorbed” by bigger publishing houses. This is not good news for the small publisher’s writers, who usually get dropped. The whole reason for the big publisher taking over the small fry was only to get rid of competition on the battlefield: the bookstore

The so-called “vanity publisher”...
...is a different genus, with a number of species! The rabid hyenas of this part of the market get the most coverage, because they charge the writer for everything, from the editing to the layout, and even some or all of the copies to be printed. In fact ... you have just self-published your book, they didn’t do anything for you, except take the credit for it, publish under their label — and, to be fair, if they’re a good vanity press, they’ll market the hell out of the work for you.

Some (most?) people get ripped off royally by the hyenas. The bad vanity press never rejects any book. No work is so poorly conceived of or crafted that they won’t take a few thousand dollars from the writer to lick it into something faintly resembling shape, put covers around it and get it into some bookstore, somewhere. But selling copies is another question ... and you won’t get paid until, or unless, you start to sell copies.

Yet, every vanity press probably dreams of the day when a potentially major writer comes to them ... this writer, having been rejected by every literary agency in the accessible universe, is ready to invest in the publishing venture. The saying used to go that if you had a good book, it would find a publisher. In today’s flooded, top-heavy marketplace, this is no longer true. Great books get rejected. Lesser works (read: rubbish) quite often get printed ... because they’re commercial ... or they were written by the publisher’s friend or relative and are printed as a favour ... or because a foolish writer, who in fact should know he or she is not-ready-yet, sluiced money into the hands of a vanity publisher.

Focus on the italic sentence, above. Great books get rejected. Not every book produced by a vanity press is rubbish; not every vanity publisher is a conman. When great books have been tossed out by literary agencies who are “not reading at this time,” and therefore did not even read the cover letter or synopsis, many of these books filter down to the vanity presses. The honest vanity press should tell a writer when a book isn’t good enough to warrant the investment ... and they should be there like a safety net, to catch the good books, which would otherwise be consigned to the desk drawer.

Not all vanity presses are rabid hyenas. Not all books churned out by them are dross, and not all writers get ripped off this way ... but you should be aware that enough people do get conned for the very term “vanity press” to have earned a muddy reputation. No one could recommend that you publish with them -- but on the other hand (and this is rarely mentioned!) no one can guarantee that you’ll be another victim! If you choose an honest vanity publisher, and you've learned your craft, and they market the heck out of your book, and your book is as good as you think it is, you could actually fare better with a reputable vanity press than with a small publisher. (The small press might have too-limited distribution, whereas the vanity press pushed you into online book clubs and so forth.) But no matter which vanity press you choose, the bottom line remains the same: the key word is vanity.

They will charge you ... you will pay for every part of the process; and it won't be cheap.

However, keep in mind one thing: a good vanity press should have a distribution network. If your book is good, and they’re tigers rather than hyenas, there’s no reason for you to be a victim, though the risk remains and this fact is inescapable: when a book fails at market, and it was published by a “real publisher” ... the writer is never asked to pay back any advances. The publisher deems the exercise to have been a tax-writeoff and drives on. But when a book fails at market, and it was published by a vanity press, the company loses nothing. The writer loses everything. Which begs the question, where's the impetus for the press to work marketing miracles?

In fact, the impetus is there, because vanity publishers with great integrity are dying to find the next Wilbur Smith or Greg Bear or Maeve Binchy or J.K. Rowling. They can retire on the discovery! But the downside to all the remains the same -- they can't lose money, no matter if you lose your house!

The joint venture, or subsidy publisher...
...is not a thousand miles from the vanity press, but at least the costs are shared. You put up some of the float, so does the company. The risk is shared and all parties have a vested interest in the project, so, in theory, all parties will get out there and market as hard as they can!

There are no guarantees of sales, and when a book fails, everyone loses. However, a company will carry a four-figure loss a great deal better than the writer. Once again, the words “tax-writeoff” leap to mind! Also, the subsidy publisher can spread his interests around: if he can publish 20 books in a year and only 15 succeed, while the other 5 lose money, he’s doing well. The failures cut his tax bill and five doomed writers had all shared in his investment.

But if you place yourself in the position of one of the failed writers, the picture is no more rosy than it would be for the writer who chose to go with a vanity press: you lost your investment. Subsidy publishing can work for you ... or not. It’s a gamble, and as the saying goes, ‘Only gamble with what you can afford to lose.”

POD -- what is it?
... The acronym stands for publish on demand, or print on demand, which are two very different things.

Print on demand is used by a publisher to minimize risk. It's also called "empty warehouse," because books are physically produced only if, and when, they're ordered. A printrun can be 1,000, 100 or 1. The books have been properly edited, designed and published -- they're just waiting for print orders. Hence -- print.

Publish on demand is used by a writer who is genuinely self-publishing. There's no publisher involved, just the writer, the printshop and the customer. In this case, a printshop like Lulu.com will actually be quoted as the publisher! This is the "iffy and dodgy" end of the POD trade. When absolute rubbish finds its way into publication, this is usually where, and how, it happens, because no one at a printshop (like Lulu.com or CreateSpace.com) is watchdogging the process. Spelling mistakes, bad grammar, hopeless storytelling and all, the book is just "published." (And this, unfortunately, is where POD has earned a bad reputation which is actually far from warranted.)

The Print on Demand (empty warehouse) publisher...
...is a newcomer to the field, and not to be confused with the vanity or subsidy press. The Print on Demand publisher is a real publisher ... in a thimble. And that’s an accolade, not a criticism! The warehouse is empty, if it even exists at all. Every book in the catalog is in software form ... and so is the catalog. The brochure is more than likely a webpage. Readers find the book in which they’re interested either by performing a search with an engine, or via links pages.

Let's say you wanted a book teaching you how to write shorthand. You’d go to Google and type in the search field something like “shorthand tutorial” ... click GO. Everything from tertiary courses to manuals will be offered to you. You can start there and surf online bookstores for the next fifteen minutes. Many of the books they will ship to you will have been mass-published ... many will have come from POD publishers instead.

When a POD publisher gets an order via its webpage, the computer sends a message to another computer in a printshop across the country, even across the world. One copy is send to the laser printer, and then bound, all completely by automatic.

These are top of the line digital systems. The book is finished as it comes off the printer. The whole thing then goes into some form of binding machine (there are numerous kinds; and they fall into the realm of the printer, not the publisher, so we’re not concerned about them here). The book is bound, and guillotined on three open edges, and it’s ready to ship, in an issue of ONE.

Is a POD publisher a “real” publisher? Most certainly. The author was charged nothing to get the book into shape. The publisher marketed the heck out of it (on the Internet, which is where these books are sold in their largest numbers. Which writer could possibly object to where sales are generated, so long as copies are shipped and all parties get paid?) ... and at the end of the day the writer was paid royalties. The risks of publishing were minimized because the big investment in printing was not made. Every copy manufactured was pre-sold.

And these are real books: glossy color covers, top-quality paper, indestructible binding. The only differences between them and bookstore books is, they were laser printed on bond paper, rather than on Bog (newspaper) stock. In twenty years, the laser printed book will not have aged ... the book done on newspaper will be yellow. And of course, the printrun was small.

The main downside to POD publishers is still the price. POD books are expensive because they're printed, bound and shipped one at a time. Whereas a mass-printer would get the price down to $5, the POD printshop will charge $8 - $10 for the same item, which means they're also going to be correspondingly expensive at the checkout.

Also ... and maybe this is important to you! ... you don’t often find those books in stores; you’ll seldom be asked to meet the people, shake hands and sign books. In other words, there's little opportunity for the writer to show off!

The upside is, the risk is minimal for all concerned, so the books happen, and you will get royalties.

The eBook publisher...
...is a little like a POD publisher, but different insofar as no physical books are produced. Any book, from a novel to an encyclopedia, is generated in software, and published to software, and it’s made available to the reader as a download. If it’s too large to be downloaded ... say, 20MB or more ... it can be sold on CD-Rom, but broadband access has made files up to 50MB downloadable. There is no printing process whatsoever -- but the publishing process should be just as stringent as if the book were about to be mass produced by a major New York company.

Today, eBooks are being made in many formats, not all of which suit all readers (in this context, “readers” being the screen device displaying them, not the human doing the reading). The format which still reaches the most people is probably Adobe Acrobat, which can be read on any PC or Mac, desktop or laptop, and a Palm device can be “synchronised” to the main computer (meaning, eBooks can be downloaded from the computer to the Palm handheld device). But the Adobe format is being challenged by Mobipocket, Kindle, Stanza, and many more. The field is expanding fast.

The most important aspect of eBooks is security; writers are naturally concerned about having their works out there, copied willy-nilly and printed out in batches of hundreds, for sale on the other side of the world, without the behest, or even the knowledge of the originating author! This can happen, and there will always be ways to get around a document’s security ... but good encryption settings on the eBook file will handicap thieves.

The eBook is sold via an online point of sale, and royalties are sent back from the publisher to the writer on a regular basis, usually on a "delay 30" or "delay 60" agreement. This means that the writer will be paid at the end of March for books sold the month, or two months, previously.

Or, the eBook can easily be hosted on the writer’s own website, and the writer then receives the money directly via an “e-commerce solution.” However, the key to selling eBooks is the same as the keys to selling any other kind of books: marketing. It’s very possible to have a glorious website which attracts no visitors at all. You have to market hard, but if you have a website, you at least have something to market; and since eBooks involve no physical printing, your investment is almost all about time, not money.

Do get a reputable website designer to build your website. They know tricks of the trade you couldn’t possibly know. (How will your site look in other browsers, such as Opera, Firefox and Netscape? What’s stopping your Javascript from working? Why are some people “whitescreening” on your pages? Some visitors can’t download things at all, what’s going on? You set out to be a writer, not a programmer! Stick to your job.)

If you intend to self-publish eBooks, do your homework. Learn how to do it properly -- don't just throw the project together. You'll need a beautiful cover for catalog pictures, proper interior design, and bookmarking. In short, you'll need to know your DTP program inside and out, even if you don't intend to print anything.

DTP for book design is a whole 'nother topic, and one we'll get to very soon! Be on the mailing list and keep up with this blog; we'll keep you posted when new items go online.

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Self publishing: where do you begin?

Flying solo: when you're ready to self-publish...

2009-04-19T10:30:00.011+09:30

The decision to self-publish is a courageous one. It demonstrates any writer’s or artist’s confidence in his or her own abilities, and a firm belief in the project.

This faith may not have been forthcoming from publishers to whom the work was shown -- but even the smallest understanding of how the major publishing houses operate should remove the feelings of failure and doubt which are suffered after the receipt of the first, or the thousandth, rejection slip.

In fact, writers across three continents have amassed a set of horror stories regarding their experiences with publishers -- stories which chill the bone marrow.

A rejection slip feels, to any writer or artist, like a rejection of oneself. Publishers and agents of integrity respond politely, with a few encouraging lines, even through the medium of a form letter. But many publishers and agents in today’s difficult market don’t see fit to respond at all.

In a majority of cases, your work will be returned to you in the SASE you provided, without any letter at all (which is certainly better than the worst-case scenario, in which an agent or publisher is actually insulting and abusive; it's not professional behavior, but it happens) and you wonder, did anyone even look at your work?

The answer is frequently, no one did, and the reasons for this are many and varied.

Publishers are not “reading” all the time. They have financial budgets, and lists which are filled for the whole year, frequently by March. When the lists are filled, they stop looking at manuscripts. You didn't know any of this when you submitted to them -- if you'd known, you'd have saved your time, money and nerves.

To prevent themselves drowning in the tide of manuscripts coming in from first-time writers (some of whom are genuinely “not ready yet”), most major publishers only read materials which are first filtered through by agencies.

Your problem swiftly becomes one of finding an agent who is reading! And, an agent who is not going to charge three-figures (in Australian dollars) per hour to read and edit. Understandably, most agents who serve the American and European markets would prefer to be sitting at a desk or restaurant table with you, and thrash out the pros and cons of your project over coffee. It can be extremely difficult to edit a book by remote control via email or physical mail; and one can forgive these agents if, being inundated with local New York and London writers, they choose not to collaborate with a writer on the far side of the world.

The reasons for the hundred-and-two rejection letters you’ve received could have nothing at all to do with the value of your work, or its publishability. They could easily be about business, budgets, and even about geography.

You might have an absolutely wonderful book ... but it will languish in your desk drawer if you don’t grasp this bull by the horns and wrestle it down yourself. Landing an agent has become as long and hard a chore as landing a publisher used to be. Some writers are never lucky enough to make the connection, and this failure can have nothing to do with the quality of their work.

How long do you walk this rocky road? The hunt for an agent or publisher should be given at least three years; but if you're still beating your head on this wall, throwing a lot of money at this problem, after seven years, it's time to seek out alternatives. Go on much (or any) longer, and you'll "burn out," lose your desire to write, and quit.

Understand that the leviathan of the publishing industry doesn't care if you quit. There are tens of thousands of writers just like you. They're skilled, with good stories to tell. However, the world does not have enough eager readers to support enough professional publishing houses to accommodate every good writer.

More and more, as times get harder, publishers are cutting their losses, amalgamating, merging, sacking staff, all in an effort to stay in business. The hardest part of this is that they will obviously choose to run with established writers who sell lots of copies.

Marginalized writers, or small niches, have been "feeling the chop" for more than a decade now. If this process is of interest, read this series of posts by Mel Keegan, in which the whole process of decay is discussed -- as well as the new industry which is still arising, phoenix-like, from the ashes of the old:

PART ONE: New York Publishing: Worms in the Big Apple
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/new-york-publishing-worms-in-big-apple.html
PART TWO: Learning to think outside the corporate box
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/publishing-learning-to-think-outside.html
PART THREE: Independent publishing- local goes global
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/independent-publishing-local-goes.html
PART FOUR: Digital publishing comes of age
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/digital-publishing-comes-of-age.html
PART FIVE: Publishing as sheer entrepreneurialism
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/publishing-as-sheer-entrepreneurialism.html
PART SIX: POD Publishing -- getting megatrendy
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/pod-publishing-getting-megatredy.html

Self publishing. Flying solo. The idea raises goose bumps, doesn't it?

Taking the first step in this process -- making the decision to "just do it" -- is difficult. For decades, there has been a stigma attached to self-publishing. It’s been labelled vanity publishing, and we are all warned against getting involved with it.

It was said (and forty years ago this was probably true), if your book was good, it would find a publisher. Many years ago, publishers were in command of publishing houses; they prided themselves in discovering new talent, and were always on the lookout for a gifted newcomer. In the golden days of publishing, such people could also afford to take a financial risk -- make a gamble on a new writer or a new book, and not suffer terminal economic wounds in the event of a mistake.

In these days of global recession, you’ll find accountants at the helm of the big publishing companies. Accountants have little interest in art, and are looking for the most marketable book; they’re hunting for high sales, big returns. Previously unpublished writers (or writers from modest-sales genres) are very low on their list of priorities ... and there are just so many fine, aspiring writers out there. More are churned out, degree qualified, by the world's colleges every year. The accountants can always fill their publishing quota with what they want and need. Celebrity books and best selling novelists come top of the list; and the list itself is much shorter than it used to be.

So where is the newcomer who is in no way connected to anyone on the inside to get a start? How does one break into an apparently impenetrable bastion, if you don't know someone on the inside? Having a friend of relative in the business has always been a wonderful opportunity, but most of us aren't so lucky. Doors are not about to swing open for us.

Which leaves many writers looking for viable alternatives.

The good news is, things have been changing lately, and changing quietly, behind the scenes, where it can be easy to ignore or not even see what’s going on.

The Internet has brought access to worldwide markets to your door; virtually every desk has a computer on it, and modern software is unspeakably powerful. The world has gone digital, and it’s suddenly possible to print very small numbers of a book. Or one. There are “empty warehouse” publishers. There are digital publishers and eBooks, and ebook "readers" which sit in the palm of your hand with nine hours of battery life before an hour's recharge, and these devices are actually (more or less) affordable.

(We'll look at the hardware in another post. We're going to review the reading devices and the software that runs on them ... be on the mailing list, and don't miss a thing!)

Little about the publishing industry is the way it was even five years ago, and it’s more possible now than ever to take on the “big guys,” play them at their own game ... and go into it with the expectation of winning.

It can be done. It's being done every day. It takes skill, determination, faith in yourself and your work, an enormous amount of energy, ingenuity, a spirit that won't be beaten, and a few bucks. But first, it takes a kind of epiphany -- an awakening...

You must hurl yourself over the first step, and turn a deaf ear when you should hear the term “vanity publishing.” In many ways this is an obsolete term. It harks back to the era where a good book would be published, and where a veteran publisher took a great joy in discovering a new writing talent.

Those days and over, and it's possible they might never return. Yet in 2009 there are more aspiring writers and artists on the fringes of the market than ever. What's to become of them? It's true that 90% of them are "not ready yet," or simply not good enough to make grade. They might have nothing new to contribute, or not enough integrity to settle down and learn a new trade -- the trade of the professional wordsmith. But 10% are good enough to make the grade, and this percentage works out to thousands of writers -- perhaps tens of thousands, globally -- for whom the opportunities to get into the traditional publishing industry are far too few.

After years of trying, the most determined writers arrive at the point where they think, "I can publish it myself and sell copies on the Internet. Why can't I do that?"

And you can -- if you can get past the stigma of self-publishing, which is still confused with vanity publishing, even now.

For marginalized writers (newcomers or niche market authors), the traditional publishing is a risky game. You may begin to break in professionally, with small printruns from a small publisher, only to find that corporate mergers close your publisher down or curtail their list. This is a very common scenario. All at once, after ten or twenty years dealing with a "proper publisher," you’re starting over, even though you have several or many published books to your credit. You can find it difficult or impossible to find another publisher, and after years of trying you'll reach the same point as the new writer who never found a publisher at all: "I can publish it myself and sell copies on the Internet. Why can't I do that?"

It's most important not to confuse self-publishing with self-marketing, or to confuse either of these with Vanity publishing. Vanity publishing can be a recipe for disaster ... self-publishing can open the door to fantastic success -- and we're about to look at the ocean of difference between all three of these types of publishing.

As someone once said, there is no better revenge than success!

The whole endeavour begins with information. If you're on this post, we assume you’ve already climbed several learning curves to get here:

you’ve made yourself into a good, solid writer;
you’re a good copy editor, too: your work is ready to go, and you know it;
you’ve computerized yourself and your workspace;
you've bought, and mastered, the DTP software...

In fact, you’ve arrived at the very last step in a thousand-mile journey. The only problem left is, this step is as wide as a river ... and you’re searching for a bridge. On one side is yourself, with a book (or more likely a pile of books, since you've spent the last 3 - 7 years trying to get a decent agent who will actually represent you instead of wasting your time and sending you bills), and the ambition to turn the damned books into earners.

On the other side of the river is The Reading, Buying Public. You need to connect the dots. These books need to find their way into the hands of those readers, and the Internet is the way to make it happen. But, damned if you can make the dots connect up. You're hunting for that bridge to bring it all together.

This bridge is made of several components, and by far the most important is information. You already have the faith in your gift and your work, or you wouldn’t be reading this. The financial costs of pre-press and printing won't be so high that some useful elbow-space on your Visa or MasterCard won’t cover them. A few hundred dollars, max. Maybe less.

In fact, the intention of this series of posts is to cut those costs down to size and get the manuscript to morph itself into a book, the way a caterpillar becomes a butterfly ... and then to get the book out there in front of readers. The decision -- to buy or not to buy? -- will be made not by an editor, publisher, or the buyer for bookstore chain. In the new marketplace there's just YOU and the READERS. You find them, you impress the hell out of them, and they'll happily give you $10 for the fun of reading your book.

After the sale, you must give them their ten bucks' worth. It better be a good book, because to make a living at this, you need what marketers call returning customers. You need to build a client base of readers who loved your first book and are dying for your next one. So it behooves you to double-check everything, make sure you're as good as you think you are, before you slap a cover on this novel and go to market.

Information is the key, and the most crucial component of this bridge. With information, you can bring self-publishing within your reach, physically and financially.

This series of posts is not about the marketing aspect! We're going to call this "Metamorphosis: From Manuscript to Book." When the printing process is finished, you’ll have something to go out there and sell -- this is the goal of this series. Marketing is a whole 'nother subject: you sell copies, make back your investment start to see a profit. That's a vast subject in itself, and we'll tackle it separately.

Marketing-wise, at this point we assume you’ve done your research, you know your markets. You are sure the sales are out there, if only you can figure out how to get the project off the ground. You're confident of your work: you're good enough to publish professionally, and have been good enough for some time now. It's killing you, not being able to find a decent agent or a publisher.

Time to fly solo. Your thousand-mile journey is about to end. Be on the mailing list or subscribe via RSS! And now --

Turn page to
Self publishing: why would you do it -- and how?!

Writing syle ... exactly what is it?

2009-04-18T13:20:00.006+09:30

Your writing style is your unique writer's voice -- and flaws here are the hardest things of all to find and correct, because these are most often "spoken language" traits, "habits of speech." They pass over into the written word, where they don't belong, and where they glare off the page sounding clumsy, awkward, or just plain weird.

There is no five-minute fix for this point of copy editing, but many years ago a slim little book was written, Elements of Style. In 1918, William Strunk Jr., an English professor, attempted to touch down on every essential element and explain it with examples. In the following 90 years, the work has been revised several times; it was released into the public domain in 1995, and at the time of this writing you can buy it on paper (Macmillan, New York), or download it as an ebook.

Stay on this page, and a little further down, we'll lift the cover and take a peek into Strunk's slim volume.

Some errors of style are colloquialisms, or regionalisms — slang terms from a geographical area which don't mean much, a hundred miles away. For instance:

A "buttie" and a "sarnie" are the same thing. A sandwich. But only in the UK. "Miffed" means annoyed, so long as you're in the US. "Chuntering" is a cross between grumbling and chattering ... in the UK. "Chooks and snags and keks" are chickens and sausages and eggs ... so long as you're in Australia. "Pollies" could be parrots or politicians, depending on where you are. "Singlets and beanies" are undershirts and woollen hats ... in Australia. "Sourdoughs and Cheechakos" are terms making perfect sense, in Alaska! "Pootling" is a verb meaning "to drive slowly" or wander about at leisure ... in London.

So, watch out for colloquialisms and regionalisms in your narrative. You can use them in dialog, where they're important in the development of your character's unique voice. So long as the meaning is either contextually clear, or you make it clear, this is the place to use colloquialisms. It's when they escape into the narrative that the problem begins!

However, most errors of style that come out at the copy editing stage are speech patterns which don't work on paper. A good example of this is the passive voice. In speech, you can get away with using the passive voice; it sounds absolutely normal: "Insufficient time is being spent on the problem," is perfectly normal in speech.

However, agents, editors and publishers want the active voice, virtually to the exclusion of all else. In the active voice you would say, "The problem is being neglected."

Look at these examples of active and passive; sort them out and see the way to navigate through these rapids:

Passive:
The river was being progressively polluted by farming along both banks.
Active:
Farmer along both banks of the river were progressively polluting it.

Passive:
The little boy was brought to school by his father.
Active:
The man brought his little boy to school.

Passive:
The book had been read by a thousand students.
Active:
A thousand students had read the book.

Passive:
The intruder was mauled by three guard dogs.
Active:
Three guard dogs mauled the intruder.

Passive:
Maureen was made a fool of by Uncle Arthur.
Active:
Uncle Arthur made a fool of Maureen.

Here's the trick: look for the verb. (Above, the verbs are bring read, maul, make, and "progressively pollute.") Look for who performs the verb. Reword the sentence to make sure that the subject is actually performing the verb:

Passive: The cat was rescued by two young girls.
Verb: rescue.
The girls performed the rescue, not the cat!
The verb was performed ON the cat -- he was rescued!
Therefore,
Active: Two young girls rescued the cat.

Editors are quite strict about this point. It's usually active voice or the rejection pile.

Watch out particularly for catch phrases. For instance, "A fine performance was given by all concerned," sounds fine in your ear, but on paper, editors want to see the active voice: "All concerned delivered fine performances."

Copy editing is the time to be thorough, and meticulous ... and to know the rules.

Another excellent example of an error of style is to overindulge in "wordiness." When we're speaking, our speech patterns govern how we talk, describe things, relate other conversations, and, again, we can get away with almost anything. However, in text, wordiness soon becomes apparent. Your copy editing will be an interesting experience for some time, as you discover how to weed passages like this:

Try this:

The simplest rule is: never use five words to say what you can say in three! (Editors and agents can spot this at a glance, and they will know (or think) your work is padded out to make a short story much longer. Some magazines pay by the word, and even though its only 3c or 5c per word, if you can sprawl the story out over an extra thousand words, you just picked up another fifty dollars! Expect strict editing from magazines that pay by the word, for obvious reasons.)

Literally hundreds of bad speech habits shadow every word we speak aloud, and none of them matters because the spoken word vanishes into the ether. The trouble starts when they're written down. They come back to haunt us. For this reason, political speeches are written long ahead of time, by professional speech writers!

Having said all this, it is also very important to find your own unique "voice" as a writer, and hang onto it. If 250 different writers were to obey every rule of the little book Elements of Style, they would sound almost identical.

This might be fine for academic writing -- but not for fiction, where it's a writer's unique treatment of words, sentences, dialog, narrative, discription, that go together to make successful fiction happen. We don't want or need romances, westerns, historicals and science fiction to all sound alike!

Copy editing is a process in which you must use your judgement. Don't get so wordy that editors and agents constantly reject you ... at the same time, don't let adherence to the Elements of Style strangle out either your voice or your creativity.

At times in this area of copy editing, it will be as if you're walking on a tightrope. When you begin to feel overwhelmed, STOP. Instead of editing yourself to death, or rewriting for the tenth time, go for a walk. Put on some music. Make coffee (apple tea will also get your brain going). Put your feet up. Pick up a couple of dozen books by other writers, in your genre, if you're writing in a niche. READ. See how other writers express themselves by flipping through the books and touching down on a paragraph here and there. You're not looking at the story or the character development, or the descriptive narrative. You're looking at the flow of words.

And some of the time, you're going to see thoroughly sloppy writing. Best-selling writers are allowed to break the rules. When you're breaking into the industry at the bottom, you have to know what the rules are, and play by them. However, if you pick up a dozen books and read a few pages here and there, you'll see some extremely good writing, as well as dross.

Be analytical. Try to key, or focus, on what these writers are doing that works, and works well. See if you can get into the habit of writing concisely. If not, fall back on copy editing to prune, or weed, sentences which are too wordy. The more you do this, the easier it will become. Eventually, you'll be able to do it without even thinking about it.

Errors in style ... the Elements of Style ... is an absolutely vast subject. An in-depth study would take a whole book, and indeed, entire books have been devoted to this topic. Copy editing, as a job, involves knowing most of the rules and making personal judgements: where do you conform to the rulebook? Where do you diverge, to protect your unique writing style?

William Strunk Jr.'s Elements of Style is the skinny volume we recommend. In the space of around 110pp, he looks are every imaginable awkward use of the language and, through the means of examples, smooths out the wrinkles.

Here's an example:

Keep related words together.

...and so on! The book is very "dense," meaning Strunk doesn't waffle on. He jumps directly from one sin to another, deals with each in a minimum of words and proceeds to the next. The book is invaluable if you're still in the stage where you're learning to analyze the language ... perhaps trying to figure our which combination of words is actually correct. If you're "playing by ear," this is the book for you.

You can actually download it: Click here to do just that! However, a book is so nice to have on the shelf, and you can also order it from Amazon.com, using the button to your left.

If Elements of Style sounds too dense -- too hard -- then by all means stay on this blog and check out a number of other posts. We're covering the same ground, but we're doing it with a coffee in one hand and a cookie in the other...!

Here are some more posts which will help you work out what Style is all about, and get it under control:

Being wordy: how much is too much?!

Is B following A, and Z following Y ...?! Are you sure?!

Is there an echo in here?!

Writing with consistency

Writing with absolute clarity

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Is B following A, and Z following Y ...?! Are you sure?!

2009-04-17T15:02:00.004+09:30

Nonsequiteur: the narrative "doesn't follow."

In the course of your copy editing, you'll come across several places in your material where, when you were writing, your mind went off at a tangent to the material. The flow of your narrative gives a hiccups, or trips. At the time, you didn't notice it, but reading the text back, days or weeks later, you do. Time to fix it.

"Nonsequiteur" is Latin, and it literally means "out of sequence," or "not sequential." When something is out of line, it should pop out of the narrative at you, begging to be fixed. Like this:

Some nonsequiteurs can be hilarious, like the one which seems to say Jeff ought to be in the lecture hall more to catch up on his missed sleep! Copy editing will find these errors, if you're vigilant.

Nonsequiteurs can easily happen if your let your sentences get long and rambling, and especially if they begin to suffer from "run on syndrome." A run on sentence is a sentence where several separate sentences have been glued together with commas, colons, dashes and conjunctions (and, but, therefore, because, as, when, while, however, though, then, after which, throughout which ...!)

Here are some beauties -- to demonstrate what NOT to do! In the excerpt below, each paragraph is a single sentence. Mel Keegan wrote this piece as a joke -- and it takes an extremely talented writer to pull this off. The sentences actually scan and make sense, while being longer than some of the chapters in the Iliad! Take a deep breath:

(Would you like to read the rest of the story?! It was done as a "picture challenge" and is posted as a comment on a blog:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=33321650&postID=7178529278178363177&isPopup=true

Enjoy the story, and the joke ... just don't write like this! Mel's piece is the perfect illustration of what NOT to do. Hats off to a particularly talented writer.)

As a general rule, in your copy editing be on the lookout for sentences which are hard for you to read, even though you wrote them yourself. If you're losing the thread yourself, how will readers keep up with you? Especially readers to whom English is their second or third language! The rule of thumb is: write for your readers, and take pity on 'em!

Is there an echo in here?!

2009-04-16T13:11:00.003+09:30

Repeated words, and terms or phrases used too often: Broken Record Syndrome!

"Repeated words" are instances where the same word, or its root, or a version of it, appearing two or more times in the same sentence for no good purpose; or in consecutive sentences; or consecutive paragraphs, if each individual paragraph is very short.

Notice that the words "sentence," "paragraph," and "consecutive" appeared twice each in the previous sentence — and then "sentence" appears FOUR times in this sentence! There are times when it's absolutely correct to use the same word repeatedly ... but many more times when it's an oversight. You're on the lookout for the oversights, and at all times when you're copy editing, you'll be seeing things like this:

splooshing

The other kind of repeated words are known popularly among writers as (!) "purple light words" ... because a certain author will use a word or phrase so often, it gets to be funny, or aggravating, to the reader.

As a general reader you might not have noticed this; on the other hand, you could easily have stumbled over this sloppy writing in pulp fiction, and even in genre fiction which sells well.

Tip: established writers can get away with blue murder! Best-selling authors are allowed to go to press with some pretty crummy writing! However, publishers, editors and agents won't let a new writer get in through the door with bad writing. You'll think to yourself, it's not fair for the best-sellers to get away with bad writing while newcomers are penalized and rejected ... and you'd be right. But these are the unfortunate facts of the writing life, and you have to deal with them in the only way you can: Don't be good. Be GREAT.

The kind of sloppy writing errors you've probably noticed in published books are briefly outlined below. Be vigilant — don't get into these habits. Editors and agents will notice, and before you're established in the industry, they won't forgive you. Watch out for these:

The word "started" will be making readers shudder by page 50. This is slap-dash writing, bereft of good, creative style.

Also, watch out for the dreaded "there was" and "there were" echoes:

I saw there were six scones left...

There were only a few...

Frank sat down, but there were no chairs left afterward...

She told me there were eleven kids...

In the paddock there were nine beautiful horses...

There were several dozen sheep in the meadow...

Across the park, there were at least two hundred trees...

Years ago, there were no high-rise parking lots...

When I was young, there were trackless wastes here...

In the state of NSW there were once bushrangers galore...

There were two big dogs in the garden...

"There were" and "there was" are so easy to use, and therefore overused. It's fine once or twice, but don't indulge in it four times on every page. A professional editor will pick up this in a few pages, and will know you haven't done your homework. Decades ago (the industry was much more affluent in those days), it was financially possible to assign you a copy editor who would go through the manuscript and tidy it up for you. These days, your editor is on the lookout for the rare manuscrip that arrives on his/her desk not needing this work! If you can get it right before submission, your chances of publication are enormously higher.

Use copy editing to find the over-usages, and use good, creative sentence construction to switch words around and achieve variety in your writing.

The next "purple light word" to watch out for is "that" ... and let's play a game. Could the usages of "that" in the following paragraph:

The tiny word "that" can soon come to be like bamboo under the fingernails. Editors will see it used up to 25 times on a single page ... say, 8,000 times during a book-length manuscript ... and this is another sign of careless writing. Be aware of what you're doing; use copy editing to pick out ALL the usages of "that" and weed them down to only what you need. Three or four to a page is fine, and correct. More can swiftly become so aggravating, the repetition of these four letters will be cause of your rejection slips!

So, if you're not going to repeat words, what's the plan? Let's work backwards from the wrong answer! Here is an exercise in not repeating the word "said," which results in literary itching powder:

This little conversation is the exact opposite of using the same word over and over. In an attempt at variety, this writer is using a different verb on every speech line ... and it turns into a "stamp collecting" exercise which shreds the reader's nerves. This can't be called sloppy writing, because the writer probably worked very hard to find a dozen alternatives to "said." The sad fact is, all his/her work was wasted, because the end result is no good.

The trick is to find a happy medium, and find other ways of expressing communication. Be watchful, while copy editing, for passages like this, and try something like this:

Being wordy: how much is too much?!

2009-04-15T11:36:00.003+09:30

This part of copy editing is a little more difficult, especially when you're editing your own work. There are several good reasons for keeping it simple (the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid!) and the first is, if you get too clever with rare, offbeat words, some of your readers won't know what you're talking about!

Think of your readers as your customers. They have to buy your book, enjoy it, and be eager for your next one to come out. This is how you build a reader base, and a career. And if you're too verbose, too "clever" in your writing ... perhaps you like to show off a massive vocabulary! ... you can lose customers. They just can't follow you without hitting a dictionary too often. (Here's a mildly worrying fact: few people in 2009 even own a dictionary.)

Copy editing is about picking out and correcting all kinds of errors, including errors of style. And one of the mistakes you can easily make is to trip yourself up by simply using the wrong word.

How good is your vocabulary? Seriously. How sure of it are you? If your vocabulary is vast and you never use the wrong word — you already have a head start over other "entry level" writers. However, always keep in mind that your reading levels, and your readers' abilities, can be very different.

It turns out that the majority of readers in the book-buying public are only reading at Grade 7 level. If you get "too smart" with your wording, a significant part of your potential readership will put the book down ... and won't even borrow your next one from the library.

The trick is to find the happy medium. Don't "dumb it down" to the point where you insult intelligent, well-educated readers, but at the same time don't flaunt your vocabulary and baffle average readers. Copy editing gives you the priceless opportunity to take three steps back from the work and look at it through someone else's eyes. You put on your copy editing hat, and you examine the structure of the novel on every level, right down to the choice of words.

You want to sell copies. You want to quit the day job and write for a living. You need to please as many readers as possible, and certainly insult none! Copy editing is your "safety net," where you double- and triple-check everything.

If in doubt, ask for a friend's help. Give him or her a felt pen and tell them to "swoosh" anything they didn't understand at first glance. You might be surprised. In fact, if you have a massive vocabulary yourself, you might be shocked.

There is another sizable problem about using a lot of large, difficult, offbeat or technical terms. If you're not absolutely as smart as you think you are ... you can misuse them. Using the wrong word is a technical sin everyone commits from time to time. The object is to do it very, very rarely.

Here's a list of words which are in common usage; you hear them so routinely, they're quite familiar. Yet ... do you know what they really mean?

Let's play a game ... look them up; award ONE point where you were right, and subtract TEN points where you were wrong. Why take away ten points? Because if/when you use the wrong word in a professionally-submitted manuscript, it glares out of the document like a searchlight ... on the other hand, no one even notices when you use words correctly. It's this easy to scuttle your chances of being published!

circuitous
turbid
turgid
morbidity
moribund
inchoate
truculent
intractable
penultimate

importunate
malapropism
misanthrope
perfidious
portentous
parsimonious
concurrent
erstwhile
cogent
decimate
soporific
existential
pedant
pedagogue
misogyny
sanguine
ennui
proletariat
polyglot
bifurcate
prevaricate
procrastination
feculent
physiognomy
pontification
plenipotentiary
dystopian
meretricious
merritorious
immanent
protagonist
ancillary
antediluvian
cantilevered
mercurial
indefatigable
inimitable
inimical
endemic
quixotic
hagiographer
inexorable
transpire
epigram
perfunctory
cursory
narcissism
punctilious
ingenuous
virgule

How did you score? You'll know by now if you need to work on your vocabulary, or if you're just too smart for your own good! The best tip is simply this: take pity on your readers! Remember that some of them are speaking English as a second, even third language. Get too clever for them, and they don't have a chance ... and in fact, nor do you, because they won't buy your next book!

Writing with consistency

2009-04-14T10:14:00.003+09:30

Consistency throughout the whole story or novel is crucial.

Copy editing is the perfect platform for checking your consistency, and you'll need to be thorough. Have a jotter pad handy, and make notes as you go.

Many words have fairly recently entered the English language, and are not yet set in stone. T-shirt, teeshirt, tee-shirt, tee shirt, for instance. Footwell, or foot well? Stair well or stairwell? Pajamas ... pyjamas. Jump drive ... jumpdrive. Car yard ... caryard, carpark car park, and so on. Bookshop, book store ... parking lot, high rise, hi-rise, highrise.

Many American/Canadian terms are becoming more familiar in British/Aussie/Kiwi English, as the language becomes more cosmopolitan. Aeroplane ... airplane, BBQ, barbecue, motorway, clearway,freeway, peanut butter, peanut paste.

We've reached a point where international boundaries are blurring. It no longer matters which term use use. What matters is being consistent. Whatever you use, use it throughout. Don't swap and change back and forth.

Make your own decision on how "bluejeans" and "teeshirts" will be referred to. Will you be saying sneakers, joggers or trainers to refer to a pair of athletic shoes? Will you be referring to the breakfast food as porridge or oatmeal? Lollies, candies or sweets? Unless you have international characters who are using their own national references in their dialog, you'll need to standardize and stick to it. Copy editing comes to the rescue here.

Try to choose terms which are understood right around the world. For instance, US readers probably won't know what a skip is, in the context of a large rubbish bin ... but thanks to the movies, everyone knows what a dumpster is. They're the same thing, but you might not want to give your story an American flavor by using the US term. Revert to the ubiquitous "bin" and be safe. Do you say garbage, rubbish, or trash?

Which term you choose is much less important than your consistency, and the process of copy editing is the time when you'll grab the whole manuscript by the scruff of its neck and shake it into shape.

Have a jotter to hand and when you read a term which could go either way, make a note. Check your usages when next you see the term. Did you use teeshirt or tee shirt last time? This is a good copy editing habit to get into. As you go on, you can also choose to keep a jotter on the desk and scribble notes as you write. This makes for less editing to do later.

If you're writing speculative fiction or fantasy, you'll be inventing a whole vocabulary to describe the worlds you imagine. Now, it's especially important to be consistent, not only in your terms and how you use them ... but also, in how you spell them. (Again, copy editing to the rescue: it's indispensable.)

We asked Mel Keegan how the ongoing HELLGATE series is kept under control. At this point, it's four big novels, with a couple more to come, a vast cast of characters, two species, speaking two languages, and more locations than Lara Croft could imagine! Over to MK, for insights into how the long-time professional works:

what

The process of creating deep, complex, believable, compelling science fiction and fantasy can become very complicated, very quickly, and it's a copy editing nightmare. None of the terms, places, relationships or alien languages are real. They exist only inside your own head and, soon, in the minds of your readers. If you don't your ducks in a row and keep them there, you'll find yourself contradicting yourself, and readers do notice!

Get a notebook. What's more important ... use it! Later, when you get into the copy editing, you'll be so glad you did.

Manuscript formatting:get it down pat!

2009-04-13T13:47:00.007+09:30

The instant an agent or editor takes your materiel out of the envelope, s/he gets whapped in the face by one feature which is so highly visible, its impossible to miss. Not your cover letter, nor the SASE. The first hurdle you must get over is right here, in the two or three seconds after your pages see daylight.

It's the manuscript formatting. The simple formatting of the page itself -- including the paper size, the font, the lot. Some editors and agents are so overworked, they'll reject right here, if you make one mistake. You could have written Harry Potter, and an editor wouldn't care. Mistakes at this stage are so visually obvious, you can be slapped onto the "rejects and returns" pile without a single word being read.

Which makes this a delicate and crucial subject ... read on!

All publishers have their own quirks and special requirements, but they all agree on the majority of points regarding how a manuscript ought to be formatted. There are so many different formats into which the same piece of text can be fed (the book, the webpage, the catalog, the magazine extract), and your job is to make sure the plain, ordinary body text supplied by you fits the bill. You can't afford to get fancy at all. Period. Don't insert any formatting, as neat as it might look on your own computer. For all you know, you might be trying to make square pegs fit into round holes.

Publishers, editors and agents should always be specific about what the want. The real chore of editing, at this point, is to ensure compliance. Every house will have a handout, a requirements guide. You can usually download it from the publisher's website these days.

Here are some of the things you'll be looking out for:

Most publishers still demand paper. (This is changing to accommodate email, but at the time of this writing it's still much more normal to send paper when submitting to a mainstream, and major, publishing house.

The paper American publishers want to see is US Letter size, which is 8.5" x 11.0" ... and some of them won't accept A4, though it's the normal paper size for the UK and Commonwealth. You'll need to get some larger paper (A3) specially guillotined to US Letter size.

Set a 1" (2cm) margin all around the page. If by any remotest chance you're typing on a typewriter, don't let your margins get too narrow; you're not fooling anyone by squishing in those extra words per page. Editors were up to these tricks decades ago! And, if typing, always adhere to one fixed "hard" margin on the left, never let the margin "wander in."

Format the text in a specific font. This is probably Times Roman 12pt, or 10 point courier. Do not set type in fonts other than the publisher specifies, not even the title on the cover sheet! There are excellent reasons for this. Editors might have to speed-read (or scan) 1,000 pages per day to sort wheat from chaff. (The chaff gets chucked back, fast.) The easier the page is to read, the more likely it will be to be read. It doesn't have to be pretty, just clear and easy on the eyes.

Never justify the right hand margin of the text. Editors swear up and down that justification makes reading harder. (Go figure.)

Use underlines to indicate where italicized words should be. (Because italics are harder to read. Same reason for using Times or Courier as the font.)

Indent the paragraphs to exactly .5"/1cm on the left only. Do not double-space block paragraphs. (Block paragraphs are paragraphs without any indent. This is the norm on webpages -- like this one -- but it won't pass muster on a manuscript intended for paper publishing.)

Never use more than one (two at most) spaces between sentences within the same paragraph. Huge gaps between sentences irritate the eye. Also, if your work is accepted and you're asked to send a disk, or an email attachment, with the work in electronic form, these extra spaces will have to be removed before typesetting ... and you're the one who's going to spend hours taking them out! Better not to put them in, in the first place, right?

If you're word processing on a computer, never use spacebar strikes to indent paragraphs. In fact, the "proper" way to do it is to use the tab-set rule at the top of the word processor page:

Click on this image to see it at full-size. Notice the rule at the top of the page; notice the two "teeth" or guides ... notice that the bottom one sets the left hand margin (it's aligned with the extreme left side of the text). Now, see the top 'tooth." Wherever you pull that little guy to, sets the paragraph indent. Now, all you have to do is hit ENTER (carriage return) at the end of a paragraph, and there you are. Auto paragraph indents ... which you can change at whim by adjusting the tab-set "tooth" there.

In keying-in, make sure you use the correct kind of quote (speech) marks for the country of your submission. In the US this means double quotes ("/"); in the UK, single quotes ('/') .

Always start a new person's dialog on a new line.

Always start a new sentence with a capital letter: no exceptions!

Always end a sentence with a period (.), ellipsis (...) or emrule (—), never comma or colon;

Always use curved "brackets" (/) for contextual parenthesis, never square brackets [/];

Print out in double-space lines (see the picture above). Never use single-spacing or even 1.5 spacing. Editors have tired eyes ... also, they like to scribble "corrections" on manuscripts, and you have to leave them plenty of scribbling space.

Never double-space paragraphs. You're already double-spacing the lines. If you double-space the paragraphs as well, your manuscript will blow out hugely. It could end up at 600pp for a fairly small novel, and the thickness of the stack of printout paper will be an off-putter before anyone looks at page 1. (It'll also cost a fortune to mail!)

Never use bold or bold-italic in the text; use underline only. Do not use capitalization or asterisks to indicate italics. Always use underline.

Make sure every page is numbered, on a manuscript. You know what offices are like. Someone turns on the a/c and the whole stack goes flying. It's gathered together, but it's out of order ... rejection. Instantly.

Place the author's name in the header on every page, and place the title of the work in the header on every page ... for the exact same reason as you're using page numbering!

Never use footers, only headers.

Never type in, or print out, colored fonts. They're just tough to read.

Where you want blank lines left to indicate a new line, use a hash mark (#) on that line. Indicate the end of the document with three hash marks (###).

These can be boring and aggravating rules. You ask yourself why you ever bothered to get a computer, since you just had to configure the machine to behave like a typewriter ... copy editing isn't always easy, or fun!

Remember, however: this is how the manuscript will be formatted for submission. Once an editor has approved it, and you're expecting a contract ... then, they'll need the whole file on a disk or jumpdrive. They'll take the absolutely plain file, as supplied by you, and they'll format it to suit their own typesetting.

The best thing you can do at this stage of copy editing is to meet them halfway, supply exactly what they want. If you can do this, you'll stand the very best chance of having your work read.

Tired eyes need big, plain fonts, and double-spaced printouts. And every publisher, editor and agent has a different way of working. Some might not notice footers, therefore footers are useless. Others might want only the author's byline in the header, not the whole book title. You won't know till you inquire, and get the "cheat sheet."

Always do some research before you call your copy editing finished and print out the manuscript. Find out exactly what your target publisher wants and needs. Do your best to meet their requirements.

Remember, a wrongly-formatted manuscript will be tossed back unread! One glance at it, and the editor opening the parcels knows instantly, you never bothered to find out what the company wanted. This certainly won't endear the editor to you, and if s/he is inundated with work, and tired, and annoyed, your SASE will be used at once!

Do a little extra work at the preparatory stage ... a little judicious copy editing right now, right here, it can pay dividends later.

Writing with absolute clarity

2009-04-12T12:13:00.008+09:30

One of the first things an editor or publisher will be looking for in your submission is clarity of writing style.

Conversely ... one of the first things that'll win you a rejection slip is ambiguity!

If your readers have no idea what the heck you mean in a certain passage, you're being ambiguous. When you're editing for yourself, correcting these passages is the toughest of copy editing jobs, because it stands to reason that you always know what you mean. This is where friends and beta readers are indispensable. Ask them to tell you when they just, plain lost the thread of what you were saying. Change the wording so they do understand.

If you're using the right words; and if you've got a lasso on the "killer pronouns" (covered in the basic grammar series of post); and if your sentences are not long and rambling, and hard to follow (covered in the same post-series), you should be pretty darned readable.

It can be difficult to figure out why someone just can't understand what you meant. Have them tell you what they think you meant, and work backwards from there. Copy editing, in this instance, is like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle. You become a detective, tracking down the reason something makes no sense.

For instance, you might have used a word the reader doesn't understand. You can look upon them contemptuously for not having a good vocabulary ... but this was a potential customer. If your friend or relative who's beta reading for you doesn't known what dystopian and existential and punctilious mean, it's a safe bet that a significant percentage of the readers in the bookshop don't know, either. The trick is to write with flair and style -- not strangling your style or suffocating your formidable vocabulary -- but at the same time remembering that if you hope to earn royalties, readers have to 1) buy the book, 2) understand and enjoy it, and 3) be eager to buy your next book.

If you're not writing for readers, go ahead and be as clever as you like. If you're writing for academia, you can safely assume they know what you're talking about! Of you're writing for the general marketplace, remember that the average reader of the English language is only reading at something like a Grade 8 or 9 level:

Literacy in America

On average, Americans have about 12.5 years of education. However, people read several grades lower than their highest educational achievement, so the average reading level for adult Americans is actually somewhere around eighth or ninth grade. Literacy skills vary widely, so you cannot assume that materials that work in one place or situation will be acceptable in another. They also vary by age and socioeconomic status: people in Medicaid programs tend to read at the fifth grade level or lower and literacy skills for those 65 and older are substantially lower than those for the population as a whole.

In the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS), which reports functional literacy in five levels, nearly half of the adults scored in the lowest two levels of literacy. However, 44 percent of people 65 and older scored in the lowest level, and over two thirds of welfare recipients scored in the lowest two levels. According to researchers, the materials in quality reports typically require literacy skills at Level 5.

Select for information on the findings of the

National Adult Literacy Survey

From

http://www.talkingquality.gov/docs/section3/3_4.htm

If you're hoping to give up the day job and live on your royalties by writing for a niche or genre, it's a good idea to get to know who's reading your work. Also, read your competition! Don't "write down" to the reader, but without a doubt, you must write to be understood. If the reader can't understand you, they'll count the financial investment in your first book as a waste, will dump it at the nearest book-swap, and won't buy your next one.

Another area when you can be difficult to understand is in delicate subject matter, where you're trying to use euphemisms. Too many euphemistic terms, too many poetic, flowery sentences used to get around some sizzling (or gross) scenes, and anyone's writing can jump off the tracks. If the material is so gross, or so sizzling ... does it belong on the page? Credit your readers with imagination, and use the copy editing experience to make the final decisions on what "makes the cut" and what doesn't. Also, bear in mind, no one actually needs to have the physical act of love spelled out in every last detail; we've all known how it goes since about the age of seven! If you're uncomfortable with the material, do what writers used to do in the days before steamy fiction was acceptable. Leave two blank lines and cut to the next scene! Every reader knows exactly what happened during those blank lines, and you can duck the subject neatly, and hence avoid being so foggy and vague, readers were confused. Copy editing is the time to make this artistic decision.

Similarly, you must decide what level of violence you want to include. being realistic is one thing, but violence can go way over the top, and again, you're wading knee-deep in euphemisms. Same story: use your copy editing process to decide what's going to land on the page and what gets cut.

Occasionally, you'll discover (all writers do!) that when you come back to something you wrote six months ago, and read it back, YOU have no idea, none at all, what you meant in a particular passage. It's the strangest feeling, to be reading your own novel and lose the thread. If you were knitting, they would say you had dropped a stitch. Now, you can only look at the material directly before the problem, and directly after, see if you can infer the meaning ... and if you can't, put a line through the paragraph that went wool-gathering. You might need to construct bridging material to close the narrative back up. You can also discover perfect flow, with the woolly paragraph(s) deleted. You're doing the copy editing here ... you're in charge!

Punctuation ... made simple!

2009-04-11T11:42:00.016+09:30

The fiddling little details we're looking at on this post are all about English punctuation. German, French, Spanish — every language has its own rules. Correct punctuation in English is a lot easier than the systems of grammar and punctuation used by some other languages, so you're already in luck, being a 'native' speaker.

(Incidentally, if you're speaking English as a second language, this page will be very helpful to you. We're about to demystify the whole subject of English punctuation, and this information is just as useful when you're trying to work out what in the world these weird English-speakers are talking about now! Stay with us.)

Let's make a start. Have a look at the nightmare, above left! That's original Latin. Punctuation? You're on your own! Which is one reason ancient literature isn't "available" to the general public until it's been fully translated ... meaning, "hammered into sensible English -- and punctuated!

Take another look at this:

It's not just the spaces between the words which were removed, to simulate Ancient Greek. You'll notice we took out a whole lot more. In fact, we took out everything that makes language sensible to today's readers:

Each of these is called a punctuation mark, also known as a punctuation point, or a punctuation symbol. Each mark performs a specific job, and there are others, too, used so commonly in English that the written language won't 'go' without them. Here are some more:

You're certainly familiar with them. You use them every day in emails, to wink at people, look shocked, and so on...

:-) ;-( :-o :-P

The 'emoticon' symbols were actually pressganged by the smiley-face people, to convey facial expressions, but their real job ... the function for which they were invented, long ago ... was to break up written language. To make it easier to read.

Correct punctuation revolves around putting these marks in the right places in your written work, so let's start with a close-up look at what each mark does.

THE FULL STOP, OR PERIOD
Looks like this: [ . ]
It has two basic jobs...

FIRST JOB:
Brings a sentence to a complete, dead STOP, like this[.]

Correct punctuation is important. Somebody stole the telescope. Nobody cared about the old tree. Albert was eaten by a lion. The lion later threw up. Cats tend to throw up on carpets. Astronauts try not to throw up in their helmets. This example is getting gross.

SECOND JOB:
Shows where a contraction has taken place. Like this

Mr. = mister
Mrs. = missus
Fr. = Father
Dr. = Doctor
St. = Street and Saint
Cr. = Crescent
Crt. = Court
Mt. = Mount
Sr. = Senior
Jr. = Junior
Col. = Colonel.
1st. = first
2nd. = second
hrs. = hours
kms. = kilometers

CAPITALIZATION
Looks like this: [ A,B,C ]
Its job -- come on guys, you know your alphabet!

Shows where a new sentence STARTS. Shows what is the NAME of a person, like John or Sally, or the name of a place, like London and New York. (There are other uses, but this is Basic Punctuation. Ground rules first; get fancy later.)

COMMA
Looks like this: [ , ]
It's job...

Breaks up sentences into 'bite size chunks,' to make them easier to understand. (How and why sentences are broken up into those chunks is all about grammar. We'll look at that elsewhere.) For now ... this is what commas do! Like this:

Correct punctuation, if anyone is interested, isn't hard to learn.

Half a mile from home, the car broke down.

The shop had run out of purple paint, but said they could reorder.

Two lads from Bendigo, fighting in the carpark, were subsequently arrested.

The dogs and cats fought, fang and claw, till they were broken up.

The tree was old, massive, beautiful, and I wished they hadn't cut it down.

Aunt Marie said she was German, or was it Austrian? I forget.

The American Flag, known in that country as 'Old Glory,' is covered in stripes. Also stars.

Meanwhile, the Chinese flag is so red, it looks a lot like a fire engine.

Speaking of which, has anyone checked the price of plane tickets lately?

Correct punctuation, like a gift from Hermes, makes literature readable!

ALSO...
Commas are used in geographical locations, like this:

London, England. Paris, France. Sydney, Australia. Florence, Italy. Mos Eisley, Tatooine. Hobbiton, The Shire.

QUESTION MARK
Looks like this: [ ? ]
It's job...

Shows the end of a question, either spoken or narrative; shows exactly where the voice pitches up at the very end of the wording of a question. Like this:

Why can't Butch have a romp off the leash?

Is there doctor in the house?

Where will I find the old maple syrup in the duct-taped bottle?

Anyone know where Hugh Jackman was born?

Isn't he an Aussie — or is he a Kiwi?

Have you seen the new show on TV?

Did anyone bother to read my blog yesterday?

Hey, am I bleeding?

Good grief, am I missing Doctor Who, is it on already?

Does anyone understand a word I'm saying?

Can somebody show me the correct punctuation for this?

Softly, softly, came the night, but where was the highwayman?

John looked into the shed. Was the light switch broken? No, the power was out.

The tide had raged five miles upriver. Had the sandbags held? Rachel could only hope.

Summer almost always brought bushfires. Would this year be different?

Correct punctuation is necessary. Will anyone trouble to learn it?

APOSTROPHE
Looks like this: [ ' ]
It has two basic jobs...

FIRST JOB:
Shows possession, or how something is owned. A thing can be owned by one person, or by two or more people, and (makes you shudder, but sink your teeth into this) the "apostrophe of possession" changes position to indicate whether that possession is singular or plural!

It works like this:
SINGULAR: John's dog. Sally's chapeaux. Mom's taxi. Bobby's worst habit. Heaven's waiting room. The burger's grease. My yarn store's manager. Dad's pet peeve. Jim's famous foibles. Frank's worst disaster. America's oil crisis. His master's voice. Her mother's anger. Our grandfather's will. Suzie's correct punctuation stunned us all.

PLURAL: The kids' bags. The actors' voices. The pilots' aircraft. The tourists' worst fears. Our gymnasts' Olympic dreams. Their parents' employment. The musicians' last gig. Our cats' gardens. Their dogs' exercise. The trees' branches. The boys' correct punctuation was greatly appreciated.

SECOND JOB:
Shows where a contraction occurs. In English, we frequently mash words together to make shorter (more speakable) versions of them. These 'contractions' are indicated by an apostrophe, which shows up where letters have been removed. Like this:

Is not = isn't.
Are not = aren't.
Do not = don't
Can not = can't.
Could not = couldn't.
Had not = hadn't.
Should not = shouldn't.
Shall not = shan't.
Was not = wasn't.
Were not = weren't.
Have not = haven't.
Might not =mightn't
I am = I'm.
You are = you're.
He/she is = he's/she's
I will be = I'll be
You will be = you'll be.
We are = we're.
They are = they're.
We will be = we'll be.
They will = they'll.
These will = these'll.
He is = he's.
She is = she's.
You would = you'd
I would = I'd
She/he would = she'd/he'd
We would = we'd
There is = there's.
There is not = there isn't.
There are = there're.
There will be = there'll be.
There are not = there aren't.
This will = this'll.
This will not= this won't.

SPEECH MARKS
Looks like this: [ US = "/", UK = '/' ]
It's job...

Shows the beginning and end of dialog. The marks enclose only the actual words. Notice how a comma appears at the end of speech, inside the second speech mark — unless the whole sentence ends along the the dialog! If both the sentence and the dialog end together, you'd use a full stop. Like this:

"I can't do that," Bobby grumbled.

"Now," said the guard, "bring me my sword."

The barbarian demanded shrewdly, "Where lies the castle?"

The old man coughed and said, "To whom does this garbage belong?"

"Can I help you, madam?" the waiter asked with feigned politeness.

The assistant blanched, croaked, "Help!" And promptly fainted.

"Correct punctuation," said Miss Prim, "will score you three extra points!"

"If I could do that," he said hotly, "I wouldn't be here in the first place."

EXCLAMATION MARK
Looks like this: [ ! ]
It's job...

Shows where an exclamation has been made. Like this:

"Get the hell out of my dadblasted cabbage patch!"

"The blasted rabbit just ate all my carrots!

"Holey moley!"

Smash! The glass shattered out of the window.

"Whew! I thought you people were done for!"

"A plane just crashed! Can you hear me? The engines exploded!"

With a massive thuddd! the warehouse doors rolled down and locked.

Jim was dying! What was I going to do?

He cared nothing at all about correct punctuation! I was appalled.

"Correct punctuation, ya varmint? I hate all kinds of punctuation!" Yosemite Sam was steaming mad.

PARENTHESIS (brackets)
Looks like this: [ ( / ) ]
Their job...

In creative writing, is used to insert a related idea into an existing sentence. Can also be used in formatting documents, to separate indicators, such as numbers, out from the text. Use them like this:

(1) Under no circumstances whatsoever will there be tarryhooting in the hallways. (2) There will be absolutely no yelling on the stairs unless, or until, (3) a fire has broken out, and it had better be a big one!

a) The restoration of the Grand Hall
b) Studies regarding the foundations
c) Concrete quotes from local companies
ci) other concrete quotes
cii) alternatives to concrete
ciii) consequences of using alternatives

And while I'm on the subject of correct punctuation (which should be high on any writer's agenda), let me just add one more point.

Sonny was a daughter of the Earth (also of Rosie and Bob, but everyone knew that), and she wanted to do something about the environment.

Zipping down the freeway much too fast (Jack would obviously have disagreed), the driver missed the last, long curve and plowed into the hay field.

The 747 is a monument to modern engineering (even if it has played a terrible part in the destruction of the atmosphere), and will be honored with a museum.

The year before Rick was born, Martin (so his mother always swore), spent one long, hot summer in the village ... make of it what you will!

The ocean broke higher up the beach every year, and even within Judy's lifespan (and that of her mother, which had been recorded in so many journals), the changes in the shoreline were obvious.

Save for the efforts of the local Community Action group (we'll be getting to them later, with a special award), the whole area would have been devastated.

Just before Christmas, when the nights are longest and coldest (for some reason, my favorite time of the year! I love winter), my family gets together at the old house in Maine.

Correct punctuation (said Miss Prim with a look on her face that made you want to feed her the inkwell), was the most important thing she knew. We all decided she needed to get out more.

ELLIPSIS
Looks like this: [ ... ]
Its job...

Used to show where text is missing; also used to indicate where a speaker has paused, or hesitated. Can also be used to do the job of parentheses (brackets). Like this:

Mr. Carmody stated that unless the changes in the legislation were ... comprehensive and prompt, further action would be undertaken.

The river has been in gradual decline since the ... drought of the 1970s.

Most schools report an increase in the unruly behavior of ... students in general.

"I don't know," she said slowly, thinking over every word, "but I'd have to guess ... maybe seventeen at the most."

He gazed at the distant, blue line of the hills. "They remind me of home, and sometimes I ... I get a little sad." "Your house feels like home. Or ... like my home used to be," he admitted. She spoke through a rush of tears. "He was my friend for eight years, and ... okay, he was a dog, but don't you dare say only a dog!" Mary and Jean were in the backyard ... the far backyard, where the willows overhung the river ... and he heard the distant murmur of their voices.

The radio was playing quietly ... songs of another era, another people, her own folk ... but she was no longer listening.

She called herself Delilah ... perhaps like the traitorous wife in that only song, sung by Tom Jones? ... yet one felt the goodness inside her.

One misses the simple things in life ... like correct punctuation.

SEMI COLON
Looks like this: [ ; ]
Its job...

Breaks up items in a list — replaces the words 'and' and 'but' (which are called conjunctions because they link together various ideas). The 'lists' of things that can be separated out by the semi-colon can also include ideas, the narrator's thoughts, and parts of the sentence. Like this:

He was from Austria, in the mountain country; I never knew him before he arrived in San Francisco.

Five gold rings; four mocking birds; three French hens; two turtle doves, but unfortunately the partridges were out of stock at the Christmas tree store, and won't be available till the January truck arrives.

The launch of the first starship of Earth was greeted with mixed reactions; for myself, I was thrilled — my brother scorned it.

Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World; it's also true that Portuguese money was integral to the voyage.

Shadows and highlights; confused illumination from the overheads; muted, stormy daylight from the filthy windows, all gave her little chance to see the wolf properly before he showed himself.

Roger could hardly believe it; sheer incredulity stopped him in his tracks.

Correct punctuation had vanished from literature; it was sorely missed.

FULL COLON
Looks like this: [ : ]
Its job...

Most often used in formatting to indicate the time, also to separate out 'bullet points' in numbered and categorized lists. In creative writing, is used for emphasis, indicating that a summary, or conclusion, or emphatic statement follows right after it. Like this:

Part Two: The Creek and Cherokee Peoples

14d: Rights and responsibilities of elected members.

I don't know much about the situation, but I can tell you this: Susan is a certified, card-carrying idiot.

Like a meteor, the spaceplane plunged into the atmosphere, streaming coolant from smashed engines: she was done for, long before the inevitable impact.

The fear of rats had haunted him since childhood, and he had always known he must face it: confront it, once and for all, and defeat it.

Religion has been called the 'opiate of the masses,' and here is the problem: they were doped out of their wits on it when they turned on Europe's women and burned thousands of them as witches.

He was a freak of nature: no other human in the world could run so fast.

The bottom line is this: if you don't get the hang of correct punctuation, it will be very difficult to find a professional publisher to take you on.

EMRULE (long dash, or double-dash)
Looks like this: [ — or -- ]
Its job...

Joins ideas that are directly related; is used to insert a related idea into an existing sentence instead of using parentheses (brackets, which can be intrusive). Can also indicate where text or dialog is missing, especially at the end of a line of dialog that has been cut off. Like this:

She ran out of the mill as if the devil himself were behind her — and for all she knew, he might have been.

The two boys had just stepped off the train — dressed in their Sunday best and looking faintly ridiculous among the sheep shearers.

Her name was Mavis — God, what a name!

My favorite day was always Sunday — it was the only day we got to sleep in.

Johnny was half-Mexican — his mother, so people said, had made her way north from a tiny town in Tijuana.

North of the Orkney Islands — where the North Sea is wide and wild — a small boat can be sunk without trace.

Marianna had never liked Richard — he was too loud and obnoxious — but she loved his brother at first sight.

Coming around the corner — where the old church hunched like a troll cast in granite — the wolf stopped to scent the air.

"Wait for me," he panted, "I can't —"

"Phonecall for you," Alan shouted, "It sounds like —"

Thunder rolled down the valley for long minutes, and then — rain, as I had never seen rain before.

"Correct punctuation — ha! You might as well say 'fly to the Moon.' He's not paying attention."

HYPHEN (short dash)
Looks like this: [ - ]
Its job...

Glues words together to make 'superwords' ... splits them apart at the ends of lines to make them appear more attractive in a typeset. (There are more uses, which we'll look at elsewhere. For now, the basics will suffice.) Like this:

Mother-in-law
Wil-o'-the-wisp
jack-o'-lantern
left-of-center
heavily-bearded guy
well-tempered trumpet
painted-on tattoos
text-based websites
character-driven plots
pug-nosed charm
nasty-minded people
fan-damn-tastic! (slang)
un-damn-believable (slang)
happy-go-lucky
heavy-handed justice

Correct punctuation? Are you serious?!

2009-04-11T09:48:00.006+09:30

Correct punctuation gives you a head start!

Sorry guys -- we're deadly serious here. If there's one thing that will jump out of your manuscript in the five seconds after an editor first looks at it, that thing is bad punctuation. Three errors on page one, and page two won't even be glanced at.

Correct punctuation has not always been a tool writers had at their fingertips. For the first several thousand years after writing was invented, nobody bothered to even separate words with spaces! If you've seen an example of ancient Greek, you might wonder how anybody ever read it:

LEFT: a page from a Bible dating from around Year Zero. They were written in ancient Greek in those days; the original Hebrew texts are much older ... and you don't want to know how hard it is to read those! RIGHT: the Ancient Greek language, like any written language, gets even 'worse' when it's scrawled by hand! You would wonder how anyone made sense of this.

As you can see at a glance, correct punctuation starts with ... nothing. An empty space. Specifically, the spaces we insert between words. If not for a pinch of punctuation (that is, if we were still writing like the Ancient Greek scholars) this paragraph would look like this:

There's a reason people invented punctuation. There's a reason we still use it! And good writers accept the challenge of learning correct punctuation, for extremely sound reasons.

You want people to understand your writing. You don't want to be misread, misquoted ... or not read at all, because some people don't understand a word you're saying and others take one look at your work, see the absence of correct punctuation (put another way: too much wrong punctuation, or none at all!) and don't buy your book.

And if your ambition is to not only get paid to write but to actually write for a living, it's all about selling your work. You can always park your stories in website archives, invite people to come in and read, and bask in the knowledge that you're being read, and some people send nice emails. It's true, many writers never go any further than this; they have no professional aspirations. But if you want to write professionally ... give up the day job and earn a living by writing, you must write well. Sorry: there's no other way but to learn.

Fortunately, correct punctuation is easy to learn. Once you know the rules of punctuation, and the rules of grammar, you'll have such a head start over 90% of your competitors, you're already halfway through the literary agency's door.

So let's look at the rules of good ... correct! ... punctuation. Let's get some simple ground rules down. Once you have this foundation installed, you can build the mansion on top.

Turn page to Punctuation made simple!

Character creation: archetypes and stereotypes

2009-04-10T14:54:00.007+09:30

What are archetypes and stereotypes ... and where should my own characters fall?

Aim for a spot somewhere in the middle. The line between archetype and stereotype can become perilously close. Archetypes can turn into stereotypes by being overused. First, be sure you understand what an archetype is. Here are some, which will help to grasp the concept. (How to write unforgettable characters is a massive subject. We're going to tickle it on this page, but when you're ready to grasp this particular bull by the horns, take Creating Characters 101, on this page!)

Father figure/male authority figure.
Odin. Zeus. Merlin. Richard the Lionheart. Gandalf. Obiwan Kenobi. Commander Adama. Jean Luc Picard. Master Po. Jor-El. Jim Gordon. Wise old(er) man who has, or seems to have, all the answers. The archetype slithers into the stereotype if your wise elder is TOO good, TOO wise, TOO all-seeing, and you use this device too often.

Mother figure/female authority figure. Mary. Galadriel. Gwenevere. Hera, Hestia, Demeter. Queen Elizabeth I. Spiderman's Aunt. Captain Janeway. The good witch of the north. The crone, or wise woman, with all the answers as well as the comfort and compassion. Again, the archetype slithers into the stereotype if you let it.

The young warrior (male or female active: light). Thor. Baldur. Hector. Robin Hood. Launcelot. Zorro. Frodo. Aragorn. Luke Skywalker. Hercules. Bruce Lee. Jim Kirk (in the first show!). Richard Sharpe. Kal-el. Xena. Princess Leia. Ripley. Eowen. S/he's smarter, better, stronger, faster than everyone else; the trick is in how to write him/her without him/her turning into a comic book hero(ine)!

The rogue warrior (almost always male male active: dark ... the antihero).Ares. Achilles. Wolverine. Magneto. Han Solo. Mad Max. Boromir. Anakin Skywalker. Bruce Wayne. Captain Nemo. They have a streak of the dark as well as the light; their allegiance could fall either way. Work out how to write the character without him becoming the cliche.

The villain (should transcend gender: dark ... resident evil). Set. Loki. Saruman. Sauron. Emperor Palpatine. Joker. Green Goblin. Darth Vader. Lex Luthor. Sheriff of Nottingham. Klingons. Cylons. Goa'ould. Nazgul. Smeagol. Dracula. The bad witch. It's critical to work out how to write this archetype, because the stereotype is lurking right behind you, dying to join the party.

There are many, many more archetypes, and just as many stereotypes, but you get the picture:

The hustler with the heart of gold; the beautiful but dumb young person of whatever gender; the naughty child who does stupid things as a catalyst to the plot; the teen who won't listen to reason and gets into trouble; the town drunk; the lecherous priest; the nasty teacher who's abusing kids; the kindly old lady who rescues stray cats; the ugly woman who's easy prey to any young guy intending to fleece her; the brainless barbarian warrior; the snivelling, cowardly thief; the virgin bride kidnapped before the wedding; the defrocked priest; the lecherous nun seducing some guy; the Arab terrorist; the dim-bulb Irishman; the Afro-American rapper, out of whose mouth you can't understand a word; the perfect hero; the corrupt politician; the butt-kicking babe who's too small and skinny to do any of this, but she sure looks cute in a movie; the lispingly effeminate gay guy who works in a frock shop; the femme fatal bursting out of the tight ruby-red down; the sassy little kid with the smart mouth; the big, butch gay gal astride the Harley-Davidson; the tired, middle-aged housewife immersed in romance novels...

How to write good characters is a subject we sink our teeth into in this whole series of posts, but you've got a good grasp of what the archetypes and stereotypes are — and in fact, they're fairly easy to avoid. Just identify who they are, get a lasso around them, get them into the corral and lock 'em in there!

Create a character stage two: give him a name

2009-04-10T14:43:00.006+09:30

What's in a character's name .. and why should it matter?

What's in a name? A lot. More than you might think at first glance, and when you're serious about the process, and you intend to create a character that really matters, don't name him/her willy-nilly. Think first — because names come to us complete with baggage.

The most important thing a name tells us about the character is his or her ethnicity; and this can give you a clue as to their upbringing ... which in turn can give a reader preconceived notions about who and what the character is, and how s/he will, and even should, behave. A name is a loaded gun, and they like to go off! Create a character with great care with regard to culture and ethnicity.

The names of 'Goldman' and 'Petrakis,' 'Rinaldi' and 'Chavanel' are very attractive, and you might be tempted to just pluck one of them and apply it to the character you're creating. However, each of them carries a burden of ethnicity, linking your character directly to a country, an immigration path, a religion, a culture, which you might not intend ... what's more, if you intend to write a good book, you can't ignore this, and you certainly can't afford to contradict it!

Take a look at these names:
Patrick Michael O'Flannery
Sahfraz Hafeez
Itzhak Goldman
Johnny Sakai
Maria Rinaldi
Gregor Danielovitch
Cheng Mei Ling
Theresa Cheng
Rosie O'Grady-Silverberg
Jessica Petrakis
Pat Chavenel
Yehudi Rosebloom
Wasim Malik
Joey Petrocelli

What's in a name? As soon as you see names, your imagination runs riot. When you create a character, always consider what your readers will construe, long before they get to your in-depth development of the character. Patrick Michael O'Flannery is certainly Irish, which until very recently meant almost certainly a devout Catholic, from a strict family background, doesn't 'sleep around,' still goes to church, wants a life-time marriage and kids, possibly lots of them. If your Mick O'Flannery is different, you'll have to deliberately and thoroughly explore how he's different and who he is ... just to overcome the ethnic "baggage" which hitched a lift on the name!

Johnny Sakai is almost certainly second-generation Japanese, living in the US, Australia or UK. Which means he's probably bilingual, speaks Japanese at home. Does he adhere to Japanese codes of conduct, or is he an American city kid? Does he have a sense of honor, even bushido, or does he (secretly?) consider the whole thing a load of rubbish? Cultures conflict in this guy; creating him must be done with great care, but this is your opportunity to create a character around whom an epic could be built ... if you can pull it off. (The downside is the research, if you're not connected to this guy's community.)

Rose O'Grady-Silverberg is most likely an Irish lass married to a Jewish lad. It happens ... do a little research into Harry Houdini! The opportunities to 'go to town' with this character are massive. Just be sure you know what you're writing about. Both the Catholic and Jewish communities are enormously complex, and the cultural quirks have the power to astonish. If you're not familiar with both communities, you'll need to research them. Thoroughly. Use what you learn to create a character that will absolutely rock your readers.

Theresa Cheng and Cheng Mei Ling are the same girl ... at work, and at home. She's bilingual, first or second generation ... Taoist, Buddhist or possibly even Catholic. But to which culture, East or West, does she lean?

Itzhak Goldman and Yehudi Rosenbloom are both Jewish ... but 'Izzy' Goldman could easily be a New York Jew, and the Rosenblooms are Yiddish, being Jews from Austria, Germany, even Hungary. Take especial care if you delve into these cultures by using such a name. They're complex almost beyond a Gentile's imagination, and their languages are so different ... Yiddish is not Hebrew, nor is it German.

Sahfraz Hafeez is a Moslem ... but is he an Aussie Muslim, or a Londoner? Devout, or atheist? On the run from the religion, or a regular mosque-goer? Just because the name is Muslim doesn't make the character a stereotype, but if you write a Muslim character, you'll have to be very specific about who and what he is, or readers will certainly have preconceived ideas. Again, create a character, real and genuine, not a stereotype.

If you don't intend your character to have Greek connections, choose a name other than Petrakis. If your character has no Jewish, Yiddish or Israeli connection, choose something other than Goldman or Rosebloom. 'Chavanel' establishes a French connection, but it it French, French-Canadian, or Cajun? 'Rinaldi' and 'Petrocelli' link directly to Italy — also to Catholicism, which might be far indeed from your character, who's an atheist, playing the field. You'd have some serious explaining to do, on that score. This could add depth to the novel; but is it something you want to get into? Create a character with cultural "baggage" only if you're prepared to do the work. Readers will definitely notice if you set it up then goof off.

Bottom lines: choose any name you want, but choose deliberately. Do some research and build up your character by delving into the culture, the immigration path, the political and spiritual environment in which s/he grew up. Are his/her parents still alive? What about siblings? The only cardinal sin is to either ignore the cultural ramifications of your name choice ... or to contradict yourself and get it wrong. For example, if your character has a Greek name and you write his/her parents as Italian, you'll really have to talk your way out of that one!

Parting shot: when you create a character, take care, beware of the pitfalls, do a little research, and write well!

Turn page to Know your archetypes from your stereotypes...

Create a character: The Villain

2009-04-10T14:42:00.002+09:30

Young guy, older guy? Tall, short? Walks with a limp due to old injury?

And yes, right here you can see that the process is virtually the same as in developing the hero. There is one different point: you get to decide, about halfway through the "create a character process," WHY this guy became evil, or bad, sneaky, underhand, cruel ... whatever the character trait is, which makes him the nemesis of your hero/hero

There are no rules to follow now, and it's twice as hazardous creating a really great bad guy as designing a fully believable hero. It's harder than you'd imaging, finding decent reasons for someone to be evil. This is where you'll probably work hardest, in the phase prior to writing the novel.

What turned this guy to the darkside? Was someone dear to him killed (Mad Max, Anakin Skywalker, Pardon Chato, Two-Face, Hobgoblin). Was he cheated of his birthright ... or persecuted for being what he was born (any of the mutants in X-Men could have gone that road; some did. The 'ostracized for difference' model gives you both heroes and villains who might be gay; physically deformed in Utopia; pagan in the time of the witch hunts; a foreigner in a racially prejudiced society; the alien (or android) in the crew — Spock, Seven, Data, Lore, Bishop, Ash, Hawk, Chewbacca, Nightcrawler, Mystique...). Isolated by race, type, religion and even sexuality, a character could become stronger or ... not. Here is a line from The Dark Knight which makes the point perfectly: "What doesn't kill you makes you ... stranger." (It's a "spin" on the quote from Nietsche, who said, "What does not kill you makes you stronger." However, Friedrich Nietsche died insane, so in retrospect one is actually more inclined to go along with the Joker's take on the line!)

Decide ahead of time what made your character "go bad." Backstory this, create a character who is so fully believable, your readers will identify, at least in some part, with the villain.

(It's quite difficult to decide why some viewers of The Dark Knight identify keenly with the Joker. He's an escapee from a lunatic asylum, and we're given oddly crossed signals about what drove him insane: he tells the story differently each time. We know only that one or both parents abused him as a child, and he saw and suffered things that turned his mind. Twenty years later, he's avenging himself upon the city. The movie's writers and directors are probably still scratching their heads over why viewers identify with a homicidal maniac! The brilliance of Heath Ledger's final, signature performance contributes a lot. However, this phenomenon has happened before. When Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior appeared, a section of the audience attached itself to the Mohawk biker, the villain, Wez. It often happens that the villain is written, and/or portrayed with such verve and panasche, that viewers and readers find him/her irresistible.)

Have a chuckle while you create a character to fill your villain's shoes. You don't have to make all the old mistakes committed by writers generations before you ... learn from their mistakes. And have a good laugh while you're about it! Grab a fresh cuppa (or coffee), and read this: Peter's Evil Overlord List.

Everything you need to avoid blunders committed by writers from Tolkien to Lucas and Spielberg, is on this hilarious list, which will bring the whole topic of "create a character for the villain" into focus faster and better than looking at archetypes for the next half hour!

Now...

Turn page to What's in a character's name?

Create a character: The Hero

2009-04-10T14:39:00.003+09:30

Young guy, older guy? Tall, short? Walks with a limp due to old injury? European, Afro-American, Native? Aussie accent? Good looking, scar-faced after the old injury? Bad tempered, sweet tempered? Foul mouthed? Snazzy dresser, or grunge guy? Rocker, rapper, or violinist? College educated or dropout? Brave, or scared silly? Straight, bi or gay? Tee-total, drinking problem, drug problem? Smoker, or non-? Republican, Democrat, or couldn't care less? Religious, spiritual, or atheist? Intelligent or a bit dim? A son, a father, a brother, a nephew?
Education, natural abilities, athleticism, trade skills — politics, sexual orientation, religious inclination, fashion preference, musical tastes ...! All these considerations, and many more, are invested in a solid character. And they're all going to come from your own imagination. A large part in winning the 'Create a Character' game is to stretch your imagination to the utmost.

There's a pitfall to watch out for right here. The tendency, especially for new writers, is to model the hero (or shero) on their own preferences. This is fine, up to a point, but take care that all your heroes and sheroes are not cast out of the same mold. Readers will soon notice.

Instead, try building a central character who fascinates you exactly because he's different from you. He likes jazz, not pop. He likes Mexican food, not Chinese. He likes old movies, not new ones. He drives a beat-up car, not an SUV. He's college educated, but dropped out before getting a degree. He had a drug problem in the past, and beat it. He's a tee-totaller now. He's apolitical, has no political preference. He's an agnostic, even an atheist, not religious. Create a character, not a stereotype. (Need to know about stereotypes and archetypes? See the lower sidebar, to your right!)

A real live guy just took shape in the above paragraph. He's driving down the road in a beat-up car, listening to jazz on the radio, looking out for a Mexican restaurant to get lunch, talking to his buddy about classic movies, refusing to talk about politics because he's bored by the subject. The two of them go into a restaurant, and our guy won't have a glass of wine, and won't be drawn into religious debate.

Is the other side of this conversation also a major character? His life partner, girl- or boyfriend? A workmate? A client? If the character will take part in much of the book, inject a little dynamism into the relationship. This second character likes rap, not jazz, is a Republican, a churchgoer, drives an SUV, likes Indian, not Mexican food...

They have something to argue about, like real people. The whole story of their lives can be spun from details which are filled in, like fields on a form, right here. You 'only' set out to create a character, but in fact a relationship wove itself out of the details and the conflict of interests.

Working backwards from what the character needs to do physically and intellectually, lets you design the whole guy in two dimensions. His personality can come along later (along with his name and even his face), but you know right at the start, he's big, athletic, and smart. (The stuff you're going to put him through, he'd better be, right?)

With these physical characteristics in mind, you can easily audition. Run your favorite actors through the role, see how they fit. Brad? Harrison? George? Nicholas? Tom? Hugh? The choice is up to you. Are you writing a shero? Angelina? Sigourney? Charlieze? Sharon? Sandra? Julia?

The last step in the 'create a character' process is probably the one your imagination wanted to start with: the character's face. Okay ... it's tempting to work backwards from your favorite actor, but try not to! Mis-casting can be one of a movie director's worst nightmares, and when you write a book, create a character, develop a plot, you are director, producer, writer, cinematographer, all rolled into one.

And as soon as you're done with casting, you'll also have a clear picture of who you're describing in the narrative. In short ... the real fun just started!

BUT! (There's always a "but" in here somewhere.) Be clever. Be cautious. Beware! Know the stereotypes and, if you want to create a character in the hero role who is believable, watch out that archetype doesn't become stereotype. It can happen easily.

The hero archetype: Luke Skywalker (Star Wars), Maximus (Gladiator), Conan, Robin Hood.

The hero stereotype: Flash Gordon (rent the movie on DVD!) is the absolutely perfect example. Also Robin, in another comedy, Robin Hood: Men In Tights. And you're noticing already that when heroes turn into stereotypes, the movie promptly turns into a comedy.

This is what you're looking out for, when you create a character to carry your story. Hero or shero, he or she MUST be a real human being, if s/he is to be taken seriously. If s/he is too perfect, too beautiful, too strong, too honorable, too fast, too good ... you'll blunder right into what we'll call "The Flash Gordon Effect." We'll coin a phrase here.

When you set out to create a character from the ground up, be vigilant. What are his/her failings and weaknesses? A phobia? An old injury which leaves a weakness? Fatigue, burnout, tiredness? Heroes come in a stunning range of roles. While you're renting Flash Gordon, rent a Harrison Ford movie called Regarding Henry at the same time ... and be astonished.

Now --

Turn page to Create a character: The Villain...

Create a character your readers will never forget

2009-04-10T14:34:00.004+09:30

Right after a coherent, exciting (or at least interesting) plot, the next thing a story or novel needs is characters. A whole cast of performers, fresh from the writer's imagination. You must create a character to fill each role — think of it as casting a play or a movie.

Let's assume you have your plot nailed down tight. For the moment, we'll take it as read that you have the beginning, middle and end, and you know (with at least some certainty) where the story line actually starts.

One point you can be sure of: the story will start with a scene, and almost every scene involves humans playing their part in putting flesh onto the bones of the story. (Notice ... almost every scene involves characters! There will always be scenes where a major event like a massive storm, a rocket launch, a ship sinking, will command the entire narrative. But in fiction these scenes will be a few percent of the overall number of scenes in your book. It's all about "Show, don't tell," and to see how it works, and why it works, see the sidebar to your right!

It's time to create a character ... or twenty characters. And here's how to do it ...

Character creation 101

Sometimes you'll have the characters clearly in mind even before you've nailed down the plot. They spring into your imagination fully formed, and literally demand that you tell their story. Some writers are lucky enough to have this happen every time ... the rest of us have to work to create a character, real, live, fleshed out and detailed in three dimensions.

Let's assume that, because you're on this page, you'll have to work at it. This actually gives you a big advantage, because character creation is a skill which can be mastered right here. The writers to whom it comes naturally are 'playing by ear,' and the downside of that is, if or when a day arrives when they get burned out or 'blocked,' they never did learn the basic skills. They have nothing to fall back on ... but you do! When you how to create a character according to a set of ground rules, you can always 'return to source.' These are life-long skills. So...

To create a character, first, look at the part of the plot and make some decisions.

With these questions answered, you can put up an 'auditions in progress' notice, and this is where the most fun in a writer's day begins. You get to cast the parts. (If highbrow writers try to tell you they don't work this way ... yeah, right. They might be telling the truth. Maybe.) To create a character, however, think about physical/intellectual characteristics first, looks second.

Auditioning for the hero, examine what you need this poor guy to do. Fly the plane? Drive like a Formula One champion? Crack the secret code? Understand chemistry and physics? Fight like Jet Li? Swim and run like Tarzan? Ride a bike like Lance Armstrong? Play the violin? Make a parachute jump? Fix engines? Perform an autopsy? Setting out to create a character from scratch, consider what you need him/her to do, and this will efficiently set out the academic and athletic background s/he needs to come from

You need to 'cast' a type which is capable of performing what's necessary. If you mis-cast the part in the first chapters, when a meek, mild academic grabs the machine pistol and jumps out of the aircraft without a parachute, catches the bad guy, rips the chute off him, blows up the chemical plant, mows down an army of terrorists and saves his girlfriend ... your readers won't believe a word of it. From the get-go, you must create a character readers can believe.

Similarly, if you 'cast' a sports hero type who later in the book starts deciphering astrophysics and chemistry, curing alien diseases and saving the day with his revolutionary 'take' on calculus, the story will have spoofed itself. If the guy needs a doctorate in physics to save the day at the end, design it into the plan, the moment you set out to create a character readers will believe utterly.

So, think it through and cast the parts carefully. This will save a lot of rewriting later.

When you invest the time and effort to create a character properly, there's a lot more to think about than what he can do and what he looks like. Do you recall this exercise from the plot idea page? (Page back and refresh your memory if you need to.) By going through a kind of questionnaire, a hero, shero, villain, coward, nuisance ... any kind of performer can be built up, layer by layer. Let's take a look...

Turn page to Create a character: The Hero...

Grammar: the absolute basics --

2009-04-10T13:33:00.007+09:30

Get this much "down" if you do nothing else!

We've put the essential ground rules in a nutshell. Be aware, there's more ... there's a lot more ... but you should find more than enough right here to get you on the right track, and if you do need more, we'll recommend some excellent reference books. (If this were soccer, you'd know the size and shape of the field, length of game, number of players, how to score and maybe two offside rules. Of course there's more — but you might not need it!)

What's in this post?
Is it singular, or are they plural? Help
If it was ... if it were ...? What goes on here?
Do I say I, or me?
Either, or, neither, nor ...say, what?
Can, may or might? And what's the diff?
Possession: adventures with the Dreaded Apostrophe
Pluralizing: more misadventures with the Apostrophe
It's ... its ... its' ... which is it?
Their ... there ... they're ... which is right?
Whose or who's or whose's? A little help here!
Controlling pronouns before they run berserk
Splicing together phrases and clauses to make sentences
Subjects, objects ... and what's this predicate business?
That or which ... which is it?
On which side of the bracket does the punctuation fall?

It's ... its ... its' ... which is it?
Understand the difference between them, and it's simple:

It's is a contraction. It's short for it+is. You use It's to say, "It's a beautiful day;" "it's a crying shame;" "Mike said it's in the cupboard;" "Jim's bike? It's broken;" "it's being mended;" "it's got two flat tires." "It's not a good idea." "It's time for tea." "It's too late for talking." "Then, it's all over?" "But it's only just started!"

Its shows possession: my, your, his, her, our, their ... its. Notice, NONE of the words showing possession have an apostrophe. Not one of them. So, it's easy to tell when to use Its, because it has no apostrophe. Like this:

"Its paint was cracked." "She had a bike, but its wheel was buckled." "Jim said its door was yellow." "Yes, but its knob was green." "Its wires were burned out." "Its tail feathers are white." "Its aroma was delicious." "The song was lovely, its melody soared." (In these examples, Its is standing in for the noun. A house, a door, a bike, a radio, a bird, a pot of soup; a song.)

Its' is a typographical error. Never use it, because it doesn't mean anything at all. It's the ultimate booboo: gibberish. A mix-up between your fingers and the keys. 'Nuff said.

Pluralizing: billboard's ... billboards ... hotdog's ... hotdogs ... house's ... houses ... help!

More fun with the apostrophe. Relax: it's easy. You already know, after reading #1, that the apostrophe shows possession. What is does NOT show #151 not ever! -- is the plural, of anything! (Singular is one of something; plural is two or more.) All you have to do, to avoid this incredibly common gaff is, never, never use the apostrophe when you mean "two or more." Like this:

Their ... there ... they're ... which is right?

All three are correct, in context. When you're copy editing, all you need to do is make sure the right word is used for the right context. Fortunately, it's so easy!

Their is a possessive pronoun. (A pronoun is a word which stands in, like an understudy, for a noun. 'It' can be the standin for a lamp, an elephant, and the planet Mars. 'She' can be the standin for two year old Gemma, your great-grandmom, and the starship Enterprise. 'They' can be used to stand for a bunch of flowers, ten battleships, and the Hell's Angels. Pronouns are the most flexible words in the language, and some of them show how a noun "owns" or "possesses" something. "The girl's bike = her bike." "Jim's book = his book." "The car's wheels = its wheels." "The boys' exams = their exams." The personal pronouns in this particular word list are "my, your, his, her, its, our, and their." Simply add a noun to any of them, and you can't go wrong.) So, their is only ever (ever!) used to show how a bunch of people or things "possess" something else. Stick to this, and you can't go wrong. "Their religion." "Their tourism industry." "Their Size 14 dresses." "Their industrial-strength titanium frames." "Their tiny, delicate petals." "Their warped camshafts." "Their photon torpedo banks." "Their painted fingernails." Easy.

There is a word with two jobs.

The first job is where "there" is used as a preposition. (Prepositions are words which show the position of objects in space. Under, over, in(side) out(side), before, behind, between, above, below, here ... there.) So, "The football stopped over there." "Our house is there, on the corner." "There are the girls." "The frog was there, on the rock." "I saw him standing there." "She said, 'There it is, under the table." He answered, 'I don't see it there.'" "'But the book is there,' she insisted. 'I put it there!'" "Jim saw the Klingons, hiding in wait there." So, in this context, use There to show the position of objects in space. Never use "their" or "they're," and you can't go wrong.

Second job performed by "there" ... it shows the existence of things. Like this:

There is; there are; there were; there will be; there aren't any; there are six; there were 43; there haven't been any since May; there won't be any until August; there isn't a chance; there can't be a sound; there wasn't any trace; there is a whole load of them; there is at least a million; there was one when I got here. So, in this context use there only (only!) to show the existence of things.

They're is a contraction. It's short for they+are. "They're" is never (never!) used for any other purpose. Stick to this, and you'll be right ever time. Like this:

"They're on their way home, I see them there on the road." "They said they're coming back, as soon as their car is fixed." "I talked to Jack and Sam, they're finished the job." "We called them last night, they're on the morning train." "The two dogs are fighting, they're going to get hurt this time." "Six cars are racing on the road, they're driven by maniacs." "Four flights have been cancelled today, they're waiting for fog to clear." "Daniel and Jack won't be back tonight, they're busy." "Their plane is late, so they're going to take a cab home, we don't have to wait there."

Attack of the killer pronouns!

Take a look at these sentences. Each contains one pronoun and two or three nous. The problem is, you're left guessing which of the nouns the pronoun stands in for, and the sentences become ambiguous. One of the most important copy editing jobs is to watch out for ambiguity, turn the muddy into the clear. Pronouns can get you into a lot of trouble! Like this:

Try this:

The trick is to see the ambiguity, and then look for ways to either invert the sentence to make the potential for ambiguity go away; you can also replace the pronoun with a similar word which will do the job just as well, and prevent over-use of the original noun. Copy editing give you the opportunity to revise to your heart's content. (In the examples above, the car = the vehicle; home = the building; lunch = his meal; the crate = the heavy box; the white cat = the Persian. In the other examples, the sentences have been turned inside out to weed out the potential for killer pronouns.

Subjects and Objects: it's war!

Every sentence has a subject. If it doesn't have a subject, it's not a sentence! (Put your copy editing hat on here.) The 'subject' of a sentence is the entity that performs the verb. Think of the subject as the owner of the verb. Like this:

First step: pick out the verbs. (A verb is an 'action' word. It can be the only word in the entire sentence that indicates what is actually HAPPENING! In the examples above, the verbs are...

Sings ... running ... wants ... jumped ... arrived ... worked ... terrorized ... arrested.

(NOTE: the verbs are in different tenses, but don't worry about this. They're all verbs, and at this moment, that's what counts.)

Now, figure out who's performing each verb. Who owns it?

The boy ... The elderly man ... A beat-up red car ... A small brown puppy with big, bright eyes ... Mother's cat, a young Persian called Nostradamus ... Two girls from Nebraska ... A regiment of door-to-door salesmen ... Six badly behaved children with execrable manners ... Eight people.

Notice how subjects can be simple ("The boy" and "eight people"), and either singular or plural. The subject can be a whole bunch of people ("A regiment") ... and the subject can get complicated, as in the case of Nostradamus!

The subject of the sentence is all the words used to describe the subject, gathered together:

These, above, are not sentences, even though they're long. They're fragments. To make a sentence, you need add a verb:

(Do you still have your copy editing hat on? Good!) Now, what about the object of a sentence. Not all sentences have objects. Very short ones can be complete without them:

But the instant these short, choppy little sentences start to grow and express more ... you get an object. The object is the entity or object that is affected by the verb. It has the verb performed on it, or done to it. Like this:

In the above examples, the verbs are:

arrived ... smashed ... escaped ... struggled-to-catch ... win ... parked ... stood ... crying-out.

And if you're looking for the subject, it's easy now: the subjects of these simple sentences are the parts that are NOT the verbs or the objects! (Jack and Daniel ... the little girl ... five puppies ... Two policemen ... Charles ... The driver of a yellow Gogomobile ... the Gogomobile ... Stockton.

So far, so good. Look for the verb; whatever, or whoever performs ("owns") the verb is the subject, and whatever gets the verb wreaked upon it is the object. The copy editing process is coming along fine.

Now things get interesting. There's a good deal more material involved in long, complicated sentences, and you have to make absolutely sure all this material is properly tagged and organized. If you get lazy and inattentive, you can end up with hilarious, fall-down-laughing copy editing results, like this:

The trick is simply to arrange the sentence to keep all the appropriate material gathered together. While you're learning, go through a sentence and "tag" the various parts. Underline the verb, highlight the subject, and then when you've identified the object, round up all the material belong to it:

A comb with celluloid teeth ... a table with antique legs ... a house with a nasty case of termites ... a drill with a three-meter cord ... a guitar with bright steel pegs.

The other subject/object battle you can easily get into while copy editing is this: in long sentences, a fight can develop over who owns the verb. When sentences become very long and complex, you can find yourself hunting around trying to sort out who owns what. The easiest "fix" for this malady is to break the sentence down into two, three or even more smaller ones. Shorter sentences are easier to control ... often, they're also easier to read, and they can pack a "punch" in the narrative, which longer, flowing sentences don't have. This is where copy editing can actually cross back over and line into creative writing. The border between the two blurs out.

For example, here's a long, rambling sentence, and the copy editing cure for it:

A good distance offshore, where the water becomes very deep because the continental shelf drops off into the abyss, two small trawlers (which had, an hour before, put out of the port of San Cristobal) set their nets, with the obvious intention of catching any assortment of the shallow-water pelagic fish which abound in those seas, when the sky darkened with thunderclouds and a storm came up, so suddenly and so violently — with massive winds and a barrage of hail — that both the boats were half swamped before the captains could secure them, and only one skipper could broadcast a Mayday signal over the shortwave ahead of the predictable disaster.

Structurally, the sentence is sound, but it rambles from one topic to another, and another: the coastline, the trawlers, the fishing grounds, the storm, the disaster. In the middle of such a sentence, you can struggle to see who or what owns which verb, and it's all too easy to get into a muddle. Good copy editing should always be performed with the reader in mind, not the writer! Make the story easy to understand, and people will stay with you, keep reading and buy your next book!

Try this:

A good distance offshore, the water becomes very deep because the continental shelf drops off into the abyss. Two small trawlers had, an hour before, put out of the port of San Cristobal. They set their nets, with the obvious intention of catching any assortment of the shallow-water pelagic fish which abound in those seas. The sky darkened with thunderclouds and a storm came up, suddenly and violently, with massive winds and a barrage of hail. Both boats were half swamped before the captains could secure them, and only one skipper could broadcast a Mayday signal over the shortwave ahead of the predictable disaster.

In the second "take" on the same material, it's split up into five sentences. The copy editing was very effective. The material is not easier to read, and much easier to control. Subjects and objects are easier to pick out. Be vigilant: by all means write in fluid sentences which sound good in the ear, but ... know when enough is enough! Take pity on your readers.

There is one more rambling-sentence problem which we'll touch on here, and cover properly elsewhere. It's called the "run-on" sentence, and this is something you need to be keenly aware of, so that you can steer well clear if it. The "run-on" is a long, long sentence which has no business being a sentence at all. It's actually several shorter sentences which the writer has spliced together with commas and semi-colons, in order to simulate the "sound" of fluid sentence construction. In fact, the sentences have nothing to do with each other and should be separate.

In the following example, each sentence is complete, even though some of them are short and choppy. They're also unconnected! You can glue the whole lot together with comms, semi-colons and conjunctions (the "ands" and "buts"), however ... you shouldn't, because these sentences address different topics:

They came to rest seven miles outside the town. The sun was hot. Charlotteville was on the horizon. A tribe of gypsies had pitched camp by the well. James was sweating in the heavy tunic. Worried about his father, Marcus remained intent on the town they had just left. With an expert flourish of the bow, a gypsy fiddler began a lively folk tune. The horses were tired, and in need of rest.

Here it is as a run-on sentence. This is what you DON'T want to to:

They came to rest seven miles outside the town, the sun was hot, Charlotteville was on the horizon, a tribe of gypsies had pitched camp by the well, and James was sweating in the heavy tunic — worried about his father, Marcus remained intent on the town they had just left, and with an expert flourish of the bow, a gypsy fiddler began a lively folk tune, and the horses were tired, and in need of rest.

You can glue anything together with the glue of punctuation and conjunctions, but in many instaces, you should't. The trick is to split up the material and keep topics together. Identify your subjects, objects and verbs, and keep them under control. This is better:

They came to rest seven miles outside the town where the sun was hot, making James sweat in the heavy tunic. The horses were tired, and in need of rest. Worried about his father, Marcus remained intent on the town they had just left, but Charlotteville was on the horizon. A tribe of gypsies had pitched camp by the well, and with an expert flourish of the bow, a gypsy fiddler began a lively folk tune.

We'll be looking at run-ons in greater detail in another post, but for now ths example will give you a good grasp of what you want to do ... and what you don't!

That ... or which ...? So, which is it?

At least in this contexthis one is an easy fix. (NOTE: there are many and complex rules governing "that" and "which," but in this case ... trying to work out which one to use, when they seem at first glance to be interchangeable! ... it's not so complex. At this moment, with this particular problem, you're hunting for a "five minute fix" to solve the "that/which battle" -- you only need to know one rule. Elsewhere on the site, we'll examine clauses, and subordinate clauses and a lot of material which can get fairly confusing. The fact is, however, when you just need a "that/which quick-fix," you don't want all the rest. For now, scoop the icing off the top; come back for the rest of the cake later.)

"That" and "Which" have many uses in English. One of their jobs is to glue sentences together in a specific ways. Both of them take short, choppy, awkward, ugly sentences and make them longer, smoother sentences. However, THAT and WHICH are used in different ways, in different contexts. They're not interchangeable at all! So ... which would you use, and when, and why?

Take a look at these examples.

All the above examples use WHICH. The examples below use THAT. Take a look at them, then we'll work out the rule:

Notice, in the first set of examples, two awkward little sentences have been glued together to form one better-sounding sentence, using WHICH. They may sound better when conjointed with WHICH ... but they are actually complete and coherent on their own. Read them through again... "Bats are amazing creatures." This makes perfect sense, and the sentence is complete, like "He had an ace up his sleeve." And "Don't overlook the force of the wind." The sentence comes to a full stop -- done. It's followed by another short sentence with amplifies it, but it'll stand on its own. WHICH is used to turn two choppy, awkward little sentences into one smooth sentence.

Notice, in the second set of examples, two concepts are joined using THAT ... but neither concept is a complete sentence on its own. Like this:

"He used the kind of language" is not a complete sentence. "It would get anyone slapped" is a sentence, but it has an "it" in there, and the "it" makes the sentence utterly ambiguous, if it's separated from the previous sentence fragment and taken out of context. "It" could be face-pulling, a rude gesture, a teeshirt with a crude cartoon, bad behavior -- or bad language. You would use THAT to join a sentence fragment (it's a fagment because it won't stand on its own as a sentence without more added) and a qualifying concept.

"The huge black dog" is not a sentence, but a fragment, like "The only science," and "It could only be the car" and especially, "Mrs. Bailey made more tea, but it was a single lingering lamington" ...! Each of these incomplete fragments needs to be welded to another, qualifying concept, in order to make proper sense. The glue you use to stick them together is WHICH."

(CAVEAT: this is the quick fix! There's a lot more to "that" and "which" than can be covered here, but by far the most common mistake is in mixing them up when you're looking for the right glue to stick short, choppy sentences together. With a firm grasp of this one rule about the that/which battles, you'll about the vast majority of errors. Bookmark this page and return when you need full, in-depth information. Or, subscribe to our newsletter. It's free, and every week or two we'll tell you which pages just went on line at Write Your Novel, detailing which pesky subjects. Visit us again when what you need is "up" ...!)

On which side of the bracket does the punctuation fall?

This at least is simple. Once you see the rule, all errors vanish, never to return. In the course of your copy editing, watch out for two kinds of sentences which contain parentheses (brackets):

1) The sentence is entirely inside the brackets;
2) The sentence is partly inside, partly outside the brackets.

The rule is this: If ALL the sentence is inside the brackets ... so is the punctuation. If part of the sentence is OUTSIDE the brackets, so is the punctuation. Like this:

Johnny had been in Mexico (working for his Uncle Joe), for six months.

(For some reason, Barbara had never thought of this.)

The mountains (up as far as the Swiss Alps) were white with snow.

(Seven dollars seemed like too much to pay.)

If wishes were horses (as my grandpa used to say), we'd all be cowboys.

(Jim would have preferred to see the Clint Eastwood movie, but decided not to say so.)

And now, with sounds of evil chuckling:
Turn page to Grammar: when to break ALL the rules!

Correct grammar? Me?! You have got to be kidding!

2009-04-10T13:06:00.011+09:30

Correct Grammar: a framework to which everything else is pegged

Grammar is the process by which verbal chaos is turned into order. A mish-mash of garbled sounds and idea turns into prose ... then the prose is processed further, and becomes poetry. Fiction, non-fiction, journalism, blogging, the work of the diarist — everything starts with turning chaos into order — an idea the Ancient Greek ancestors of our own language would have loved. In fact, the parts of speech were first identified by a Greek scholar who worked at the Library of Alexandria.

Letters flow together to make words: nouns, proper nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, pronouns, possessive pronouns, prepositions, the definite article and indefinite articles ... think of them as birds in a flock. Each bird has its own job to do within the flock, and every bird is great the job. Like birds which wheel together to form the flock, Words flow together to make sentences ... but again, inside the sentences are "globs" of words which perform different jobs to make the sentence go. Phrases, independent clauses, subordinate clauses, conditional clauses, and the cases and tenses —

Before the panic sets in, STOP! Take some deep breaths. Grab a cup of tea. (Coffee, if you prefer. Some brain-food on the side is a good idea. Your brain "thinks" on carbohydrates. You need an excuse to go for a cookie? Here it is, ready-made!)

What you need right here is a GLOSSARY OF GRAMMAR. A short-version which states, simply and clearly, what all the confusing stuff means. First: nail down what it all means. Second: see how it's all used. Third: practise using it. Done.

So let's begin with an A-Z of Fundamental Grammar which demystifies the subject ... and then we'll look at how it goes together. Trust us: it's not as bad as it looks.

CAVEAT: The subject of grammar is vast. It fills books ... thick books with small type. In fact, the subject is much too vast to be tackled on a webpage like this! However, we can get you off to a flying start and recommend some extremely good reference works, into which you can delve for more detail, if or when you need it. On this page you will find all the grammar you should need to take an extremely good crack at bullet-proof fiction writing; but if you need more — you'll know. And we'll tell you exactly where to go for the rest. Right here, right now, we're going to hit the high points, the "must haves" of grammar.

So --

Let's get up close, personal and physical with this beast:

The A-Z of Grammar

(Lite Edition!)

ACTIVE VOICE
The subject performs the verb upon the direct object. The GIRL baked the COOKIES. The BOY washed the DISHES. The MAN took out the TRASH. (See Passive Voice.) Use of the active voice makes for writing which is much more involving and exciting; editors have a passion for it.

ADJECTIVE
A describing word added to a noun to better define it. A SMALL house. The GREEN ball. A BATTERED car.

ADJECTIVE CLAUSE
A complex adjective made up of two or more words. The UNBELIEVABLY BADLY DRESSED woman. An ENORMOUSLY RICH AND VERY ELEGANT woman.

ADVERB
A describing word added to a verb to better define it. He drove MADLY. She sang BEAUTIFULLY. It won EASILY.

ADVERBIAL CLAUSE
A complex adverb made up of two or more words. They were CAUTIOUSLY, CAREFULLY shopping for socks. We watched CLOSELY AND SINGLE-MINDEDLY.

ANTECEDENT
One statement preceding another, and used to modify it. "Some children are well behaved, and their parents don't know how lucky they are." "Hospital is a place for sick people ... and their nurses and visitors, of course."

AGREEMENT
The process of making the subject, verb and object agree, in term of their number (singular or plural). The dog barks. Two dogs bark. Six kids riding bikes. An orchestra tours. A team plays. The orchestra on its stage. Ten girls in for different cars ... two girls, both in the same car. A herd in its paddock. A herd stampedes. One cow. Three cows run. One sheep, two sheep. A flock of sheep graze in its meadow.

AUXILIARY VERB
See modal.

CLAUSE
A set of related words, contained within a sentence, containing a verb. "The chorus came onstage, singing like a troupe of angels." "I watched the car drive away, its exhaust streaming oil smoke.

COLLECTIVE NOUN
A noun which, though singular, implies a group: A collection. A swarm. A multitude. A school (of fish). A flock. A pod (of dolphins). A pride (of lions.) A herd.

COMPARATIVE
Two words comparing the state of quality of something. GOOD, BETTER ... FINE, FINER ... BAD, WORSE ... TERRIBLE, MORE TERRIBLE ... LOVELY, LOVELIER. (See Superlative.)

COMPOUND ADJECTIVE (or complex)
Two words used as an adjective, and normally hyphenated into a "super adjective." Big-eyed Stares. His thick-crust pizza. Many-colored robes. Fast-growing plants. Gap-toothed grin. A broken-down car. One badly-written novel.

COMPLETE SUBJECT
The noun plus all its modifying words, as a group. All shops on the mall. Every boat in the harbor. Jim's three dogs. The biggest, roundest apple pie. Mom's all-time favorite movie.

COMPOUND SUBJECT
An instance where the same verb has two subjects, both of whom become one. Cats and dogs love summertime. Men and women go to the movies. Women and children leave first. Girls and women shop for dresses. Kids and dogs are always playing. Cars and bikes share the same road.

CONDITIONAL CLAUSE
A set of related words within a sentence, which pivot on a condition. "We're going to the movie, if we can get tickets." "I worried about him, if he were safe." "He arrived at night, as if he were unaccustomed to traveling by day."

CONJUNCTION
Words used to stick together words, or word-groups (clauses and phrases), and even sentences. And, plus, but, yet, if, though, for, because, not that. "Jim saw the movie, AND afterwards went for coffee." "Mandy was caught in the rain, BUT she had an umbrella." "Jack walked Butch, THOUGH he hates dogs."

CORRELATIVES
Pairs of related connectives, showing the relationships between things or people: either/or; neither/nor; both/and; not only/but also; whether/or. Either John or Jim is responsible. Neither Jane nor Sally was there. Both Mickey and Donald are cartoons. Not only Tweetie, but Sylvester too. I asked whether Bob or Jack was at home.

DIRECT OBJECT
See Object. See also Indirect Object.

FUSED (RUN ON) SENTENCE
Two or more sentences joined together with little or no punctuation, when the sentences are topically unconnected and should be separate.

FUTURE TENSE
The form of a verb setting its time frame in the future. Jack will be at the show. I will be able to attend. The team will be competing. The two boats will be leaving. A platoon will be deployed.

HISTORICAL PRESENT TENSE
A way of referring to past events in the present tense, such as when describing events in a movie or drama. "Judah ben-Hur is a chariot-racing legend." "Macbeth is a character in torment." "Achilles fights the best warriors at Troy." "Hector fights well, but is defeated."

IMPERATIVE
A verb stripped to its stem and used as an order. Go! Fire! Shoot! Duck! Drive! Stop! Help!

INDEFINITE CLAUSE
A statement, or statements, following the restrictive "if," which is/are joined to the first part of the sentence with "were," not "was." If wishes were horses, we'd all be cowboys. If Mary were wise, she'd have bought the book. I told him, if John were taller, he'd have reached that candy bar and eaten it first!"

INDIRECT OBJECT
The thing or entity indirectly affected by the verb. The boy brings the books to the TEACHER. Mom made a cup of tea for ALICE. Two cats were stalking mice in the GARDEN. Helen brings the books to Roger. Mom baked a peach pie for the kids. The man driving the tractor plowed the field. The teacher wrote complex algebra on the blackboard, boring the class.

INDEPENDENT CLAUSE
A clause (see) which can function independently of the rest of the sentence.

INFINITIVE
The form of the verb which is absolutely unrestricted by any condition or modification. No noun, pronoun, tense or case is applied to it. To swim. To fly. To jump. To read. To feast. To watch. To dig. To play.

INFINITIVE PHRASE
A phrase using the infinitive of a verb. She wanted to go home. They wanted to play too. The dogs were loosed to run. The artist longed to paint her portrait. A writer wants only to write a great book (and get paid for it!).

INTERROGATIVE
A word which forms a question. Why? What? When? How? Which? Whose? Yes? Why not?

MODAL (VERB)
The verb's "helper" or "support" term, which expresses the possibility, probability, ability and imperative nature of the verb. MUST go; CAN'T play; CAN study; SHOULD be arriving; MIGHT be writing; MAY attend; WILL paint; SHALL call.

MODIFIER
The word, or word group, which sets limits on (restricts) a noun or verb. She danced very badly. His limited pilotal skills. Palomino horses. Cars painted red. Guys wearing big cowboy hats.

NOUN (Common Noun; see also Proper Noun and Collective Noun)
A naming word, defining a "class" of thing. A TABLE. Four CHAIRS. Two DOGS. The MAN. An AIRCRAFT. The HELICOPTER. Three tall TREES. Two white CATS. (See Proper Noun)

NOUN CLAUSE
Two or more words, used together, to amplify the simple noun. The ball. The big, blue ball. The fish. The small, silver, fast-swimming fish. A horse. A big, sleek, chestnut-red horse.

OBJECT
The thing or entity which is affected by (acted upon) by the verb. The boy sang the SONG. The cat ate the FISH. The lady baked the COOKIES. (See also Indirect Object.)

PARENTHETICAL ELEMENT
A group of words which express material or thoughts digressing from the main flow of the sentence. "She came from Chicago (the last city I'd have imagined), and had a hard time settling here." "The dog had a bone (not the best thing for them to eat), and wouldn't give it up."

PASSIVE VOICE
The form of a verb where the subject has been inverted: The story was written by Jeremy. The cake was sliced by Mother. The cat was bathed by John. The resulting wounds were stitched by Doctor Paul. (See Active Voice)

PAST TENSE
The form of the verb setting its time frame into the past. Jim was late. Mandy was unable to play. I had been delayed. It was a disaster. Bradley had been fired off the job. The dogs dug up the yard. The boat sank on the reef. The birds ate every grain.

PERIODIC SENTENCE
Sentence structure where the gist, or thrust, of the sentence, rather than leading is, is used last. On Five Mile Reef, long after dark, the boat sank. Just before dawn, when the sky is pink, the cockatoos come to the pond. On Kenya's Lake Victoria, Maria was thrilled to photograph the flamingos.

PHRASE
A set of related words without a subject, grouping within a sentence. "Like the sea, his eyes were blue-green." The big white cat, wanting to play, pounced on my feet." "Aunt May is still a lovely woman, and well past seventy" "Tom was being an idiot, which was quite usual." PLURAL
Two or more things or entities. Two boys. Three girls. A regiment of cleaners. A handful of flowers. A bunch of idiots. An army of students. Swarms of bees. Clouds of flies. Masses of books. Piles of unwashed socks. A pod of dolphins. A pride of lions. Three prides of lions. A pack of wolves. Two packs of wolves. (See Collective Noun.)

PLURAL
Two or more of something. Dogs. Horses. Six policemen. Five gold rings. Three men and a baby (= 4 individuals). Four weddings and a funeral (= 5 individuals). Dark Lords of the Sith.

POSSESSIVE PRONOUN
A stand-in word, contextually taking the place of the possessive form a common or proper noun. Jim's = HIS. Joan's = HER(S). Mary's and Robert's = THEIR(S). The car's = ITS. Also MY, MINE, OUR(S), YOUR(S).

PREDICATE
Literally, all of the sentence except the subject! Everything the sentence has to say about the subject.

PREFIX
A syllable add the beginning of a word, to modify (usually to reverse) its meaning. INeffective. UNsurprising. UNdue. INsubstantial. INdefinite. UNcariing. (See also Suffix.)

PREPOSITION
A word which fixes the position of a thing or entity in space and time. On, in, behind, before, above, below, beyond, beside, between... "Behind the washer." "Under the car." "In the cupboard." "Below average." "Between the pages."

PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE
A preposition fixes the position in space and time of a thing or entity, which is the subject of the preposition. A prepositional phrase is the preposition with its subject, and any modifying words. "Behind the beat-up car." "Under the old music stand." "In the big, fancy box." "Beside the tired old gentleman."

PRESENT TENSE
The form of a verb setting the time frame to the present. I run. I am running. He is riding. She is shopping. He throws. He drops. It is coming. It stops. We are reading. They write.

PRONOUN
A stand-in word, contextually taking the place of a common or proper noun. I, me, him, her, it, they, them, we, us. (See possessive pronoun.)

PROPER NOUN
The specific noun, Capitalized, referring to one thing or entity only: Susan; Roger Smith; Detroit; the Commonwealth of Australia; Voyage of the Beagle; Hamlet; Star Wars; My Fair Lady; Mickey Mouse; Felix the Cat; Rover; my dog Butch.

QUALIFIER
To all practical purposes, very like a modifier (see); often used as an "intensifier." Like a modifier: He was OFTEN early; she was FREQUENTLY out of synch; it was RARELY good enough. As an intensifier: She was EXTREMELY clever. He was the GREATEST athlete. It was ABSOLUTELY the worst time.

RECIPROCAL PRONOUN
Pairs of words (compound pronouns) which stick together like bacon and eggs and show a relationship. Each other; one another.

RELATIVE CLAUSE
A clause (see) leading off with a relative pronoun (read on!) ...

RELATIVE PRONOUN
A pronoun (see) which leads off relative or subordinate clauses (!). Subordinate "structures" within a sentence depend on the rest of the sentence to make sense (see Independent clause). Who, whom, whose, whoever, that, which, whichever, what, whatever. "He spoke of his sister, who is in Ontario." "Bob is in class today, which is amazing." "I brought the whole kaboodle ... whatever a kaboodle is." "Maud pointed out Janet, whose car was double-parked." "Tell me about the sweater which is on that chair."

RESTRICTIVE
An adjective (see) which restricts the scope of the noun (see) to which it is applied. All STRAY dogs will be impounded. LOUD music must be turned down. The blue dresses WHICH SHRANK were discarded. The shop's FIRE DAMAGED stock will be sold at sale prices.

RUN ON (FUSED) SENTENCE
Two or more sentences joined together with little or no punctuation, when the sentences are topically unconnected and should be separate.

SENTENCE
A module of spoken expression which is complete within itself, and makes sense independent of any other material.

SENTENCE FRAGMENT
An arrangement of words which does not make an independently sensible sentence; it needs more to make sense as a sentence.

SENTENCE MODIFIER
A term or phrase which modifies the gist of a sentence, according to external criteria. "He is a good student, in my opinion." "Though some people disagree, Singapore is a great tourist destination." "In lieu of better evidence, the court accepted his testimony." "Bill's cat notwithstanding, felines are a fastidious species."

SIMPLE PAST TENSE
The simplest reference to actions in the past: I RAN; Bob SANG; we ARRIVED; she WANTED; they TOOK.

SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE
The simplest reference to actions in the present: I RUN; Bob SINGS; we ARRIVE; she WANTS; they TAKE.

SIMPLE FUTURE TENSE
The simplest reference to actions in the future: I WILL RUN; Bob WILL SING; we WILL ARRIVE; she WILL WANT; they WILL TAKE.

SINGULAR
Only one of something. A cat. One boy. The dog. That house. This tree. A beautiful garden. An untidy street. The other girl. My feeling. Our thought. His blue teeshirt. Their cottage in Exeter.

SPLIT INFINITIVE
The subject of a lot of debate recently, on how intelligent this point of grammar is! Decades ago, the infinitive TO GO was split into TO boldly GO (Star Trek), and has been iconified. The fact is, "To go boldly" just does not sound the same (or as punchy), and many people contend that the "don't split infinitives rule" should be dropped. "To come quietly" is an UNsplit infinitive, like "To write beautifully." NOTE: spoken dialog (shown within speech marks) is often written in dialect, reflecting actual spoken forms. In this instance, split infinitives are of no account, since they are part of the character's speech patterns, and his/her dialog is used to define who he/she is."

SUBJECT
The entity which performs, or owns, the verb. The DOLL actually FELL downstairs. My DOGS always BARK at strangers. Four MEN in the club area ARE FIGHTING over politics.

SUBORDINATE CLAUSE
See Relative clause. Subordinates (clauses and phrases) depend on the rest of the sentence to function, and begin with relative pronouns (see). "Mary told me everything, which pleased me." "He insisted it was alien, whatever he meant by that!" "She arrived with her Mom, who drives a red Jaguar."

SUFFIX
One or more syllables added to the end of a word to modify it: hapLESS; useLESSLY; conformITY; pluralITY; lightLESSNESS; lightING; sadLY; ineptITUDE; educationALLY; fractionAL; fantasticALLY; vanishING; bookISH; childISHLY; pointEDLY; swimmINGLY. (See also Prefix.)

SUPERLATIVE
A word, or words, describing the most attenuated of something. BEST. WORST. LONGEST. SHORTEST. MOST BEAUTIFUL. LOVELIEST. MOST HORRIFIC. FASTEST. SLOWEST. MOST AWE-INSPIRING. MOST BORING. (See also Comparative.)

TAG QUESTION
A suffix to a sentence, turning a statement into a question. He's coming home at five, ISN'T HE? Your cat is a Persian, RIGHT? It's a great film, DON'T YOU THINK?

TENSE
The exact form of a verb which defines its time frame: Past tense; present tense; future tense. The verb itself changes (ie., Present tense becomes simple past tense: sing ... sang; bring .. brought; beg ... begged), and is accompanied by changes in the noun and pronoun forms: I was told; we were sent; they were sanctioned; Julia had to leave.

VERB
An action, or "doing" word. Running, jumping swimming, singing, riding, talking, wanting, feeling, thinking, breaking, mending.

VERB PHRASE
Two or three words attached to a a verb, amplifying it. Whipping UP (cookies). Running AFTER (someone). Flying OVER (hills). Ie., the verbs have become complex, or compound: To whip up; to run after; to fly over.

VOICE
The form of a verb which differentiates between the passive and the active (See). (Active: The man parks the car. Passive: The car is parked by the man.)

Now, you at least know what people are talking about when they say incomprehensible things about sentence structure! Read through the Grammar Glossary, but don't even try to memorize it. However, refer back to it when you read through the section below.

Hang tight: you're almost there. It'll all start making sense, and here is a great thought: When you understand something, you don't have to remember it. You just know. That's our object here. Grammar made doable. (Okay, nothing's going to make it easy, but we can break your fall!)

Turn page to
GRAMMAR: The Absolute Basics ... get this "down" if you do nothing else!

Grammar? Who in the heck needs it, anyway?

2009-04-10T13:03:00.004+09:30

Grammar...without it, the language unravels!

Grammar. What in the world is it? You certainly can't see it, touch, smell or taste it. But you hear it, and the worse it is, the more of it you seem to hear! Bad grammar is at the root of a lot of jokes. When spoken language goes ridiculously wrong, humor of the unintentional kind won't be far behind.

On the other hand, good grammar is one of a small handful of factors which have, for centuries, set the aristocracy apart from the rest of mankind. Not long ago, only the sons of rich men could go to school. Many were taught by monks ... girls were rarely taught at all. Literacy was the privilege of the wealthy and scholarly. Grammar — being the framework on which every word we speak is hung — was one of the qualities peculiar to ladies and gentlemen, because only they were given the opportunity to learn it.

Like anything else that is rare, proper language, good grammar, soon became a status symbol. You could be shabby, not own a horse, much less a piece of land, but so long as you spoke well, the classes of the nobility would accept you into their ranks. You were 'people like us,' or PLU. It was an elite club, where the entry card was your ability to use the language properly. And it all begins with grammar.

In movies, we get a big laugh out of the "local yokel." In the street, face to face with friends and acquaintances, we tend to overlook lapses in grammar. The spoken word is gone in a heartbeat; who remembers? But what a writer commits to paper achieves a kind of immortality...

In other words, your booboos will come back to haunt you! As an aspiring writer, you have one big goal: to impress the heck out of editors, agents and publishers. If you can impress them enough, they'll publish your work, and you'll earn. Eventually, you'll earn enough to give up the day job and write for a living.

One of the criteria on which you'll be judged — on page one of your submission! — is your grammar. You can't afford to make any, or many mistakes. If your creativity is "off the scale," you'll be forgiven for the odd lapse here and there; an editor will straighten out a few mistakes in grammar. However, if you make too many of these lapses, the editor, agent or publisher won't keep on reading your manuscript for long enough to discover how brilliant your fiction really is.

There is only one solution to this problem. Good grammar. Either learn it yourself, or recruit your friends (if you do conscript friends, make very sure they know what they're doing ... if they don't, the manuscript will simply be full of their errors, instead of yours). The third option is to pay for professional editing, and although you can certainly do this, please do read our caution, on the freelance editing page. Of you haven't yet read it, go there and scan it now ... this page will be here when you come back!

For the purpose of this page, then, we'll assume you've made the commitment to being the consummate professional. It's not a five-minute journey from "wannabe" to "best-seller," but the trip can be a lot of fun. No one ever said any of it had to be boring.

So: you're on this page to get a stranglehold on the gentle art of grammar. Right? Right.

In that case, let's grab the fundamentals and throttle them!

Turn page to
Correct Grammar: a framework to which everything else is pegged

The writer who hates to type

2009-04-09T15:07:00.006+09:30

Do I have to type the darned thing? Must I use a computer? I hate typing. I wanted to learn to write here, not type!

You'll have to type eventually, but nothing prevents you from writing in longhand. Jackie Collins is famous for writing those massive tomes of hers in 50c exercise books, which are leather-bound when she's done! However, she can afford to pay a typist ... inquire locally as to how much this will cost before you make the decision to outsource your typing. You might be appalled. Some writers have no idea how to write passionate fiction at the keyboard, and yes, they write by hand. But the bottom line is, it has to be typed eventually.

If you're going to use a typing service, consider your handwriting. Do you write well ... or, like most of us, do you scrawl? Most adults evolve their own handwriting, and some of us are the only ones who can even begin to read what we're written! If a typing service can't understand what you scrawled, it can't be keyed in. If you do intend to use a typing service, it'll be most important to learn to write extremely clearly, in longhand. Or relearn how to do this, if the last several decades have reshaped your handwriting into ancient Greek!

If you really hate to type, by all means get the book finished in longhand. Then bribe your friends and family to type for you. The fact is, you could learn to write and never learn to type at all, if you're handy enough around the house. Do the dishes, wash the car, mow the lawn, walk the dog, babysit the kids. Have people key in a few pages here and there, and pretty soon, you're done.

Another caveat: have your helpers key it in on a computer. That way, their typographical errors, misreadings of your scrawl (!), and misspelled words, will be easy to correct when you start your proofing and editing work.

Bottom line: yes, eventually the work has to be typed ... but maybe not by you ... and ten people, all of them bad typists, can collaborate on a computer-based project, and achieve a perfect, seamless result in the end!

Turn page to Learn to love your keyboard...

Learn to write ... but learn to type ... a bit!

2009-04-09T14:56:00.002+09:30

Learn to write ... but learn to type ... a bit!

No law says you have to be an expert typist, typing 100 words per minute. You can be a two-finger typist if you like, and type as slowly as you please. You also might be daunted by the prospect of having to learn to 'touch type.' Don't be, because no one cares if you watch your fingers while you type.

In the last twenty years or so, when one had to learn to write, and to read, as a child, a lot of people learned at a computer. The vast majority of folks under 30 right now are already well acquainted with keyboards. But if you're a little older, never worked in an office, never had the need to type anything — you might easily have some of the best novels ever written locked up in yor head, but they're going to have to get out somehow!

Try a little bribery, as mentioned above. Or (and you might shudder as you read this, but give it some serious thought before you leave it behind), consider investing in a computer and either having the kids or grandkids come over and show you how to use ir properly, or get a book, or take a course ... or stay on this website, and we'll talk you through the rudiments! We're also going to take a close-up look at computers for writers: what you need to buy, and what you don't need or want, but the salesman will sell you anyway, if you let him, for an extra suitcase full of money.

Learning to type ... a bit ... is the best way to solve the problems involved when you've decided to learn to write fiction, stories, books, novels, absolutely from scratch. Computers to make typing easier, but there'sa downside: using them us not quite as simple as turning them on. You do have to learn to use a mouse (which is a pointing device, used to 'point at' and 'cliclk-to-activate things on the desktop. The desktop is the computer's basic screen, before any program is started up. The 'things' on the desktop are 'icons' — you click on them to choose which program you want, and start it.)

In short, there's a small learning curve before you actually get started learning to type. But when you can tell your mouse from your moitor, save files, open folders ... and all the stuff five year olds are doing without even thinking about it (!), you'll be ready to conquer the keyboard. There are some very good typing tutors, if you want to get into this seriously, but remember, the objective is to learn to WRITE, not to type. It's your words, your plots, ideas, characters and situations which are important, not the process by which they get inside the computer.

Using a computer also gives you the ability to have the machine do a quick proofread for you. It's called 'spell cehcking,' and it will certainly pick up spelling errors, should you make them. However, it's far more useful for picking up typographical errors, which is sees by matching tyor typing against its database, the vocabulary of words it knows.

A word to the wise. Never trust the computer to proofread for you. It'll miss almost as many errors as it finds, because it doesn't read the contextual meaning of sentences, so it can't tell when you meant 'through' and typed 'threw,' or you wanted 'through' and got 'though,' or wanted to say 'then' and typed 'them' instead. Unless there is a genuine error in a word (rotatoon = rotation, planer = planet, swign = swing, and so on), the spell checker sees nothing. The human eye is the only tool which will find many typos, becuse even now, as smart and powerful as computers are, they don't actually read. They match individual words against a monstrous database. When you decide to learn to write, challenged pop up everywhere: you just discovered you can beat the machines!

We're going to talk more abouot computers in another post: what to buy, what to skip, and how to save some money. We'll be looking at the hardware (the machines thesmselves) and software (the programs which run on the machines), and you can choose which is right for you before you put down a penny.

Learn to write ... love your keyboard!

2009-04-09T14:54:00.004+09:30

Learn to write ... learn to love your keyboard!

When you make to commitment to learn to write, and write well, you're actually looking at several layers of skills, from the most mundane to the most artistic and poetic. We live in an electronic world. TV and DVD, music, the Web, communication, publishing, reading, driving, flying ... there's not one darned thing you can do these days that doesn't involve digitizing something.

If you're an artist, you'll either scan your artwork when you're finished, or (and more commonly now) you'll create the whole piece of work inside the computer. Most artwork, in 2008. has never known a sheet of paper or canvas panel, nor felt the caress of a pencil. If you're a writer, your work has to end up inside the computer sooner or later.

The term 'learn to write' can also be understood as the process by which a young child figures out how to hold a crayon and draw the alphabet ... but in our world, the first words a child makes are more likely to be keyed into a computer.

If you write your book by hand, it'll be typed up by someone, somewhere, and the typing process will happen before a publisher takes a look. Sorry, guys. You might be horribly allergic to typing, but, like goldenrod and cottonwood, it's not going to go away! You'll have to grab the Kleenex and soldier on. Learn to write = learn to type. You don't have to like it, but you will have to do it.

Having said that, there are many ways to make the process easier!

Turn page to Learn to write ... but learn to type ... a bit!

Freelance? Do I have to freelance?

2009-04-09T14:45:00.005+09:30

Fiction writing (or anything else!) ... do you have to freelance?
Most writers begin as freelancers for obvious reasons. Fiction writing (or non-fiction, books and articles) is seldom commissioned from unknown authors ... and in the early days, remember, you're going to be absolutely unknown!

If you're good, a day will come come when editors and publishers will offer you a contract before a book has been written. You'll talk to your editor, send a synopsis or an outline of your proposed work. This company specializes in fiction writing, and they 'bite' on your project, sight-unseen, because they know you from several previous sales. You'll sign a contract and get an advance before the work is delivered.

An even better day is on the horizon. The day when an editor asks you for a book. Their list has a gap which needs to be plugged, and they come to you — to you! — for a novel to fill that space! Finally you're known for great fiction, writing is your business. Then, you know you've arrived.

But in the early days you'll be a stranger to the publishing industry; and few people will take a risk on a stranger. It can happen, but if you dig a little, do a little research, you often find the truth. The new writer was a relative or friend of the publisher; or had already won a major fiction writing prize at college level; or was willing to invest cold, hard cash in a joint publishing venture.

If you can get through the door by virtue of your relationship with an editor, or if your skill was recognized in college — frankly, more power to you. Go for it! Take the shortcut and don't look back. Remember, you'll still have to be good: even pro writers with a string of books to their credit can be savaged by the critics. If you don't write an excellent book, it won't sell so well, and you'll almost certainly get some bad reviews. So never offer anything but your best work. Over-deliver, 110%, whenever you do anything.

The rest of us, however, won't have this shortcut. Most writers are long, long past the college stage by the time they decide they have a story that must be told — or the time to invest in climbing the learning curve as a writer, writing enough to be significant, and finding the agent, editor and publisher who make it all come together.

Many people who long to be involved at any level in fiction writing, pro or otherwise, must wait till their kids are grown up, or the mortgage is paid off — and some are in retirement before they can find the opportunity to make a start ... and few of us indeed are related to publishers and editors!

So, above 99% of writers will begin as freelancers — fiction writing, non-fiction, children's books, adult, genre, whatever. It all begins with a piece of work created by you, from your own imagination, or research, and inspiration. A piece of work which is finished, edited, polished, and submitted.

If you're good enough, your hard work should be immediately obvious to an editor. No one thoroughly masters the skills of the writer without making a high degree of commitment. (To put it another way: a concert violinist is born with the skill to play ... and though it will take the best teachers in the world to hone that talent, s/he still needs those teachers!)

So ... jump the queue, take the shortcut if it's available to you — and if you think you're ready. There's a big, deep pitfall right here in front of you. Watch out for this one, because it's so deep, if you find yourself at the bottom, it'll take a lot of work to get out.

Don't jump the queue before you're ready. Your friend, or relative, who made the opportunity available to you is doing you a massive favor, IF you're skilled enough to deliver the goods. Fiction writing, and doing it well, is a complex business. You won't 'fool' critics and discerning readers.

Book critics can be tough — they can also be extremely cruel. And discerning readers can tell immature, 'rough' writing at a glance. They probably won't buy your book in the first place ... and if they do, it'll go right to the book exchange, and they won't buy your next book. You need "subsequent sales" from established and loyal readers, to earn your livings as a fiction writer, or journalist, or diarist, in whatever your genre might be. Digging your way out of this pit can take years, hard work, many excellent books, and a good deal of heartache.

The old saying, 'Look before you leap' came to be a cliche by being so wise, it was repeated a thousand times!

There is absolutely nothing wrong with starting out as a freelance in either journalism or fiction writing ... and the freelance beginner has one vast advantage. Professional editors and agents literally won't let you debut until you're ready. You'll be told (kindly, one would hope; but they can be brusque) if your writing is not yet up to the full professional standard. The description used to be, "Unsuitable for publication."

This didn't mean the plot line was bad, or the material was inappropriate. It just meant that the writing style was immature and not (yet) wearing a veneer of professional polish. Years later, you'll come back and take a look at the manuscript which was rejected, and you'll see exactly what that editor meant.

(You might even shudder to see how rough your early work was. There's no harm in submitting, when you think you're ready; but it's vitally important to keep an open mind, take criticism in the spirit it's intended, and never stop striving to become better at your art. This is true of new, aspiring writers at every age, both the teen and the retiree. Fiction writing is a challenge; you'll master it, but not in a month, and not in one book.)

Never be insulted if an editor responds in this vein. It will probably hurt, but they're telling you the truth as they see it, and they have the experience to know these things. Few editors will lie outright to get rid of you; what would they profit from this?

It is true, however, that publishers do use 'professional readers' to screen books before they even get to the chief editors ... and here's the rub. Professional readers specialize in a certain subject, say, fantasy fiction. They read it all the time. Every week. Every day. In fact, they read far too much of it, and like any of us they get tired, jaded, bored. Professional readers can definitely kick back some very good books, because they themselves have reached a point where they're bored even by the best that fiction writing has to offer. The truth is, they should resign the job — but who's going to give up something as easy as reading, when they pay you to do it?!

If this happens, try not to take it to heart. Have faith in your abilities as a fiction writer, or documentarian, or diarist. You can at least know without a shadow of doubt that your work is flawless on a technical level, because you worked hard on grammar, punctuation, format and elements of style, to make sure of this. Having faith in your plot, characters and abilities will carry you through, and if you're right — if the work is as good as you think it is — the odds of you running into the same 'ennui factor' with another reader are slim.

Caveat: if you do get the same response from two or three readers and/or editors, you're looking at a considerable weight of critical opinion stacking up against you. Time to back way off and take another look. Try to see the book through their eyes. If someone was good enough to give you notes on what they perceived as 'wrong' with your story, you can at least start there and see if you can find a place to set up an analysis of the work.

These are the measures taken by inspired freelancers. You can always respond positively to rejection and criticism. Back off and take another look at your book. Recruit some beta readers. If necessary, take a course, participate in a fiction writing workshop. Read several books by writers whose work you admire — and be analytical about them! Take their work apart, see what makes it tick ... pick their brains. Let Greg Bear and Megan Davis and Matthew Reilley be your teachers! Then come back to your own work, and get out the rags and polish.

A book always gets better in the rewriting. In fact, it has been said (and this is perfectly true), great books aren't written, they are rewritten.

As a freelance in journalism, fiction writing, the art of the documentarian, any kind of writing, fields of opportunity open up before you. It may take a while longer to get financial results, but the pitfalls of taking the shortcut won't be strewn before you like a minefield.

Bottom line: take great care in your endeavors; never offer anything but your best work; and hone your skills until you know one thing for sure ... an editor won't be able to pick fault with your work on any technical level. In order words, don't just be good — be the best. If your chosen genre is fiction writing, it has become the area n which you absolutely excel. Then go out and knock 'em dead.

The global edit: writing and editing working in tandem

2009-04-09T11:20:00.002+09:30

You've heard the phrase, 'Think global, act local.' It's the same thing in this context. When you read a story, you're always reading locally, because your attention can only ever be focused on the paragraph or even sentence you're digesting at this exact moment. When we ask you to edit globally, it's the exact opposite...

You look at the story (the plot) as a whole. Writing and editing merge at this point. The writer and the editor become the same person. By the time you read this page, you'll have written enough that you feel comfortable writing. And editing is probably something you've done unconsciously. It's nothing new to you. Very few surprises are about to be sprung —

It is, however, time the formalize the process. Nail it down tight, by understanding how and why it works. In the early days, writing and editing is very much about trial and error. You do your best work, show it to people, and listen keenly to how they respond. Now, friends and family will seldom tell you if a piece was poorly written, boring, or full of mistakes! So deliberately ask for feedback, constructive criticism ... and don't take offence when you get what you asked for. Use it. Learn

The first job of editing you're going to do is to look at the story line as a whole, and make sure it makes sense. This sounds almost ridiculously easy, but ... it's not! Some absolutely astonishing disasters have happened because global editing was overlooked or forgotten. For instance, a character's name changes in the middle of the book. It's subtle: MacCready become McCready. No one noticed till after the book was printed. Ouch! Or, Helen started out blonde in the first chapter, but by Chapter Nine she's being describes as having 'lustrous, mahogany tresses.' Ooops. Writing and editing can be a minefield. The writer is usually wafting above the mantraps, free of the constraints of gravity, while the editor shuffles along on hands and knees with a stick, locating and defusing the mines!

Another obvious mistake is to have a character who started out as an Aussie from Victoria, and then name a town in New South Wales as his home, when he tells his story to a new friend, 240 pages later. Here's a beauty: a dog who started the book as a Husky turns into a Malamute by Chapter Six. The two dogs are both Arctic breeds, but very different. In the business of writing and editing, it's the extraordinary author who has a memory good enough to carry every facet of every character and situation. The editor is the one who saves the day.

A subtle mistake is when a character's eyes turn from blue to brown, or brown to green. A whopper of a mistake is to forget that a character was killed in Chapter 2, and have him/her reappear 500 pages later. This is so obvious, it rarely happens; but what happens much more often is that a writer will forget when a character was very badly injured, and allow insufficient time for him/her to heal up, before they're suddenly out there kicking butt again. This error happens when, in a long novel with a lot of action, several hundred pages have been written, depicting a series of intense events. The problem is, all the events (all 400pp of them!) took place over a three-day period. Billy Bob, whose pelvis and both legs were broken just before all hell bust loose, should still be heavily medicated for intense pain, and weeks away from being able to get back on a superbike and hit the road. In writing and editing, 400pp doesn't mean a long time; it just means some heavily documented events.

A global edit has to be meticulous. You either remember or (better) jot down physical descriptions of the characters, plus where they're from, who they're married to, who's widowed, who has kids, how old they are ...! You write thumbnail biographies. You also keep a check on who's hurt, who's dead ... who's a Persian and who's a Siamese. Writing and editing is always meticulous, but nowhere more so than in this process, which is often skipped. As the saying goes, that's how accidents happen.

Bear in mind that writing and editing a full-length book will take months, possibly even years. Over that much time, you can't carry thousands of tiny details in your memory. In any case, why would you want to? Have a notebook, write things down. You'll be amazed how much work this simple tip will save you in years, and projects, to come.

We asked the maestro, Mel Keegan, to nominate the best process, and here's the word:

"I don't have limitless time to devote to writing (I wish I did!) so I tend to be thorough, and not have to backtrack. The first thing I do is think the story line through from beginning to end, and, when I'm pretty much satisfied with it, I write it down. It's odd: when you get the plot line down in note form, the gremlins start to come sneaking out of the woodwork. You'll see problems you never perceived before. They might be problems of timing, or geography, or great bald patches in the plot will show through: swathes of story in which nothing much happens. These parts have a ghastly potential for being boring — that being the single sin of which a writer must never be guilty. Never, ever bore your readers. Do that, and they'll put the book down ... and they won't buy your next one, either. So, get the story firmly in your head. Write it down, and LOOK at it. Imagine, or figure out, how many pages will be needed to get over, or round, this subplot or that plot device. Look for the bald spots. Rework the plot a couple of times; reverse the order of some scenes. Roll two or three characters into one ... or split one character up into two or three. And write biographical files, so you don't trip yourself up on the details, six months and 350pp from now. Lastly, sketch a timeline, and plot the events of the story against it. The scale of the timeline can be anything from minutes to years, depending on what you need. Make sure you leave enough time for Jack to get over the smashed bones in his foot, for Jill to hike out of the wilderness after crashing the glider, for Bob to work out how to fix the motor and get the fishing boat back to port, and for Brenda to take the train from London to Cairo!" Always keep in mind that writing and editing are two sides of the same coin. Two jobs which can't be done alone. They're the flyer and the catcher in the circus act ... and the better the catcher, the higher the flyer can, well, fly.

Give yourself time to learn the skills of writing and editing. Don't demand of yourself that you lean it all in a week. Remember that an apprenticeship as a tradesman takes years to finish, and appreciate that it's just as tricky mastering every aspect of writing as it is to learn every nuance of fixing leaky faucets!

Let's assume, for the moment, you're determined to succeed. You're going to crack the market and get published, build a writing career — or bust. Let's also assume there's a lot you need to know, and you're smart enough to admit it. You're on this page to track down the information, and you hit paydirt. When it comes to writing and editing, you'll find it here.

As we said above, the writing side of the circus balancing act is a multi-faceted artform. Approached 'all of a piece, it can be overwhelming, so we've broken the whole thing up into nibblets of information. Zero in on what you need right now, at this moment. The same holds for the editing aspect of the job. Focus on what you need right now, right here, to get a particular job done. Master one thing at a time, then go on to the next chore. When you work bite by bite, things don't look nearly as overwhelming.

Style editing ... it's editing for style

2009-04-09T11:05:00.004+09:30

This is where you make sure your readers are definitely understanding you, and you're using the right words, and they're in the right order ... you're not overusing words, not repeating them, not inadvertently using regionalisms, which can sound unintentionally comical — or mean nothing at all to your readers. At this level of editing, you ensure that pivotal points are revealed once, while nothing is skipped over and forgotten. Material is not repeated, or repeated too often.

For example, a phrase used too frequently soon becomes annoying. Or funny. 'I'll be back.' Speaking of which, you'll be on the lookout for clichés! (Editing to the rescue.)

As you edit, you'll be making sure enough detail makes it onto the page to 'paint the scene,' but not enough to become boring. Modern readers will skip over too much description, and if there happens to be something crucial buried in the middle of this passage, they'll miss it utterly. This is how they 'lose the plot' and put the book down, saying it's incomprehensible and it's all your fault, as the writer.'

And you'll be on the lookout for several more 'writer beware' points. Hazard flags go up when something isn't right, like the black warning flags signaling 'oil on the racetrack.' Words have a way of flowing together naturally, every writer has a unique 'voice,' and so will you; but you must be in control of how the words flow, why they flow, and where they're flowing to. Here, freelance editing crosses a line of fuzzy logic into a form of art.

For instance, Jilly Cooper and Clive Cussler 'sound' very, very different indeed. Both are fine writers, but not only is their material a world apart, they also approach the 'job of writing' from different angles. They're from different parts of the world, different social backgrounds. Their words have a way of flowing together naturally, but the similarity ends right there!

Both writers, being consummate professionals, choose their words to suit their readership. Comparing a social comedy and an industrial thriller is exactly like comparing apples and oranges. Sure, they're both fruit, but every other quality is different.

The trick is, as your own freelance editing guru working on the fly as you write, to choose your words to suit your readership. Moreover, you'll soon 'get a nose' for what works, and you'll automatically, instinctually, choose your words to suit your changing material, from scene to scene within the same novel. In your intimate scenes, the words flow together in one way ... in action scenes, they flow another way.

If you're one of those 'natural, born writers' who make this happen without even thinking about it, bravo! Mother Nature gave you an advantage. The rest of us need to develop the instinct for words. The good news is, it doesn't take long.

Here's a grossly-exaggerated example, which will make the point. A short poem by John Macefield, entitled Cargoes, where the choice of words speaks for itself:

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds, Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal, Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

'Style' has little to do with how you spell or punctuate your writing, and whether the grammar is perfect. 'Style' is about how the words flow together ... which words you choose for what purpose ... and within all of that, keeping a tight grip on your own unique voice.

Daunted? Don't be. If you know how to score tennis, understand the offside rule, can put together flatpack furniture, bake a carrot cake, follow a knitting pattern, and program the DVD recorder, you can crack editing. It's an instinct, a 'nose' for writing and editing. And developing it is actually a whole lot of fun.

Editing your own work ... where to do begin?

2009-04-09T10:37:00.004+09:30

When you're just starting out as any kind of writer, editing is a large part of your job, and copy editing is where we get down to the real nitty gritty stuff. This is editing on the fine-tooth scale, where you make sure the grammar, punctuation, spelling, clarity and continuity are absolutely accurate. You'll be looking at every sentence as a stand-alone, and checking to ensure you're not getting run-on sentences, which become hard to follow. You'll be looking at the sentence in the context of its own paragraph, then looking at that paragraph in the context of the one previous and the one after.

This level of editing might sound daunting, but don't sweat it. Copy editing is a skill, like tapdancing and baking bread to die for. Once you learn it, you'll do it so well, you're going to be asked to do it for other people. (You might be on your way to a career in freelance editing; and it does pay well. Now, this has to grab your attention. Hang out your shingle...! Hmmm.)

There is so much to consider under the heading of 'freelance editing,' we're breaking it up into a whole flock of posts. Here's the plan: Deal with one thing at a time. Nail it down, call it 'done' and go on to the next thing.

As we go, we'll index all subjects, in rational order; and here's where we are to date:

For example, the issue of clarity in your writing is often overlooked. It's vitally important for readers to be able to understand what you mean, but the misuse of pronouns, the wars that can happen between the subject and object of a verb, and so on, can undermine your clarity. You know what you meant in a certain sentence, but no one else does! If you write ambiguously, there can be three ways to understand something, and — people being people — two thirds of readers will take what you wrote the wrong way. As a freelance editing guru for your own work, you'll soon see how to remedy errors 'on the fly.'

Relax — it's quite easy to make peace on this battlefield. Need to get a quick start right here? Copy Editing 101! Here's where your freelance editing skills start to repay you a hundred-fold!

Global editing ... what in the world is it?

2009-04-09T10:16:00.005+09:30

Freelance editing begins here: work local, think Global

This is editing (freelance or otherwise) on its most 'gross' scale, where the grammar and punctuation don't matter, and the storyline itself is under the magnifying glass. Global editing also verifies the integrity of the plot: events have to follow in a logical order. If a character who was killed in Chapter Five shows up again in Chapter Twelve, there had better be a good reason! At this level, continuity is also addressed: a character who was Californian when introduced can't be from New York eight chapters later. A blond(e) should stay blond(e), unless a 'new do' is part of the plot. At this level of freelance editing, you can also check to make sure there's a good balance between dialog and narrative, with enough of each and not too much of either. And so on.
Global editing is the first stage in the process. Most writers do it 'on the fly,' and there's a way to make it dead easy, even if you're not a 'natural' at this.

If you've never done this before ... if the book is 1,000 pages long and you lose track of the details ... if you're writing a series of books ... if you have a memory like a sieve ... if months go by between opportunities to write, and you just forget stuff, global editing can be a hassle. It still has to be done, but there's a cast-iron way to get around it. It's simply this:

Get a pack of cardex file cards and a pen. Read through your story. Write down every proper noun -- character and place names; make a note of the relationships between characters; the physical appearance of the characters, plus any special characteristics. Does someone lisp or limp, or have a scar? Is someone crazy for a specific reason? Give each character his/her own card ... and organize them alphabetically. Six months from now, pull Rhett Sinclaire's card, and jog your memory:

Rhett Sinclaire: has a Chinese grandmother, bleaches his hair, talks with a Chicago accent, is phobic about spiders and allergic to cats, but loves dogs and rides horses like a pro, he was married to Janet, two kids, Marina, 10 and Shaun, 8; divorced 5 years ago when Janet couldn't stand his job any longer; has custody of the kids every second weekend; his dogs are Biff the Beagle and Bozo the schnauzer; lives in a 30-y-o ranch house in the San Fernando Valley; worked for Eagle River Security, 6 years; has been an insurance investigator for IUA for 8 years. Loves the job; loves German beer and Chinese food; hates punk rock music...

A lot of writers can carry that lot in their heads, and do it for 40 characters in a giant novel, but there's no law that says you have to carry it all in memory. Cardex file cards are cheap, and they work!

Finding a fresh spin for old material, and being able to see when the spin either has not been done yet, or was not done well, is one part of the editing process. In fact, it's the first part. Global editing, also known as story editing.

Turn page to The Global Edit... writing and editing working in tandem

Can I proofread and edit my own work?!

2009-04-08T17:51:00.005+09:30

I've heard proofing and editing my own work is impossible!

Well ... not impossible. Just more difficult! When you're editing for someone else, it's easy to be ruthless. You 'prune' wherever you see something that needs to be snipped. You're not in love with every word in this chapter, and what needs to be done seems obvious, often painfully so. However, writing as a freelance, editing your own work will require some discipline.

There is a good chance you are in love with every word in the chapter you're editing, and you know the saying ... love is blind. It can be hard to see faults in our own work, though they fairly 'jump off the page' to someone else. (Which is the up-side to using a professional freelance editing service.) See the sidebar to your right for career-changing, guru-like guidance!

At this point, you come to a personal decision, and it can be another epiphany.

If you're aspiring to be a professional writer, you'll need to slither past the natural love affair you have with your material. Step back to get a new perspective. See it through someone else's eyes.

It can be a right, royal pain to put a line through what you've written, find other words to express what you mean, delete a whole scene, ditch a lot of dialog. However, if this kind of freelance editing is what it takes to bring your manuscript up to full professional standard and earn you some good money, it's unavoidable, and highly desirable.

Here's the kicker. Industry professionals (publishers, editors, veteran writers) can see every fault the instant they look at a text. It's an 'eye' for words, which some people have naturally and others have to work at. This quality, the ability to perform freelance editing unconsciously, on-the-fly, is like hearing a melody and being able to whistle along with it.

Believe it or not, a fair percentage of human beings can't hear melody! They're said to be 'tone deaf,' it's a medically diagnosable condition. (Which might explain why a good deal of modern music actually has no melodic line; it appeals to the surprisingly large section of the population who can't hear a tune.)

Professional writers have what's been called a 'built-in, automatic crap detector,' which turns on the moment they begin to write, and acts like a filter for all kinds of materials. Bad grammar, poor sentence construction, ambiguous wording, incorrectly used words, repeated words, 'purple light words,' over-writing, under-writing, melodramatics, unintentional humor, run-on sentences, and 'sudden death' material ... all gets filtered out either as soon as it's typed, or before the fingers hit the keys! This is freelance editing on autopilot.

IMPORTANT: Don't be perturbed by unfamiliar concepts in the paragraph above. They might sound odd, scary and confusing now, but in an hour you'll be familiar with them all. Some, you'll recognize. Some might make you stop and think, and perhaps take another look at your own work. And maybe you'll feel the tingle of an epiphany coming on! The freelance editing wizard inside you is beginning to turn on.

Even if you can't 'pick the tune' at once when it comes to being able to tell good writing from poor, don't be anxious. There are two ways to approach this. If Plan A is out of reach, fall back on Plan B.

Plan A is about natural, born writers who can pick the tune so easily, for most of their writing careers, they 'play by ear.' They're like a singer or musician who can't read music, has no idea what s/he's playing or singing, yet fronts for a band and gets massive applause.

If you're among these writers, you've probably been getting rave reviews from friends and family for years. They're exhorting you to 'go pro.' You might even have tried ... you might also have failed. The reason is, a writer 'playing by ear' is prone to let fiddling little errors slip through. Professional editors easily pick them up. The editor will weigh the sparkle of your work (and if you're a born writer, it'll always sparkle) against the amount of editing needed to bring you up to publication standard. They look at outsourced freelance editing as time, then convert time to money — and you get a rejection slip instead of the contract you were praying for.

It's still very possible for a natural, born writer to get published. But it's by no means easy or certain, and it would be fair to say that the road to publication will be liberally papered with rejection letters, even for natural-borns.

So ... Plan B: Not being a natural, you need to (figuratively) learn to read music. Even if you only play the piano with one finger, you can tap out the tune and learn it, note by note. It just takes a little longer than being able to hear the melody a couple of times, and then promptly play it.

Writing (and the freelance editing which goes hand in hand with writing) is exactly like this, for a great many people. Having to learn the process doesn't mean you can't do it. It just means you'll play 'catch up' while the naturals romp it. (However, the 'by ear' writers are often working with a handicap they're not even aware of. Those little errors slip through and accumulate, and the end result is still a rejection slip. Take heart: you can to better than catch up. You can actually overtake them.)

There's a gray area in which writers who are on the top rungs of the amateur league tend to languish for some time. It's a twilight zone where these writers are the best of the bunch in their writers' workshop, APA, or class ... yet they don't make the transition to professional. You've seen it happen; you wonder if it'll happen to you.

These writers don't make the transition for any one of several reasons. Some writers are quite happy to be amateurs. They don't need to write for money. It's a fantastic hobby, and they don't feel 'driven' to get to grips with the world of pro publishers, freelance editors, reviewers. Other writers would love to turn pro, but they suspect they don't quite have the skills ... and they're simply too lazy to invest the effort, and learn.

A third group refuse to believe they have anything to learn. They know they're the best, and they have fits if anyone 'puts one sticky finger' on a word they write (unquote!) Such writers might be very good indeed, but it's a thousand-to-one against them getting professionally published without being edited, and since they don't want to confront editors -- they don't submit professionally. Their love affair with their material, which causes them to guard every syllable, is maintaining their amateur status. (Freelance editors would be creatures from their worst nightmares. Again — see the sidebar to your right!)

A large group of writers are extremely good, and willing to learn, do submit ... and still fail to make the transition. Some can't deal with rejection slips, and in the early days, rejection notices are a fact of life. Someone one said, 'You have to develop a thick skin.' Line the budgie cage with your rejection slips, and press on.

Other writers genuinely have nothing fresh to contribute, and they probably know it! To get published, you need determination, skill, and something fresh to say.

It's perfectly true that there are no new stories. They have all been told, and most of them have been told a thousand times over. The trick is to find a new spin to put on old material. Have a look at Eregon ... in fact, it's Star Wars dressed up as Lord of the Rings. It's also incredibly popular. (In turn, Star Wars has so much in common with both The Three Musketeers and Lord of the Rings that, if you need it, here's the proof. There's no such thing as a new story! However you can put such a fresh spin on an old one, readers and viewers are delighted.)

Freelance editing is an invaluable skill

2009-04-08T17:48:00.002+09:30

It's never too early to begin the process, and when you're just setting out to work as a freelance editing is a job you probably won't be able to delegate. Professional services abound. You can easily find one ... but they can be very expensive.

A bureau will provide several levels of service. A 'light' edit, followed by various degrees of thoroughness. At the end of the process you should have an error-free manuscript. The downside is, you could easily have paid a couple of thousand dollars to a reputable freelance editing service. As an aspiring professional yourself, you need to think about the investment, weighed against the potential ROI, or 'return on investment' you expect to make. In other words, your royalties.

Every publisher seems to have a different way of figuring out how much to pay for a book. They know their markets; they know how much advertising is going to cost; they should have a good idea of how many copies of your book they can expect to sell. They may have staff to pay and a large office to keep up; they might also have taken a loss on a recent book, where sales were unexpectedly poor. They also might outsource to a freelance editing service, in which case, they pay the fees.

All these, and many more factors are used to work out how much a writer will be paid for a work, as a new freelance. Editing will be done at the publisher's cost, and this also will be factored into the royalties equation. (The more editing you need, the less you'll be paid.)

If you're able to get a contract with a large publishing house, of course you'll be paid correspondingly more than if you make your debut with a small publisher. The more major the publisher, the bigger the 'engine' driving the process of publishing and distribution. And if they have to outsource freelance editing, they can more easily cover the costs.

If you're pretty sure you can get a sale to a major publishing house, paying for editing services might be within your budget; go with a good 'jobbing' freelance editing service, because downtown bureaus can have fee schedules that'll make you blanch.

A point to consider is that you'll probably need a literary agent to make the breakthrough with a major publisher. Your agent's fee will usually be 15%. If your freelance editing service's fee was in the regions of $2000, for an in-depth, meticulously thorough edit of a long (or longish) book, you can cover both of these fees out of a $10,000 income from the book, and come out of it with a tidy sum.

But do be reasonably sure you can make the sale to a major house. Most writers make their professional debut with a small publisher (even writers like James A. Michener, and J.K. Rowling had to 'get in via the backdoor' of small publishers).

The 'problem' of small publishers is, their printruns are small, and your royalties will be lower. If you receive $5,000, the agent's and editor's fees won't leave very much as a gratuity for your efforts. Sure, you can work your way up the ladder to bigger printruns and higher royalties, but it takes time (you progress at your publisher's speed, which can seem glacial at times!), and ... being blunt about this, wouldn't it be nice to earn some money right now? Money saved is money earned. It's a sound idea to become familiar with freelance editing.

If you can master the skills of freelance editing yourself, you have a big advantage. At the very least, you can do four-fifths of the editing work before you have a professional editor look at it. The less work they have to do, the faster they'll be through your manuscript. You might be 'on the clock,' or you might be on a flat, scheduled fee. Either way, the less your freelance editing guru needs to do, the less you'll be out of pocket!

Edit me? No way!

2009-04-08T17:44:00.003+09:30

Very new writers can get extremely upset when someone has the temerity to edit their work. If this still describes your own reaction to your editor — it's a symptom of your newness to the trade of the wordsmith. Being proud of your work is good; having faith in yourself is crucial. Without the enthusiasm to write in the first place, plus the artist's pride in achievement, and a solid faith in one's abilities, no book would never be finished; or, if it was, it would certainly never be submitted.

However, many (new) writers take these feelings of pride and faith to such extremes that they take umbrage at editing. The changes made to the work (sometimes called 'corrections' ... which is where a good part of the offence is given, and received!) are seen as unnecessary, and insulting to one's talent.

The professional perspective develops later. Sometimes much later. One realizes that words are not engraved in gold, nor set in stone. Prose is a fluid which, like a stream, has eddies, currents, flow-patterns, and like water it can get deep, murky, muddy — stagnant and difficult to swallow.

The inescapable fact is that the writer lives and breathes the work while writing. Think of yourself as a lungfish, equally capable of breathing the water as of breathing air. Immersed in the work, filled with its momentum and romancing your characters, you're so close to your writing, the 'boiled frog syndrome' actually does happen!

The 'boiled frog syndrome' is a model for change in any environment; in fact, humans are living in the results of it, with our climatic breakdown. The theory goes that if you put a frog in a pot of cold water and heated the water very slowly, the poor, dumb amphibian would get so used to the gradual increase in temperature, he never would jump out. He'd sit there and cook. You see the results of this all around us on this planet, on a global scale. On a local scale, it also means you can get very, very 'close' to your own work. Too close to 'see the woods for the trees,' to use the old cliche!

Then a fresh pair of eyeballs looks at the work. An editor. The 'fun' begins, and if you're a very new writer you can feel slighted, insulted, angry, especially of the editor is highly experienced and utterly insensitive, and makes every change (correction) at one time, so the manuscript seems to have been scribbled all over with a red pen. You might feel like a kid in a classroom again; if your school years were less than pleasant, you might shudder.

Some editors are insensitive. Some are emotionally dense. Others are ruthless: they actually want to scare off newbies! It's a 'survival of the fittest' environment. If you have what it takes, you'll be back in a few years, a little older and infinitely wiser, with a skill suite that is actually ready to propel you into the professional writing arena.

But you can take a shortcut, skip those years. The trail which diverges in this particular forest entails a shift in your way of thinking. Develop the 'mindset' of the professional now, rather than in ten years' time. Learn to see your work through the eyes of the editor, reader or critic, rather than your own eyes. Even if you dislike being edited, as few of us do, (and if you take a dim view of the editor as a person!) you can still pick his or her brains. Learn from them. Get your revenge by becoming the best.

The process begins with an epiphany on your own part: you must admit you have a lot to learn. The instant you make this confession to yourself, you're moving forward. You could call this 'right thinking,' or 'right attitude.' It's very Buddhist. Lose the ego, become the empty vessel ready to be filled with the wisdom others have spent half a lifetime gathering, and you can zoom forward.

So, why is editing necessary? Who should do it — and when? Click here to learn more about what a professional edit entails, and why it can take some time.)

The authors' blogs

2009-04-08T15:47:00.002+09:30

Mel Keegan:
The World According to Mel
Legends
Digital Kosmos
MK's LJ ... OK

Doctor Mike
Digital Kosmos

Aricia Gavriel
Aricia's Gay Book Blog
Aricia's Album

Jade
Digital Kosmos
(Digital art blog, waiting for title; pending)

About us...

2009-04-08T14:26:00.003+09:30

About us...

Mel Keegan
...will be talking about every part of the writing and publishing business, from the unique vantage point of the long-time professional writer.

Doctor Mike
...will be talking about aspects of the writing trade from the perspective of the university campus and the armchair.

Jade
...will be talking about the designing and publishing aspects, from the POV of DreamCraft, where manuscripts morph themselves into books, in a process like the caterpillar-to-butterfly dance.

Aricia Gavriel
...will be talking about the "down and dirty" job of the proofreader -- and as a "proofie" for MK and DreamCraft, Aricia has seen it all!

Grammar: when to break all the rules!

2009-04-08T13:50:00.002+09:30

There's one instance when really rotten grammar will work for you. It's the ONLY time it'll work for you, however, and you'll have to be referee, umpire and touch judge. You're going to set the rules yourself, and you must play by them consistently throughout the project, or deliberately rotten grammar will fall apart into old fashioned bad grammar.

The place four rotten grammar is in the dialog of characters who come from different cultural, social or ethnic backgrounds, and this is why you must be extremely careful when you set your ground rules, and then adhere to them like glue.

People, when they speak naturally, rarely sound like they are reading aloud from a thesaurus. Every region on the planet has its own speech patterns. People who are speaking English as a second or even third language speak it with the inflection of their own mother tongues. In other words, the grammar of their native Italian or German comes through into the English.

The most attenuated form of this is Chinglish, which has virtually come to be a recognized language. It's a literal, word for word translation, of Chinese into English, leaving all the grammar and syntax of Chinese as it was, but substituting the English words, albeit pronounced according to Mandarin or Cantonese rules of pronunciation. The result is a language which is ... and isn't English. Nor it is Chinese. It's Chinglish, and both races can take a crack at understanding it.

Bad grammar — really rotten, stinking grammar! — is typical of the dialog written for "local yokels" in the Western movies. Such characters in those movies are barely educated, most often illiterate, and have just enough English to make themselves understood. For example:

"It don't make no difference when he come to town. I sez, we git together, you and me and a bunch of them good ole boys out in that there bunkhouse, and we gives him plenty of reason so's he gits right back on that train. He don't need no more persuadin' to leave here than's gonna git provided when Butch and Joe's bit by the persuadin' bug, and they whaps him up the wrong side o' the head, or maybe they even gits a mite more hornery and comes right out and shows him the wrong end of a forty-five. Yous all recalls how them boys dam' near tore up the town, while the Sheriff weren't here? They's got passels of the means and nasties, when they's riled and ready. Dagnab it, that there new guy, he'd need to be crazier'n five ole rattlesnakes in a sack, if'n he don't just run for that train and git out before he ain't got no limbs workin' good enough to run with!"

The aggression aside, you can understand every word of what was said! The grammar is execrable, but the language remains understandable. However, this kind of grammar as deliberately bad. It doesn't belong in narrative. If it creeps in there, it will appear to be a genuine error based on (sorry!) ignorance of correct grammar. If you use this, deliberately execrable grammar inside a character's dialog, however, it gives you a very powerful tool for character building. Really stinking grammar makes a character sound like a thug (as in the above example). You're off to a head start on character building, the moment the character opens his mouth!

Here is another good example of bad grammar, and how it can be turned around to build a wonderful character:

"See, I come from Milano, I get here four, maybe five year ago, and I get work every day in market. I live in heart of town, you know, where all city, every day, she is alive, fill with so much life, you wanna sing for joy of seeing. So I sing, and cuz I come from Milano ... and I gotta be saying at you, everybody, he sing in Milano! ... so I sing the opera. I sing all the song of Caruso and Gigli and Pavaroti, and one day, I am singing while I stack empty crate for to go back on truck, and he comes to the market. He listens, he stands right there where you standing this minute right now, and he say to me, "You there with curly hair and mud on shoes, where you are learning to sing?" So I tell him, "Hey, I learn to sing at home in Milano from my father and grandfather and brother and uncle," and he say to me, "You wanna sing for crowd of people, hundred people, maybe thousand even, on stage?" And I said, "Sure, why not, whole thing, she sound like big fun."

Again, the grammar is spectacularly bad, yet it conjures an image of a beautiful young man with a vast talent and a great heart, who is about to begin a marvelous career.

TIP: make grammar work for you, good and bad alike, but to make rotten grammar work to your advantage, you have to know the rules of how it all works. This way, when you have the right (the writer's privilege) to set new ground rules of grammar ... with the single proviso that you MUST stick to them!

Grammatical errors: shoot them down

2009-04-08T12:45:00.005+09:30

Grammatical errors are like dropped stitches in knitting, or forgetting the salt in cookery, or using the wrong size nails in carpentry: the end result is a flaw. A shelf fell down; a dish tasted odd; the knitting pattern went wrong. Copy editing is the process of picking up the stitches, salting the pot, and fixing the cupboard!

Grammer is a huge subject, much too broad for a single page. However, anyone who is experienced in copy editing will tell you, there's a particular handful of gaffs which are so common, made so often by so many people, they comprise about 75% of all the copy editing booboos you'll see. Therefore, if we fix those few, it's safe to say we'll be down to only 25% of the gremlins left to be hunted down. That's under control. I can look at the last, pesky 25% in an in-depth PDF, downloading from this page (in due course: bookmark this, and come back soon!), but for now, let's get after those gremlins that have seriously out-stayed their welcome.

Your computer won't be able to help much here. You can get grammatical checking programs, but these are a mixed blessing. They read your document and make suggestions. Most will be right; some will be glaringly wong. You'll still have to know the difference ... when to accept the program's suggestion, and when to reject it.

THE SEVEN MOST COMMON GRAMMATICAL ERRORS
... and how to avoid them.

Serious, nuts-and-bolts copy editing starts here, so get out your pencils and let's make a start.

#1: It's ... its ... its' ... which is it?

Understand the difference between them, and it's simple:

It's is a contraction. It's short
for it+is. You use It's to say, "It's a beautiful day;" "it's a crying shame;" "Mike said it's
in the cupboard;" "Jim's bike? It's broken;" "it's being mended;" "it's got two flat tires." "It's not
a good idea." "It's time for tea." "It's too late for talking." "Then, it's all over?" "But it's only just
started!"

Its shows possession: my, your, his, her, our, their ... its. Notice, NONE of the words
showing possession have an apostrophe. Not one of them. So, it's easy to tell when to use
Its, because it has no apostrophe. Like this:

"Its paint was cracked." "She had a bike, but its wheel was buckled." "Jim said its door was yellow." "Yes, but its knob was green." "Its wires were burned out." "Its tail feathers are white." "Its aroma was delicious." "The song was lovely, its melody soared." (In these examples, Its is
standing in for the noun. A house, a door, a bike, a radio, a bird, a pot of soup; a song.)

Its' is a typographical error. Never use it, because it doesn't mean anything at all. It's
the ultimate booboo: gibberish. A mix-up between your fingers and the keys. 'Nuff said.

#2: Billboard's ... billboards ... hotdog's ... hotdogs ... house's ... houses ... help!

More fun with the apostrophe. Relax: it's easy. You already know, after reading #1, that the
apostrophe shows possession. What is does NOT show #151 not ever! -- is the plural, of
anything! (Singular is one of something; plural is two or more.) All you have to do, to avoid this
incredibly common gaff is, never, never use the apostrophe when you mean "two or more."
Like this:

One billboard; two billboards.

One dog; half a dozen cats.

One horse; herds of horses.

One book; a whole library of books.

One mug of soup; twenty mugs of soup.

One piece of cloth; ten bolts of cloth.

One pilot; an air force filled with pilots.

One doctor; more doctors than you could guess.

One lawyer; more lawyers than can be employed.

One flower; fields filled with flowers of all kinds.

One lawnmower; fields of mown grass without flowers.

One man; two men riding bikes.

One fish; fifty fish in the fish shop windows;

One sheep; fields full of sheep.

One goose; a gaggle of geese;

One woman; crowds of angry women.

One child; several children;

One cargo; several cargoes on various ships.

One zero; three zeroes and a one make a thousand;

One star; ten thousand stars in tropical skies.

One foot; several feet but only two boots.

#3: Their ... there ... they're ... which is right?

All three are correct, in context. When you're copy editing, all you need to do is make sure the
right word is used for the right context. Fortunately, it's so easy!

Their is a possessive pronoun. (A pronoun is a word which stands in, like an understudy,
for a noun. 'It' can be the standin for a lamp, an elephant, and the planet Mars. 'She' can be the
standin for two year old Gemma, your great-grandmom, and the starship Enterprise.
'They' can be used to stand for a bunch of flowers, ten battleships, and the Hell's Angels. Pronouns are the most flexible words in the language, and some of them show how a noun "owns" or "possesses" something. "The gir's bike = her bike." "Jim's book = his book." "The car's wheels = its wheels." "The boys' exams = their exams." The personal pronouns in this particular word list are "my, your, his, her, its, our, and their." Simply add a noun to any of them, and you can't go wrong.)

So, Their is only ever (ever!) used to show how a bunch of people or things "possess"
something else. Stick to this, and you can't go wrong. "Their religion." "Their tourism industry."
"Their Size 14 desses." "Their industrial-strength titanium frames." "Their tiny, delicate petals." "Their industrial-strength tartan underwear." "Their warped camshafts." "Their photon torpedo banks." "Their painted fingernails." Easy.

There is a word with two jobs.

The first job is where "there" is used as a preposition. (Prepositions are words which show the position of objects in space. Under, over, in(side) out(side), before, behind, between, above, below, here ... there.) So, "The football stopped over there." "Our house is there, on the corner." "There are the girls." "The frog was there, on the rock." "I saw him standing there." "She said, 'There it is, under the table." He answered, 'I don't see it there.'" "'But the book is there,' she insisted. 'I put it there!'" "Jim saw the Klingons, hiding in wait there." So, in this context, use

There to show the position of objects in space. Never use "their" or "they're," and you can't go wrong.

Second job performed by "there" ... it shows the existence of things. Like this:

There is; there are; there were; there will be; there aren't any; there are six; there were 43;
there haven't been any since May; there won't be any until August; there isn't a chance;
there can't be a sound; there wasn't any trace; there is a whole load of them; there is at least
a million; there was one when I got here. So, in this contect use There only (only!) to show the existence of things.

They're is a contraction. It's short for they+are. "They're" is never (never!) used for any
other purpose. Stick to this, and you'll be right ever time. Like this:

"They're on their way home, I see them there on the road." "They said they're coming back, as
soon as their car is fixed." "I talked to Jack and Sam, they're finished the job." "We called them
last night, they're on the morning train." "The two dogs are fighting, they're going to get hurt this time." "Six cars are racing on the road, they're driven by maniacs." "Four flights have been cancelled today, they're waiting for fog to clear." "Daniel and Jack won't be back tonight, they're busy." "Their plane is late, so they're going to take a cab home, we don't have to wait there."

#4: Attack of the killer pronouns!

Take a look at these sentences. Each contains one pronoun and two or three nous. The problem is, you're left guessing which of the nouns the pronoun stands in for, and the sentences become ambiguous. One of the most important copy editing jobs is to watch out for ambiguity, turn the muddy into the clear. Pronouns can get you into a lot of trouble! Like this:

Try this:

The trick is to see the ambiguity, and then look for ways to either invert the sentence to make the potential for ambiguity go away; you can also replace the pronoun with a similar word which will do the job just as well, and prevent over-use of the original noun. Copy editing give you the opportunity to revise to your heart's content. (In the examples above, the car = the vehicle; home = the building; lunch = his meal; the crate = the heavy box; the white cat = the Persian.
In the other examples, the sentences have been turned inside out to weed out the potential for killer pronouns.

#5: Subjects and Objects: it's war!

Every sentence has a subject. If it doesn't have a subject, it's not a sentence! (Put your copy editing hat on here.) The 'subject' of a sentence is the entitythat performs the verb. Think of the subject as the owner of the verb. Like this:

First step: pick out the verbs. (A verb is an 'action' word. It can be the only word in the entire sentence that indicates what is actually HAPPENING! In the examples above, the verbs are...

Sings ... running ... wants ... jumped ... arrived ... worked ... terrorized ... arrested.

(NOTE: the vebs are in different tenses, but don't worry about this. They're all verbs, and at this moment, that's what counts.)

Now, figure out who's performing each verb. Who owns it?

The boy ... The elderly man ... A beat-up red car ... A small brown puppy with big, bright eyes ...
Mother's cat, a young Persian called Nostradamus ... Two girls from Nebraska ...
A regiment of door-to-door salesmen ... Six badly behaved children with execrable banners ...
Eight people.

Notice how subjects can be simple ("The boy" and "eight people"), and either singular or plural. The subject can be a whole bunch of people ("A regiment") ... and the subject can get complicated, as in the case of Nostradamus!

The subject of the sentence is all the words used to describe the subject, gathered together:

These, above, are not sentences, even though they're long. They're fragments. To make a sentence, you need add a verb:

(Do you still have your copy editing hat on? Good!) Now, what about the object of a sentence. Not all sentences have objects. Very hort ones can be complete without them:

But, the instant these short, choppy little sentences start to grow and express more ... you get an object. The object is the entity or object that is affected by the verb. It has the verb performed on it, or done to it. Like this:

Here's more, with the object in capitals:

In the above examples, the verbs are:

arrived ... smashed ... escaped ... struggled-to-catch ... win ... parked ... stood ... crying-out.

And if you're looking for the subject, it's easy now: the subjects of these simple sentences are the parts that are NOT the verbs or the objects! (Jack and Daniel ... the little girl ... five puppies ... Two policemen ... Charles ... The driver of a yellow Gogomobile ... the Gogimobile ... Stockton.

So far, so good. Look for the verb; whatever, or whoever performs ("owns") the verb is the subject, and whatever gets the verb wreaked upon it is the object. The copy editing process is coming along fine.

Now things get interesting. There's a good deal more material involved in long, complicated sentences, and you have to make absolutely sure all this material is properly tagged and organized. If you get lazy and inattentive, you can end up with hilarious, fall-down-laughing copy editing results, like this:

The trick is simply to arrange the sentence to keep all the appropriate material gathered together. While you're learning, go through a sentence and "tag" the various parts. Underline the verb, highlight the subject, and then when you've identified the object, round up all the material belong to it:

A comb with celluloid teeth ... a table with antique legs ... a house with a nasty case of termites ... a drill with a three-meter cord ... a guitar with bright steel pegs.

The other subject/object battle you can easily get into while copy editing is this: in long sentences, a fight can develop over who owns the verb. When sentences become very long and complex, you can find yourself hunting around trying to sort out who owns what. The easiest "fix" for this malady is to break the sentence down into two, three or even more smaller ones. Shorter sentences are easier to control ... often, they're also easier to read, and they can pack a "punch" in the narrative, which longer, flowing sentences don't have. This is where copy editing can actually cross back over and line into creative writing. The border between the two blurs out.

For example, here's a long, rambling sentence, and the copy editing cure for it:

Structurally, the sentence is sound, but it rambles from one topic to another, and another: the coastline, the trawlers, the fishing grounds, the storm, the disaster. In the middle of such a sentece, you can struggle to see who or what owns which verb, and it's all too easy to get into a muddle. Good copy editing should always be performed with the reader in mind, not the writer! Make the story easy to understand, and people will staty with you, keep reading and buy your next book!

Try this:

In the second "take" on the same material, it's split up into five sentences. The copy editing was very effective. The material is not easier to read, and much easier to control. Subjects and objects are easier to pick out. Be vigilant: by all means write in fluid sentences which sound good in the ear, but ... know when enough is enough!

Take pity on your readers.

There is one more rambling-sentence problem which we'll touch on here, and cover properly elsewhere. It's called the "run-on" sentence, and this is something you need to be keenly aware of, so that you can steer well clear if it.

The "run-on" is a long, long sentence which has no business being a sentence at all. It's actually several shorter sentences which the writer has spliced together with commas and semi-colons, in order to simulate the "sound" of fluid sentence construction. In fact, the sentences have nothing to do with each other and should be separate.

In the following example, each sentence is complete, even though some of them are short and choppy. They're also unconnected! You can glue the whole lot together with comms, semi-colons and conjunctions (the "ands" and "buts"), however ... you shouldn't, because these sentences address different topics:

Here it is as a run-on sentence. This is what you DON'T want to to:

You can paste anything together with the glue of punctuation and conjunctions, but in many instaces, you should't. The trick is to split up the material and keep topics together. Identify your subjects, objects and verbs, and keep them under control. This is better:

I'll be looking at run-ons in greater detail elsewhere, but for now ths example will give you a good grasp of what you want to do ... and what you don't!

#6: That ... or which ...? So, which is it?

At least in this contex this one is an easy fix. (NOTE: there are many and complex rules governing "that" and "which," but in this case ... trying to work out which one to use, when they seem at first glance to be interchangeable! ... it's not so complex. At this moment, with this particular problem, you're hunting for a "five minute fix" to solve the "that/which battle" -- you only need to know one rule. Elsewhere on the site, we'll examine clauses, and subordinate clauses and a lot of material which can get fairly confusing. The fact is, however, when you just need
a "that/which quick-fix," you don't want all the rest. For now, scoop the icing off the top; come back for the rest of the cake later.)

"That" and "Which" have many uses in English. One of their jobs is to glue sentences together in a specific ways. Both of them take short, choppy, awkward, ugly entences and make them longer, smoother sentences. However, THAT and WHICH are
used in different ways, in different contexts. They're not interchangeable at all! So ... which would you use, and when, and why?

Take a look at these examples.

All the above examples use WHICH. The examples below use THAT. Take a look at them, then we'll work out the rule:

And now, the simple rule which makes sense of all this!

Notice, in the first set of examples, two awkward little sentences have been glued together to form one better-sounding sentence, using WHICH. They may sound better when conjointed with WHICH ... but they are actually complete and coherent on their own. Read them through again ... "Bats are amazing creatures." This makes perfect sense, and the sentence is complete, like "He had an ace up his sleeve." And "Don't overlook the force of the wind." The sentence comes to a full stop -- done. It's followed by another short sentence with amplifies it, but it'll stand on its own. WHICH is used to turn two choppy, awkward little sentences into one smooth sentence.

Notice, in the second set of examples, two concepts are joined using THAT ... but neither concept is a complete sentence on its own. Like this:

(CAVEAT: this is the quick fix! There's a lot more to "that" and "which" than can be covered here, but by far the most common mistake is in mixing them up when you're looking for the right glue to stick short, choppy sentences together. With a firm grasp of this one rule about the that/which battles, you'll about the vast majority of errors. Bookmark this page and return when you need full, in-depth information. Or, subscribe to our newsletter. It's free, and every week or two we'll tell you which pages just went on line at Write Your Novel, detailing which pesky subjects. Visit again when what you need is "up" ...!)

#7: On which side of the bracket does the punctuation fall?

This at least is simple. Once you see the rule, all errors vanish, never to return. In the course of your copy editing, watch out for two kinds of sentences which contain parentheses (brackets):

The rule is this: If ALL the sentence is inside the brackets ... so is the punctuation. If part of the sentence is OUTSIDE the brackets, so is the punctuation. Like this:

Proofreading: weeding out spelling errors

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Spelling errors are less common these days, due to the computer's spellchecking capabilities. (If the manuscript is 'only' typed, be vigilant.) Since the computer will pick up genuine spelling errors that result in 'gibberish,' you have the possibility of a spelling error being 'corrected' into the wrong word entirely in the spell checking process. The trick is ... when you're either proofreading or copy editing, you have to know the difference!

The computer will find these:
Brign = bring; folllow = follow; wheere = where; enrole = enroll; contemporery = contemporary; definate = definite; residentiel = residential; perequisite = prerequisite; solem = solemn; perogative = prerogative; mountainus = mountainous; affinnity = affinity; proffesional = professional; sherriff = sheriff; acoustic = accoustic; erradicate = eradicate...

The computer will not find these:
Compliment = complement; their = there; though = through; principal = principle; bright = bight; cost = coast; bow = bough; pallet = palate; crate = krait; bare = bear; price = prize; buoy = boy; gorilla = guerilla; wen = when; thee = the; broker = broken; sash = sack; cloth = clothe; sooth = soothe; reed = read; pore = pour; wait = weight; bred = bread; court = caught; jeans = genes; mite = might; lice = lies; spice = spies; wrack = rack; teeth = teethe; meet = meat; write = right; rigt = wright; wheel = we'll; urn= earn; bark = barque; flaw = floor; wring = ring; sword = soared; ice = eyes; cote = coat; mote = moat; maid; made; moan = mown...

In English, there are literally hundreds of words that sound alike, are spelled differently and have vastly different meanings. It drives tourists mad ... it makes life interesting for you, when you get your teeth into copy editing.

TIP: when you read anything, anywhere, be keenly aware of WHAT you're reading. Notice, remember or jot down things which are curious; look them up later. Keep a notebook of "weird stuff." It'll soon start to make sense.

The other side of the coin of "correct spelling" is the question of which spelling system you intend to use. UK/Australian English is quite different from American/Canadian English ... and both are correct. For the purposes of copy editing, you'll need to know which is which.

If you're writing with a publisher in London, Edinburgh, Sydney or Melborne in mind, it would be best to use the UK system. If you're targeting the New York publishers, it's very important to use the US spelling system. (These days, American authorities can be a lot less tolerant of spelling differences than their British, Aussie and Kiwi counterparts!)

There is only one cardinal copy editing (or writing) sin, and this is to mix up the two systems, willy-nilly. You'll just show your (sorry, guys!) ignorance and carelessness if you use British spellings here and American spellings there. And we've seen writers change from one to the other without a care, using "recognize" here and "recognise" there. This is actually bad mannered toward the editor or publisher ... not a good idea, when this is the person you're trying to impress.

So, what's the difference between the two spelling systems? In fact, there are hundreds of words which are spelled differently, but for copy editing purposes, you need to be aware of two things. One: the rules. Two: the exceptions to the rules.

Space and time don't permit us to go into them all, but I'll look at the broad rules, and make a recommendation here...

Buy an American English dictionary, and a British/Australian dictionary, and keep them to hand. Websters Riverside is a good American English reference; the Maquarrie dictionary is the best Australian English reference, and for UK English, get the Oxford. When you're copy editing, keep these on the desk, and when you're less than 100% certain of what you're doing ... check!

The rules for the different systems of spelling used in the States and Canada, the UK and Commonwealth countries (on a broad-spectrum level, with the caveat that there are scores of exceptions!) are these:

TIP: Know who you're writing for, and chose the spelling system accordingly. Never swap and change between systems inside the same document. Consistency is paramount. Remember to set your computer's spellchecker for which spelling environment you want for a specific job. Know the rules ... and know the exceptions!

Stay with us, while I plow our way through the Copy Editing 101 series of posts; we have some useful tips for picking up all kinds of errors.

Turn page to Grammatical errors...

Proofreading: weeding outtypographical errors

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Typographical errors (known as typos) are probably the most common gaffs you'll find. Everyone from the copy editor to the proofreader is looking for these little monsters, and no matter how many pairs of eyeballs are on the job, a few will still get through into the published version.

A computer spell checker will find most of them, but anyone still using a typewriter is particularly susceptible. Who's still using a typewriter? Older writers who scorn computers, younger people who can't afford one, anyone who has a computer that's broken down with the deadline right around the corner ... and writers with eye problems like macular degeneration, who must not, at all costs, look into a bright light. You'd be amazed how many typewriters are still out there, and still in use. Did you know Tom Hanks collects them? True!

However, computer users need not be too confident: computers are blind to an amazing number of booboos, and the human eye of the copy editor must find them. For example, you wanted the FIRST word in these pairs; your fingers typed the second. It's an error, but the computer won't see it:

Though ... through. Kneel ... kreel. Fine ... find. Fool ... foot. Root ... toot. Lean ... leak. Now ... not. Can ... car. Skim ... skip. Slim ... slip. Wound ... would. Deer ... deep. Then ... them. Bank ... band. Bought ... brought. Dropped ... dropper. Slipped ... slipper. Fond ... font. Like ... live. Mister ... master. Miss ... mist. Coasting ... boasting. Brawl ... yawl. Push ... lush. Boy ... box. Bright ... fright. Bathers ... fathers. Shout ... stout.

Typographical errors can produce some absolutely hilarious results. You can often have a good laugh, when you see what your fingers did all by themselves. (There are also some amusing Freudian slips).

Humor aside, get after those typos, weed them out. Get as many as you can, then have someone else apply a fresh pair of eyeballs to the manuscript. The more proofreaders "do" the book, the better it's going to be.

TIP: read slowly. Read the words, not the sentences, and definitely not the story. Read the last page in the manuscript first, and work your way through to the front. This makes sure you don't get caught up in the story and start reading, instead of proofreading.

Turn page to Spelling errors...

Return to What the heck is copy editing, anyway?

A Copy Editing Q&A

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Copy editing for myself, do I have to be neat and tidy?

Don't be squeamish: rework the monster.
Only YOU will ever see these sheets, so change the whole thing, if you want to!

No. Proofread and edit in any way you like. Every writer has a different way of working, even though it's true that the industry itself has a traditional, regimented way of doing things. In the early days of a book, however, you're not writing for them, but for yourself.

When you're working only for yourself and no one else has to understand what you mean — go ahead and make a right, royal mess! You only have to worry about your edits being comprehensive to other people if you're working with a publisher and typesetter, and will be mailing the galley proof back to them, with all your changes and corrections in.

So long as you're working for, and with, only yourself, use any system you like. For example, I'll be editing and proofreading at the same time (why not? It's Keegan's own work, on Keegan's own desk), mixing up every kind of symbol (including some self-invented ones) without a qualm ... because I'll be the one putting the corrections into the pages on the computer.

The pages above are from a Keegan book that's receiving its final edits, prior to going to press. When a piece of work has made it out of the computer and onto paper, it will already have been proofread and edited several times. On paper, being the absolutely final version before the type is sent to the printer, I work on a "galley proof," which is a printout of the press-ready copy — the book will be printed at 6" x 9" (trade size), but the reading copy is printed on A4 paper. This gives big margins all around, facilitating the work. I scribble on the copy. ALL over the copy. Almost every page! Very few pages pass parade without getting the spit-shine treatment ... this is copy editing at its most fundamental and effective.

Some writers prefer to work on a double-spaced printout. Others work in colored pens and pencils, and text highlighters. Use whatever you feel comfortable with, and what's handy.

A day will come, however, when you're working with a publisher and typesetting who need to understand exactly what you mean.

Is copy editing the same as proofreading?

No. Proofreading can be done by any literate person, who will look ONLY for typographical, spelling and formatting errors. This person has no authority whatsoever to change, or suggest a change in, so much as a syllable. An editor edits; a proofreader looks for gaffs in the actual typing, typesetting and formatting.

Are there formal symbols used to indicate proofreading corrections, and editing changes?

Yes, and they're similar, though not quite the same. The major difference between them is that proofreading symbols are usually going to appear on the "galley proof" (see above), because the editing is finished and you're just looking for typos and formatting errors, in the absolutely final stage before publication. Therefore, proofreading symbols have to be "squeezy," because you'll be working on the galley. By contrast, copy editing symbols can afford to sprawl, be big and comparatively sloppy, because — at least traditionally! — you'd always be editing on a double-spaced copy. These days, of course, you're far more likely to be editing inside the computer, but you know how long it takes to slow down, stop and turn around the juggernaut of tradition. It'll be another century before it all changes. You can't afford to wait that long, so meet meet the industry halfway.

Here's the rule: When you're editing and proofing for yourself along, use any system you like. However, when you're marking up a manuscript for a publisher, typesetter or printshop, use the traditional proofing and editing markup system. You probably won't need to be completely familiar with the copy editing and proofreading symbols just yet, but let's take a look at them, for the sake of interest.

1) Insert [something] at this point. 2) Insert a comma here; 3) a semi-colon, 4) a full-colon. 5) Insert opening quotes and 6) insert closing quotes. 7) The copy editing symbol for "start a new paragraph and, 8) the proofreading symbol for start a new paragraph. 9) Insert a space (with the slash cutting in where the space should be), also 10) Insert a space. 11 Close up an unwanted space. 12. Insert a line (arrowhead points in between two lines that should be separated. 13) Enclosed "stet" meaning, "Leave as is," often used to cancel out an unwanted change. 14) Enclosed "cq" meaning, "spelling is fine, don't change this." 15) delete this blank line. 16) Capitalize this letter. 17) End of document. 18) Transpose (switch the order of) the words separated out by this wiggly line. 19) Insert a hyphen. 20) Insert an emrule. 21) Delete the unwanted letter which is struck out by the slash (this is the editing symbol). 22. Delete the unwanted word which is struck out by the horizontal line. 23) Delete unwanted letter (this is the proofreading symbol. 24. General "delete this and close up the resulting space" symbol, used in proofreading, not copy editing.

Now ... got your copy editing hat ready?

Turn page to Typographical errors...

Return to What the heck is copy editing, anyway?

Copy editing: what the heck is it, anyway?

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Copy editing: The nuts-and-bolts end of the business...
or, "Copy Editing 101"

'Copy editing' is a term which raises goose bumps on the arms of many writers, yet these days there is absolutely no need for the reaction. In the old days, heavily correcting a piece of work meant retyping the whole thing ... perhaps 300 - 500 pages of typing, Hence the goose bumps! Since the advent of computers, correcting is done on-screen, and you just hit "print" to get a fresh copy. The old "shiver" reaction to the specter of the copy editor persists, but there's no need for it to. Writing is a cross between art and craft, and if you ask any painter, sculptor, knitter or carpenter, they'll tell you the same golden truth.

There are skills to be learned and rules to be followed. Once you have the pattern (be it a knitting pattern for a sweater or a woodworking pattern for a bookcase), it's very like painting by numbers. You stay with the pattern. If something is wrong, you take it apart and put it back together again, to get a correct fit.

This is copy editing. Trust me. You won't drop dead, or spontaneously burst into flames at a lick of sunlight.

The major difference between copy editing and other crafts is that you're working 'on the fly.' The "pattern" is a list of "ingredients," while the plot is the recipe. As the copy editor, you're the 'taste tester.' You stick your finger in the mixing bowl, try the goop, and correct it when it's not quite right.

You need two things, to excel at this. First, you have to be ready to learn, and accept, copy editing. Very new writers cam get very offended when someone suggests that they need some editing. More experienced writers might have a history of rejections, or they've spent some considerable time polishing their own work, with the help of friends.

During this polishing process, a time comes when errors start to literally jump out of the manuscript and bite you ... and, inevitably, you wonder, "Why didn't I see that a year ago?" You realize, the publishers who looked at the novel last year would have seen the errors (they must have seen them, if you yourself can see them now!), and you think to yourself, "A good editor would have weeded the gaffs out of the manuscript back then."

Someone skilled at copy editing could certainly have weeded the manuscript ... but were you ready, at that point, to admit that you needed the editing/weeding? All writers reach a threshold. On one side, they're amateurs, not-yet-ready to go forward. On the other side, they've experienced The Epiphany. In a flash of insight, they start to see written material (fiction of journalism) as a fluid, constantly changing, endlessly flexible, lending itself to molding and shaping.

Copy editing is like dipping your hand into this fluid, changing the pattern of eddies and currents, to get around rough patches, make things clear, and keep the fluid moving smoothly.

So, the first useful thing I can do is take a look at the 'rules' by which this game is played.

You have to learn the rules before you can score tennis, knit a sweater or fiddle with the car engine. Copy editing is no different ... and nothing to be intimidated about.

I'm going to call this "Copy Editing 101," and it's quite a large subject, so what I'm going to do is break it up into chunks and tackle each chunk in a separate post.

In fact, he entire subject of copy editing is larger than you might think at first glance. It can be overwhelming, if you don't break it up into bite-sized chunks. We'll divide up the pie into nibblets which fit the size of blog posts, and you can choose exactly what you need at this moment, to solve some specific problem which you just diagnosed. (However, be sure to get the "big picture" too, because it's way too easy to be making mistakes you're not even aware of. A professional editor will pick them up at once, and there's another rejection slip for your collection!)

You'll probably want to hit the whole list -- and access it easily! -- so we'll itemize it right here (stay on this post and scroll down). Some of the topics are short series of posts...

First Rules: Put out an APB for bad guys

You have the manuscript on the desk before you, and pens and pencils. You're ready to scribble on the manuscript ... all over it, if necessary! But what are you looking for? Here's a short-list -- topics will turn into links as posts are added to this blog:

Typographical errors, especially in manuscripts which were typed up rather than being "done on a computer," which spellchecked the document prior to printing out.
Spelling errors which got past the computer's spellchecker; all spelling errors, if the manuscript was 'only' typed, using a old-fashioned typewriter.
Grammatical errors
Punctuation errors
Textual formatting errors
Inaccuracy: wrong word used
Repetition and Over-use: repeated word within a sentence or paragraph; term or phrase used too often overall.
Ambiguity: the reader can't tell what the writer means!
Writing with consistency in word usages throughout.
Nonsequiteur: the narrative either contradicts itself or heads off in unconnected directions.
Errors of "style" (harder to pick out; don't worry, we're going there).

Take it from the top! I'll start with a five-minute Q&A covering the physical aspect of the job. What does it look like, how does it work at the fundamental level of the paper and pencils ... then we'll dive into the details....

Click here for A Copy Editing Q&A...

Most-asked questions about freelance writing

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A dozen of the most-often asked questions

How long is a novel — how short is 'too short' ... and how long can I go?

The shortest novels are around 40,000 words. The longest can be twelve times this length.

Pulp fiction tends to be short; pulp westerns and military action novels can be as short as 130pp, as long as 200pp, and the publisher will adjust the typesetting to achieve the desired page count. (Larger or smaller on the font size, more or less space between the lines, and the chapters can either begin on a new page or 'chase' each other, nose to tail.) If you're intending to submit to the short-fiction market, you need to know how to write to a definite plan. Plots must be structured with great detail to be just the right length.

How long you can let your material run depends on the publisher you're submitting to. Many publishers have an upper limit, which might be 150,000 words, or perhaps 400pp. Other publishers can accept any length book. The larger the book, the more it will cost to print, and highly-priced books can be harder to sell. Ideally, a first novel would be something like 80,000 - 150,000 words, unless you're writing in a genre which demands shorter pieces (such as pulp westerns), or you're tackling the literary fiction market. Genre fiction obeys its own rules.

Science fiction from a certain publisher, for example, might have to be between 125-155,000 words, because this is where their list concentrates. They know the size/price bracket in which they achieve their best sales. Before you start, you can be thinking about how to write your material to suit the publisher you've targeted as your best shot at getting a professional contract.

So, how do I get a word-count ... and why should I want one?

If you're working on the computer, your software will give you an exact word count. Search the menus till you find this function. (For instance, in Lotus Word Pro you find it under FILE > DOCUMENT PROPERTIES > DOCUMENT. In Microsoft Word 2003, it's under FILE > Properties > Statistics.)

If you're working on paper, before you started you'd have set your margins to 1" all around the page. This tells you the 'live area' of the page — the typed-over part. You'll be typing in fixed pitch, like Prestige Elite or Courier. 10 pitch is 10 characters per inch, or 65 characters across a 6.5" live area.' And 65 characters gives you about 10 words across the line, where a word is five characters + one space after it! Remember that many lines are shorter, so average down to 10. Then, simply count the number of lines down the page, and multiply. Get the page count and multiply by the number of pages in the document. Done.

You'll need an accurate word count to tell you if you're inside a publisher's 'budget' for text length, before you submit; and the publisher will certainly want to know the length. This should be printed on the cover sheet. If you need to know how to write to a particular constraint, thinking about word count is a good place to begin.

How do I write 'genre' fiction? (I've heard that it's easier to get published in a niche.)

This is an enormous question, which I'll tackle at length in another post. The brief answer, here, is to know your subject, inside and out, know the market, over-deliver with the very best material you can devise, pick your target publisher with great care, research exactly what they want and need at the moment you make your submission, and deliver the highest-quality work, with the best presentation you can.

You'll have read in your chosen genre 'till your cup runneth over.' You'll be able to write that stuff in your sleep! You'll have pondered how to write militaria, or westerns, or romance, till you've figured out the formula and have a file stuffed with plot ideas. You might have written two or three of these novels to get a feel for them. And you'll know your publisher's requirements to the letter. Are they accepting submissions? Do they accept electronic, or only paper? Will they look at work from someone previously unpublished? Will they look at submissions not coming in via an agency?

With these broad points covered and an extremely good novel, well written, on the table, you can look at making a submission with a good chance of opening negotiations with a publisher.

How much research is necessary ... and how much is too much?

You need to know the world you're writing in, simple as that. The challenge is in how to write about the past, or other countries, or other cultural groups, and have your writing be credible, compelling, moving. If your novel is set in the Napoleonic Wars, you've got some work to do, because that era is very well documented, and mistakes will be obvious. If you're writing in the tenth century, you'll still need to take care with the details, but documentation is thin on the ground and fewer people know a lot about the era. Mistakes won't be so visible.

How to write credibly about other cultures is an even more complex topic, and only research will help, here, if you want to set your story, say, in Armenia in 1952, or among the Cherokee and Creek peoples on the Road of Tears, or in a big Glasgow Irish community in 1966. A major part of your research will be from books, movies, documentaries, but if you're incredibly lucky, part of it can be drawn from personal contact with 'people who were there,' when some pivotal event took place, or whose grandparents were there, and the stories have been passed down as family folk lore.

But here is a caveat: don't get so caught up in the research that your enthusiasm for the project dwindles. I can tell you a horror story of how a great novel concept of mine came along -- set in Ancient Greece. Six months of research later, I'd gone stale on the book. It was never written. Fast Forward 20 years, though, and I have a new novel idea set in the same time frame ... and the research was done a long time ago!

(Will you take a tip? If you're wondering how to write material set in the distant past, do it in two or three stages. Stage One: watch a couple of reputable movies, where you can trust the details (TROY, or ALEXANDER, or GLADIATOR, and so forth), and then, Stage Two: fudge it. Use what you saw in the movies to get the novel moving, get it two-thirds done, while you get into your background reading. Stage Three: when you're finished, make your first editing 'pass' over the book into a 'proofreading for factual errors' check. Fix the details after the fact. So long as everything is 100% kosher by the time you're done, who's going to know what order the work was done in? And, in fact, what does it matter?"

Do I have to type the darned thing? Must I use a computer? I hate to type!

You'll have to type eventually, but nothing prevents you from writing in longhand. Jackie Collins is famous for writing those massive tomes of hers in 50c exercise books, which are leather-bound when she's done! However, she can afford to pay a typist ... inquire locally as to how much this will cost before you make the decision to outsource your typing. You might be appalled. Some writers have no idea how to write passionate fiction at the keyboard, and yes, they write by hand. But the bottom line is, it has to be typed eventually.

If you're going to use a typing service, consider your handwriting. Do you write well ... or, like most of us, do you scrawl? Most adults evolve their own handwriting, and some of us are the only ones who can even begin to read what we're written! If a typing service can't understand what you scrawled, it can't be keyed in.

If you really hate to type, by all means get the book finished in longhand. Then bribe your friends and family to type for you. Do the dishes, wash the car, mow the lawn, walk the dog, babysit the kids. Have people key in a few pages here and there, and pretty soon, you're done.

Another caveat: have them key it in on a computer. That way, their typographical errors, misreadings of your scrawl (!), and misspelled words, will be easy to correct when you start your proofing and editing work.

Bottom line: yes, eventually the work has to be typed ... but maybe not by you ... and ten people, all of them bad typists, can collaborate on a computer-based project, and achieve a perfect, seamless result in the end!
Here's much more about typing: Lean to write ... learn to type a bit!

Is it necessary to rewrite, do drafts? What's the difference between a first and third draft?

Most writers do drafts; some don't need to. If you're wondering how to write something long and complex, a project which is defying your writer's logic, then the draft system is a good answer, to kickstart your book. A first draft can be daggy, dog-rough, shoddily mashed together, and short, with whole scenes missing, represented by a line in capitals that says, [THIS IS WHERE JIM GETS SHOT]. The key element is, every plot twist, character and pivotal event is in place,
even if each scene is little more than a sketch.

A first draft can also (from a master writer) be practically finished, with just a few 'flags' left in the body with 'notes to self' such as [IDENTIFY THIS RAIL SERVICE IF POSS.], or [CONFIRM WHEN DYNAMITE FIRST USED], or [CHECK SPELLING OF CHEEKTOWAGA]. The second draft will be completed with these details, at the same time as the manuscript is polished and proofread — in other words, in the editing process. A master writer's third draft will usually entail nips and tucks, amplifications and amputations, and the last polishing of grammar and dialog.

The third draft should be finished, or almost so. A book which is still 'not right' in its third draft is a book with problems. Is there something wrong with the plot line, at a fundamental level? Is the problem with the characters? If you're struggling with how to write your way out of fourth- and fifth-draft problems, the solution could easily be in a complete rewrite. (You'd go through the existing manuscript and highlight all the 'must use' bits. Be ruthless about this. Then, replot, restructure, go again from scratch, and copy-paste the passages which were solid gold.) As painful as it is to do this, and as time consuming — it can get you to the finishing post faster than
waffling on with fifth drafts, trying to save something which is fundamentally flawed.

So ... first draft: quick and rough. Might not even have dialog in place ... or, might be all dialog, with flags to indicate where narrative and action need to be written in. (Every writer has a different way of working, and none is wrong, so long as the book is excellent upon completion.) Second draft: all major material in place, few flags remaining to indicate where research will be checked, dialog polished, extra scene added. Third draft: all research in, nips and tucks, rewrites to abbreviate or amplify, spit and polish. Fourth draft: more polish, more nips and tucks ... trying to work out why this book is starting to give so much trouble!

I'm blocked. How do you get through writer's block?

There are complex theories regarding how to write your way out of writer' block! You can buy CDs and DVDs on the subject, but the most useful tactic is to figure out where the block is coming from. It all starts in your mind, not your fingers. Once you know where the blockage is ... go around it. Under it. Over it. Never try to go through: this is probably why you're still blocked!
You can be blocked for many reasons. The first is burnout. When you're writing a long novel, you can simply get tired of it before you're done. With a quarter-million words on paper, academically you know you have to get on and finish: a job half done is as good as not begun. What a waste of time and effort to get 80% of the way through and stop. But the urge to write isn't there any longer. You're burned out.

How to write yourself out of burnout is a whole topic of its own, but here's a quick fix. If you're burned out because the job is difficult, look at ways to make it easier. If the burnout is do to the 'same old, same old' syndrome, introduce a challenge either to yourself of your characters. Throw in a plot twist which stretches your imagination; bounce ideas off a friend and get their reaction. Do the job of writing in a different order: write all the dialog first, as if you were writing
a screenplay ... get through the rough part, fill in the narrative later. Or, if the characters have been talking for so long, you're tired of the 'sound' of their voices in your head (it happens!) write all the narrative first, come back and plug in key dialog later.

If you're blocked because you're bored with the subject matter, put it aside. Write something completely different and then come back to the existing project with fresh eyes, next month or even next year. Have you grown bored with your characters? Here's a trick: 'recast the parts.' Seriously.

Many (most? Or is it all, though they won't admit it?!) writers have a performer in mind when they write a particular character. Your hero is played (at least in your mind's eye!) by, say, Tom Hanks. The problem is, you're bored with the performance. So ... try auditioning George Clooney in the part. Or Nicholas Cage. You're the casting director here, it's your production. Nothing's about to stop you pink-slipping Clooney and hiring Hugh Jackman, if the difference in nuance will get you through. Consider this: motion picture directors can audition dozens of actors before they decide on Russell Crowe and Orlando Bloom for the key parts. Brad Pitt and Johnny
Depp could have played the same parts — but the performances would have been worlds apart. The difference in performance is where the sparkle comes from. The same 'casting tricks' are available to a writer, even though only you ever get to see the movie that's playing before your mind's eye!

What are archetypes and stereotypes ... and where should my own characters fall?

Aim in the middle. The line between archetype and stereotype can become perilously close. Archetypes can turn into stereotypes by being overused. First, be sure you understand what an archetype is. Here are some, which will help to grasp the concept. (How to write unforgettable characters is a massive subject. We're going to tickle it on this page, but when you're ready to grasp this particular bull by the horns, take Creating Characters 101!)

Father figure/male authority figure. Odin. Zeus. Merlin. Richard the Lionheart. Gandalf. Obiwan Kenobi. Commander Adama. Jean Luc Picard. Master Po. Jor-El.
Wise old(er) man who has, or seems to have, all the answers. The archetype slithers into the stereotype if your wise elder is TOO good, TOO wise, TOO all-seeing, and you use this device too often.

Mother figure/female authority figure. Mary. Galadriel. Gwenevere. Hera, Hestia, Demeter. Queen Elizabeth I. Spiderman's Aunt May. Captain Janeway. The good witch of the north. The crone, or wise woman, with all the answers as well as the comfort and compassion. Again, the archetype slithers into the stereotype if you let it.

The young warrior (male or female active: light). Thor. Baldur. Hector. Robin Hood. Launcelot. Frodo. Aragorn. Luke Skywalker. Hercules. Bruce Lee. Jim Kirk (in the first show!). Richard Sharpe. Kal-el. Xena. Princess Leia. Ripley. Eowen. S/he's smarter, better, stronger, faster than everyone else; the trick is in how to write him/her without him/her turning into a comic book hero(ine)!

The rogue warrior (almost always male male active: dark ... the antihero). Ares. Achilles. Wolverine. Magneto. Han Solo. Mad Max. Boromir. Anakin Skywalker. Captain Nemo. They have a streak of the dark as well as the light; their allegiance could fall either way. Work out how to write the character without him becoming the cliche.

The villain (should transcend gender: dark ... resident evil). Set. Loki. Saruman. Emperor Palpatine. Green Goblin. Darth Vader. Lex Luthor. Sheriff of Nottingham. Klingons. Cylons. Goa'ould. Nazgul. Smeagol. Dracula. The bad witch. It's critical to work out how to write this archetype, because the stereotype is lurking right behind you, dying to join the party.

There are many, many more archetypes, and just as many stereotypes, but you get the picture. The hustler with the heart of gold; the beautiful but dumb young person of whatever gender; the naughty child who does stupid things as a catalyst to the plot; the teen who won't listen to reason and gets into trouble; the town drunk; the lecherous priest; the nasty teacher who's abusing kids; the kindly old lady who rescues stray cats; the ugly woman who's easy prey to any young guy intending to fleece her; the brainless barbarian warrior; the snivelling, cowardly thief; the virgin bride kidnapped before the wedding...

I'll sink my teeth into how to write great characters in Character Creation 101, but this post gives you got a good grasp on what the archetypes and stereotypes are — and in fact, they're
fairly easy to avoid. Just get a lasso around them, and keep them under control!

When should the editing process start, and can I do it myself?

You can start editing literally as soon as you have the first paragraph down! Many writers rattle out a page, or half a page, and they sit back with a cup of tea and look over what they've written. Errors jump out at you, when you know what you're looking for. These can be errors in grammar, punctuation, style, or fact. You can take a break as often as you like, and edit 'on the fly.'

Your major editing will happen after the work is complete, but professional writers are editing in their heads while the words are still on their way to the fingers, for typing. In short, it's never too early to begin. If you're wondering how to write the most competent prose, as the old saying goes, it's about 10% inspiration ... the rest is perspiration. But don't sweat it: the process can also be a lot of fun.

Can you edit for yourself? Yes. And you should edit your work during the entire process. Polishing your material and straightening out errors is an important part of the work, and you can do by far the majority of it yourself. Naturally, there are tips and tricks to know. Need to start right now? Good editing begins here, especially when you're working on your own material.
But when you're working on your own material, a special set of skills come into play. The first ability you need to master is to divorce yourself from the work, so that you can clearly see the errors, and have impartial judgment when it comes to deleting lines or whole scenes, and replacing or revamping them.

Yes, it can be painful. You wonder about how to write your heart out and then promptly rewrite most of your work, and not go thoroughly bonkers? This ability is the hallmark of the professional wordsmith. Of course you're in love with your work! You're romancing (and being romanced by) your characters; and your themes, the issues you're writing about, are close to your heart. If they weren't, you wouldn't be spending your free hours writing this thing. But —

It's precisely because you believe your material is so important that you need to do the very best editing job you can. Writing which has not been edited can be fraught with incongruities, nonsequiteurs, factual errors, grammatical slips, wrong words used by accident (their / there / they're, for instance, and to / too / two ... everyone makes these errors when they're typing at high speed, with their mind throw on 'down the track' ahead of the hands, which struggle to catch up).

If you're asking how to write perfect prose first time out, prose which never needs editing, I'd have to tell you, you have an improbable ambition. It can be done, but the skill is developed over decades of practice, and most writers would not choose to work this way: you don't type a single character until the entire sentence (and possibly the whole paragraph) is complete, and perfect, inside your head. Then you type it in. However, the fact is, the editing was done in the brain before the text filtered down to the fingers!

In other words, somebody, somewhere is going to edit the prose, at some stage, even if it happens before it's typed! And think about this: if the characters with whom you're in love are going to 'go under the surgeon's knife,' wouldn't you like to control at least part of the process?

Distance yourself from the work. Develop clear, impartial vision. See the prose through the eyes of a reader, an editor, a critic. And then make the changes, apply the polish, according to the rules of grammar and style which you understand so well, you can do it in your sleep. Need to make a start? Click through to Editing Central for the overview, and choose a place to jump in: The Global Edit is the best place to begin, if you're new to all this. Or, Take Copy Editing 101!

Do I need to have beta readers? What are beta readers, anyway?

You don't have to have beta readers, but it helps. Beta readers are friends, family or associates who will do you a favor. They'll read your work (a chapter or two while you're writing; the whole book, once you've finished editing to your own satisfaction). If the question, 'how to write' has even flittered through your mind, a beta reader will be able to help you with feedback, a fresh opinion, a reaction to what you've written. Without this feedback, you're writing in a vacuum, like the actor who can't see the audience and has no idea how people are responding to his performance. Everything s/he does will be inspired guesswork.

An extremely good beta reader can also be asked to check your grammar and spelling during the reading, but if you doubt that the person's skills are any better than yours ... check what they've marked as errors. They might be dead wrong. Then again, they can also be dead right, so never turn down the offer of another pair of eyes to go over the work.

The beta reader will, at the very least, tell you if the book was boring, interesting, exciting, moving, funny, hard to read, easy to read, clumsily written, smoothly written, done with a professional 'sound,' done with an 'amateurish 'sound' ... or so uninteresting they were simply unable to get into it far enough to know.

Listen to your beta readers. Don't fight with them. Never try to defend what you wrote, because beta readers can get defensive: "You asked for my opinion, I gave it to you, you don't like it, that's your problem." Friendships can be strained to the limit. The other side to this problem is that beta readers who have to live or work with you (very close friends or family members) can feed you platitudes and sugar-coated white lies because they can't afford to tell you the truth (that the story was boring to them, they didn't appreciate its brand of humor, your writing style was like itching powder to them).

A critical point to remember is that all readers, all people, are different. What thrills one person will bore another. What amuses one person will 'go over like a lead balloon' to another audience. It's been said that if you can please 51% of the people 51% of the time, you're winning. Most writers want to please a lot more than that, but ... how to write material that pleases 90% of readers, 90% of the time? It's virtually impossible.

So choose your beta readers with care. Ask for honesty, and accept what you're given at face value. Make notes, try to see the work from another perspective. People will astonish you by reading into a story whole dimensions you had never imagined there. It's even possible that a beta reader will say something which will make you go back and rewrite sections — not because they were 'tacky' or 'cheesy' or poorly done, but because the reader perceived layers of meaning which had escaped you previously.

In this way, a good book can become a great book by benefiting from the perspective of fresh eyes.

How can I be sure when I'm finished, and have written what publishers really want?

It's an instinct. You know, the way you know when the carrot cake's ready to come out, or when the ignition timing is dead right, or the tension on the yarn is absolutely perfect, or the amount of brewer's sugar left in the bag is spot-on for this batch of home brew.

There are things we don't measure, things that can't actually be measured. You just know when something is right. Having said that, you can also listen to your beta readers, who will give you the feedback you've been waiting for. There's no answer to how to write the last line and call it done! You can tinker with a book for years, but sooner or later it's time to submit it and see if publishers agree that you're as good as you think you are.

How can you be sure you've written what publishers want? This is a tough one, because every genre demands something different and unique. But all of them reach a 'lowest common denominator' when it comes to the ground rules. Your work must meet these ground rules, or won't even be read! The rules are about manuscript formatting; word count; grammar; spelling; and the integrity of the work itself. You might be asking yourself how to write for a specific
publisher, to meet their needs...

Query them, and ask what they want and need right now. Most publishers carry this information on their websites; they'll also tell you if they're 'not reading at this time,' and if your submission must come in via an agency. You can also reverse-engineer it to a degree, figure out how to write for this or that publisher by buying a stack of their books and reading them. You'll soon know what they want, and how they want it.

Do I send a manuscript to a publisher, or does an agent have to do this?

All publishers are different. Some will read manuscripts submitted by the public, others rely on agencies to 'screen' incoming manuscripts, sort the wheat from the chaff, first. Query your target publisher, or check on their webpage for information. Try 'flying solo' for a while before you get into the hunt for an agency. This quest in itself can take months (and longer), and you'll never know if you could have connected with a publisher without going through that.

One point on which all publishers and agents agree, however, is that nobody (but, nobody!) these days will read an unsolicited submission. You can't just package up the manuscript, send it off, and have it read. Some publishers trash such submissions; some will send them back unopened. Suffice to say, with postage costing a small fortune, you don't want to waste your time and money this way.

Always contact the publisher first (visiting their webpage is fine), get their submission guidelines ... meet those guidelines perfectly, and then write a query letter. In this letter, you can introduce yourself, ask if they're reading, and if they have any interest in the work for
which you're enclosing a one- or two-page synopsis. Send return postage! They will either answer, or they won't. If they don't, it's a safe assumption the answer was 'No, we're not reading,' or 'No, we have no interest in the book you're offering us.' Accept this as a point of business, and go on to the next one.

For the whole spectrum of how to go about finding publishers and agents ... and how to do it yourself instead ... stay with me, and I'll cover a massive field in many different posts. Good hunting!

Plot construction...

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The framework goes up before the house!

If you have most or all of the whole plot in mind already, it's time to get down to brass tacks. Let's look at how to write your construction blueprint. With that done, you're ready to build the novel.

When a plot is giving trouble, fall back on the basics: sit at the feet of master fictioneers and shamelessly pick their brains. Need help to plot the seemingly unplottable?! Here's an overview of the subject. With this crow's-eye-view, you'll know where to head next.

Do you have part of the plot, say, the middle? The beginning is still vague, and you know you need a fully-rounded, satisfying ending. (I'm going to look at why the ending is by far the most important part of a work of fiction.) Let's take a look at the structure of a good novel — the system behind how to write something so compelling, your reader can't stop turning pages, and at the end is hungry four your next book: it's all about plot development. Stay with me ... I'm going there next.

Do you have the beginning and the middle, but the ending is proving elusive? Time to do a little creative brainstorming, using tried and proven models that have worked for writers for years. We'll take the existing models, tear them apart right back to their constituent bricks, and build something new: How to write the Big Finish.

Or, do you have a fantastic book idea that needs to 'gel' into a plot? In another post I'll talk about how to write a story outline, or timeline. Tap into this way of working, and an afternoon invested now can save you a week of reworking later.

With the plot tied down fast, the next step is to consider creating characters, of developing the characters that have already taken shape in your imagination. You'll want to write characters so real, they seem to have lives of their own, and they'll haunt your readers. There are no graven-in-gold rules about how to write great characters, but a number of techniques are at your fingertips, and all are extremely effective. Here's Character Creation 101 ... How to write the characters readers love — and love to hate!

Create unforgettable characters

Create a character: the hero

Create a character: the villain

What's in a character's name?

And with the major characters mapped out, the construction blueprint can be called done. The time has come to explore your creativity, flex your writer's muscles, see what you can do. Set your own 'ground rules' and stick to them.

For example, try to write every day, even if it's only 200 words (which would be around half a page of a paperback with decently-set type, or almost a full page of a paperback where the type is enormous and the lines are almost double spaced ... which is how publishers take a very short book and make it look much larger. All that wasted paper between the lines is known as 'white space' ... what a crass waste of trees).

Now, let's take a look at some of the most fundamental nuts and bolts of how to write. It starts with getting ideas and words onto paper, or into the computer, so that they can be pushed, pulled, shoved, culled, and otherwise pounded into shape!

Only you know how much you know, and how much you need to learn. I'm going to answer dozen of the most-asked questions, which clear answers, which will help you skim over sticky patches. (Grab a fresh coffee and take a few minutes to read through them; you might be surprised. The industry keeps changing.)

Turn page to...
Q&A: 'How to write ... what?!' 12 Most-asked Questions!

Plot ideas --

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Where in the world do they come from?

Most of the time, plot ideas pop right out of a writer's imagination, and many writers are usually inundated with these ideas. They get far more than can even be jotted down, much less incorporated into storylines. However, occasionally a writer does find him- or herself in a drought, and then it's important to know how to deliberately generate fresh plot ideas.

The drought usually comes on when a writer must turn in a piece of work, because it's all a matter of money. Let's say you're a working writer selling scripts for TV shows. Working in the US, you'll be so well paid, you'll be able to live comfortably on two or three sales in a year. Working in Australia, the pay is a lot more meager, which means you must sell a lot more scripts.

Each script is built on a core plot idea, and running dry of fresh concepts when you absolutely, positively must produce a piece of work, is a writer's concept of the classic bad hair day. So, most writers have their own system for generating fresh ideas, and we'll look at a range of them on this page.

Does a Random Plot Generator actually exist?

Unfortunately ... yes, there is such a thing. You can actually buy software which gives you what are known as 'prompts,' and by filling in the blanks you'll always come up with some kind of a plot. The question remains, is a story based on a plot idea, or a bunch of plot ideas generated this way, worth writing? This is question, you'll have to answer for yourself.

Let's look at how the generator works. Save your money. There is absolutely nothing in this system which can't be achieved with a notebook and pencil. The prompts are very like the 'when, whom where, why' model we set in motion on the What is a plot? page. Refresh your memory, if you need to. Then ... Here are the prompts:

Create a hero.
(Young guy, older guy? Tall, short? Walks with a limp due to old injury? European, Afro-American, Native? Aussie accent? Good looking, scar-faced after the old injury? Bad tempered, sweet tempered? Foul mouthed? Snazzy dresser, or grunge guy? Rocker, rapper, or violinist? College educated or dropout? Brave, or scared silly? Straight, bi or gay? Tee-total, drinking problem, drug problem? Smoker, or non-? Republican, Democrat, or couldn't care less? Religious, spiritual, or atheist? Intelligent or a bit dim? A son, a father, a brother, a nephew?)

Create a villain.
(Go through the exact same process to design this guy as you did to design the hero.)

Set the time frame.
(Ancient Greece, Rome or Egypt? American Civil War? Queen Elizabeth I and Francis Drake? Wars of the Roses? The Third Crusade? The American War of Independence? The Rum Rebellion? Columbus, or Captain Cook? World War I, or II? The Swingin' Sixties? The Cold War? Indiana Jones era? Contemporary? Futuristic...?)

Set the location.
(City or country? Coastal or mountains? Jungle or snow fields? Forest or farmland? Rainforest or desert? Hotel, farmhouse, apartment block, horse property, beachfront house, decaying mansion, brand-new home, old church, creepy old house?)

Create a pivotal event to set a story moving.
(A murder. Plane crash. Car crash. Abduction. Theft. Divorce. Marriage. Birth of a child. Death in the family. Funeral. Reading of a will. Outbreak of war. Arrival of strangers. Hellfire sermon causes social unrest. Political turmoil agitates people. Bushfire. Arson -- school burns down, or church, or mansion. Mine cave-in. Baby down the well. Thoroughbred stallion escapes. Pet dog runs away. Sudden unemployment. Sudden employment. Highway coming through. Railway coming through. Ship sinks. Ship launches. Business bankrupts. Business opens ...)

Set the mood and feel for the piece.
(Light comedy. Grand tragedy. Adventure. Romance. Slapstick. Mystery. Tear-jerker. Spooky. Thriller. Chiller. NOTE: the genre is not important here. Science fiction can also be comedy (Ice Pirates), westerns can be slapstick (Cactus Jack). What you're defining here is the 'mood' for your piece. In other words, the vein in which you'll write it: will you be trying to make your readers laugh, or cry?)

Each of those plot ideas, or 'parameters,' can be written on something like a business card blank. You can toss them in a shoe box and pull one out at random. If you have one box each for hero, villain, time frame, location, and pivotal event, a story will certainly begin appear. Using the above method, it's quite easy to find your way to Luke Skywalker standing on the desert surface of Tatooine, chafing at his uncle's demand that he stay on the farm. It could be a kid on a farm in Kansas in the great drought, wanting to join the Air Force ... same plot idea. (Of course, it's what you DO with the plot idea that makes for a good story, a boring story, or just plain plagiarism!)

By now you have at least one plot idea, and probably more than one. You can always come up with a plot this way, but we'd be remiss if we didn't include a caveat: If you don't apply your own imagination and creativity, such plots are artificial, fake, cardboard. You can write them, but the result — without the input of individual creativity — will lack the dynamism that makes a great novel. The result will be something like the pulp westerns which were churned out by the thousands, with stock situations and characters.

Give it a shot — it makes an interesting game for a rainy afternoon! But don't come to rely on this for your plot ideas. There are better ways...

Plot ideas, and how writers spark them

All writers have different methods, and here are some of the best. They're not going to cost a dime, and you can try any or all of them for the 'best fit.'

Mythology is a rich source of plot ideas. Every story idea one can imagine is to be found in the legends of Greece, Egypt, the Norse world, and China. An encyclopedia of mythology (the Larousse is excellent) is a great place to start. Inspiration abounds on every page. The Bible is a rich source of Hebrew mythology, and there are some great plot ideas among those pages ... Hollywood clearly thought so, too!

Similarly to paying attention to Mythology, you can also look at the classics. The Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid. These works are incredibly ancient, and dwell in a 'twilight zone' between fact and fable. Writers like Homer and Virgil explored every possible permutation of the human condition. Rest assured, there's nothing modern writers can dream of that wasn't written in antiquity. And these works are public domain. People will surely notice if you lift plot ideas right out of, say, The Illiad; but if those ideas were handled magnificently, you're more likely to be applauded than censured.

History is the richest source of ideas one could dream of. During several thousand years, humans have said and done virtually everything that can be said and done. The exploits of Captain Cook, or Columbus, are projected into the future and morph into Star Trek. Tales of the Black Death are redressed as stories like Outbreak, a thriller set in the contemporary age. The gradual collapse of the Roman Empire is, right now, being echoed in the demise of much of what we have taken for granted of Western civilization. If you want massive plot ideas, for massive novels ... look to history.

Like Homer and Virgil, Shakespeare spent an entire career examining the human condition. The twists and turns of Shakespearean drama, and the plot ideas at the core of each, are well worth a look. The forces driving characters like Macbeth and Hamlet are still driving human beings today; they just drive us in slightly different directions, to achieve the same ends. (For example, Lady Macbeth is less than likely to exhort her husband, who is second in command of a corporate empire, to murder the CEO at their house party. She's more likely to plot with him to assassinate the CEO's character and reputation, making him resign and maybe suicide ... leaving Macbeth to assume the corporate crown. Same plot idea ... very different story.)

So --

How do you generate fresh plot ideas when you're absolutely, utterly blank?

There's a game I enjoy, and anyone can play: watch the trailers for movies you've never seen ... just leave the sound turned off. The trailer becomes a rapid-fire sequence of almost-related images and concepts (ie., plot ideas hammered at you, one after another, to get you to drop fourteen bucks on a ticket!) and the human mind, which has a desperate need to make sense out of chaos, will race, trying to fill in the blanks. Your mind will create connections, spin stories, to make the images and ideas relate. Whole scenarios will generate themselves before your mind's eye.

You can do something along the same lines with movie stills. A picture is actually worth closer to a million words, if you ever start backstorying what your mind thinks it sees in a movie still. I recommend stills over family snapshots, because it would be the weird family album that boasted shots of people racing around on superbikes, being pursued by police cars, jumping horses over fallen trees, hanging out at creepy old houses on the moor, crashing airplanes into tropical islands, and so on. Each photo is not just a couple of plot ideas, but about a hundred of them — so long as you haven't seen the movie! Of course, if you have, all you see is Harrison Ford hauling old pontoons over a waterfall in Six Days, Seven Nights. So search the web till you find a stash of stills from movies you never saw, and probably have no intention of seeing. And let your imagination rip.

Many more ways to find a new plot idea are out there: daydreams, falling in love with someone else's characters and having them spur your own imagination, flashes of intuition ... and old fashioned hard work. The hard work idea is the least appealing, but we can inject a little fun into this, too. Just as Mel Keegan uses images to literally kickstart the mind's ability to weave stories, if you're not 'visually inclined,' you can use words.

The game could be called, "Give me a killer first line." The challenge is to write the first line of a novel that does not, yet, exist ... and make the first line so outrageous that the rest of the book almost explodes into being, given the image created by that first line. (Incidentally, publishers, editors, agent and critics love these first lines; they read them all too seldom.)

All right, let's pick up the challenge. Let's scare up fresh plot ideas. I'll give you a half dozen first lines ... then you're on your own!

I came to the village of Kintyre to paint a portrait, and I stayed to marry two men.
His blood was warm on my hands, looking black in the near-darkness, and the reek of chemical smoke made my head burn.
Summer was gone overnight, with a storm that dumped half the Atlantic Ocean into the top paddocks, and Lassiter felt only a dark, consuming relief when the last train pulled out.
Like a heartbeat, the drums called out of the high valleys, but mist still wreathed the lowlands, and no glimmer of torchlight was visible.
She swore the runes and cards had foretold the man's death, and even Robert, who had spent most of his short life mocking 'fortune telling,' felt a chill in the air around Bradgate's ancient walls.
Nothing moved in the shimmering, rust-red landscape, save a few tattered crows that gathered where something had perished in the heat.

The mind always generates images in response to words, and some of the most vivid are conjured when you read poetry. When you want plot ideas, read poetry with an open mind's eye.

The next chapter in this quest for a great book is about plot development. Getting great ideas is the first step, and one of the most important. What you DO with those ideas is what turns basic plot ideas into jewels ... or junk. Two writers could begin with the concept of the kid desperately wanting to get off the farm and join the military, make something of his life. One writer wound up telling Star Wars. The other chased the same idea into a pulp-style novel about womanizing drinking buddies, blood and dismemberment. Both started with the same plot ideas...

Two paths clearly diverged in that forest! One went to Tatooine (and a billion dollars' worth of merchandise), the other landed in a short, pulpy novel with a printrun of a few thousand copies and no reprint value. Can you tell those paths apart, in the gloom of the forest? They're not marked in any way. You have to choose for yourself. Plot ideas are the certainly the start of the process, and join me in the next post in this train of thought, because I'm going to catch a cab down the road to Tatooine!

Help with plotting...

2009-04-07T14:20:00.004+09:30

When you need help to plot the seemingly unplottable ...

Learn from the masters. When, in their youth, they needed help to plot their material, they consulted their masters, so you're entering into a 'continuity of the generations' stretching back to Chaucer and beyond.

Writers across the centuries have not merely invented the wheel, they've found fifty different patterns for its spokes, and twenty treads for its tires (or tyres, depending on which system of spelling you'll need to use.)

In this article, I'm just going to look at the broad points of plotting. If you find the lever and fulcrum you need here — exactly what you need to help to plot your material — you're in business. But we examine the whole theory and execution of plotting in the WRITE! segment, so if you're still stuck (or get stuck again), follow this link and bookmark the page, for help to plot the most elusive story thread.

When the beginning of a novel (or story of any length) is refusing to 'gel,' as yourself one question: What makes the plot go? Alfred Hitchcock had an answer to perfect, it's still clockwork. He called it the 'McGuffin.'

The McGuffin is the 'device' which makes events, people and places coalesce into a story. When you have this element identified, tagged and labeled, the beginning of your novel will usually suggest itself. But it's not always as easy as it seems! For example...

What would you call the McGuffin of Moby Dick? If you said, "A white whale," you actually missed the point. It's Ahab's insanity, the crazed hunger for revenge, which drives the plot forward, and is the reason for the next 400 pages. Melville's McGuffin shapes the book's opening. The Peaquod is hiring on and heading out, under a cloud of gloom and doom: the foreshadowing of disaster is already perceptible. If Herman Meville ever needed help to plot his signature novel, his author's preoccupation would not be with a whale, but with Ahab's insanity. What would you call the McGuffin of Treasure Island ? This one's hard to miss! Billy Bones has it; everybody wants it, they'll kill to get it, and Jim Hawkins is literally caught in the crossfire. The existence of a secret treasure map drives the novel. Given Billy's turning up at the inn, complete with map, no one would need help to plot the first six chapters or so — they race along, sparkling like champagne.

The same 'device' drives Star Wars (the Death Star plans), and National Treasure (the clues to the Templar hoard), and even Fellowship of the Ring (Bilbo has it, Gollum and the Nazgul want it, they'll kill to get it, and Frodo is caught in the crossfire!)

So, regarding the opening of your novel — take a tip from Hitchcock. Find the McGuffin. And do see the WRITE! segment, the nuts and bolts of how to get any plot up and running, no matter how uncooperative it's being.

If the McGuffin is the 'ignition,' getting the story off to a strong start, all plots need a full fuel tank if they are not going to run down in the middle. Popular science fiction writer David Gerrold likens a well-structured plot to a three-act play. When you need help to plot the core of the work (and occasionally we all do, don't feel sheepish about it), take advice from another veteran professional...

A good plot has three clearly distinct segments: a beginning, a middle and an end. Think of it as the three acts of either a stage play or a classically-structured movie. In the first act you (the writer) "get jack up in a tree." In the second act you "throw rocks at him." In the third act, you "think of a way to get him down."

David Gerrold nailed the 'system' with the same clockwork precision as Alfred Hitchcock and his McGuffin, and here is much of the help to plot to unplottable that you need — albeit in a nutshell. Remember, link through and bookmark the in-depth page in case you need it later.

The McGuffin is the creature that chases Jack up the tree. In 'formula romance' it would be the problem keeping hero and heroine apart (or at loggerheads). In the classic western, it's the demon railroad being driven through, and ruining, the prime cattle range. In the SF novel, it's the killer virus that just arrived on the returning space probe. No matter the 'dressing,' there is always a plot device doing the job of backing the principal character(s) into a corner out of which he, she or they will have to fight, struggle or argue. In a courtroom drama, the hero is wrongly accused of a crime. In an action thriller, s/he is suddenly on the run from enemies, the law, or both...

So ends the first act, and you might easily know how the story turns out. You might have glimpsed the ending even before you backtracked and worked out where it all began. Now — a little help to plot the middle, please!

The midsection of a novel (or movie) can be a paddle through shark-infested waters. Some novels start well, end well, and seem to wander in circles in the middle. One only stays with it because the characters have become familiar and appealing (and maybe you skipped ahead to see how it turns out, and since you know good stuff is coming, you'll sweat through the tedious or repetitive parts).

The object is to keep up the pace and tension ... throw rocks at Jack. But, what kind of rocks? How many? How much rock-throwing is too much? What will readers 'buy' as good drama, and how much is over the top into sheer melodrama?

The middle of a book is where the risks of over- and under-writing are highest. You can't afford to ramble (people just stop reading), but you don't want to rush it (if you do, the book reads as if you were bored with the material yourself and scrambling to get through it).

You're hunting for just the right rocks to throw. If this section of your story is problematical, you'll need a layer or two more help to plot your way through the minefield than can be included on this 'quick start' page. Examine the nuts and bolts, the building bricks of fiction. Rest assured, there ain't a story that can't be worked out, and every writer occasionally needs some degree of help to plot difficult material. You're in good company.

Are you through the minefield and stuck on the home stretch? Nothing is worse, because you feel so close to done, and then a hurdle appears before you, and all at once you're looking for ways around, or under, or through. In fact, the only legitimate way is to go over it. Under and around and though are possible, but they involve cheating. You'll be pulling 'the rabbit out of the hat' trick, and some readers will notice. Some will feel let down.

And the end of the book is no place to shortchange people who have been with you for hundreds of pages. If you know you need help to plot your way through this, get help, don't cheat. (More on this later.) The end of the novel is critical, because it's the part you readers are most likely to remember, since it's the part they read most recently. The end has to be excellent, not just good, because this is the same reader you want to leave salivating for your next novel.

At the end of your current work, you're trying to score the impulse buy for your next book. The next time your reader sees a novel of yours on the shelf, you want the immediate sale. In traditional marketing, they refer to such customers as 'warm leads.' In online affiliate marketing you're said to 'own' this particular customer. The same applies at the bookstore, or if you're doing a newsletter to promote your next book. Think of your readers as your customers. After he has spent three decades on Hollywood's 'A-list' you'd have to trust Harrison Ford to know what he's talking about. You might have heard him mention how he regards his viewers as his customers ... and this is the key to success in the entertainment industry. Fiction writers are part of the same industry, and the same ground rules apply to Harrison Ford and yourself!

So — be honest, now! — need help to plot a fantastic ending? Don't be embarrassed to admit it. Teams of writers work on Hollywood movies, each one dissecting what the others wrote, to decide what worked (and didn't), and why (and why not). These tag-team writers have already re-re-reinvented the most high-tech wheel in history, so take your lead from the best of them. James Cameron.

Titanic. Aliens. The Abyss. The Terminator. Look past the fact that three our of four are SF; the genre is of no consequence. The 'Cameron Cascade Finish' is a model that is applicable to any genre, equally useful in the romance, the western, the actioner. You haven't seen these movies? Rent a couple. (Grit your teeth, if you don't care too much for SF. You need help to plot your own novel's big finish, so suffer for your art a little, okay? It's only a couple of hours.)

These movies have a lot more to them than the SF element. (If you really cant bear SF, watch The Abyss, which is also contemporary, a love story, with the US Seals, plenty of humor, the sea, deep ocean diving, heavy industry, politics ... plenty of 'meat and potatoes' for everyone before you add the SF element. Rent the director's cut, if you can.)

But (important!) watch these movies with shrewd, critical eyes. Identify the McGuffin, note the rocks that are thrown 'at Jack' in the middle, and the elements of the 'Cascade Finish.' The help to plot your way to an unforgettable ending for your novel isn't in any one movie; it comes when you see the model, when you actually catch sight of the mechanism of plotting working! At that moment, you make a huge breakthrough. It's an epiphany. You'll never look back.

I'm going to explore the mechanism of the 'Cascade Ending' in the whole thing, nut by nut, bolt by bolt, in other posts. If you're still stuck, or get bogged down again — or if you're fascinated to get into the machinery, find out what makes it tick...

Here's a wealth of practical help, from experienced writers, to plot your way out of the minefield!

Back to basics: what is a plot, anyway?
The skeleton of the story: the bare-bones plot line.
Plotted yourself into a corner? Stumped? Generating fresh plot ideas!
Writing a plot outline ... one of your best marketing tools.

Story writing... where do you start?

2009-04-07T14:11:00.005+09:30

Story writing can certainly begin with short pieces, but it's not essential. Many writers feel more confident of writing short stories first. Because they're short, they'll be finished quickly! Also, when you're learning to edit it can be very daunting to see a ream-sized stack of paper and know you have to work through the whole, book-length manuscript. A short piece is less overwhelming.

Much depends on your own courage as you tackle your early projects. Story writing is as demanding as painting, sculpting, playing an instrument. Do you have the love of what you do, can you make the commitment to work the number of hours needed to finish a novel?

If you love writing and are never happier than when you're fiddling with editing and propelling your characters into this or that hair-raising situation, there is a much better question. We shouldn't be asking if you 'can' write a novel. Of course you can. Who's going to stop you? The only thing to impede you will be your own boredom, which is not likely to happen, because you enjoy writing the same way someone else enjoys baseball.

The question is: which form of story writing suits your plot line?

You'll be looking at your notes — the plot outline you wrote, when you were hit by the plot ideas for your new work. You'll read through them, and in your mind you'll go over how much space, how many pages, it should take to do justice to each plot element without over-doing it.

You don't want to over-write. You also don't want to under-write. You're aiming for the 'just right' mark, which is somewhere between the two. Your writer's instinct will tell you when you hit the mark. If it doesn't, or if you're 'off,' a good beta reader will tell you where the book is 'too long' or 'too short.' This instinct is one of the skills you soon develop in the art of story writing. Don't worry, it'll soon come to you.

So, here's the question: do you have enough material to make for a novel of at least 45,000 words? That's a very short novel. In fact, it's probably too short for most non-pulp publishers to consider. They would be looking for something at least 80,000 words, and on up to a maximum of perhaps 160,000 words.

(You won't know what they want until you visit their website in search of information, or write to them with an initial query. You can do this before you begin to write, if you feel that your book is really only suited to one publisher. Caveat: if your book has such a narrow playing field, you might have a problem. If you're writing to earn royalties, narrow-interest subjects don't make for big sales ... and you only get paid when you sell copies.)

If you don't have enough material for a novel, then you're looking at a short story. Writing a novel around too little material involves padding out the themes. Extremely good writers can do this, and get away with it; but critics and editors can almost always see what was done. If the book seems to be padded out, an editor could easily reject it for this.

'Padding' is largely irrelevant material that's pushed in between the 'real' scenes to make the book longer. It can take the form of 'character development,' or a sub-plot, but if the scenes stray too far off-topic, they're likely to be deleted by your pro editor before publication.

Here's the downside: if the editorial cuts make the book too short ... the fact you padded it out to get a novel becomes obvious. You actually had the material for a short story! Writing to please editors should always be in the back of your mind.

If you have the material for a novel — go for it. Understand the time it will take to write so much, and then edit and proofread. Do it for the love of writing. Fall in love with your characters and situations, dive into the realm you've created, and play! Story writing should not be about work. It should be 70% play, 20% natural skill (all of which you can develop on this site), and 10% work. We should be able to survive 10% work.

If you don't have the material for a whole novel, you know right now, you're writing a novella or a short story. Writing in the shorter formats is quite different from writing novels. It's actually a unique discipline. You approach the writing style differently, the characters tend to be created differently, events are described differently, in a short piece. (Story writing has its 'departments,' just as picture painting can involve oils, acrylics, watercolors, pastels, mixed media.)

To get a feel for short story writing, read some. Look at anthologies and fiction magazines, find a writer whose work you like and respect ... and pick his or her brains. Be analytical. Can you see what the writer did, and how? Take the the story apart and put it back together. Where is the beginning, what's the McGuffin? At what point does Jack get up in the tree?

Is it easier to get published with a short story? Possibly ... which doesn't mean it's simple, or a dead cert! Writing for professional magazines is a field which obeys its own ground rules, and you'll need to do your research there, just as you would before you approached a book published. Short fiction is often generic — science fiction, crime, mystery, horror, romance.

There are magazines and ezines devoted to many niches. You'll need to find the best place to send your material, query the publisher to discover exactly what they want in a story. Writing according to the guidelines you receive provides your best shot at getting into print. (It's also very true that some very nice royalty rates are paid for short story writing at the professional level, whereas entry-level authors of full novels can be surprised by the modest nature of the first check.)

Do you have to start with short stories? No. But be sure you have enough material for a novel, and be sure you have the time and patience to write, edit and proofread a whole novel. You might find that you enjoy the short story writing experience so much, you stay with it. Some writers rarely produce novels.

Story writing demands as much of you as learning to dance or play the flute. The trick is to enjoy the process as much as the contracts at the end of the road!