Month: May 2014

From CBS.com

by Margie Lawson, @MargieLawson

If you watch NCIS, you know Jethro Gibbs, aka Mark Harmon, has rules. Fifty-plus rules. My next fifteen (or fifty) blogs will feature a different Margie-Rule for writers.

[Click here for Margie’s Rule #1:
Never Take Any Word for Granted.]

Margie’s Rule #2: Write the Hard Stuff: Facial Expressions

Write the hard stuff.

Those words sound harsh. Nobody wants to write the hard stuff. And writing fresh facial expressions is tough.

It’s easy to write a sigh. It’s easy to write a nod. It’s easy to have a character shake their head.

It’s easy to write eyebrows raising, lifting, lowering, wagging.

It’s easy to write eyes narrowing, widening, slitting, squinting, winking, rolling.

It’s not easy to write fresh facial expressions.

You may be thinking, why write fresh? What’s wrong with writing overused facial expressions? Everybody writes them.

Lots of writers use…

the past meets the present

Continuing my series of posts about time and fiction, I couldn’t avoid taking up a topic I’ve explored before: the flashback. When it comes to dealing with time in our stories, I think there are two majors things we have to consider, and this is just as true for flashbacks as it is for any other time-related issue:

1. Keeping the mechanics of time correct (years, seasons, hours, etc. We don’t want someone aging a decade in three years or winter becoming summer.)
2. Portraying the passage of time in a way that emphasizes things we consider important and suits our aims better than other ones could have chosen.

Part of number two, where flashbacks is concerned, is how you transition into them. Here are two methods to transition into flashbacks that, though common, might prove useful:

THE TRIGGER

Flashbacks are sometimes looked down upon as cheap…

On the few occasions a reader has expressed dissatisfaction with one of my main characters, it’s been with the heroine. This is a theme I’ve noticed when reading reviews of other authors’ books too.

The hero can be a womanizing playboy, an arrogant jerk (wounded underneath, of course), or a self-blind martyr and most romance readers will love him anyway. They’re incredibly forgiving of the hero’s flaws. But a flawed heroine? Not so much.

Sure, no one wants to read about a woman—or man for that matter—who’s too stupid to live (TSTL, as we say in the biz), cheats on her man, whines incessantly, or is perpetually helpless. But that’s not what I’m talking about.

Aren’t we all a bit selfish? Don’t we do the things that make sense for us, our goals, our situation, even at the expense of others sometimes? Don’t we all make errors in judgment?

As a writer…

By Sharla Rae, @SharlaWrites

If poets are to be believed,eyes are the windows to the soul.

Rather than using clichéd or common descriptions,why not use “explicit” eye descriptions to give your reader a real peek into a character’s psyche?

I’ll touch on eye color, movement, and appearance and, of course, I have some helpful lists to inspire ideas.

Eye color

It’s a given that writers mention eye color as a character feature. Color can be mentioned every so often to remind readers what the character looks like. But! Don’t hit them over the head with it.

Besides using eye color as a facial feature it can sometimes be used to identify who is speaking especially if the color distinctive.

Blue eyes widened and she threw up both hands. “Now hold on a minute.”
OR
Her amber cat eyes narrowed. “xxxx”

A character might have plain old blue or brown…

In an effort to get “unstuck” and get back to some serious writing, I’ve been reviewing my story scene-by-scene. What do I have and what do I need to round out each act? Are my scenes doing what I need them to do? Do they escalate the action? Move the story forward? While thinking about all of this, I realized I needed to go back to the basics and look at my structure, and that meant I needed a refresher on  what each act should do.

So, I dug through my class notes (I created a wiki that’s a little treasure trove of great writing information). Low and behold, I found this gem. According to what we learned at McD the Four Act structure should look something like this:

by Orly Konig-Lopez, @OrlyKonigLopez

The other day I finished a book and when my husband asked if it was good, my answer was a rather drawn out, “Yeeaaahhhh.” The story was interesting and the author had a pleasant, easy style. She’d done a nice job of showing me what the rooms looked like, what the characters were wearing, what the car looked like … you get the picture.

And that’s exactly what it was—a nice picture.

But that’s all it was.

That nice picture was behind a glass wall. As a reader, I was left admiring the world the author so carefully created from the outside. So “yeeaaahhhh” it was good but it’ll go in the read and forgotten pile.

That’s not the pile you want your books to go in.

What can you do to make sure your book doesn’t end up there? Don’t just paint a nice visual…

There should be a “swear jar” for every time a writer says to me, “My proposal is good, but don’t judge it based on the synopsis because I don’t know how to write one.” I could buy a house in the south of France! When I hear this, I don’t feel sympathy. Writing a synopsis is not string theory. I do understand that compared to the ecstasy of writing romance, writing a synopsis is tedious. They aren’t so interesting for editors to read either. But the synopsis is important if you want to submit your work anywhere. Here’s why:

In an industry where a lot of skimming is done, a synopsis is essential. And because many of us have to give a summary to higher ups for approval, we need that synopsis. We don’t pore over them, salivating over each luscious description. We just want the most crucial points given…

I took a page from Kat’s book (or a recent post, anyway) and looked back through my McDaniel Romance Writing class notes. I came across this checklist for self-editing a scene (from the second class). I did not create it. I got it somewhere else (it could have been Jenny or maybe Jeanne). I like it because it guides me with concrete questions that address conflict, motivation, character and story arc, and tension. It along with many other hints/tips/tricks is stuck to the bulletin board beside my desk. 

Jami Gold recently had two articles on using Macros to help in your editing and polishing phase of your manuscript: MS Word Trick: Using Macros to Edit and Polish and Fix Showing vs. Telling with Macros & Word Lists.

Jami does an excellent job of showing you how to insert and use macros, so I won’t repeat that here. The first link also gives a ton of different macros you can use. Come back here after you’ve read those two, and I’ll share with you another one: SimultaneityCheck.

Why check for Simultaneity Issues?

There are two helpful flags to look for in your WIP that could spell trouble: phrases employing -ing verbs and ‘as’ constructions.

Why can these flag trouble? Because in certain cases, they can mean that the actions are happening at the same time. I say certain cases, because ‘as’ is also used to introduce metaphors, and…

by Lisa Hall-Wilson

What to do? Facebook has changed – again. There’s more competition than ever for reader attention.

Writers are frustrated and it’s easy to understand why. How do you build a business when the goal posts for success keep moving? What’s the point?

Facebook is probably the slowest platform to build an audience on, and shooting yourself in the foot by listening to bad advice only makes it more difficult.

Choosing to build platform the right way will insulate you from the changes Facebook continues to make because those changes are often intended to deter those who cheat and try to game the system.

Here are 4 of the worst pieces of advice I’ve heard when it comes to building a writing platform on Facebook:

Promo your books to every group every day.

This feels a whole lot like spam.

There are three kinds of groups on Facebook: