Blind Baby Raised by Worms

By Joe Moore

When I first started attempting to write fiction many years ago, I subscribed to and devoured all the writer’s magazines out there. Writers Digest, Writer, and many more. I read every article, sometimes multiple times, and I would use a yellow highlighter to mark those pearls of wisdom from the experienced authors on how to be a better writer. Over the years, I accumulated large piles of magazines containing many yellow highlights. When the day came to clean out my closet and give the copies away to some of my writer friends, I first sat down and went through every edition, copying those jewels of advice into one complete list. Today, I will share them with you. Maybe you might not agree with them all, but there’s a wealth of advice from countless bestsellers that can help improve anyone’s efforts at being a better author.

And if you’re wondering why this blog post is called Blind Baby Raised by Worms, check writing tip number 35. It’s the only one I personally contributed. Enjoy.

1. Easy writing makes hard reading, but hard writing makes easy reading.

2. Surprise creates suspense.

3. Vulnerability humanizes a character.

4. Anything that does not advance the plot or build character should be deleted.

5. Their reaction to a situation shows a great deal about your characters.

6. What your characters say and do under stress reveals their true feelings.

7. Coincidence is used effectively when it sets up a plot complication instead of a resolution.

8. Use all the senses to build your setting.

9. You are not accountable for the absolute accuracy or completeness of your factual information as long as it’s plausible. Write so it sounds right.

10. You can build characterization by seeing your character from another’s viewpoint.

11. The reader doesn’t know how a story will resolve, but they should have no doubt what must be resolved.

12. As a story grows, so should the obstacles.

13. Any word that can be substituted by a simpler word should be.

14. Suspense is created by having something extraordinary happen in an ordinary situation.

15. The simile includes the quality that is being compared as well as the comparison. The metaphor’s comparative frame of reference is only alluded to in the image used.

16. There must always be conflict in some form to keep the story interesting.

17. Deleting “very” usually strengthens a sentence or phrase.

18. Your story must interest you. If it does, there’s a good chance it will interest someone else.

19. Credible prose is not self-indulgent; it exists to illuminate the story, not to show off how clever the writer can be.

20. If you cannot describe your story in one or two sentences, you’re in trouble.

21. Rather than describing your characters, come up with actions that show what they’re like.

22. One way to decide if sex in a scene is necessary is simply to delete it.

23. If it comes easy, it’s a cliché.

24. Don’t give your characters names that are similar, start with the same letter, or are hard to pronounce.

25. A cliché is a sign of a mind at rest.

26. Think of your settings as a character.

27. The reader must feel that your characters were alive before the story began and will live on after it ends.

28. Begin the story where the reader will anticipate what happens next but is compelled to guess wrong.

29. A commercial novel is one that a lot of people buy, finish reading and tell others to read it.

30. The average reader must be considered a genius with the attention span of a two-year-old.

31. To get an editor’s attention, you have about three paragraphs in a short story and three pages in a novel.

32. Conflict, the basis of all good writing, arises because something is not going as planned.

33. Villains never think of themselves as “bad guys”.

34. Always start with the character, not the plot. The needs of the character will drive the plot.

35. Always use a cheap tabloid-style blog title to grab attention.

Are you a “student” of writing magazines and books? Have they been helpful? If so, which ones?

Writing is Rewriting

By Joe Moore

I just finished the first draft of my new thriller, THE BLADE, co-written with Lynn Sholes. This is our sixth novel written together; this one coming in at a crisp 92,500 words. Now that the first pass on the manuscript is finished, the rewrite begins. As E.B. White said in THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE, “The best writing is rewriting.”

Some might ask that if the manuscript is written, why do we need to rewrite it? Remember that the writing process is made up of many layers including outlining, research, first drafts, rewriting, line editing, proofing, more editing and more proofing. One of the functions that sometimes receives the least amount of attention in discussions on writing techniques is rewriting.

There are a number of stages in the rewriting process. Starting with the completion of the first draft, they involve reading and re-reading the entire manuscript many times over and making numerous changes during each pass. It’s in the rewrite that we need to make sure our plot is seamless, our story is on track, our character development is consistent, and we didn’t leave out some major point of importance that could confuse the reader. We have to pay close attention to content. Does the story have a beginning, middle and end? Does it make sense? Is the flow of the story smooth and liquid? Do our scene and chapter transitions work? Is everything resolved at the end?

Next we need to check for clarity. This is where beta readers come in handy. If it’s not clear to them, it won’t be clear to others. We can’t assume that everyone knows what we know or understands what we understand. We have to make it clear what’s going on in our story. Suspense can never be created by confusing the reader.

Once we’ve finished this first pass searching for global plotting problems, it’s time to move on to the nuts and bolts of rewriting. Here we must tighten up our work by deleting all the extra words that don’t add to the reading experience or contribute to the story. Remember that every word counts. If a word doesn’t move the plot forward or contribute to character development, it should be deleted.

Some of the words that can be edited out are superfluous qualifiers such as “very” and “really.” This is always an area where less is more. For instance, we might describe a woman as being beautiful or being very beautiful. But when you think about it, what’s the difference? If she’s already beautiful, a word that is considered a definitive description, how can she exceed beautiful to become very beautiful? She can’t. So we search for and delete instances of “very” or “really”. They add nothing to the writing.

Next, scrutinize any word that ends in “ly”. Chances are, most adverbs can be deleted without changing the meaning of the sentence or our thought. In most cases, cutting them clarifies and makes the writing cleaner.

Next, go hunting for clichés and overused phrases. There’s an old saying that if it comes easy, it’s probably a cliché. Avoiding clichés makes for fresher writing. There’s another saying that the only person allowed to use a cliché is the first one that use it.

Overused phrases are often found at the beginning of a sentence with words like “suddenly,” “so” and “now”. I find myself guilty of doing this, but those words don’t add anything of value to our writing or yours. Delete.

The next type of editing in the rewriting process is called line editing. Line editing covers grammar and punctuation. Watch for incorrect use of the apostrophe, hyphen, dash and semicolon. Did we end all our character’s dialogs with a closed quote? Did we forget to use a question mark at the end of a question?

This also covers making sure we used the right word. Relying on our word processor’s spell checker can be dangerous since it won’t alert us to wrong words when they are spelled correctly. It takes a sharp eye to catch these types of mistakes. Once we’ve gone through the manuscript and performed a line edit, I like to have someone else check it behind us. A fresh set of eyes never hurts.

On-the-fly cut and paste editing while we were working on the first draft can get us into trouble if we weren’t paying attention. Leftover words and phrases from a previous edit or version can still be lurking around, and because all the words might be spelled correctly or the punctuation might be correct, we’ll only catch the mistake by paying close attention during the line edit phase.

The many stages making up the rewrite are vital parts of the writing process. Editing our manuscript should not be rushed or taken for granted. Familiarity breeds mistakes—we’ve read that page or chapter so many times that our eyes skim over it. And yet, there could be a mistake hiding there that we’ve missed every time because we’re bored with the old stuff and anxious to review the new.

Spend the time needed to tighten and clarify the writing until there is not one ounce of fat or bloat. And once we’ve finished the entire editing process, put the manuscript away for a reasonable period of time. Let it rest for a week or even a month if the schedule permits while working on something else. Then bring it back out into the light of day and make one more pass. It’s always surprising at what was missed.

One more piece of advice. Edit on hardcopy, not on a computer monitor. There’s something about dots of ink on the printed page that’s much less forgiving than the glow of pixels. And never be afraid to delete. Remember, less is always more.

How do you go about tackling the rewriting process? Any tips to share?

Creating Vivid Settings in Fiction, by Jess Lourey

This past weekend, I attended the Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books, a two-day (free!) event featuring authors, cooks, readers, critical thinkers, and general lovers of the arts. Besides learning how to make a great Thai curry, I also heard William Kent Krueger deliver one of the most inspiring and humbling keynote speeches I've ever heard.

I also had the great honor to teach the "After the Idea" class for MWA-U. MWA-U is a low-cost, all-day, college-level, fiction-writing seminar sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America. It consists of six classes, each taught by a different instructor and each building on the course before it. My presentation explained in seven manageable steps how to turn your idea into a full manuscript, Hallie Ephron then brilliantly outlined the secrets of suspenseful plotting within that manuscript, and so on.

John Galligan, a Wisconsin creative writing professor, was a new instructor in the line-up. He taught the "Setting and Description" class, and it's his method for crafting vivid details that I'd like to share with you now. According to John, effective detail explains time, place, character, and theme. This isn't always possible, of course, but it's what writers should aim for.

Here's an example. When describing where she grew up using as few words as possible, Hallie said, "before it was 90210." Does that evoke time? Absolutely. Place? Of course. Character? Yes--you have a sense that the speaker has a sense of ownership with the pre-zip code Beverly Hills, which tells you a lot about the person, which can lead naturally into the theme or mood of the book, depending on the context.

Contrast that neat, sweet package with the "cataloguing" that can be found in a lot of fiction nowadays (and I've been guilty of this myself):

I grew up in southern California, a hot, windswept land of palm trees, ocean, and blonde hair. You have to know somebody to be somebody here, and I remember when I first arrived, I tried to look the part. I dyed my hair platinum, wore blue contact lenses, and affected a Valley Girl accent. If you're still reading, you've got a lot more patience than I do. It was here that I made my fortune and left, well before Yankees knew where Beverly Hills was.

Not terrible, but not memorable, either.

So that's my lesson for today: when you write, use detail mindfully, and never information dump. Be concrete, and try to hit all four goals (time, place, character, mood/theme) with a single detail at least once a chapter.

Your assignment: either leave a writing tip in trade for this one, or describe where you grew up in ten words or less, using only concrete detail. Cheers!

That All-Important Bio

by G.M. Malliet

The Guardian.co.uk recently published "Ten Rules for Writing Fiction," a collection of tips from world-famous authors. The list was inspired by Elmore Leonard's rules, the most famous of which undoubtedly is "to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. "

Printed out, the advice from all the authors quoted by the Guardian came to sixteen pages. Even so, I read every word, since you never know when you're going to find that one handy tip that will catapult you onto the NYT best-seller list.

Roddy Doyle's advice, as with so much of his writing, made me smile: "Do spend a few minutes a day working on the cover biog – 'He divides his time between Kabul and Tierra del Fuego.' But then get back to work."

How did Roddy know? My aim as a writer has always been, once I've finished writing the book, of course, to be able to put something really knock-out glamorous in the bio or biog on the book's cover. I remember being much taken with the bio of Martha Grimes that appeared on many of her books over the years, to the effect that she divides her time between Washington, D.C., and Santa Fe, New Mexico. How great is that? That's exactly what I always wanted to do. Then Martha apparently sold the place in Santa Fe, because it disappeared from her bio. To say "she lives near Washington, D.C.," while somewhat interesting, is just not the same. I mean, I could do that.

There's also the awe-inspiring bio: "When not rappelling down a mountain in the Swiss Alps, advising heads of state on foreign policy, or discovering new sources of green energy, Famous Author can be found doing volunteer work in one of the dozens of hospital orphanages he's founded worldwide. A Nobel Prize nominee, he was recently cited by President Sarkozy for service to humanity."

You know the kind of thing. The kind of bio that can't possibly be true and still allow the guy time to write blockbuster novels, but somehow is true.

As long as I'm dreaming, though, I think I would rather go with the lazy bio - the achievable bio, as it were: "She divides her time between Seattle and Provence." Or Aspen and Edinburgh. Costa Rica and the Caribbean? Or Tuscany and...but Roddy's right. If I get back to work now, maybe one day...

*******Breaking News*******
My first book, Death of a Cozy Writer, has been translated into French (Mort d'un écrivain bien installé) - I've just received my copies in the mail. It's also available for pre-order at Amazon.fr. So I'm undating my bio to say I'm an international author. Still working on the "divides her time" bit.

Image of Provence from Telegraph.co.uk.

No Drawer Left Unorganized

By Deborah Sharp

I think Book No. 4 is going to be a 10-pounder. Not that MAMA SEES STARS is going to tip the scales at 10 pounds. No, I'm going to weigh 10 pounds more than I do now if I ever manage to finish the darned thing.

Ah, avoidance. Often, it takes the form of deciding I need a little snack before I can start a new scene. And I never decide that a couple of carrots or a stalk or two of celery would really hit the spot. I've had three cups of hot chocolate with marshmallows tonight. Yes, it's unseasonably cold in Fort Lauderdale. But still. Three cups??? Last night it was tortilla chips with melted cheddar. (It's cold out, right?) The night before, a can of chocolate peanuts left over from Christmas. Note to husband: Lock up the chocolate.

It's not all about eating. I've also done laundry, paid the bills, watched TV. Including re-runs of shows I didn't like the first time. I've even organized drawers -- cleaned out drawers! -- in a desperate bid to avoid getting back to the book I promised myself I'd dive back into come the New Year. Well, the New Year is now a week old. The notebook awaiting my next chapter is growing cobwebs.

Is it just me, or is everyone else having trouble getting back into the swing of writing? (Sue Ann Jaffarian, don't answer that. Your work ethic puts every other Midnight Ink author to shame. Three concurrent series??? You know the rest of us suspect you're an android, right?)

Fess up, y'all. Let me know I'm not alone. What's your favorite avoidance tactic? How do you finally get back on track? How many pounds did you pack on finishing your last book?

How about the non-authors out there? Anybody gotten ANYTHING done, work-wise, since mid-December? And clean drawers don't count.