Tag Archive for: resources

On writing…better!

Pile of BooksWhat do you view as the most important element of your writing, or your writing life?

Passion? Yes, we all need that, especially when faced with rejection or obstacles in our quest for publication. But if passion were the most critical element in the making of a successful author, the bookstores would be overflowing with our works.

Persistence is certainly another closely related trait shared by successful authors. Again, though, while essential to success, it’s only part of the story.

Time (and balance) questions are often posed to well-known authors in Q & A sessions. It’s a challenge for everyone: how to juggle family/work/writing. That one has no pat answer. Each person has to find what works, and once a routine is established, be flexible enough to accommodate changing circumstances.

How about subject matter and finding a matching audience? Yep. Crucial. Have you written something that someone wants to read? How are they going to discover it? If you have a good handle on these basics, you’re a step ahead of many writers.

Let’s say you have all these ingredients. You’ve got a story (or a topic, for nonfiction writers), a passion for telling it, you are persistent, and you have a good sense of your target audience. You’ve created a workable plan that supports your creativity.

Anything missing?

I would humbly propose that commitment to development of one’s craft might actually top the list. If the final product is full of misspellings, inappropriate word choices, poor pacing, clichés, etc., no one is going to want to read it, no matter how awesome the premise.

Your goal is for readers to snap up your amazing work! And then clamor for more!

Development of craft can come through formal schooling (college coursework, or in-residence classes), informal schooling (online classes or workshops at conferences), or books. I’d like to share my favorite books on the craft of writing. Some of these have garnered mention in my contributions to the CWG blog over the past year or so, but I thought it would be helpful to list them together. I’d also love for you to jump in with your favorites.

  • Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Browne & King. The first craft book I ever bought, its precepts remain timeless and valuable.
  • Plot & Structure, Bell. Great for learning, well, how to structure fiction.
  • Conflict & Suspense, Bell. How to keep your reader turning the pages. The ideas pertain to all fiction, not just suspense, and can be applied to nonfiction, as well.
  • Revision & Self-Editing, Bell. Just what it says. (*Note: The last three books are by James Scott Bell, and are published by Writers Digest, which offers an extensive list of books on the different aspects of craft. There are other books on these subjects by other authors and other publishers.)
  • Save the Cat!, Snyder. Intended for screenwriting, it is a great resource for learning story structure and for increasing the level of dialogue (a trend in modern fiction).
  • Writing the Breakout Novel, Maas. Everything about novels and how to balance the elements, written by a high-powered literary agent.
  • Break into Fiction, Buckham and Love. Perhaps more geared to the genre of romance, but more broadly applicable.
  • Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies, Wainger. A top editor with many years of experience, this peek at our work through her lens is invaluable. Again, the content can be more broadly applied.
  • Believable Characters, Creating with Enneagrams, Schnebly. A method for creating rich characters based on personality types.
  • Punctuation, Plain and Simple, Edgar C. Alward and Jean A. Alward.
  • Roget’s Thesaurus.
  • Any good dictionary.
  • Words That Make a Difference, Greenman.
  • The Elements of Style, Strunk and White.

Books by successful authors about writing on my shelves:

  • On Writing, Stephen King
  • How I Write, Janet Evanovich
  • Escaping into the Open, the Art of Writing True, Berg.

Believe it or not, this is not a complete list of my reference books. Some of the rest duplicate the content of the ones listed, or stray from a strictly-writing focus. Have I read all of these? You bet. In some cases, several times over. Have they helped me? Absolutely. Would they help writers of the submissions of a recent contest I judged? Yes, yes, and yes again.

What references do you keep at hand as you write? What books do you consider so essential that you’d buy a copy for your favorite protégé? Let’s see how many different books show up in this list! Thanks for contributing to a reference gem for our fellow authors!

Tag! You’re It! Writing Dialogue in Fiction

 “Hi, Beth,” waved Justin.

“Why, Justin, I haven’t seen you since our high school prom six years ago, the one where our mutual friend, Erik, got suspended for spiking the punch,” gushed Beth.

“Ho, ho,” chortled Justin. “Those were the days! He went on to become a successful, if whacky and innovative executive with an online social network. What have you been doing since then?” he queried.

“As you know, my family life was difficult and I had many obstacles to overcome, but I triumphed by speeding through college in record time, completing my undergraduate, double major degree in only two years, and am graduating from medical school next week,” Beth elaborated.

Are you bored yet? Grinding your teeth and wanting to throw this story across the room? I am; it was painful writing it!

Good dialogue can carry a story; conversely, badly written dialogue can sink one faster than the Titanic’s spectacular and ignominious end. Many resources are available, from Renni Browne and Dave King’s Self Editing for Fiction Writers, Second Edition to Write Great Fiction: Dialogue by Gloria Kempton, and more. If a good book on the craft of writing dialogue doesn’t reside on your shelf, I strongly suggest you consider acquiring one.

Let’s examine this fragment to see why it’s so grating. There are four issues here: dialogue tags, stilted language, indistinct voice, and information dump.

Dialogue tags are the words we use to indicate that a character is speaking. When I wrote the first draft of my first novel, I spent hours dreamily staring into space while trying to conjure the cleverest dialogue tags ever. My characters retorted, snorted, coughed, shivered and quivered their lines. After reading the above example, you can see how awful it was!

In reality, you only need a few simple guidelines.

1. Use the word ‘said’ whenever necessary. It’s an almost invisible word to the reader, whereas all the chortles, queries, etc. do nothing but draw attention to the author—not the story. The author should be entirely invisible, and your goal is to keep the reader engrossed in the story, not yanked out by strange word choices.

2. Keep in mind that physical actions are not involved in uttering speech. Rather than succumb to the temptation of using the action as a tag, use it in a separate sentence as a ‘beat’ that reveals body language and moves the story forward. For example: Justin pulled up short when he recognized the woman approaching him. A spurt of pleasure shot through him, and he waved. “Hi, Beth!” (Note how this example could go any number of directions. Maybe he wanted to avoid her, but couldn’t; maybe his response is anger over an unresolved conflict. Whatever the case, the greeting becomes much more complex and compelling.)

3. If only two persons are involved in a stream of dialogue, omit tags entirely. This works especially well when the characters’ voices are so different that it is obvious who is speaking by their speech patterns. But don’t be afraid to add an occasional beat to keep it clear for the reader.

Which leads us to stilted language and indistinct voice.

The best way to avoid stilted language is to read your dialogue out loud. If it feels or sounds awkward, change it. Each character should have distinctive speech patterns, too; make sure the words and delivery you choose remains authentic to the individual character. As you read the dialogue out loud, it should be obvious which character is speaking at any given time. Let’s make Justin a Texas cowboy and Beth a California Valley girl (yes, I know I’m dating myself, but it’s an easy ‘dialect’ to show for our purposes).

Now we have: A spurt of pleasure shot through Justin when he recognized the woman approaching him on the sidewalk. He whipped off his ten-gallon hat and waved. “Howdy, Beth! I ain’t seen you for a coon’s age.”

Beth, preoccupied with her Smartphone, lifted her gaze. A smile wreathed her face and she squealed. “Ohmygosh! Justin! It’s been, like, too-too long! Since high school?”  As you can see, these two wildly different styles will never overlap in dialogue. Not all characters will be such polar opposites, but if you give each character a distinctive voice, whether through style (i.e., women tend to use longer sentences, while men tend more toward brief statements) or specific verbal traits, it will strengthen both their characterization and their dialogue.

A word about foreign words and idioms: a little goes a long way. If your character is fluent in French and sprinkles French phrases into her speech, limit those to one every few pages. If a character’s speech is very back-woodsy and old fashioned, pick one word to highlight that pattern and write the rest in ‘regular’ English. For a southern drawl or an Irish brogue, use that as a descriptor outside of the dialogue and use word choice and placement to reinforce the pattern. Trust your reader to catch on. They will.

Last: information dumps. This is where characters bring in information that the author wants the reader to know but doesn’t have an organic way to get it across. Hence, awkward dialogue that no one in real life would use, such as: He went on to become a successful, if whacky and innovative executive with an online social network.

When you find those in your writing, ask yourself if the information is truly important. If so, is it crucial at this point in the story? If yes, then find a more relaxed way to get it into the story, either as internal dialogue (Beth’s mind went back to the last time she’d seen Justin. The high school prom. The one where Erik had been suspended for spiking the punch. “Justin! It’s been years!”), or in more natural sounding dialogue (“Justin! It’s been years!” Beth’s face heated at the memory of their high school prom. “I’m still embarrassed at how I acted after—“ She broke off her sentence, and Justin, grinning, finished it for her. “After  Erik spiked the punch.”

Dialogue can make your story sing, and those who can do it well often do well on other aspects of the craft. As a plus, the more of your story you can tell via dialogue, the better the structure will be, so it’s worth the effort to improve your skills in this area.

What are your tricks or tenets about writing dialogue? This has been a quick and dirty, and by no means comprehensive look at writing dialogue. Please share your experience!

 

 

Using Photos and Images on Your Blog

There’s something appealing about a good picture with a good blog post. I started using images as a matter of course when I noticed some of my favorite bloggers doing it.

It’s like a challenge, sometimes, finding the picture that expresses the post. Sometimes it’s a way of sending another message in the post.

Other times, it’s just a headache. Especially when you consider the copyright issues.

You need to make sure you list sources and that any images you use aren’t copyrighted. Lifting them from Google Images isn’t always kosher. (And, yes, I’ve been guilty of that in the past.)

Just as you don’t want someone just using your writing–or, to keep to the topic of blogging, your complete blog posts–without crediting you, photographers and designers don’t want people just lifting their images or artwork.

I’ve come up with a few rules in the last few months:

  1. No credit, no go. Whether I use an image that’s fair game online or one that my sister-in-law took, I try to give credit where credit’s due, usually at the bottom of the post.
  2. CYA. I cover myself and make sure I’m getting my photos from sources that are open source (meaning anyone can use them in a non-commercial way) or that I have permission. Period.

This is a serious issue, indeed. A favorite non-profit of mine was sued for money they didn’t have because, on their website, they had used a copyrighted image without permission. Lesson learned, for me AND for them!

Here are a few places I’ve found that are good for free, open domain images, suitable for blog posts and non-commercial content:

  • Creative Commons Search
  • Deviant (This an open online gallery and social site for artists. You can search it for paintings, cartoons, etc. that people have done. If you find something that you like and fits, contact the artist through his page and ask to use the image. Sometimes, they will want to charge. Others will be glad to let you use their image as long as you credit them. Be sure to thank them on their deviant art site and give them a link to your video when done.)
  • Flickr Advanced Search (use the option for Creative Commons licensed items)
  • FreeFoto
  • Gimp Savvy
  • MorgueFile
  • Stock Xchng
  • Wikimedia Commons

Here are a couple of colletions that have links to other places:

Have any to add to my list?

image source: MorgueFile

Readability Tool Success and Mobile Posting Fail

First, something helpful…

This came to mind when, during a class last week at the conference, someone mentioned reading level and being appropriate for your audience (specifically children in a certain age range).

Did you know you can paste your text into an online tool that will test your document’s readability? Check it out here, with many thanks to an editor of mine who shared it with me about a year ago. The same editor also shared this website with me, and it explains fluency and reading levels in more detail.

You might wonder what that has to do with blogging, and I’ll tell you: in my world, everything has to do with blogging. 🙂 The truth, though, is that we can easily write over our audience’s heads without much thought, especially when we’re talking faith and theology and stuff that’s technical.

There’s also the fact that I have found myself writing for children (my current title is one example), though I never intended to be a children’s writer. (God has a sense of humor, after all.)

Second, a frustration that could have been cool…

There’s an option for mobile posting on Blogger (which is what we use right now for the CWG blog). I enabled it, entered my mobile number, and took the 20 minutes to type out a post on my phone’s teeny-tiny screen last Friday afternoon.

Turns out, it doesn’t quite work, at least not with my (non smart) phone. Oh well…it would have been SO COOL to be able to share things on-the-go via texting. It’s not to be (and it’s probably just as well…for you!).



Sarah Reinhard is the author of Welcome Baby Jesus: Advent and Christmas Reflections for Families. You’ll find more of Sarah at her blog, SnoringScholar.com. You can also connect with her on Twitter and Facebook.

A Resource for New Media Users

Last week at the CWCL, I received quite a few questions regarding new media. They seemed to stem around these themes:

  • What is it?
  • Why should I use it?
  • How does it work?

I watched people take notes on what “backlinking” meant and how to “schedule a post.”

We’re a group of writers here, but I do think there is a place for discussion about new media. The number of people who approach me about it, asking for help and guidance, is growing. There is a discernment process for deciding whether any of this is right for you, but the trend leads, more and more, to writers being online and having a presence.

Today at my blog, I have a review of The Church and New Media: Blogging Converts, Online Activists, and Bishops Who Tweet, by Brandon Vogt. It’s an excellent resource for anyone and it examines the use of new media in light of our faith. Check out the website as well for more about the book and some nifty features.

I mention it here as something that could serve you in your writing and in your interactions with new media.

I’ll be tackling some of the questions I’ve received in upcoming columns. If you have anything related to blogging or new media that you’re wondering about, feel free to leave them in the comments here.



Be sure to check SnoringScholar.com for more of Sarah Reinhard’s antics, tales of rural adventure, and writing updates. Her newest release is Welcome Baby Jesus: Advent & Christmas Reflections for Families. You can also connect with Sarah on Twitter and Facebook.