Write

Articles about craft.

Quick Links: The Delicate Art of Character Folding

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

I will confess to being a big Game Of Thrones fan. One of my best friends just can’t get into the story. Too many characters, plots, and subplots to follow. Different strokes for different folks! But a good writer should look honestly at their first draft and see how many characters, backstories, and subplots they are making their readers deal with.  See if one or two can be combined or done away with, as Rebecca Makkai at Aerogramme Writer’s Studio explains.

~ * ~

The Delicate Art of Character Folding

Rebecca Makkai

People crowd7 June 2016

You probably knew, when you started writing, that you’d signed on for murder. I was warned well in advance: One of my favorite childhood books was Lois Lowry’s The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline, in which the title character finds the notebook of the man her mother is dating. “Eliminate the kids,” one note says. She and her brother swing into crime-fighting mode, only to discover in the end that this man, a writer, was talking about editing characters out of his work-in-progress.

Later, as I studied writing, I’d hear authors lament the characters they’d had to erase from draft two, the ones who “felt like real people” to them. Or they’d talk about the ones they kept around because, despite the fact that they served no real purpose in the narrative, they’d become old friends.

In fact, our first drafts are often overpopulated. There’s a reason: Your character needs a boss, so you invent a boss. He’s a typical boss. He wears a suit and does boss-like things. “Get me those numbers, Stan!” he says. You need someone to overhear the nighttime argument, so you invent the nosy neighbor. She’s always trimming her azaleas, of course. Naturally, she’s a widow in her sixties. Your character can’t get over someone, so you invent the ex. A cruel, beautiful ex who appears only in flashback, saying belittling things about your guy’s manhood. By halfway through a novel, you’ve got enough fictional characters to fill a cruise ship.

And how could you possibly cut any of them? If you lose the boss, you lose the whole storyline at work. You lose the neighbor, and all the pressure goes out of the fight scene. So you keep them all—which is often the wrong answer. Or you bite the bullet and have a stiff drink and sit down to cut those people, cut those scenes. Which is quite possibly the wrong answer too, and almost definitely unnecessary.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Links: Ten Clever Ways To Keep Your Reader Enthralled

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

We all want readers to love our story, to not be able to put them down until the last page is read, and then having our readers want more.  Sue Coletta over at Writer’s Village shares with us ways we can accomplish this goal. What is your favorite writing tip to keep your readers hooked?

~ * ~

Ten Clever Ways To Keep Your Reader Enthralled

by Sue Coletta
June 10, 2016

Boy readingWe all know how to inject pace into our stories, don’t we? Just drop in a lot of exciting moments and space them with ‘scene hangers’. ‘Little did I know that my life was about to change forever’, and the like.

But hangers are clichés. Sure, they’re useful but not right for every story.

So what else can we do to keep the reader enthralled? Turning our every page? And wholly immersed in our story?

Top crime suspense writer Sue Coletta reveals ten tricks of the trade. We can adapt them to any genre!

1. Language itself is the subtlest means of pacing.

Throw away those passive expressions. ‘His head was hit by something sharp and cold.’ Yawn...

Think concrete words.

Concrete words are nouns that we experience through our senses. Example: smoke, mist, iceberg. Use active voice plus sensory information that’s artfully embedded. If you write long, involved paragraphs, try breaking them up into shorter ones.

‘Hail pounded his head. Icy water down his spine. He drew his collar round his throat and shivered.’

Drop in lots of white space.

Fragments, staccato sentences, and short paragraphs quicken the pace. They also give the page visual texture. At a glance, it looks interesting.

Crisp, punchy verbs, especially those with onomatopoeia, add a lot of tension to a scene. Onomatopoeia? It’s the formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named. Example: sizzle, crash, scamper, lunge. ‘The steak sizzled on the grill.’

Examples of staccato sentences are: ‘She froze.’ ‘He paused.’

At a moment of tension, why say more?

A sentence fragment might be: ‘Deliberate.’ ‘Intentional.’ ‘Dangerous.’ For example: ‘The pit bull growled at me. Dangerous.’

The reader can easily digest one or two word sentences so they speed up our pacing.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Link: Deepen The Protagonist to Readers By Challenging His or Her Moral Beliefs

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Want readers to invest in your main character? Make them interesting. How? Give them depth and reasons, show why they do the things they do. Nothing is more boring than a perfect character who always knows the right thing to do and does it. Challenge their morality. Push them to the edge and see what happens. That is what Angela Ackerman over at Writiers Helping Writers helps us to learn this week.

~ * ~

Deepen The Protagonist to Readers By Challenging His or Her Moral Beliefs

May 28, 2016

by Angela Ackerman

This is what I found when I searched for "perfect" and the title, I kid you not is "The Perfect male body". Someone totally needs more depth.
This is what I found when I searched for “perfect” and the title, I kid you not is “The Perfect male body”. Someone totally needs more depth.

When we sit down to brainstorm a character, we think about possible qualities, flaws, quirks, habits, likes and dislikes that they might have. Then to dig deeper, we assemble their backstory, plotting out who influenced them, what experiences shaped them (both good and bad) and which emotional wounds pulse beneath the surface. All of these things help us gain a clearer sense of who our characters are, what motivates them, and ultimately, how they will behave in the story.

But how often do we think about our protagonist’s morality? It’s easy to just make the assumption that he or she is “good” and leave it at that.

And, for the most part, the protagonist is good–that’s why he or she is the star of the show. The protagonist’s moral code dictates which positive traits are the most prominent (attributes like loyalty, kindness, tolerance, being honorable or honest, to name a few) and how these will in turn influence every action and decision.

In real life, most people want to believe they know right from wrong, and that when push comes to shove, they’ll make the correct (moral) choice. People are generally good, and unless you’re a sociopath, no one wants to go through life hurting people. Sometimes it can’t be avoided, but most try to add, not take away, from their interactions and relationships.

In real life, most people want to believe they know right from wrong, and that when push comes to shove, they’ll make the correct (moral) choice. People are generally good, and unless you’re a sociopath, no one wants to go through life hurting people. Sometimes it can’t be avoided, but most try to add, not take away, from their interactions and relationships.

To feel fully fleshed, our characters should mimic real life, meaning they too have strong beliefs, and like us, think their moral code is unshakable. But while it might seem it, morality is not black and white. It exists in the mists of grey.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Links: How to Read Critically and Become a Better Author!

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Reading is my favorite homework assignment ever! But I don’t think the kind of reading I like to do is what Kristen over at She’s Novel is talking about. Instead of devouring books, Kristen recommends slowing down and really examining how your favorite writers write.  It really is a great post, so go check it out.

~ * ~

How to Read Critically and Become a Better Author!

Grow your writing skills by analyzing what you read

Smart guyMay 27, 2016

Hellooo there, friend!

If you’ve been hanging around the writersphere for a while now, you’ve probably heard the phrase “read critically” tossed around a time or two. Or, ya know, twelve.

In fact, it’s one of the topics I’m most often asked about in emails and tweets and such, probably because I mention just how important reading (and reading critically) is whenever I get the chance. And I’m not the only one who thinks so…

Check out these quotes from famous authors:

“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.” – Oscar Wilde

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” – Stephen King

“Think before you speak. Read before you think.” – Fran Lebowitz

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”  – Joseph Brodsky

 

And these are just a few examples!

Reading truly is fundamental to who we are as individuals, as well as to society as a whole. Books are the backbone of culture and learning and entertainment. They challenge and excite us just as much as they keep us educated and informed. Without them, our lives would be vastly different.

And to state the obvious, there would be no books to read if it weren’t for the authors who write them!

Just as writers create books, books are integral to the creation of writers.

Think about it: would you be a writer today if you hadn’t first fallen in love with reading? Books can make an incredible impact on writers. And this impact? It thrives when you read critically, which is exactly what we’re going to talk about today. So let’s get started!

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Author Tools: I wrote this review of a Freewrite on a Freewrite

by

Author Tools – things to help you get your writing done

I don’t know that a first draft only mobile word processor is for everyone, but if you want to what one is like head on over to Boing Boing where Jason Weisberger reviews his.

~ * ~

I wrote this review of a Freewrite on a Freewrite

Jason Weisberger

Jun 3, 2016

Astrohaus-Freewrite_lg_05-1024x768I jumped on the Freewrite/Hemingwrite kickstarter ages ago. It took so long for the single purpose, first-draft-only word processor to show up, I’d occasionally forgotten it was coming. I’ve had it for a few weeks now, and last weekend I typed a review out, on the unit itself.

Thing is, you can’t edit on the unit. The review below is the raw output of my clattering away at the old-timey keyboard.

If there is elegence to be found in simplicity, the team at Astrohaus have done their damnedest with the Freewrite, their single-purpose, distraction-free word processor. Originally billed as the Hemingwrite, I bought into the kickstarter on this years ago, hoping it’d help me focus on some short stories I never get finished while working on my laptop, or bother to transcribe from my notebooks.

I waited a long time for this unit, so I’m a little less forgiving of the problems than I might be with another kickstarted piece of kit. I have absolutely no complaints about the fit and finish. The device is pretty lovely in its gaudiness. It is supposed to resemble a typewriter, I think of the 1920s-1930s generation of my Remington Rand Deluxe Porta 5. It sort of does, the selector switches are mounted in a way to resemble the reels for ribbon, but it more closely feels like a mid to late 1990s portable wordprocessor. It weighs slightly, but not much less. It works about the same, and part of its charm is that it throws back to a mechanical keyboard like they would have used back then.

The keyboard is pretty much heaven, if you come from the days of yore, as I do. It feels like I am jamming along on a Commodore Vic20, or a WYSE terminal. While the e-ink isn’t vac green, its about as slow as the old led based screens would have been. You get just enough text on the screen to let you read back 1-3 sentences. You can’t edit at all, aside from erasing with backspace, so watching as you type and not looking at your fingers on the keyboard is really critical. I find that if I miss a typo by more than 5 words, I try to leave it and not go back.

Read the full post on Boing Boing

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Link: Now a Word from the Copy Editor . . . Nan Reinhardt – Anachronism

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

An anachronism is anything in a time period where it doesn’t belong, and it can bring your reader’s experience to a jolting halt. Copyeditor Nan Reinhardt from Romance University, discusses anachronisms at length and why they are so bad for your story. I am pretty sure I never want to play against her in Trivial Pursuit. Read the article and you will see why. ; )

~ * ~

Now a Word from the Copy Editor . . . Nan Reinhardt

Copyeditor Nan Reinhardt gives us a new word of the day – and a reason to hope we never get to use it when writing our books!

TimeAnachronism—it’s a great word, isn’t it? I love words and this is one of my favorites because if you don’t already know it, you can’t even begin to guess the meaning. Am I right? And when someone uses it in a sentence, like “Kind of anachronistic, don’t you think?” you have to be right in the moment to get the meaning and even then, it might not be obvious. No, most of us don’t get this word from context and I confess, as a newbie copy editor, the first time I heard a project editor use the word, I had to look it up. I wasn’t going to be able to “watch for anachronisms” in the manuscript I was editing if I didn’t know what the devil an anachronism was.

So, Webster tells us an anachronism is “an error in chronology; a chronological misplacing of persons, events, objects, or customs in regard to each other; a person or a thing that is chronologically out of place; especially one from a former age that is incongruous in the present; the state or condition of being chronologically out of place.”

Make sense? Try this, in a historical romance I once read, the setting was pre-Civil War Georgia and the heroine was having a ball to celebrate her engagement. A friend came to the plantation and admired the flowers—dozens and dozens of orchids—that the heroine had used to decorate the ballroom. The heroine said, “Aren’t they lovely? I had them flown in from Bermuda.” Okay . . . hmmmm. Interesting. First of all, who flew them in? In 1856, the only things flying were birds and hot air balloons, neither of which could have brought hundreds of orchids from Bermuda to Georgia. Anachronism! Maybe in 1956, she could’ve had orchids flown in to Georgia, although if she’d done some fact-checking she’d have discovered that orchids aren’t indigenous to Bermuda—they don’t grow well in the ground there, so even Bermudans have to import orchids if they want them or grow them in pots.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Links: How to Create Legendary Villains

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Yesterday we talked heroes and character development. Today it is villains and… character development.  Every great story needs a great villain. Really memorable antagonists allow you to almost identify with them, because everyone is a hero in their own story.  Kristian Lamb shares her thoughts on what makes a bad guy legendary.  I always sympathized with Frankenstein’s monster, especially after I read the original classic story. What villain resonates for you?

~ * ~

How to Create Legendary Villains

Excellent.....
Excellent….
by Kristian Lamb
May 9, 2016

This past Saturday I held my Bullies & Baddies class and a couple of the folks posited a really good question worth talking about. How do we write great villains? One of the reasons I love holding this class is that all stories require a core antagonist (who is responsible for generating the story problem in need of resolution), but there are different types of antagonists. All villains are antagonists but not all antagonists are villains.But since we went there, what goes into creating a truly terrifying villain?

I watch a ton of movies and television series. I also read around three novels a week. I’m always studying, breaking stories apart so that I can understand them better. I do it for my fiction, but also so I can share what I learn with you guys.

Though the series isn’t for everyone (it’s pretty gory), I particularly love FX’s American Horror Story for studying villains. AHS is one of those shows that you have to get a few episodes into before you connect, namely because it is often cast with truly despicable characters.

It isn’t until you get a few episodes in that the writers start peeling back the layers and exposing the delicate undersides of the villains…and that’s when you really begin to care for them.

I know. Seriously. AHS is some of the best writing out there.

Jessica Lang almost always plays the core antagonist in each season of AHS (though she was absent in Season Five and it was evident). Of all the seasons, though, Season Four Freak Show was my favorite and that’s what I am going to use today. Btw, there is a bit of spoiler alert, but it’s necessary. So what do we do to really make the villain POP?

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Links: Character Development Is a Two-Edged Sword

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

I don’t know if you follow the superhero world much, but there was a recent upset when fans found out that Captain America, the epitome of the American spirit, was actually a bad guy in disguise all along. Captain would never!  Jami Gold explains on her blog why readers get upset when characters that they have invested in act in a way that is, well, out of character. And yes, I realize that there will probably be a plot where Captain America will turn out to be the good guy again, but he is so iconic in his values that even pretending to be a bad guy is out of his character. 

~ * ~

Character Development Is a Two-Edged Sword

by Jami Gold

I call this one Captain LOVE...
I call this one Captain LOVE…

May 26, 2016

Within the writing community, there are just as many articles (if not more) about developing great characters as there are about creating interesting plots. We see blog posts debating how likable a character needs to be to interest a reader, other posts sharing techniques for evoking reader empathy, and still other posts instructing us on methods for showing a character’s emotional arc, etc., etc.

We know as readers that even the best-plotted book will suffer if the protagonist isn’t at least compelling. So as writers, we do everything we can to make readers invested in our characters in some way.

An invested reader is a happy reader, right?

Well, maybe not. Let’s take a look at the other side of character development.

The Danger of Out-of-Character Behavior

A couple of months ago, I wrote about how our genre promises certain elements to readers. And if our genre alone creates expectations in readers, it’s a safe bet that our characters do as well.

As we develop our characters, we establish expectations in the minds of our readers for how that character will act and react in the future. Readers sense their intelligence, what they value or fear, their moral code, etc.

Those expectations are important to understand because insults like “Too Stupid To Live” are more likely when our characterization is broken. We don’t usually see that insult flung at characters who do stupid things in character.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Links: The Painful Practice of Putting Your Art Out There

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

What is worse – when people dislike your work or don’t even pay attention? A fear most writers can appreciate.  Amy Crumpton, guest posting on Goins Writer, shares how she deals with this very emotional issue. What is your best tip for dealing with the emotional traps that writers face?

~ * ~

The Painful Practice of Putting Your Art Out There

Workplace headacheby Amy Crumpton
After years of blogging for a small email list, I’d finally slipped through a door at The Huffington Post with a story about discovering my purpose. In it, I offered a free trial for a course I’d created to help others discover their own callings.

I was excited like a kid at Christmas until I saw the first comment:

“As I read your article, I found myself entertaining hope again. Then I got to the end and saw you were just trying to sell me something. I want to judge you but God says I am supposed to forgive you. I don’t know if I can, but I hope God will.”

Shame rose up in me like steam from a whistling teapot as I turned the comment over and over in my head.

The blistering effects of criticism

Criticism can blister us like a red burner. The wound will heal, but it’s unnerving to keep working so near the hot stove.

I thought The Huffington Post door would open the door to a lot more opportunities. But as they expanded their blogger platform, readership dwindled and became divided.

I continued to post there, but I focused primarily on my own list. I blogged steadily, asked for feedback, invited comments, ramped up social sharing, and offered free stuff. I did everything I knew to do.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Links: How To Prepare for Self-Publishing – Editing

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

This is part of a series on self-publishing by over at Digital Book World, so bookmark for future reference . One of the best things a self-publishing author can do is to make sure they have a quality product for consumers. What would be your biggest tip for self-publishers?

~ * ~

How to Prepare for Self-Publishing: Editing

By:

Work In Progress Sign Held By Construction WorkerThis is part one of a six-part series.

As a self-published author, it’s your responsibility to make sure your book is as high-quality as it can be, and an editor is an indispensable resource who can help make your book look professional instead of amateurish.

Getting off to a Good Start

Ask your peers—other writers—for their opinions. Join local writing groups. Meet writers online and ask them to have a look at one or two chapters for you. Don’t be shy about getting feedback from your fellow writers.

Every writer is focused on her own work, so make sure you give something back to the community by returning the favor for others.

Now is a good time to write a synopsis. This is a skill in itself, so practice is key. A synopsis is different from a blurb; it should be about one A4 page long, contain all the major plot points and describe what happens in your book. Don’t worry about spoilers! This is a great way to identify weaknesses or plot holes. Read it out loud. Does it ramble or sound boring? Do things seem to happen for no reason? Maybe you just need to tweak the synopsis, or maybe you need to go back to the book and make some changes.

When you feel happy with your book, that’s the right time to look for an editor. But wait! Do you know what you’re asking them to do, and does that match up with what you need?

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Links: What Are The Rules on Mixing Viewpoints?

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

My current writing goals are to work on viewpoints and dialog. At Advanced Fiction Writing, Randy has a great post on the basics of viewpoints. Even seasoned writers might learn a thing or two. Head on over and check it out and let us know what you think.

~ * ~

What Are The Rules on Mixing Viewpoints?

May 23, 2016
Of course you can have multiple points of view with the right character.....
Of course you can have multiple points of view with the right character…..

Can you write a novel mixing first-person and third-person viewpoints? Is that too stupid for words? How do you decide?

Dezaree posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I’m trying to write a book with my main character being seen through first person, and my second main character from third person. I separate them distinctly in the book and when they are together the story stays in my main characters first person. Can This Work? I tried writing it with them both in first person and without the second main character being separated that way. Both ways made me feel like it was either too confusing or missing to much information. So I want to write this book from two different points of view.

Also while I call her my second main character I really only want my readers to connect with the Main character.

If you don’t fully understand what I mean email me and I will try to better explain.

Randy sez: This is a good question that I’ve heard several times over the years. Before I can answer it, we’ll need to clarify some terms.

What is a “Main Character?”

When we talk about the “main character” of a novel, we mean that there is one single character who is most important within the story. The novel is this character’s story. The Story Question for the novel is a question about whether this particular character will succeed or fail.

Do you have to have a main character? No, of course not. Some novels don’t have a main character. You can write a novel with several characters that are all important, without any of them being the main character. But I don’t recommend that for beginning writers, because it’s hard enough to make your reader care about your story when you HAVE a main character. It’s much harder when you don’t. That’s my advice—follow it or don’t follow it, as you like.

What is a “Viewpoint Character?”

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Link: How To Keep Writing: 5 Tricks To Sneak Past Perfectionism

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

I have learned that I use perfectionism to deal with fear of finishing my work. One of the ways I have been dealing with that in my writing is by participating in the annual NANOWRIMO challenge.  It really helps to improve my writing and gets me moving. Michelle Russell at Write To Done gives us five tips to deal with perfectionism that might be holding you back from writing success. 

~ * ~

How To Keep Writing: 5 Tricks To Sneak Past Perfectionism

We won't talk about the issue of being distracted by too many cat videos....
We won’t talk about the issue of being distracted by too many cat videos….

By Michelle Russell

Have you been sitting in front of your computer for what feels like hours?

You know the feeling.

Typing a few words, deleting them, groaning in frustration, getting a couple of sentences down only to decide they’re not quite right…

You’re about ready to tear your hair out.

You recognize what’s happening, of course. Your inner perfectionist is rearing its obnoxious head, inciting an epic battle between you and the blank page.

And the blank page is winning.

This could happen for several reasons.

Maybe you’ve got a deadline looming and you’re under time pressure.

Maybe you only have a rough idea of what you want to write about, and you’re worried it’s not going to come out coherently.

Or maybe you care so much about your subject matter that you’re afraid you’ll never do it justice.

Whatever the cause, you’re stuck. Of course you’ve heard all the well-meaning advice about not being a perfectionist; to just get something written that you can edit later.

But you honestly can’t write just anything.

Wondering how to keep writing?

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Links: 6 Tips to Help You Finish Your Book

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Over on Helping Writers Become Authors, encourages us to actually finish writing our books. Which is apparently very useful information for a bunch of us, me included… Perhaps I should reread this article daily. Have you finished writing your novel? Congratulations and what are your tips?

~ * ~

6 Tips to Help You Finish Your Book

May 1, 2016

111-1113tm-vector2-688by K.M. Weiland

Every time I hear about a writer finishing a book, I want to jump up and down and go into a gospel choir of Hallelujahs! It’s a momentous accomplishment for two reasons.

1. Finishing your book is the most important thing any writer will ever accomplish.

2. Not many writers do it.

Seriously. Depending on the source you examine, as much as 90% of the population wants to write a book. And many of those people will go so far as to actually begin writing something. But the percentage that actually finishes a book? Minuscule.

Why is that?

Easy. Writing a book is hard. Even dedicated writers like you and me find it hard to keep at it when the going gets rough on a story that just isn’t cooperating, for any number of reasons.

On Facebook, fantasy author Lee Diogeneia shared the results of a poll from her writing group:

Conquer 6 Obstacles and Finish Your Book

If the most important thing a writer can do is also one of the hardest–finish your book–then don’t you think it’s time you tackle some of the major obstacles standing between you and the finish line?

Let’s take a look at the six most common reasons writers drop their manuscripts–and how you can put habits in place to best every single one of them.

Obstacle #1: Discouragement

You know the drill. You wake up one morning, all bright-eyed and excited to be a writer–only to open your Scrivener file, look at your manuscript, and realize… this is complete rubbish.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Links: How do you become an editor?

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Have you ever thought of becoming an editor and helping other writers shape their work? Roz Morris at Nail Your Novel shares the different types of editor and what it takes to become one.

~ * ~

How do you become an editor?

Who What Why When Where Signpost Showing Confusion Brainstorming And ResearchRachel Anderson asks: How did you get into editing? Did you start writing first and then take on editing as a natural second, or was it out of necessity since there are more opportunities for editors than writers?

Oof, talk about cutting to the quick. It’s certainly tricky to make a living as a full-time writer. So most writers also use their wordsmithing in some other way – teaching or working in the publishing trade.

But does that mean all writers could be editors? Not necessarily. There’s a lot of difference between tidying your own work and shaping someone else’s to professional standards.

And you need different skills for the various strains of editing.

Copy editing and proof reading These are the nitpicky, forensic phases. Fact-checking and querying. Reading for consistency, clarity, correctness, house style, possible libel. The copy editor and proof reader are a human error trap – they have to catch anything that might be inaccurate, or would spoil the reader’s experience or undermine the author’s command. They have to spot anything that could possibly go wrong such as characters’ names changing half-way through, repeated passages from copy/paste mistakes, and snafus that no other human has yet encountered.

Rachel: I’ve been reading articles and stuff about developmental editing…

Aha – the creative stuff! For developmental editing, you need a mind for detail and a solid grounding in the mechanics of fiction (or non-fiction or memoir if that’s where you want to specialise – they need developmental editors too). Developmental editing is part diagnosis, part teaching. You need sharp radar for what isn’t working, and you need to explain this to the writer in a way that helps them solve it. Equally, it might be your job to solve it.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Links: Six Ways To Self-Edit & Polish Your Prose

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

I am a firm believer in hiring a professional editor.  That said, you want to put your best effort forward and do as much as you can. Lucky for us, Kristen Lamb is here to help us with self-editing tips so you can avoid the pants of shame.

~ * ~

Six Ways To Self-Edit & Polish Your Prose

May 16, 2016

Editing your work has become a lot easier....
Editing your work has become a lot easier….

Kristen Lamb

Whether you are new to writing or an old pro, brushing up on the basics is always helpful. Because no matter how GOOD the story is? If the reader is busy stumbling over this stuff, it ruins the fictive dream and she will never GET to the story. So today we are going to cover six ways to self-edit your fiction. Though this stuff might seem like a no-brainer, I see these blunders ALL the time.

….unfortunately even in (legacy) published books.

When I worked as an editor, I found it frustrating when I couldn’t even GET to the story because I was too distracted by these all too common oopses.

There are many editors who charge by the hour. If they’re spending their time fixing oopses you could’ve easily repaired yourself? You’re burning cash and time. Yet, correct these problems, and editors can more easily get to the MEAT of your novel. This means you will spend less money and get far higher value.

#1 The Brutal Truth about Adverbs, Metaphors and Similes

I have never met an adverb, simile, or metaphor I didn’t LOVE. I totally dig description, but it can present problems.

First of all, adverbs are not ALL evil. Redundant adverbs are evil. If someone shouts loudly? How else are they going to shout? Whispering quietly? Really?O_o Ah, but if they whisper seductively? The adverb seductively gives us a quality to the whisper that isn’t already implied by the verb.

Check your work for adverbs and kill the redundant ones. Kill them. Dead.

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.