ONLY GOOD LIARS WRITE FICTION

Fiction writers are good liars. The best, actually, because to succeed in our craft we have to cajole our readers into entering the world we have created and convince them that it exists. How do we do this? With believable characters. The first thing editors look for in a manuscript is strong characterization.
There is only a little difference in characters used in non-fiction. With them it is necessary to study what has been written about the person, what he was like, of course his physical characteristics, but also pick up on mannerisms, likes and dislikes, everything about him and then weave those into the story. There still must be goals, internal conflict and of course the true story that created the external conflict, or that which deters him as he struggles to reach his goals.
For those of you who do interviews and write articles, it is especially important that you recall the physical attributes, the mannerisms, the way of speaking so that your article will bring that person to life for the reader. I’ve written columns and profiles for twenty years or more and in each one I strive to acquaint my reader with this person. Let them see deep inside.
Whether reading fiction or non-fiction, most readers don’t want to be told a story, they want to live that story. You, the writer, must make it possible for them to become a part of the life of your characters. So the reader will cry when they cry, laugh when they laugh, be disgusted, appalled, excited, saddened. Without characters that live and breathe, suffer, exalt, readers lose interest.
Your fiction characters must be admirable and goal oriented, they must have flaws that make them appear real. They can also be larger than life, this is fiction, after all. And aren’t our heroes larger than life? Think of real heroes and expand upon them for your hero. Everyone dreams of doing the impossible, let your hero help them fulfill that dream.
Each character must carry baggage with them into the story. Baggage that produces a certain angst. Emotion is why people go to movies and read books. We have to know who the characters are before we can care about them. Ever notice that all good movies begin by dragging the viewer into the characters’ lives, the set-up, where we learn to care so much about them that when things begin to happen we care. If we don’t care, the story, no matter how good, falls flat. Emotions can be credible and in character, or incredible and out of character.
Writers have it one up on movie producers, though. We can establish internal conflict. The eye of the camera can’t, and so the actors must make us care. So acquaint the reader with each important character by showing that internal conflict.
That done, here are some questions we must ask about our characters: Are they likeable despite their flaws and faults? Do they seem real? Can reader identify with them and care how they feel? Do they have unique voices and traits, are they consistent in manner and speech, are their motivations realistic?
And, by growing stronger, can they handle the situation in which you place them?
There’s no one right way to begin your story, novel or book. Some writers create and outline a story idea, then people it. Others create characters, put them in a situation and go.
I usually do the latter, what’s called writing by the seat of your pants. If I spent weeks outlining a story, I would lose the spark of creativity, but many do it that way very successfully.
Next week we’ll talk about the characters who should be in your book.
See my E books here

A WRITER'S FINAL EDITING

When an author brings work to read to our critique group, often the story may be there, characters, pov and internalization firm, yet there are little things that ruin the writing. It's clear that the author hasn't done a good job of final editing. Here are some points to watch when you go through your story for the last time before presenting it to your critique group. For goodness sake, don't send it off to an editor or an agent before you go over these points of good editing.

1. Mark repetitive words and phrases for rewrites or substitutions. As is a particularly overused phrase beginning.

2. Mark all lazy verbs such as were, was, had, look, walk, run and the like. Substitute active verbs or restructure sentence. In most cases take out just, very, only, almost. Those weaken the sentence. 

3. Substitute words (especially verbs and nouns) that will set a mood, convey the five senses or visualize a scene.

4. Watch your viewpoint. You are not God, nor are you a camera.

5. Balance dialogue and narrative.

6. Say what you mean. Incorrect placing of prepositional phrases can totally change the meaning of a sentence.

7. Be true to the voice and tone of your book in both narrative and dialogue.

Once those basic mistakes are corrected, *read aloud and mark the following to fix:

     A. Hard to read passages that make you stumble.    

     B. If you stop to breathe in the middle of a sentence, it’s probably too long.

     C. Unpleasant cadence, too many sentences with the same rhythm, too many long or too many short sentences within a scene. As a general rule, short sentences are used for fast paced action, longer are to calm down a scene.

     D. Sibilance (repetition of S or SH sounds) or iteration (repetition of same sounds) should be avoided unless you are doing it to create a particular effect.

     E. Too many verbs ending in ing. Was running becomes ran. Was walking becomes walked.

     F. Noun-verb repetition, most especially at the beginning of sentences. Jake saw, Jake sat, Jake ran, or he saw, he sat, he ran, etc.

     G. Overuse of adverbs and adjectives. They are in our language for a purpose, but use them like salt over tomatoes. A little goes a long way.

           

*When the time comes to read aloud, print out the work and go someplace else to read the entire story from paper, not the computer screen. I do this chapter at a time. Do not sit in the same place in which you created the work. As an editor you are wearing a different hat, so to speak, and it's best to do the job away from your writer surroundings. Edit with a red pen, it stands out much better. After those corrections have been made, one more read is in order before taking it to your critique group or sending it off to an editor, agent or contest.

Wolf Song and Stone Heart's Woman have both been released to Ebooks. You can also buy Stone Heart's Woman in paperback. See my Kindle page for a listing of all my Ebooks. Hope you enjoy reading my work and will take the time to give me a quick review on Amazon.

MAKING SPLIT PEA SOUP AND WRITING

Recently it's occurred to me that this business of being a writer is much more than writing. Have you noticed that? I'm sure you have, I just thought that was a good way to open a blog about what goes on in a writer's life and how it affects what else we do.

For instance, this morning, I finished a pot of homemade split pea soup and put it on warm for dinner (that's lunch to a lot of you). We here in Arkansas have three meals a day, Breakfast, Dinner and Supper. And yes, for the writer in you, they are all capitalized nouns. When I gathered recipes for my cookbook, Arkansas Meals and Memories, I recalled that in the good old days people ate much more than we do now. The reason it didn't stick to our hips was there was corn to hoe, water to haul on washday, canning, gardening, sewing, chasing down a runaway mule and hitching him to the plow. Well, you got the picture.

As usual I've strayed from the point. While the soup was in one of it's processes I made a pan of bran muffins. That's what I have for breakfast each morning along with a cup of tea. Hubby does his own thing, thank goodness. With lunch on the stove, I carried a box of books that arrived in the mail upstairs to my office, sorted through the remainder of the mail, hit the email on my computer and answered several important letters. One asked for a long blog post, jpgs, etc for posting on Savvy Authors tomorrow. I'd sent them once but for some reason they were lost in the ether world.

Another email reminded me that I have to cut some 30 second views from a video made when I appeared on a television show so I can present at the Women Writing the West conference in Albuquerque this fall. They will be put on a DVD and shown as we talk about the dos and don'ts of interviews for television.

Now I have two blogs to write after which I will finish a project I began yesterday, putting together my presentation for a free conference our critique group will hold in March. I will speak on building your platform, complete with handouts on websites, blogs, etc., that will help writers learn how to do just that.

Those handouts will do double duty as I present two workshops later in the month on publishing to Kindle. I hope to include some promo information for those who attend the all-day workshops, if we have time.

Yesterday, I began my own promo campaign on my latest Kindle book. Images In Scarlet  went live Monday. As we've all learned, promotion is a touchy thing cause we don't want to Spam our readers with daily pleas to buy our books, yet we need to let them know when a new one shows up. I finished doing all the formatting myself last week, and also designed a cover, but had to have some help getting it to come out the right size. Patty Stith, one of the wonderful writer members of our critique group, lent a hand and had it sized in no time by adding a red border that set off the design perfectly.

To top off the busy day, because we had snow Sunday night the Internet slowed down so badly that email was slogging and waiting on stuff to happen is a source of a lot of irritation. I try to have something at hand I can work on when this happens. Living in the country surrounded by Ozark mountains, this isn't unusual. We are lucky to have DSL while a lot of folks around us still only have dial-up, so when it's slow we must be patient and thankful. I thanked my lucky stars that I broke a cardinal rule not to work on Sunday and uploaded the latest book to Kindle because of the forecast of snow for that night. It went without a hitch.

I still have half a day left in which to do writerly work. If the snow melts off the steep driveway I'll run to the Post Office and mail off a book someone ordered last week. Otherwise, I'll finish these blogs then work on my presentations for both the conference and the two workshops.

One more thing. Had to haul water to three huge plants I have up here around my office. They like the sunshine from the south facing glass doors that lead out onto my little patio built by our daughter and her husband as a surprise one year while we were away. I can sit out there in the sunlight where no one but God can see me. And dream up intricate tales to put down on paper later.

So, when do I write? Hopefully the remainder of the week if I get these chores finished. There are two or three books lying around that need some editing, deeper editing or total rewrites and I'll get to some of that if the creeks don't rise. An aside: Did you know that means literally if the Creek Indian Nation doesn't rise. That's where it came from. Don't say you can't learn anything from my blogs.

So, tell me how your day goes. If I get enough comments, I'll draw out a name and send the winner a copy of my latest Kindle book, Images In Scarlet. But I need at least ten comments to make it fun. Okay?

WHY WE SHOULD BLOG

Take a look at Kristen Lamb's latest blog. It's important for everyone trying to build a platform, and she's one of the best.

HOW WE BECOME WRITERS

Sometimes while I'm working diligently at my computer---every day but Sunday---I begin to wonder about my decision to begin a writing career. It was probably an accident brought on by boredom, a rainy Sunday afternoon and a dreadful football game on a television that often only picked up one or two stations like fuzzy underwater shows here in our mountains. That gives you a hint about how long ago it was. Our extended roof antenna plus booster box didn't help much. The stations were in Tulsa and Springfield, a good two to three hours distant by car.

At any rate, I picked up a looseleaf notebook and began to write a story that had been bugging me for months. It was 1982, and there was so much talk about Vietnam vets and their problems readjusting to life in the world. I wondered, if they were having so many problems, what about the women who loved them? And that began my story about an art teacher recently widowed and stuck in her bereavement and a Vietnam vet trapped in the battles of his mind while drawing and painting them. She's asked by his doctor to visit with this patient and try to help him using her artistic abilities.

I had no idea how to put together a novel, just knew that this story would be long. Once I began to write the scenes, I saw that the next step would be research. No Internet, people, so I spent several months poring through books and articles at our library. I probably learned much more than I wanted or needed to know to write the book, but it was fascinating and completely absorbing.

For several years I spent a few hours here and there working on this. Finally bought a small electric typewriter from Sears and began to type out the story. No chapters, often no idea about whose story it was, his or hers. Or how to make it both. But an avid reader, I began to study how other authors did this. And one day while visiting our local craft outlet where I occasionally worked, I met another author and we bonded on the spot. She helped me, I helped her, and we began to meet every Saturday to read what we had written and work on it.

Then we grew curious about other writers in the area and visited some meetings in town. There we met Dusty Richards, who was also at work doing what we were doing. Eventually, though my writer friend disappeared one evening and never showed up again, Dusty and I and some others formed our own group because we couldn't find one we were suited to.

Those first meetings were not at all like they are in our group today, but we were writers struggling to learn. No one had much money. Dusty would attend a conference and bring back notes and handouts to share. Then I began to attend local conferences, OWL and OCW were the first. These were conferences he already attended as well. I have many good memories of nights when five of us would share one motel room to attend a conference. Once six of us rented a trailer at a campsite in which to sleep.

Meanwhile my novel attracted the attention of the wife of a published author, Doug and Mary Jones. Doug sent it to his agent who immediately called and signed me. He never sold that book, but I later pitched and sold my first historical western at a Western Writers of America Conference and that kicked off my brief career in New York with Topaz/Penguin.

The mid-list crash hit at the wrong time for me, my sales were growing, but my career hadn't been built sufficiently to continue contracts. Rather than fight the inevitable, I pulled out after the publication of six novels, and began to write and be published in regional historical nonfiction. Circumstances have led me, slowly, back to my greatest love, fiction, and publication by Ebook publishers.

Oh, yes, that novel that attracted so much attention? I'm rewriting it and bringing it up to date and hope to see it published as an E book sometime this year. We'll see.

Learning online promotion, new formatting, publishing a back list to Kindle, have all taken plenty of time and concentration. Our group continues to flourish and we've seen several members published in the past few years.

So, why do I write? Well, I can't stop now that I'm involved. Stories and voices plague me every day. It's like being haunted by people who want their stories told and I dare not ignore them. What worries me is what will happen to them when I can no longer answer their plea? Oh, well, there's not really time to think about that now. I have a Kindle book to format, two books to promote, more books to write, workshops and conferences to prepare for. And more writer friends to make. It's a great life.