Battling the Blues

No, this blog post isn't about trying to wrestle into my service blues uniform- thank you, I no longer have to wear them- yeah!!! No, this is about feeling "blue" when you don't get any sales. Yeah, I'm there right now. Haven't sold a book in over 20 days- nada, nothing, zip, zilch. Kinda makes you feel down. And not to add insult, I finally got my first royalties payment from Kindle- for 8 months of sales, I got paid $10.72. I know, some people would be thrilled to get that, but you must realize, I've had some of my books out over a year, and I'da thought by then my sales would have been better. I also sell on Smashwords, and tend to do a bit better there. But still, nothing to be considered impressive.

So, what am I doing to lift my funk? Well, a little poo-pooing to my best friend was somewhat helpful- she's great at pep talks. I read a few good blogs by other people (one of them a struggling screenwriter); learned that I'm not the only one (of course I knew this). Then I spent a whopping .99 on a Kindle book on sales and marketing of books- I have been reading this. And I've been Facebooking with a few friends who assure me that I'm not a crappy writer-- thanks all.

Deciding there is no point in wallowing in my own self pity (although with the chaos going on in my life right now, it kinda feels good), I decided to do some marketing. I went on Twitter and made a few posts, including my Amazon author's page, and my Smashwords page. I also posted Project Dragonslayers on Smashwords at 75% off for the 4th of July weekend. Have I gotten any sales? No, but I'm hoping. I've posted them as much as possible on FB- without hopefully being considered a pest or rude. Will this generate sales? Maybe. And I also got a link to another blog for listing Kindle books- I jumped on this one. I am learning not to look a gift horse in the mouth- I have three of them to feed, I need to sell books!

All said and done, I put in a few hours over the last couple of days in marketing. I know, you seasoned vets are laughing, saying you need to do 2x that much. Well, considering I'm retiring from the Air Force next week, moving from NJ to KY, and won't have internet right away, I'm doing the best I can until we get hooked up. And I'll have a house in complete disorder until we can actually move into the house we're supposed to be living in. Yeah, fun, wish me luck. But once all the dust settles, I hope to get my butt in gear, write like a mad woman, and do as much marketing as I can. I'd like to see my royalties checks come in with more digits in front of the decimal point. Yeah, that would fight the blues.

Until next time, my creatively obsessed friends,

Kathy 

Writer- edit thyself-mostly!

 

When you read a book and find a typo, misspelled word, or a sentence that simply doesn’t read well, what do you think of that writer? Lazy? Uneducated? Unedited? Probably any or all of the above. Do you want to continue reading that book? Or will you toss it aside in favor of a better one? Chances are if you tossed it, you won’t read anything from that author again. Now, what if it was your book that someone tossed? Or wrote a bad review citing all the errors? I’m sure that wouldn’t make you happy. As authors, (and especially Indie authors) we should strive to put out the finest quality work we can. No excuses!

Okay, now that you have your masterpiece together, now what? Well, you can’t send it out to the adoring public without a few (usually many) editing passes. Sending out an unedited book will do two things: kill you as an author, and kill your book. The public wants to read books written by intelligent, educated people. I’m not saying you need to write your book with a college level vocabulary; no, simply put out a GOOD product, as free from errors as possible.

How do you go about doing this? I’m going to use MS Word as my platform for instruction. Recently I upgraded to Office 2010, and it has a few interesting differences, but nothing that I’ve found in the spelling and editing departments. So pretty much any MS Word version you have will do the trick. If you use any other word processing software, I’m sure they have similar capabilities to Word.

Editing is the most boring, frustrating part of being a writer. But if you use the tools available to you, it’s not as painful as you think. Just making sure everything is spelled right can drive you batty, especially if you’re typing in either a dialect, or a foreign language (Word doesn’t take kindly to them). Those particular items will wreak havoc with spell-check and drive you insane. You can, however, teach spell-check to recognize names, languages, and dialects. The most important part is YOU need to make sure they are spelled right! Don’t tell spell-check the word is right, and it’s not, and the rest of your document will be wrong—what a mess!

A quick word about dialogue: have your characters speak how you speak, not how you write. Humans don’t speak with perfect diction and grammar, or in complete sentences, why should your characters? I can see having a well-educated character speaking with good grammar, but a street hood? Or someone from the south with an accent? We tend to speak in fragments; don’t be afraid to let your characters be who they are. Southerners tend to drop “g’s” from their words, so going is goin’, playing is playin’, and you get the idea. Don’t overdo an accent or you’ll tick off your reader. You can introduce the character, say they have a strong accent, and then use a few words here and there to punctuate it. The same goes with the use of foreign languages. It’s okay to use them to add flavor and color to the scene, but do translate somehow for your reader. Not all of us speak Elvin, Spanish, Norwegian, or any language you may create. Readers may read, but they’re not mind readers.

Using spell-check is your single best friend in the war against typos. Word will put a wiggly red line under any word it feels is not spelled correctly. I tend to type and read a little, so most of what I catch is rather quick. Some will type for a while and then go back and catch errors. It’s really your own personal preference. Just don’t forget to do it! Don’t forget if you have a word you want to use and aren’t sure of the actual proper usage, you can highlight the word, right click and “look up” the questionable word. Use your available resources.

Auto-correct—you will either love it or hate it. I’m 50/50 in that department. Word is smart enough to follow along as you type, and if you misspell a word, and it thinks it knows the word, it can change it for you. Now, if you absolutely hate auto-correct, you can turn it off. To do this: Go to the circle button in the top left corner of the screen and go to “Word Options.” Click on “proofing” which will open up a window to the right with all your correction options. Take a look around this window, there’s tons of stuff that will help you out later. In the auto-correct function, you can add words and if spell-check comes across them and you’ve misspelled them, it will fix it for you. And there’s also the lazy way of typing—using macros. If you have a name or word you type a lot and you get tired of typing it a lot (or even a difficult spelling of a name) you can tell spell-check to finish it for you. For instance, I have a demon in one of my books, its name is Khyrpizhus, a long, hard to type name. You can tell spell-check to recognize the first few letters and then to complete the word for you. So if I was to type Khy, spell-check would automatically finish the word for you. But this can be a double edged sword, so be careful.

Spelling and grammar pretty much go hand in hand. Unless you are writing in a dialect, grammar is pretty important. The next section under the proofing tab is “When correcting spelling and grammar in Word.” I strongly recommend checking all the boxes. In the drop down box, you can select grammar only or grammar and style. If you pick the grammar and style, it will nit-pick all your sentences and warns you of passive voice and other things. It’s not a bad thing, according to statistics; a novel should have less than 4% passive voice.

How do you find the passive voice? Well, if you have that option turned on, it will leave a green squiggly line under the passive section. If not, it’s up to you to decide what is passive. But here’s a clue- if you use “was” “had” “were” or any version of those words, you’re treading into a passive voice. I’m notorious for “was” and I will freely admit that I now scan my documents for it before going on. It’s easy, just use the “Find” option on the top tool bar. You can do that for any word that you think you’ve used too much—and we all have them!

Your next best friend will be the Readability Statistics in the proofing tab. This will give you the percentage of passive voice and also let you know what grade level you are writing at. Sorry, I’m a “keep it simple person.” Most of my works are 3^rd-4^th grade reading level.  I hate having to look words up to figure them out, it slows down the story. Keep it simple and keep your readers happy. Shoot for less than 4% passive voice. The higher the Reading Ease percent is, the easier it is to read. And the scale below it will tell you what grade level you are writing at. This whole section is a wealth of information, giving you word count for the section, average sentence length, and words per sentence. The shorter the sentences, the faster the book will read.

Now that you have everything working for you, it’s time to read through your document and check it over. I’ve heard some folks read it backwards to catch errors—not my slice of pie. You’ll find what works for you. Most important, keep it consistent. Try and devote a certain amount of time to editing. Don’t allow yourself to get tired, or you’ll start missing things. Reading aloud is another good tactic. If it doesn’t sound right, it probably isn’t. There are programs like Autocrit, but if you don’t want the expense, you can use the “find” function in Word. You just have to know the words you’re looking for.

Another thing to look for is run-on sentences and run-on paragraphs. Can they be successfully broken up without disjoining the storyline? If so, do it. Readers like to get the story going, and not have to be bogged down with long narratives. Describe what you need, move on, and let your characters tell the story. Studies show readers prefer books with a good helping of dialogue. White space means a page turner, and readers want to see what comes next. Patience is not always one of their virtues. There is no hard and fast rule for sentence and paragraph length. Some say 3-6 sentences is adequate for a paragraph. Some say you can have a 1 word paragraph. Not sure about that, but I suppose in the right situation it’s possible.

Once you think your work is complete, it’s not. I highly recommend finding 2-3 more sets of eyes to look it over. Some people (like me) have a paid copy editor, and their job is to bleed all over your work and show you the errors of your ways. Don’t get discouraged by red (or whatever color they use), think if it as a learning experience and file the information in the back of your mind NOT to make those mistakes again. Do we? Heck yeah! But the object is to make less work for your editor, and in the end, it’s less work for you, because you get to go back and fix all the errors. A good copy editor is worth their weight in gold, so keep them happy!

Right, you’re now armed with handy tools in which to do some self editing, it’s time for you to quit reading this blog and get to work!

Until next time, my creatively obsessed friends….

Kathy

Your plot shouldn't be in a cemetary.

Okay, I apologize for the lack of blogs lately. I’ve been busy finishing books, entertaining friends from foreign countries, and trying to get my house sold so I can retire. Yeah, busy! Sometimes I think my life is a story in itself: plenty of action, plenty of drama.

So, we shall carry on to the next part of the writing blog—the plot. If you don’t have one, you don’t have a story; simple as that. Your plot is the motivation your characters have to do something. I’m going to use the “plot arc” commonly used in screenplays, simply because it applies to novels as well, just the number of pages is different.

Setting the stage: the first few pages, or perhaps a chapter or two are normally devoted to meeting your characters and setting up what their mission will be. The quicker you cut to the chase, the better. How many of you have read books that droned on about characters, the setting (the physical one) and anything else that could be considered trivial? Boring! At times, I must admit, I do spend a little more time than I should on some of those points. Getting the action going is the key to keeping your readers enthralled and looking for more.

My best friend occasionally harps on me (lovingly, of course) that I spend too much time building my characters and backstory. Admittedly, it’s a friendly slap up side the head telling me I need to rethink my opening; that I’m dragging. I go back, read, and then work on making it catchier, knowing that my first few paragraphs set the tone of the whole book. If they aren’t good, people will pass on it. So make those first few paragraphs count! Try and introduce dialogue early, let your characters tell the story. Narrative is boring, but necessary, use only enough to keep the story rounded and moving.

The passages are from a recently finished novel "Space Junk" that hasn't been to my editor yet--so there may be a few hiccups; but it'll work for our purpose.  Let's do a little test and see which one you prefer reading:

“Shmuff, where’s my warp drive?!” Space freighter Captain Dar Meltom bellowed into his comm headset. He owned the Marsuian, the fastest and most heavily armed ship in the galaxy. But today, fast was not happening. On his tail were half a dozen Soothian pirate ships determined to take him.

“What? What do you mean the intake manifold on the particle accelerator is clogged?! I need warp NOW!” He was knocked sideways as a blast from a laser cannon shook the vessel. “Can’t you fix it? No? Son-of-a-bitch!” More blasts rocked the ship. “What about shields? Can you give me more power to the shields?” He poked at the controls on the bridge panel, time running out. “Look, Schmuff, I need you to divert all available power to the rear shields. We can’t let ’em breech the containment field to the shuttle bay.” 

And here’s the second passage:

Parnela stepped off the shuttle, flanked by her usual detail of four male Kruelian soldiers. This journey made the second trip to Versith in the last few months. She found the planet to be the most depressing place she’d ever seen. A far cry from her own beautiful, peaceful planet covered in lush greenery. She’d rather see Kruelis destroyed than have it become like this place.

A group of Renthids stood by to escort her to Mognath. As she walked down the hall, she saw a group of slaves heading toward the shuttle bay. They were heavily guarded by other Renthids. One slave in particular caught her eye. It wasn’t because she found him overly attractive, she really couldn’t tell because of all the grime on him. But his shock of green hair stood out against the drab surroundings. She realized he must be Satiren. Parnela found it odd to see one in this part of the galaxy. The Satirens usually stayed far away in the Beta sector.

Okay, I cheated a little and used passages from the same book. The first one was the actual first two paragraphs, the other, later in the book—but it could very well have been the opening. Notice how different they read? The first was action, action, action. It grabs the reader, immediately sucking them in; the second, stands off a bit more, not drawing you in so close.

The basic screenplay is divided into 3 acts. Within those 3 acts, you usually find Act I is the set up (usually from pages 1-30) Act II is the confrontation (31-90) and Act III is the resolution (91-120). It’s funny, in some movies you can almost run a stopwatch and find the different acts. In a book, your plot may flow more loosely, time for you is not a complete hang-up (page count might be, however).

In a novel you have more time to set your character(s) up, introduce the conflict, and allow your character(s) time to resolve it. I think the most important of all is to create a conflict the reader can associate with. Is it a story of good over evil? Triumph in the face of adversity? Boy meets girl, boy likes girl, girl doesn’t like boy? Your plot will carry a common theme in which your reader should be able to understand. Don’t go crazy with a storyline that no one can “get into” that’s the fastest way to lose a reader.

And keep it simple if entirely possible. I’ve read books that you needed a dictionary to figure out, or worse, a physics degree. The majority of people read to enjoy, so let them enjoy escaping into the world you created—don’t bog them down with words only a college professor would use. Most people are comfortable reading at a 3^rd to 6^th grade reading level. Smaller words, shorter sentences also help to move a book along. Use the Fleish-Kincade reading level that is found in the Word Options/Proofing section. It’s awfully handy!

If you’re into the nitty-gritty, you can study plot points further. There are 8 well-known plot points used by Nigel Watts in his books. They consist of: 1. Stasis, 2. Trigger, 3. The quest, 4. Surprise, 5. Critical choice, 6.  Climax, 7. Reversal, 8. Resolution.  You can find further information on them on this website:

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/how-to-structure-a-story-the-eight-point-arc/

or, the book: “Writing a Novel and Getting Published” by Nigel Watts.

Plot twists:

Oh, these are my favorite! It’s so fun to have your character about to complete his mission and you throw in a monkey wrench, and foil his best laid plans. Here’s just a tiny twist to show you how a good plan can be foiled, or at least delayed:

Slowly he approached the Plexus. He thought the sound of his boots on the dusty gravel would alert the guard, but the loud humming of the device seemed to be masking his approach. Dar paused when he reached the opposite side of the “tin can” and gathered his nerves. One guard, just one guard was all that stood between him and the precious device. Taking several deep breaths, he readied for battle. He figured he’d come around from the back and surprise the guard, one shot, and that would be it.

He peered around the corner, getting ready to attack. His heart jumped when he saw another guard approaching. Dar ducked back and waited. He hoped they wouldn’t make a patrol around the device, there wasn’t anywhere for him to hide, and a hasty retreat was out of the question, there wasn’t any cover around for hundreds of yards. If confronted, he’d have to fight. He listened as the guards talked loudly for quite some time. They were speaking Renthis, a language he wasn’t familiar with. He knew a few words of Soothian, but despite the planets being “twins” in the galaxy—located within gravitational pull of one another, the species spoke very different languages.

Just a “momentary monkey wrench” can add some tension and drama to an otherwise anti-climactic scene. Of course the character does complete his mission, but not more than a few pages later, I throw another one in:

Going down two levels, Dar stopped to get his bearings. More aliens pushed by him, the noise, deafening. The ground shook constantly, and he figured he didn’t have much time. Making his decision, he went left, hoping it was the correct way. He knew he’d only get one shot at this. Hurrying along, he fought his way through the falling debris to the infirmary.

Bursting through the door, he hollered, “Aggalith! Emelith!” Wasting no time, he began searching. The infirmary was small, so there wasn’t much to search. “Aggalith! Where are you?” He ran to the kitchen. He found Aggalith trapped under a fallen beam, Emelith frantically trying to move it.

“Dar! Help!” she screamed, her little fingers digging madly.

He quickly joined in her digging frenzy.

Aggalith lay helpless. “Dar, take her, get her out of here!” he said, trying to push them away. “I am old, she still has many years, take her, please.”

“No,” he replied, still digging. “Are you hurt?”

“My leg is pinned, I don’t think I’m really hurt much, if any.”

A rock fell from the ceiling, smacking Dar on the head, he winced in pain. He continued digging, seeing that he was actually making progress. The planet continued to shake. “Hurry, Dar!” Emelith cried.

It wasn’t bad enough the character had to pick his way through dangerous tunnels to get to his friends, then I threw the little twist that one of them was trapped under a ceiling beam—complicating things even further. The more tension you can create, and the harder you can get your reader’s heart to pound with being caught up in the action, the better you’ve done your job. You want the reader to be sucked into the story and be in such a frame of mind that they want to jump in and help your characters.

The key to a successful story is to have a solid plot and a good smattering of twists thrown in to keep the reader off balance—keep them guessing what will happen next. All right, I’ll leave it at there for now. I think the next blog will be about self-editing. Yes, I use a copy editor, and it’s a good choice. But you want to do as much self-editing as possible before sending off to an editor, so they won’t be pulling their hair out with so many mistakes.

Until next time, my creatively obsessed friends.

Hey Stoopid!

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hey+stoopid+alice+cooper+video&aq=f

OK, watch that if you want, it's just Mr. Cooper reiterating how stupid some people can be. Why did I call this post Hey Stoopid? Well, that's what you are if you don't do research!! How many of you have read a book and realized the author didn't have a clue about the subject they were writing about? Kinda gives authors a bad name, huh? 

Here's a quote from my author buddy Blaze McRob:

"If a story is really bad, I don't finish it. Some tales are left to the imagination, but others need some basis in fact to bring the believability out. I get pissed and would love to pound the holy shit out of the person who wasted my time with inane garbage. I loved reading the old Mickey Spillane novels because he knew the city he wrote about and what happened there."

So do you really wanna waste you hard-earned pennies on a book that's gonna suck? NO! And would you wanna waste someone else's hard earned pennies on your book? I would hope not. As authors, our job is to strive to put out the BEST quality work you can. So what if research takes time, so does writing the book in the first place. Why not take a little extra time and make it right? Even Science Fiction has some research that needs to be done. 

When I started writing my first novel, Project: Dragonslayers, I started it when there was NO internet! (Yeah, I really am that old) If I wanted to do research, I'd have to either dredge around on the entry hall floor of the house to find the right encyclopedia (you know, those big, heavy, dusty books no one reads anymore) or I had to climb on my bike and ride 6 miles to the local library and try and find what I wanted using the Dewey Decimal system. It sucked! So I made up a lot of stuff. It was a good thing for me that novel got shoved in a drawer for quite a few years before I unearthed it and decided to finish it. Now, there was the magic of the internet at my fingertips! Oh, the amazing amount of information I gleaned from the masses of electronic pages. I was in heaven!! Things that I had written about that I thought were "science fiction" were indeed, "science fact." A whole new world was opened to me. 

Don't be afraid to use the internet. Wikipedia is one of my favorite starting places. Starting, yes. Not all the information there is 100% correct, but many times there are links at the bottom to other pages which are very handy. They may take you on a wild goose chase and dump you at the Holy Grail of your chosen source information. Another of my VERY favorites is Google Earth (GE). It can be a royal pain to download, but once on your desktop, is an invaluable tool for finding locations. I've never been to Yemen, nor do I care to go there, but I was able to give a pretty accurate description of the dormant volcano on the tip of the Aden peninsula. GE will even let you measure distances in a variety of lengths. So cool!

And my other way to find information, just use a search engine and type in roughly what you're looking for. I needed information on nanotechnology, well, I knew MIT was working on stuff, so I poked around their website and another called MIT World, and found this:

http://web.mit.edu/isn/  

and this:    http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/140     both are super cool!

Now, I didn't use the technology exactly how they described, but it gave me enough information to be able to have my characters employ the nanos in a slightly different, but plausible manner.

To sum it all up. You don't want to sell your readers short on your hard work. If you do, and they aren't happy, then they won't buy any more of your books. Give them a bang-up story with juicy, realistic morsels and they'll come back for more, and maybe dessert! Speaking of, I'm off to get some dinner before this beer really goes to my head!  I can see the headlines now: "Blogging on Boddington's."

Until next time, my creatively obsessed friends,

Kathy

Next installment: The Plot.

"I write-therefore I am" Right?

Ah, a lovely, warm spring day. The birds are singing, the kids in the neighborhood are screaming, dogs barking, and I'm seriously wondering how I managed to get a nap!

All things aside, let's delve into the next part of this "I-don't-know-how-many-part blog"-- Are we writers, or are we authors? Hmm, let's see what the good ol' dictionary has to say:

Author:

–noun

a person who writes a novel, poem, essay, etc.; the composer of a literary work, as distinguished from a compiler, translator, editor, or copyist.

the literary production or productions of a writer: to find a passage in an author.

the maker of anything; creator; originator: the author of a new tax plan.

Computers . the writer of a software program, especially a hypertext or multimedia application.

–verb (used with object)

to write; be the author of: He authored a history of the civil war.

to originate; create a design for: She authored a new system for teaching chemistry. 

 

Writer:

 noun

a person engaged in writing  books, articles, stories, etc., especially as an occupation or profession; an author or journalist.

a clerk, scribe, or the like.

a person who commits his or her thoughts, ideas, etc., to writing: an expert letter writer.

(in a piece of writing) the author (used as a circumlocution for “I,” “me,” “my,” etc.): The writer wishes to state….

a person who writes  or is able to write: a writer in script.

Stock Exchange . someone who sells options.

Scot. a lawyer or solicitor.

 

Hmm, is it me, or do they, with minor variances, sound the same?

 

So, you wanna be a writer/author? What's it gonna take? 

First of all, you need to have ideas--lots of 'em. Why? Cause you need to have enough to last the length of your chosen work- poetry, short story, novella, novel, or series.

 

OK, so you got this fantastic idea burning a whole in your brain, and you gotta get it out. How? Well, you can sit down at a computer, or grab some paper and let it flow. This is good for getting the basic idea out of your head. Sometimes I have to do this or the idea just keeps haunting me until I do. What do you end up with? Sometimes it's a nice little synopsis, other times, it's just an idea with maybe a few plot points and some great character names. But either way, it's cool, just let it be for a few days. Why leave it alone? Because your brain will sooner or later decide to add to that info. Now you're getting the basis for a story. 

 

What next? Well, your idea needs to take shape. You as the author have to decide just where this story is going. How will it end? Yeah, having an ending in mind is nice, but I can honestly say I've started writing a book and really didn't have an idea how it would end. And I've heard from several other authors who do that too. It's all good, either way. But you must decide the main aim of your story- what is the character's mission? It may not sound like it, but there's a mission in every book. So, for now, you need to make a rough outline of what you think will happen in the book. Don't worry about chapters, page or word count, just let it flow.

 

It takes time to grow as a writer. You must study the trade like it's a school class. Find a few books on grammar, and ones on how to write in which particular format you are aiming for- novel, short story, etc. Do a little reading up. It also helps to read some of the folks who your genre is based in-- Okay, okay, I know, I'm probably the WORST about that last point. I tend to write more than I read. Yes, shame on me! But most important of all: find your own style. Your work will be unique to you, let your inner creativity shine. We're all tired of movie remakes, right? So don't remake someone else's book. It's your own baby!

 

Next post: Research. I can't tell you how many times I've read a book (or someone else read a book and told me) that whomever wrote it didn't do research into their chosen subject. Does that irritate you? It does me!

 

So, until next time my creatively obsessed friends...

 

Kathy