2 posts tagged “tips”

Since my novel is finished, I have entered that terrible limbo where I must crawl over first-timer-mines and hack barbed wire. Which generally means a ton of Miss Snark and honest-to-god, paper-and-ink book research! Papercuts and all. Want me to summarize what I've learned for you all?

Write good.

Ouch, that actually hurt to type. But seriously, people, if you write well and beyond that have a story to tell, the only thing standing in your way is....well, you.

Though the book I linked you to is called Writer's Guide to Book Editors, Publishers and Literary Agents, that's not really the order in which you should go. First, I think competant writers should be able to edit themselves until they are cross-eyed. It just shows a dedication to your work that is necessary in perfecting your craft. If you're not reading your novel 20 times by the time you hand it off to someone else, there's something wrong with you. That's not to say to skip editors. Oh no, my friends. Editors are your salvation. Love your editor. It's just that they should come later, unless you saw no problem with my "write good" sentence above, in which case, get an editor quick! Otherwise, edit your own piece to death until you have an agent. Once you have decided it's perfect, step away and realize that there's no way in hell that it's perfect. Come back, look at it, and decide whether it's worthy. That's a better starting place. Now sit down and research. Not editors. Not publishers but literary agents. Yes, Publishers will sometimes publish someone with an agent but it's rare. Extremely rare. Like the Plague rare. Most places won't even consider you or your work without an agent. Rightfully so. If you can't even convince one person to take the risk by believing in you, why the hell should a publishing house invest anything in you?

So, research literary agents. Don't just send off your stuff to any agent you find. No, research them as people. What works are they interested in? More importantly, what are they expressly NOT interested in? A good tool for this is that book I linked to. And it'd be a good idea to read between the lines. For example, an agent that expressly says, "no satanic trash!" well, you would probably be right to assume that this agent might not be the right one to represent your gay fiction. Yes, "satanic trash" might mean a book about satanism that is trash, but most likely, it's hinting at a background that might not be so thrilled to receive the manuscript for When Harry Met Sam.

Also, number one rule to remember is that you should not be paying an agent. Ever. An agent should only make money when you make money. Meaning, a good agent receives 15% of the sale. That covers all the expenses they undertook trying to sell it too. So, if an agent asks a reading fee, trash 'em. If they ask for you to pay any sort of fee, trash 'em. If they ask you to pay for every copy they send out for consideration, every envelope, the cost of ink, trash 'em. Hell, if they refer you to one specific editor, trash 'em. In all of those cases, the agent is either stupid and unlikely to sell your work, or immoral and getting paid by taking on your work and nickle-and-diming you instead of selling your work. After all, why the hell should they try to get you published if they are earning money by sending you a bill every month? Or if they are sending you and every writer that comes to their door to a specific editor who gives them money for referrels? No, the golden rule is, the agent doesn't get paid until you do and then it's only 15%. No exceptions, people. The internet has helped writers but it's also helped hacks.

Now, when you write a query letter, try not to spend pages summarizing your plot blow-by-blow. Ugh. Don't spend pages telling them how great you are, how great your novel is, how much your friends love it. Don't blow your ego. But don't grab your tail between your legs and say, "Oh, Ma'am, I have no idea how this works. I think my work is really nice and I'd be just so amazingly honored if you would read it, Ma'am. By the way, I love your shoes. Oh, and I piddled in the corner." Be professional. Be straight-forward. Don't say shit you can't back-up. Tell them what makes your work special and any specific, special background you have that would reflect on the piece. But don't tell them that your book is going to cure cancer.

And for god's sake, don't send a form query letter. Would you want to pay special attention to someone who refers to you as "To whom it may concern" or some other meaningless and faceless greeting? No. You'll just get a form refusal letter in reply. You're still likely to get one but writers love form letters; it helps us feel like we're real artists, struggling against the faceless Man keeping us down.

Also, SASE means Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope. Always send one. Even if they don't specifically request it. At worst, you'll waste a couple dimes. At best, you just saved the chances for your manuscript.

Anyways, that's all I have to say about this for now. Time for ibuprofen and tea before again continuing on with the dangerous and likely tragic search for my literary agent.

To send you off, here's a quote from one agent that just tickles me pink.

From Writer's Guide to Book Editors, Publishers, and Literary Agents:

Reading-fee Policy: No reading fee as such. We do, however, request a bush-league, small potato, hardly worth mentioning but ever so popular contribution to our efforts of $20 per submission, which in the past has been used to pay for guard dogs to keep other agents away from our authors, to send those delightfully tacky pens and coasters that publishers like so much, and to pay for all those cocktails at the pools in Palm Springs and Las Vegas where we do our reading (eat your hearts out, you agents who winter in New York). Seriously, each year we receive more and more submissions, and to give each one the time it deserves increases our overhead dramatically. Now, unfortunately, we have also had to purchase haz-mat outfits for all of our staff, body armor, and air testing technology and that's just for the guard dogs. We are now requiring that each submission bear the words on the outside of your envelope, "check enclosed." This is to entice our staff to take the chance on opening your submission. Submissions without these words on the outside fo the envelope are subject to immediate destruction, without return of the contents. If ou do not have a rich aunt, a trust fund, or a three-car garage and cannot afford this fee, we suggest you contact another agent, as we are extremely choosy and now, as you can tell, also somewhat paranoid about opening the mail.

-Sebastian Gibson

Can you tell most ligitimate literary agents find it insulting to even suggest they ask for a reading-fee? Yeah, have to say I love this guy. Funny dude. I'm half-tempted to send along a doggie treat in the query letter for the haz-mat clad guard dogs.

  -Just googled the guy and found him on P&E. Predators and Editors is a great site. Just goes to show you that you must RESEARCH your agents thoroughly. Damn, I'm disappointed in him. He sounded so funny. But apparently he was serious on the reading-fee which is NEVER funny. Still, you see why he was so confusing on responding to that. Because saying "Reading-fee policy: Yes" is a big no-no.  

As much as I love writing, I love reading. In particular, I enjoy reading unpublished works and occasionally giving helpful feedback to their authors. Most of this is fanfiction and fanfiction writers. Despite the fact that many turn their noses up at that medium, I’ve found it to be a great playground for writers. I know that I am the writer I am today because of fanfiction. I’ve been writing original work for years and years but it was through fanfiction that I was first required to write for an audience. That causes a writer to learn from their mistakes a lot sooner than if we are well set in our ways before letting anyone ever see it.

Often, I see the same mistakes commited from writer to writer in the works I read. It’s such a shame when the story and the writer show such promise but both are limited by lessons they have yet to learn. It doesn’t help when the other people reading it are writers that commit the same little sins. These are things we’ve all done. Sometimes, we work it out ourselves and other times we are given a tip from our fellow writer that just turns on that proverbial light bulb. I’ve had both those experiences but I’ve always preferred the tip from my fellow writer. Mainly because of the time it saves me and how it immediately improves my writing.

That is why I’m writing this. I hope to share some of those little tips with you. I won’t focus on minute grammar since you all can search up any grammar site and have it explained far better than I could manage. You don’t need tips from a fellow writer on how to deal with that. Instead, we’ll focus on how to reach out to the reader and how to improve our storytelling qualities.

This post will center on dialogue.

He Said, She Said

One of my favorite things in my writing and reading is dialogue. It furthers the plot and character. It also helps for the reader to feel familiar with the characters in a way exposition can’t accomplish. At least, that is the case when it is done correctly.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to lecture you on what you contain inside your dialogue. How could I? However, I do have a couple tips of how to best present it.

Timing –

Dialogue is its own form of action. Thus it has its own egg timer like any other action. If the exchange is quick, there shouldn’t be much else clogging up the dialogue. Don’t be afraid to leave some dialogue alone. You can go up to half a page with no identifiers at all.

For example:

“Quick! Tell me where the keys are!”

“Why do you need the keys?”

“Look, I don’t have time for-.”

“I don’t like your tone, Missy.”

“…Excuse me, Mrs. Robinson. Might you please hand me those keys, Ma’am? With great haste, perchance, Ma’am.”

“…Now you’re being cheeky.”

“Come on, you fat cow!”

Now, that’s just an example I wrote off the top of my head. However, do you truly think it’d be better writing for me to include description of Alexandra’s beating heart and heaving breath? Or how about an in-depth description of Miss Robinson’s lazy expression and how much that has annoyed Alexandra through the years? If that’s terribly important to the plot, perhaps include it at some other point, where the timing is more fitting for exposition. But I think that the dialogue got most of that across itself, with no bulk muffling the exchange.

Also, the more fluff we put in-between statement and response, the more we run the risk of our reader forgetting what the first statement actually was. We don’t want our reader to have to search back to figure out what they forgot. But if we cannot avoid a piece of exposition between question and answer, our best friend is repetition.

Example:

“Quick! Tell me where the keys are!” Alexandra tried her best to gasp for breath quietly. She knew Mrs. Robinson couldn’t stand the sound and was susceptible to needless interrogation; especially when she believed time was of the essence. The woman turned a lazy expression on her and she knew that to be exactly what was going to happen. She had to swallow the sudden urge to jump across the room and strangle the woman. But violence would require time and she was painfully aware of every second wasted.

 

“Tell you where the keys are? Why?”

It’s a small addition but it keeps your reader from becoming annoyed with your little bit of exposition.

Invisible Words, Soft Words, Loud Words –

I’m not saying that all dialogue should be unaccompanied. Not at all. I mean, any writer immediately thinks of those scenes where there are more than two speakers. Those can be terrible for a writer. We sit there, pulling out our hair, and tormenting ourselves over how to make a group conversation feel natural and flow. It’s so easy to feel as if we’re overusing names or ‘said.’ Then we start getting creative. We start using, “the red-haired woman posed,” or, “the gangly boy exclaimed,” or “her best friend queried.” That just confuses our reader even more. We may start out with four characters having a conversation but with all the other ways we identify them, it seems like we have a dozen people in the room: all posing, exclaiming, and querying. We’ve just done exactly the opposite of what we were going for.

Where we went wrong was LOUD word overload. I’m speaking from personal experience here. I committed this sin often enough in the past. The only excuse I have is that I was young and foolish and those brash words had such sexy spunk.

Loud words:

Shouted, hissed, quipped, snapped, interrogated . . . words rarely having reason to be used. 

What we were really looking for are invisible and soft words. Don’t worry if you are asking yourself what those are. After all, they’re invisible and soft. They aren’t as showy and in your face as LOUD words.

Invisible words:

The, And, Said, Ask, She, He, They . . .

Soft words:

Replied, whispered, answered, but, stated, both . . .

Invisible can be applied to words that we are so accustomed to seeing and have such a fundamental place in our language that our minds take in their information without ever really noticing them. They sneak into the reader’s mind and make sure they get it right without the reader ever truly realizing they were there.

Soft is applied to words that we notice but are quick to forget.

For example: Which is better?

“It’s such a beautiful morning,” she said and he joined her at the window.

“Yes, it is.”

“Mornings like this make me feel so happy.”

“I can tell,” he whispered with a little smile.

She returned it.

“You want to take a walk?” he asked.

She nodded with smile widening.

OR

“It’s such a beautiful morning,” the woman announced causing the man to join her at the window.

“Yes, it is,” he replied.

“Mornings like this make me feel so happy,” she confided to him.

“I can tell,” he stated. The man smiled a little and she returned it.

“You want to take a walk?” the man queried.

I hope you picked the first one. That one pushes the dialogue to the forefront. It doesn’t clog the image and sound with unneeded creativity. Would we know he was replying if we weren’t told? Would we realize she was confiding in him if we weren’t told? Of course, we would. Not only do those words POP out to us when we come across them, but they are needless. I’m sure you understand what I’m saying there, so let’s take that a step further.

Names or Is Your Character Schizophrenic?

Know what else becomes an invisible word? Names. If our main character’s name is Charlie, after a while, the reader will pick up when we are talking about Charlie without really seeing the name. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be there. That’s just saying that it becomes one of those fabulous and oh-so-friendly invisible words. Unfortunately, I can’t illustrate that since an example would be too short for the word to become invisible, but take my word for it that it will within a couple pages. This holds true for supporting characters, as well; even if it might feel like the name is long or too proper.

An example could be taken from a fanfic I read a few days ago: Insidious by Grainne. It’s a very good fanfic and I recommend it. In this case, I use the name of one of the characters as an example.

 Mrs. Mountbatten-Woolley-St. John-Blye

Yes, that is the name of one of the characters. It is mentioned many times despite it being a mouthful. Personally, I like saying it to myself. But I’m weird and I think that’s pre-established by the fact that I’m writing this thing as a break from my novel. I digress. With repetition, even THAT name becomes invisible. Well, not completely invisible but damn close. My mind notes it but my eyes slide right over it.

Though you may feel that a reader will get sick of the name, don’t use different variations or come up with tons of descriptions to take that name’s place. If you’re referring to the character by half a dozen different names and terms, none of them will become invisible and it’ll seem like you’re talking about a dozen different characters. A character should not be referred to beyond two identifiers. That’s not including the rare situation where they must be referred to as woman or man, mother or father, sister or brother . . .

A literary example would be taken from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

Miss Bennet – Jane- Sister

That character does not need to be referred to as:

the beautiful woman

the shy lady

the blonde

Miss Jane

Jane Bennet

Those are needless attempts at variation and a cheap shot at character description.

Pulling those together -

Now you may be thinking, “But without those variations, it seems so bland! There has to be a place for loud words!” To drive the idea home, it’s probably exclaimed like that: definite use of loud word, by the way.

Of course there are places for loud words. But there shouldn’t be more than a handful spread out over each conversation. Just try to use more soft words and invisible words.

An Example:

“I wish he wouldn’t do that,” Betty whispered.

Jessica glanced around the room before leaning closer. “Who?”

“Jamal,” she said.

“What’s he doing?”

“Flirting with every warm body in the room but me.” She sounded spiteful and was quite aware of it. Yet, she couldn’t stop herself.

“Maybe he didn’t see you.”

“He saw me.”

“How do you know? Maybe you need to get his attention.”

“No,” she said even while realizing what was about to happen only a second before the fact.

“Oy! Jamal!” Jessica shouted and waved at him. “Yeah, over here.”

“I’m going to kill you,” she hissed but her sister seemed unconcerned.

“You’re welcome.”

Did you notice the loud words? There were only two of them: Shouted and Hissed. One right after the other. Loud words tend to sprout other ones. Makes sense really. If someone shouts at you, aren’t you likely to shout back? I know I am. Did you notice the soft word in there? Whispered. I only used two loud words and one soft word though the dialogue jumps back and forth twelve times. The reader’s smart. We don’t need to tell them the force and emotion in every little statement; only the ones where the force and emotion matter. And I didn’t come up with a new descriptor for the two girls every time they talked. I used: she, Betty, sister, and Jessica. There’s absolutely no need for more than that.

Only One More Point, I swear!

Perhaps we need to identify who’s talking but we’re sick of ‘said’ and there’s no need for loud words. There’s another way to identify who’s talking in dialogue without sticking some modifier on the end or leaving it completely hanging.

I illustrated it above.  We do so by including a sentence or even a couple that gives the reader direction of the speaker and/or the tone.

The example:

“Flirting with every warm body in the room but me.” She sounded spiteful and was quite aware of it. Yet, she couldn’t stop herself.

“Maybe he didn’t see you.”

Notice how it has both the advantage of no identifier tacked on the end while still directing the reader’s interpretation. Isn’t that handy? The only threat with that is using it too often and making the dialogue too bulky or going on too long and ending up with a bit of exposition where it doesn’t belong.

Putting These to Use -

This is a pretty big post when the overall point is to trim down when presenting your dialogue. And I certainly don’t mean to be condescending. I have committed all these sins in the past. I learned how to see and overcome them through practice and the guidance of other writers. I want to offer these tips of what I have learned because it has vastly improved my writing and at some point, some writer was kind enough to do the same for me. Everyone’s style is different and that’s great. I’m not trying to make you write like me. How boring would that be? No, this is merely illustrating good bone structure. What you mold onto it is what makes a good writer and what makes a great story. I’m putting this out there in the hope that I can help others in the same way that other writers have helped me.

Go, little birdie, write some great dialogue for me to later read and enjoy. I’ll be in the kitchen getting some Ibuprofen.