Wednesday, November 29, 2006

I Admit, I Have a Pet Peeve

Today’s blog is really more of a rant about a pet peeve than anything, but it’s a valid pet peeve and so I shall indulge myself.

I recently picked up a novel where the word “admitted” was used about four times, and only three of those times was it used correctly. “Admitted” should be used when your character is saying something that they really don’t want to say but they realize they have to. For instance:

“I killed Molly Malone,” he admitted.

“I have a crush on the guy who killed Molly Malone,” she admitted.

“I hid the letter that contained the secret plans,” he admitted.



However, you should not use that word for simple exchanges, such as the following.


“I’m hungry,” she admitted.

“I’m Molly Malone,” she admitted.

“I have a secret fondness for cream puffs,” he admitted.



“Admit” is a weight-bearing word, much like “confess.” When you see “admit” or “confess,” you automatically gear yourself up for something big, and then it’s a letdown when you don’t get the something big. In addition, because it’s a weight-bearing word, you should only use it once per manuscript. Any word that calls attention to itself by its very nature ought to be used sparingly.

And them’s my thoughts for today.

Monday, November 13, 2006

Making Your Office Writer-friendly

Okay, okay, so I don’t have an office. I will someday, but for right now, I have a corner in my bedroom. Granted, since the move, it’s a bigger corner than I had before. I can scoot my chair back without hitting my bed. I’ve got elbow room on both sides and a great window at my left. It gives me more scope for the imagination than my old room.

There’s just one problem. I haven’t had the time to put this area together the way I want to. See, my husband is a day sleeper and I get most of my unpacking, etc, done during the day, but because Hubby is in the bedroom all afternoon, the bedroom is sadly neglected. I’m getting ready for bed when he gets up, and I have pulled a few “unpack until three a.m.” shifts, but those aren’t really ideal. So my office area isn’t perfect yet.

But, soon it will be. I had the honor to meet artist Carol Harding this last Saturday, and she gave me a print of her piece “Symbols of the Orient” which will be on display at the Springville Art Museum. This piece is so beautiful. It shows a Japanese wedding kimono and some black pottery, and you can see the stitches of embroidery on the kimono. It’s amazing how she created that with pastels. The picture ties right in with “Nothing to Regret” and with the sequel which I’m currently finishing up. (I know, I keep saying it’s almost done. Do you know how hard it is to really finish up historical fiction?) I am going to frame this picture and hang it right over my desk.

Which, in a long, roundabout way, brings me to the real topic of this blog. Is your writing area conducive to writing? Do you have your papers under control? Do you have pens and pencils handy, do you have Post-it notes to hang up reminders to yourself, and is it a place where you feel you truly can be creative? When my desk is cluttered and I can’t find anything I’m looking for, it slows down my creative juices. When I can only sneak in five minutes to write and four minutes is spent looking for that quote I know I put right there, it’s not a good use of my time.

Additionally, is it beautiful? Do you have pictures that inspire you, quotes that motivate you hanging on the walls? Have you surrounded yourself with things that feed your spirit? Right now I have my grandmother’s clock hanging to my left, pictures of my grandfather and great-great-grandparents in frames on top of the desk, and a ceramic mug that fellow Storymaker Shirley Bahlmann gave me. And I have plans to not only hang up the Carol Harding, but I’m going to take my books down to Kinko’s and have the covers made into 8 X 10 pictures to go on either side of the painting. I’ll be surrounded by beauty on all sides.

Remember to feed your soul while you write. True, most of your time will be spent staring at the screen, but when your eyes do wander, let them land on things that uplift and inspire you.

Friday, November 10, 2006

Writer Tip #22 -- Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing is the method by which you drop hints to your reader about something that is going to happen later in the book. Sometimes you want your reader to suspect, and sometimes you want them caught completely off-guard. If you do want them to have an inkling, foreshadowing is what you’re after.

Say, for instance, that Sally is going to die from a drug overdose. In all of her outward appearances, she’s a respectable citizen, choir member, volunteer at the community center, and no one would ever suspect her of being a drug user. When she dies, it’s going to be so unexpected that the reader won’t really buy it. But what if George walks in on her and sees her slip something into her purse, and she’s acting strangely. He doesn’t ask her about it because it’s none of his business, but later, when she’s dead and the drugs are found in her purse, it will make sense to the reader and they won’t feel as left out as they would otherwise.

If you want to do a little foreshadowing but still have Sally’s death be a surprise, you do want to be subtle. You wouldn’t necessarily go through the manuscript and show Sally experiencing all the classic signs of drug addiction unless you wanted the reader to know it all along. Readers are very smart. They’re looking for plot twists. They’ll take each sentence and look for the hidden mystery. If you don’t want them to know, you can’t spell it out.

Let’s say cousin Ed turns out to be a thief. It would be good to have money turn up missing from time to time, maybe an hour or two after Ed leaves the house, or even the next day. If this plot element is a surprise, don’t have it happen every time Ed comes, and don’t discover it until he’s been gone for a while. Put plenty of other characters in there that it could have been, and possibly even more likely characters than Ed.

The #1 mistake authors make when they are foreshadowing is to use the expression “Little did they know.” Poor Aunt Gloria, fretting and fuming over the $20 missing from her purse. She needs it to pay for her heart medication and she can’t imagine what could have happened to it. But little did she know, Ed stole the money, and if she knew, she’d have a heart attack. Of course she didn’t know. If she knew, it wouldn’t be a mystery. When you say something like “Little did they know,” you’re telling the reader things that the characters themselves don’t know, and you yank the reader out of that third person POV you’ve created into a world where the narrator and the reader are sharing secrets. That’s very jarring to the reader and throws them out of the world of pretend.

It’s not difficult to plant subtle clues. What is difficult is knowing when to stop.

SPOILER ALERT: In my book “Strength to Endure,” Anneliese has a crush on Kurt right from the start, but he’s enough older than she is that she doesn’t think he could possibly be interested in her. He’s going off to college to become a professor, while she’s just a girl from the farm. At one point, she tells him that he’s very wise, and he tells her that she’s very young. She takes that to mean that she’s too young for him, but when we see them get together, we read a double meaning into that. He’s reminding himself that she’s too young, and that he’d better keep some distance for the time being.

In summary, to foreshadow, drop vague hints. Show an occasional hole in the character’s armor of secrecy. Give the other characters reason to wonder, but also show holes in the other characters as well. When the big moment of revelation arrives, the reader should be able to say, “Wow! What a surprise! I didn’t see that coming! Although, now that I really think about it, he did come to the Halloween party as Jerry Springer. I see how it all ties together now.”

Thursday, November 09, 2006

A Few of My Favorite Things

Every so often, a blogger will blog about their top ten favorite things, and, not wanting to feel left out, I decided I would too. There’s enough room on the playground, right? But not being able to narrow it down to ten, this is a list of a random number, covering random topics.

Best Scrapbook Store – Keeping Memories Alive in Spanish Fork, Utah. They have an amazing selection of paper, cardstock, stickers – you name it. They ship anywhere, and they were actually the store who invented scrapbooking (as we know it) in the first place.


Best Brand of Pen – Bic. Not only is it a good pen, but the letters “BIC” could stand for Believe In Christ. A pen that bears its testimony is a pen for me. There will not be a favorite pencil category, though. I hate pencils.

Best Kiss in a Book – The kiss between the nurse and the doctor in “Fire By Night” by Lynn Austin. Beyond a doubt.

Best Kiss in a Movie – "Somewhere in Time," the kiss between Richard and Elise when he takes her back to her room after their day together. I get goosebumps every single time.

Best Ice Cream – Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food. Absolutely heavenly. However, I’m allergic to ice cream and lose the hearing in one or both ears every time I eat it, so this is a painful topic for me.

Best Pizza – Papa Murphy’s Gourmet Vegetarian. You wouldn’t automatically think that a pizza with artichokes on it would be delicious, but it really, really is.

Best Sandwich Chain – Quizno’s. It’s absolutely delicious. Subway half-heartedly tries with their toasted subs, but it’s a feeble attempt at best.

Best Smell – A baby fresh out of the tub where they have been washed with Baby Magic. Best perfume in the world.

Best Time of the Day – Comes right after the baby is washed, and everyone is in bed and finally asleep.

Best Sound – Listening to my husband load the dishwasher.

Best Christmas Carols – “Mary, Did You Know” by either Donny Osmond or Kenny Rogers and Wynonna, and “O, Holy Night” as sung by Josh Groban.

Best James Bond – Pierce Brosnan. Was that even a real question?

Best Place to Read – In bed. With chocolate.

Of course, this is all just my opinion only.

Monday, November 06, 2006

Some Examples of Great Writing

You all remember that nationally published book I dissected and criticized to pieces? I recently read a book that impressed me so much, I decided to balance out the scales and tell you all the good things about it. The novel is “A White Bird Flying” by Bess Streeter Aldrich, a well-known author of the same type as Willa Cather, also from Nebraska but a little bit after Cather.

In a nutshell, the main character is Laura Deal, a girl who aspires to be an author and has decided not to get married so she can pursue her career. Her grandmother, recently deceased, is the only member of her family who understood her dreams, and she feels alone now that her grandmother is gone. As she grows up, she is firm in her conviction not to marry, but she almost turns away from the love that was being offered to her.

Here are some snippets that I particularly enjoyed:

“Eloise always picked a subject to pieces, squeezed the parts dry and then put them together again.”

“Christine Reinmueller, Grandma’s neighbor and friend for sixty years, came over, her blue calico dress gathered on full at the place where her waistline should have been, her colorless hair braided in moist flat strands and wound from ear to ear, like a miniature braided rug that had been pinned on the back of her head.”

“The mother was one of those highly efficient women who would have arranged the stars in symmetrical rows and dispensed with the Milky Way as being too messy.”

“Allen in evening clothes was Apollo in a tuxedo.”

A conversation between Laura and Allen. She’s refusing his proposal and he’s trying to talk her into it:

Allen: “And you wouldn’t even have to leave your home to do your kind of work. Look at your own Aunt Isabelle Rhoades in Chicago. Hasn’t she been a professional singer and music teacher ever since she and Harrison Rhoades were married?”

Laura: “Yes, but they’re different. They work together. He composes and she sings.”

Allen: “Well, so could we. You’d write, and I’d sharpen your pencils.”

There were many, many more well-worded sentences and passages in this book, but I’d have to start from the front and copy in the entire text in order to share them all. I encourage you to go get a copy and enjoy it start to finish for yourself.

Why Do We Edit?

If I had my way, I would write perfectly from the very start of the manuscript and I would never have to edit. I don’t like to edit. After about the fourth pass, I get a very “been there, done that, want to throw it under a train” feeling and I start to get sick and tired of the story. That’s always a good time to take a break, but I know that I have to come back and edit it again. Why?

I was explaining the “why” to a friend the other day, and in the back of my mind I heard a little voice that sounded surprisingly like me saying, “This would make a great blog.” So, folks, here’s the why.

When you write a book, your job as the author is to create a world for your reader. You pull them into it from the first pages, wrap them in cords of suspense or in warm fluffy blankets of romance, and you keep them there. You feed them with plot and dialogue. You entice them with twists and turns. You make your book a place they want to be, and they hate to pull themselves away for any reason. You want to keep their attention riveted on your words, on the spell that you have cast. You don’t want anything to interrupt that hypnotic state you’ve so carefully crafted.

Nothing throws a reader out of a hypnotic state like bad grammar, a poorly constructed sentence, or a mislaid historical fact. Your reader is floating along on a blissful sea of literary loveliness, and suddenly BAM! Smack up against a poorly constructed sentence. The spell is broken as the reader tries to figure out what you meant. It will take at least two pages to get them back under your spell, and in the space of time that takes, they may get up to make a sandwich, answer the phone, or run an errand, and you might not get them back for days.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the most important reason to edit. Yes, it pleases the editor. Yes, it makes your manuscript more presentable. Yes, it’s the professional thing to do. But what it all boils down to is this: if you so successfully entrance your reader that they feel they have escaped to your world for a blissful three hours, they will want you to entrance them again and again. They will come back for more. They will recommend your books. They will buy your new releases. They will rant and rave about you to everyone they meet. Best of all, for those precious three hours, you will have granted them the gift of relaxation and you send them back out into the world better able to face their day. That’s powerful. That’s worth all the angst of editing, isn’t it?
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