Bringing Characters to Life in the Mind of the Reader

By mcmckit on Jul 1, 2013

We would bet that the characters in the novel you are writing or the people in your non-fiction book are as real to you as your neighbors and relatives. They may live in your mind, but they are three dimensional and capable of behaving in ways that sometimes surprise you. Writers often talk about characters doing something that changes the course of their stories.

Here’s the rub: you and your characters or subjects are an exclusive group. If you want the reader to see what you see, you have to let the reader in. We get lots of manuscripts in which the writer has not described his/her characters at all. That’s probably fine for the writer. After all, the characters are alive and doing very well in the writer’s mind. It is downright weird for the reader, who is being asked to invest emotionally in a phantom, a character or person without a face or sometimes, even an age. It makes it really hard for the reader to even picture this entity much less invest in it emotionally.

There is a school of thought that readers are going to have their way with book people and pretty much picture them they way they want to no matter how the writer describes them. Maybe, but as writer you have to give them something, even if it is just an outline.

We are not asking for you to run off a list of stats: sex, female; race, Asian; age, 69; height, 5’4”; weight, 165 pounds. Rather, we are asking you to sketch. Think of the person’s defining characteristic. In the case of the 69-year-old, we just reduced to numbers, maybe it is her unruly white hair, sticking up in all directions. That she has white hair indicates she is probably elderly so you’ve covered her age and also given the reader an image: an older woman with sticking up hair. Somewhere else, you might mention that she is short and plump. Maybe she sticks something in her crazy hair, say an iPhone stylus. That says something different about her than if she sticks a pencil in her hair. Maybe she has a distinctive way of moving or speaks with a Chinese accent. All of this defines her and brings her to life in the reader’s mind. If you are successful at this, maybe the book person will be as real in the reader’s mind as she is in yours. That is what you should be aiming for.

And don’t feel you can rest on your laurels when you have described your main characters. Every character in the book should be described, if only briefly. A waiter in a restaurant, who serves only to put food on the table of characters with bigger roles, should get a two-word description. Again, choose that waiter’s defining characteristic: black-vested, tattooed, gum-popping, with gelled hair, taciturn, overly friendly etc. Give the reader something, so the waiter is not just a black hole. It will not only define the waiter but also say something about the restaurant where the scene is taking place and the person who chose to eat there.

Bringing characters to life is one way that you build the tapestry of your book and make it vivid in the reader’s mind.

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Going the Distance: Stepping Back to Revise your Writing Work

By mcmckit on Jun 17, 2013

In past blogs, we have stressed how important it is to find a reader for your writing work. A more or less objective eye can help delineate the flaws and the brilliance in your work. But we have also said that the only person who really knows what is right for your work is you. Wouldn’t it be nice if these two people got together, the one with the objective eye and the one with the intuitive knowledge?

Even if you never succeed in becoming your own editor, it is worth making the effort because nobody cares more about your book than you do and you are uniquely qualified to improve it. But stepping outside your work and viewing it objectively is not an easy thing to do.

The advice that everyone gives is to put the piece of writing aside for a period of time between writing it and revising it. This makes a lot of sense. Coming at your work from a new perspective may help you see it more clearly. In the meantime, read other people’s work with a critical eye. What would you do to beef up the plot or clarify a description?  How would you edit this work?

When you come back to your own writing, start by doing your level best to put aside all the love and affection you feel for it. Try to separate it from yourself. While everyone approaches revision in different ways, here are some additional suggestions that may be helpful.

Ask yourself questions – and try to answer them honestly. Is the narrative moving along quickly, or have I gotten bogged down somewhere? Is my voice consistent? What was I really trying to say here? Did I actually say it? Is there enough description? Does the dialogue need support?

Read aloud. This is like casting an audio net for awkward phrasing. However, just because a passage sounds good doesn’t mean it makes sense. As editors, we read a lot of mellifluous passages that must have been treasured by their creators, but make no sense whatsoever. So, read aloud suspiciously.

Paraphrase. When you come to a passage that you are particularly in love with, be even more suspicious. Test what you were trying to say here by putting it in plain words. Do the plain words mean the same thing as the original passage?

Eliminate word repetition. This is what your thesaurus is for. Also, be absolutely sure that you know the meaning of the words you have used and have employed them correctly. Enter, dictionary.

Simplify your sentences. This is another place where paraphrasing is useful. See if you can’t re-work some of your more tortured sentences. These should pop out at you, reading aloud.

Experiment with rearranging the furniture, your sentences and paragraphs. See if you can improve the narrative flow.

 Get rid of gratuitous words and phrases, like “well” or “truth to tell” or “as the story goes.” These don’t add anything and they weigh the narrative down.

Make sure your similes and metaphors work. Some comparisons just don’t make sense such as comparing a nearby elephant to a fly on the wall. Also, once you have compared your elephant to Mount Rushmore, you want to make sure you don’t come back and reference him as an eighteen wheeler. That’s mixing metaphors.

Be sure your voice is consistent. If you are going along, telling your story in a nice folksy manner, you can’t just switch to professor-speak to explain the historical background of a certain place. Instead, that information should be woven into your folksy narrative.

Check punctuation and grammar.

 You have probably heard many times from teachers and other writers how difficult and challenging writing is. What they really meant, at least in part, is that editing is challenging.

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Filling in the Background without Derailing the Story

By mcmckit on Jun 3, 2013

One of the most challenging aspects of writing a novel or memoir is fitting in background information the reader needs to know without slowing down the story. If the story is a 3,000-meter race, than anytime you have to digress to explain a piece of back story, you are taking a detour. It slows the action down. If it isn’t done right, it can get the story off-track and lose the reader’s attention.

Background should be seamless with the story so the reader is not even aware of being sidetracked. Here are some observations we have made about what makes it work:

Only put in information that is necessary to the story: This may mean leaving out favorite bits about your or your character’s background. The cute story about Uncle Bill, who came to visit and short sheeted every bed in the house, may be a personal favorite but if your memoir is about the Vietnam War, it may not fit. You have to be as ruthlessly true as possible to your main story. If the information doesn’t fit, don’t use it.

Put in the back story stuff when it is needed or when it naturally comes up: For instance, if a character limps across the bar room floor on his way to wait on a creepy looking character in the corner, it is an opportune time to explain that he grew up during the London Blitz and his leg was crushed when a bomb fell on the house next door, collapsing it on his house and him. The character’s limping has created a question in the reader’s mind so rather than feeling derailed, the reader is grateful for the explanation. Sometimes, there is room for expansion: The bar tender’s mother had been killed in the bombing and he had been scarred for life growing up in a cruel foster home. And then, bring this digression back to the action: The skull-like head of the man in the corner reminded him of his drug-addicted foster father.

On the other hand, if your lead character is in the middle of a gun battle, it is not the time for him to think how his mother gave birth to him in a cattle shed and he grew up poor on the prairie.

Avoid phony set ups: Remembering is a funny thing in books. So often when characters or memoirists “remember” events or people or places, we find ourselves saying, “no way.” Authors often use memory as a device to get across back story stuff. Sometimes, it is completely random: Gazing out at the rose garden, Serena remembered the time she broke her leg falling out of the apple tree. Or, the English Tudor house made me think of the house I grew up in, a one-story rambler.

Sometimes set ups aren’t even necessary. The rhythm of a book will often allow for digression, and you can just include the information straight up: I was born thirty-six years earlier in a yurt on the Mongolian plain… You will often see back story at the beginning of the second chapter. A good first chapter will hook the reader, get him or her involved in the story, and raise questions that the reader wants answered. Then, in the second chapter, there is leeway for some back tracking.

Look for natural pauses in the action: When FBI agent Jim Snyder is on a stakeout, it is a good time to take a look at him as he sits there in his Chevrolet. He is wearing a cheap, rumbled suit and tie, but his tie clip is silver. It was a present from his mother. When he graduated from the academy, she had slid it on his tie. She had still been relatively youthful then… And so on into his past. Nothing is happening during the stakeout anyway and it has to go on for awhile before the plot unfolds again.

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Reader, Oh Reader, Where Art Thou?

By mcmckit on May 20, 2013

We get a sinking feeling whenever a client or prospective client talks about submitting her/his manuscript to the book club before sending it to us for review. What makes us tremble is the prospect of having to sort out a book written by committee, going every which way and not really adding up to anything. But really, it only takes one misguided reader to send an author down the wrong path.

After almost twenty years of editing, we become more and more convinced that reading, the way we do it as editors, is a skill. We characterize this as reading with the mind rather than the heart, and it is surprising how few people actually do it. Most people read into books rather than actually reading the words on the page. They bring what they know and believe to the process and experience the book through those filters, almost as if it is their book.  Our book club does this, and we even know agents who read this way.

This put authors in a dilemma. Almost everyone needs someone to act as book reader, to help give needed perspective and helpful advice.  Obviously, finding that special reader is a matter of trial and error. Here are some red flags to watch out for in the search for a good reader:

Beware of readers who seem to be reading a different book than the one you thought you wrote: If you are writing a murder mystery and your reader gets caught up in a secondary love story and sees that as the main arc of the book, don’t abandon your mystery to play up the love the story. You may need to do more work to bring your mystery center stage, but don’t abandon it for a different book. You’ll end up with a strange hybrid.

Do not trust readers who make your book all about them. You are not interested in their emotional response to your book. This can be hard when the reader is saying flattering things like, “Your book really spoke to me.” “I really identified with the main character.” Uh-uh. That person is not reading your book; they are reading their fantasy about your book.

Be afraid of your friends, very afraid: How many of them are likely to risk hurting your feelings by saying something negative, even if it might be helpful? Asking friends to do this really isn’t fair to them and puts the friendship in jeopardy.

You are not looking for new ideas or a co-author: You have worked for months, if not years, on your book; you don’t need a co-author now. The reader, who tries to horn in on your manuscript with lots of “great ideas,” is not helping you so much as ego-tripping.  Don’t let this person distract you.

Trust your gut, trust your gut, trust your gut:  Sometimes the voice coming from your gut can be very small and faint. You really have to cultivate this voice and you have to trust it. This can be easier advised than acted on. We recently suggested a major change to one of authors. “Oh,” the author said, “I knew it. I knew I should do that.” The author then went on to explain that the manuscript had been give to a reader, who got caught up in a secondary story line that distracted from the main story. The author went with it, ignoring the gut.

You have a vision for your book; deep down, you know what is right for it. Don’t take any counsel that isn’t sitting comfortably down there. A good critique should make you think, “Oh wow, why didn’t I see that?” Good advice will resonate.

When your gut speaks, hold on to that reader. You will need him/her for the sequel.

Here is a cartoon that illustrates another pitfall of reader/writing groups.

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Looking for the Story in Your Memoir

By mcmckit on May 1, 2013

Writing a memoir is more than regurgitating everything you can remember about your life. In fact, regurgitation is sure to result in a big mess, a whole lot of words tossed all over the place. Unless you are such a well-known person that readers are interested when you sneeze because you have developed allergies or walk to the corner store for pickles or check THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS out of the library, you have to organize your remembrances into some story or series of stories that readers can care about.

Some memoirs are so compellingly written that they are worth reading just for the way the author uses language. Mary Karr, who wrote LIARS’ CLUB, is in this category. She is a poet, and her use of language is just exquisite. Karr also knows how to tell a story. Her book is a series of entertaining short stories about her family. If you go this route, the stories have to be really entertaining, and each one has to be a whole. Let go of the idea that you are going to tell EVERYTHING that ever happened to you. And if you find yourself dribbling between stories, stop it.

Another way to write a successful memoir is to look for the story that your life is an example of. A number of years back, one of our clients, Carol Cline Schultz wrote CROSSING THE VOID, her memoir of an aphasic stroke that completely robbed her of words. She could not speak, read, or write. Her book is the story of how she painstakingly taught herself to do all those things again. She had to figure it out; there wasn’t an expert she could go to who could simply teach her to talk again. So how she did it, her story, is of interest to readers, many of them in the speech pathology field.

Yet another approach to writing a successful memoir is to put your life into a greater context of time and/or place. In other words, use your story to tell the way it was in a particular time and place. A recent client did this very well in his yet-to-be-published memoir, CONEY ISLAND DAYS. With his permission, here is an excerpt from Richard Pepitone’s book. Notice how he starts with the world around him and brings it back to his own life.

The year was 1944, and I went to all the theaters in downtown Brooklyn: the Brooklyn Fox on the Flatbush Avenue Extension off of DeKalb Avenue; the Brooklyn Paramount at the corner of Fulton Street and DeKalb Avenue; and the RKO Albee up the street from the Paramount. The Strand, the Majestic, and the RKO Orpheum were all nestled together on Fulton Street. The Orpheum was the only theater of its kind in Brooklyn, leftover from the old vaudeville days. Most of the performers were old-timers and had been doing their acts since long before I was born. Some had been successful at one time, but had lost their appeal to the fickle public and changing times; many were just lost along the wayside. Other than my father playing instruments in the living room, it was the only live entertainment I’d ever known. For me, a stage full of people who wanted to reach me, delight me, and make me laugh, and an audience that wanted to share the experience with me, was a world away—away from arguing parents who weren’t concerned about my comings and goings, schoolteachers who held me in contempt, and a neighborhood of bullies.

 The market for memoirs is over saturated; they are tough sell. So it really is imperative to find the story in your life that will appeal to readers.

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ADD Characters? Or Overzealous Writing?

By mcmckit on Apr 24, 2013

One of the quirky things about the first drafts of novels we see is that they are often full of characters, who start things and never seem to finish them. We are always reading about Character X, who “began to wash the dishes” or Character Y, “who began to close the windows.” There is often no reference to Character X finishing washing the dishes or Character Y completing the task of closing the windows.

It is tempting to imagine that all the characters in all these books are suffering from attention deficit disorder. But really this is a language issue. Authors who write about characters beginning things are technically correct. You have to begin something before you can do it, but in the telescoped world of a book, it is usually preferable to skip that first step. Characters can just do whatever it is: Character X washed the dishes. Character Y closed the windows. Or better yet, be specific: X moved a stack of plates to the dishpan and picked up the sponge. Y slammed down the living room window as the rain pelted in and ran upstairs to the bedroom.

 “Begin to” or “began to” are mostly just extra words that get between the reader and the book. An exception to this is when a beginning has significance in itself: The race began with a shot from the pistol. Since the race and the outcome of the race are likely to feature in this story, the beginning has importance.  Winter began that night with a shot of brutal cold. Here again, winter is likely to last some time and have an effect on the story so the moment of its beginning has significance. God began by creating heaven and earth. This paraphrase of a famous book needs no explanation. The beginning, in this context, matters.

           As you write and find yourself using “begin” or “began,” step back and see if the sentence really needs these words. If you can pretty much just cut them out and not affect the meaning of your story, you don’t need them. When you do this, you are beginning to self-edit…

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Writing a Book is More Than Paragraphs Strung Together: Make a Scene

By mcmckit on Apr 11, 2013

Fiction or non-fiction, your goal as a writer should be to write in scenes, whole, round rooms that readers can step into and experience what is happening there. You have to build that room or place by establishing where it is and what it looks like, its smells, the feelings hanging in the air. Next, you fill the room, either with characters (fiction) or the people from your past (memoir) or real scientists in a laboratory or witnesses to an event (non-fiction). Then, you make something happen.

An effective book is usually a series of scenes like this strung together. They can go back and forth in time; they can happen out of sequence but each one should be round and full like a fat bead on a necklace.

The difficulty with this is that sometimes you have to advance your plot; you have to convey information to the reader simply to move the story, as a whole, along. And often, this information does not lend itself to a big, blown-up scene. This is where you have to be tricky and clever and figure out how to fold the plot-advancing info into another scene. If, for instance, it is important to let readers know that Jim found the key in the silver box, you don’t have to bring Jim into the study, have him see the silver box and retrieve the key. Instead, as Jim is rowing on the lake with Sarah, who he intends to strangle in the marsh, you can simply have him pause to rest and wrap his fingers around the key in his pocket. He can remember where and under what circumstances he found it.

When you find yourself stringing together paragraphs that hop from subject to subject, it is time to step back and think about what you are doing. Here is the kind of thing to be on the lookout for:

Jim was growing increasingly irritated with Sarah, who could not stop talking about her tedious Thursday writers’ group and her novel. She had now been writing it for more than a year but Jim still hadn’t seen any of it. He continued to wonder if he was in it and what she might be saying about him.

Summer had turned into fall and they hadn’t taken any vacation. Jim had been working hard at the office at on the Grantham bribery case which was due to come to court in October. Grantham was still dropping in every day to see how it was going. Jim didn’t tell him the defense was a weak one.

In August, Sarah took up yoga so she was gone on Wednesday evenings. Jim found the house peaceful and quiet as he drank his nightly martini. This set him thinking – not for the first time – about how nice it would be if there was more quiet.

 These paragraphs read like a checklist: Establish the passage of time, check. Explain what Sarah is doing, check. Establish what is still going on with Jim, check. Imagine how exciting this is for the reader. These graphs can probably all be cut. Instead the writer should jump to the next important scene where something happens and fold this information into it.

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Promoting Your eBook Means Getting Reviewed

By mcmckit on Apr 1, 2013

When our authors go off to self-publish their ebooks, we sometimes feel as if we are releasing innocents to the world. Some of them have not even thought about promoting their books. And they must, because books don’t leap into bestsellerdom. They have to be promoted.

This piece is aimed at ebook authors but it applies to traditional books and books with traditional publishers as well. Publishers don’t always do the best job of promotion and wonder of wonders, they too are somewhat baffled by the new world of books.  “…while ‘word of mouth’ is the holy grail of book-selling, we publishers were never very involved in the conversation,” writes Island Press Publisher David Miller in the Washington Post. “…publishers now must connect directly with readers. Increasingly, we need to create word of mouth ourselves.”

So however you get to publication, you should be taking promotion into your own hands, and key to promoting an e book (or any book) are reviews. So today, we offer some websites where authors can go to get reviewed:

Goodreads is pretty much the go-to site for both readers and authors. The Goodreads community is 14 million people and growing. They are all book lovers. You will want to post your book and author profile on Goodreads. And if that doesn’t generate reviews, you can also advertise. Goodreads enables authors to promote themselves according to genre, reader age, gender, and location. In other words, you get an extremely targeted advertising opportunity.

Successful ebook author, Hugh Howey, featured in our last blog, started his publicity campaign with Goodreads bu sending free copies of his book to bloggers and reviewers. A few raves and the reviews snowballed. Fiction author Lindsay Buroker says she spends $4-$5 a day on Goodreads and earns $10-$14 in royalties.

Bookrooster will route your book to a select group of readers who will read your book and post their reviews on Amazon. The $67 fee Bookrooster charges does not necessarily buy you good reviews, just honest ones. As the old expression goes, a bad review is better than no review at all. And a mix will look more true than all five-star reviews. You will have to line up for Bookrooster, which is currently accepting only two titles a day.

The Kindle Book Review offers a list of reviewers for your Kindle book. You choose the reviewer by scrolling through a list of reviewers until you find one whose expertise matches your book. Write a formal review request, inclulding a brief synopsis, the author’s name, the title of the book, and a link to the book in the Amazon Kindle store. Include a digital copy of your book in the format that works best according to the reviewer’s specifications.

KBR reviewers are not obligated to review your book, but if they choose to do so, they will be honest. If you get a good review or good-enough review, you can add it to your website or prodcut page.

The Indie View offers a similar list of reviewers. If you get one of them to give you a four or five star review, The Indie View will give you a page to list and promote your book.

BookDaily gives subscribers access to the first chapters of books so they can sample books they might like to buy and read.  Authors can register for free and post a book chapter, upload a bio and photograph, upload a promotional video and a link to their website.

The Book Hookup is a group of five reader/reviewers in various parts of the country. They are accepting a “limited” number of e books for review in a limited number of genres, including contemporary fiction, romance, historical romance, urban fantasy, dark fantasy, paranormal and young adult.

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Power to the People, Authors, That Is

By mcmckit on Mar 19, 2013

While most authors would kill for a deal with a major publishing house, Hugh Howey actually thumbed his nose at offers from publishers. (That distant roar you hear is writers everywhere, cheering.)

Howey first published his postapocalyptic thriller WOOL as an e book on Amazon, charging ninety-nine cents for each of the series’s five parts. A year ago, WOOL – which takes place in a postapocalyptic future where a few thousand remaining humans live in a giant, 144-story underground silo – went VIRAL.  It has sold more than half a million copies and generated more than 5,260 Amazon reviews. Mr. Howey has earned more than a million dollars in royalties. The film rights have been sold to producer Ridley Scott.

So, no wonder Howey has not jumped at six- and seven-figure offers from traditional publishers.  Publishers did not want just the print rights to his books. They wanted the lucrative e-book rights as well. Howey wasn’t about to give those up. On his own, he keeps 70% of his books’ royalties.  Most publishers offer a digital royalty rate that amounts to 10% to 15% of a book’s retail price.

 “I had made seven figures on my own, so it was easy to walk away,” Mr. Howey told the Wall Street Journal. “I thought, ‘How are you guys going to sell six times what I’m selling now?’ “

Last fall, Simon and Schuster offered Howey a print-only deal.  And he took it. The deal is so unusual that it has generated a lot of press – and also that sound of writers cheering. “It’s a sign of how far the balance of power has shifted toward authors in the new digital publishing landscape,” the Wall Street Journal says, adding, “Self-published titles made up 25% of the top-selling books on Amazon last year. Four independent authors have sold more than a million Kindle copies of their books, and 23 have sold more than 250,000, according to Amazon.”

Since our business is manuscript editing, we have our own reasons for being excited about the e-book revolution. But we were once novel writers. We were what is known as mid-list authors, which is to say not best sellers. Our books sold in the thousands, maybe tens of thousands, and nobody ever thought they were going to do better. We were treated accordingly by our publishers: small advances and no book tours. A few years later in the mid-1990’s, publishers pretty much stopped printing mid-list books at all, not enough return.

For mid-list authors, which is the vast majority – the 99.9% of authors – e-books present an opportunity where lately, there has been none. Hip hip hooray!

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The Secret Life of (Key)words

By mcmckit on Mar 11, 2013

We got a call on the office phone recently asking for the “imperial commander.” There are only two of us and we operate as partners so we’re not much on titles. This request is one of a lot of strange queries we’ve gotten lately, mostly by e mail, that have nothing to do with book editing. Here are some examples:

A simple way to check the rotation of an outrunner motor is to find an old
prop with a MUCH larger shaft hole and hang it on the shaft.

 — Please advise me if expired Bisquick is poison as I have read in the past. 

I can’t believe that you would write such an article as in the March Bulletin page 3  Face the Mortality Gap, on health and safety, and  then illustrate it with 2 people riding bicycles WITHOUT helmets. 

 I was visiting a relative who had a fireplace that had no glass doors.They were heating the house with a fire and I was there all day. When I got home, my family noticed my coat (etc) smelled like a bonfire.  I have washed my clothing and the smell is gone, but my coat is wool and says dry clean only.  How can I get the odor out without the expense and bad chemicals used when dry cleaning ?

I have an inspirational story about a homeless dog with eight puppers (sic).  I would love to share it and write more about it. I found you on Oprah’s website.  Any suggestions where to start? 

 I WAS TRYING TO FIND A BOOKLET ON ALL OF THE ROYAL DOULTON CHARACTER MUGS & JUGS. I HAVE BEEN COLLECTING THEM FROM THE LATE 1950’s. I WANT TO CHECK OFF THE ONES THAT I HAVE

I   D O N ‘ T   COLLECT  THE   T O B Y  O N E S.

We dutifully write back to all the queries we get that are clearly not aimed at manuscript editing. But we do wonder how they get to us in the first place. Presumably, they begin with a search. Someone types a search phrase, or keyword, into a search engine, like Google, looking for something. And somehow The Word Process popped up.

Our best guess is that these keywords contained the word “editor.” “Editor” can mean anything from a newspaper or magazine editor to a software editor to a photo editor to a video editor to a (yes!) manuscript editor. Search engines, clearly, aren’t awfully good at distinguishing. A Google search for “editor” yielded on the first page links for photo, video and publication editors, editor jobs and proofreading.

Search engine algorithms are said to be enormously complex and unfathomable even by the sizable industry that has sprung up to suss them out. We wonder where the search words go, what virtual twists and turns they take to bring to us the quest for the imperial commander. It makes us glad to be human editors, making honest assessments of which words belong in a narrative and which don’t. If you want a book edited, skip the search and go directly to our address: thewordprocess.com.

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