He Mumbled, Groaned, Hissed, Spat, Purred, Whispered

As part of my Daughter Am I Blog Tour festivities, I am exchanging blogs with Aaron Lazar. I am blogging at Murder by 4, and he is blogging here. Lucky for me!  

Aaron Paul Lazar writes to soothe his soul. The author of LeGarde Mysteries and Moore Mysteries enjoys the Genesee Valley countryside in upstate New York, where his characters embrace life, play with their dogs and grandkids, grow sumptuous gardens, and chase bad guys. Visit his websites at www.legardemysteries.com and www.mooremysteries.com and watch for his upcoming releases, HEALEY’S CAVE (2010), FIRESONG: AN UNHOLY GRAE (2010), and ONE POTATO, BLUE POTATO (2011).  Aaron talks about dialogue tags: 

When I first started writing over a decade ago, I exulted in every new dialog tag I could think up. I preened over “he croaked” and purred over “she grumbled.” Finding new and inventive ways to say “he said” became my quest.

My early works were peppered with gloats, murmurs, and barks. I even started a most coveted (only by me) list. 

How many words can you think of to say “he said” or “she said?” Here are some, in no particular order:

Mumbled
Murmured
Expostulated
Grunted
Groaned
Whispered
Purred
Spat
Huffed
Croaked
Barked
Choked
Queried
Cackled
Harrumphed
Stuttered
Muttered
Moaned
Hissed
Grumbled
Whined
Sang
Twittered
Tittered
Griped
Yelped
Cried
Stammered
Shrieked
Crooned
Wheedled
Retorted
Pressured
Cajoled

How many more can you think of? There are probably hundreds.

…

Okay, now that you’ve wracked your brain for tantalizing tags, let me tell you one very important lesson.

DON’T * EVER * USE * THEM. 

What? Such brilliance? Such innovative thought? 

Yeah. Sorry. Forget it. Never use anything but “said,” “asked,” or an occasional “whisper” or “mumble.” 

Once in a great while, if you feel you really need it, slip in a “spat” or “croaked.” But I’m here to tell you that dialog tags, for the most part, should be invisible. “Said,” is invisible. “Asked,” is invisible. “Barked” stops the flow of the dialog. Anything that makes your story stutter needs to be eliminated, including these juicy but totally distracting tags. 

Got that part? 

Now that I’ve encouraged you to use “said,” I’m going to retract it. 

Forgive me, but that’s just the way it is. If you can avoid a tag altogether–through the clever use of action “beats”– then more power to you. 

Here’s an example of changing a passage from lush useless tags, to he said/she said tags, to using beats instead of tags: 

Case A:

          I maneuvered the van around the next pothole, and was about to congratulate myself for my superior driving skills when a series of washboard ruts nearly popped the fillings out of my teeth.
          “Want me to take over?” Tony wheedled.
          “Why? Am I making you nervous?” I retorted, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white.
          “Of course not, sweetums. You’re a great driver. Just thought you might want a break,” he crooned.
          We rounded the bend and the road disappeared. The crater before us could hold three elephants. Big elephants.
         “Whoa! Watch it, honey. Don’t wanna blow a tire,” Tony groaned.

Case B

          I maneuvered the van around the next pothole, and was about to congratulate myself for my superior driving skills when a series of washboard ruts nearly popped the fillings out of my teeth.
          “Want me to take over?” Tony said, leaning on the dashboard.
          “Why? Am I making you nervous?” I said with a frown.
          All smiles, he said, “Of course not, sweetums. You’re a great driver. Just thought you might want a break.”
          We rounded the bend and the road disappeared. The crater before us could hold three elephants. Big elephants.
          “Whoa! Watch it, honey. Don’t wanna blow a tire,” Tony said in a panic. 

Case C

          I maneuvered the van around the next pothole, and was about to congratulate myself for my superior driving skills when a series of washboard ruts nearly popped the fillings out of my teeth.
          Tony braced himself on the dash. “Want me to take over?”
          My knuckles turned white. “Why? Am I making you nervous?”
          “Of course not, sweetums.” He forced an innocent smile. “You’re a great driver. Just thought you might want a break.”
          We rounded the bend and the road disappeared. The crater before us could hold three elephants. Big elephants.
          Tony’s frozen smile barely hid his panic. “Whoa! Watch it, honey. Don’t wanna blow a tire.”

***

These examples aren’t beautifully written or perfectly rendered. But they should give you the gist of what I’m trying to illustrate today. 

Add your own examples below, if you’d like. Let’s see some Case A, B, and C’s in the comments section!

copyright Aaron Lazar 2009

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Welcome to the Business of Writing

To celebrate the eighth day of the Daughter Am I blog tour, I am treating myself to a guest here on Bertram’s Blog. That means one less post I have to write. Oh, joy! While Claire Collins is guesting here, I will be at her blog talking about How Best to Procrastinate. When you get a moment, please visit Claire’s Blog and join in the fun. 

Claire Collins  is the author of Images of Betrayal and Fate and Destiny, both published by Second Wind Publishing. Claire says:

Welcome to the Business of Writing! 

Wait! Don’t go anywhere. I’m not going to take your favorite hobby and turn it into work. Or maybe I am . . . 

It depends on what you want to do with your writing. Are you writing as an outlet? Do you write to relieve stress? Maybe you keep a personal journal and write to document your life. Perhaps you write to shut up the voices in your head that scream until you tell their story. Some of you may already be highly successful authors or journalists. 

No matter why you write, or where you are in your writing, at some point, you may want to adjust your mindset to look at writing as a business. When that first royalty check rolls in, you will be self-employed as a sole proprietor. To help you think of your writing as a business, I suggest you develop a mission statement for your writing. 

A mission statement is defined as: a formal short written statement of the purpose of a company or organization. The mission statement should guide the actions of the organization, spell out its overall goal, provide a sense of direction, and guide decision-making. It provides “the framework or context within which the company’s strategies are formulated.” 

That’s pretty stiff. Simply put, a mission statement is a summary of how the company will conduct business and the purpose of the business. 

Create a mission statement for yourself as an author, for your works of writing, or for your type of writing. If you aren’t an author or writer, create a personal mission statement. I give you permission to use your creative ingenuity to draft your mission statement. 

I’ll even create one for myself to give you an idea. Oh, and don’t forget: Have fun! 

Claire Collins: author – Mission Statement 

“It is my mission as an author to weave tales that draw readers down an interesting path with twists and turns. I will entertain, educate, and create emotion with my words.” 

Stop by Second Wind Publishing for a free ebook sampler or two. One sampler includes the  first chapters of all Second Wind’s romances, the other sampler includes the first chapters of all Second Wind’s mystery, adventure, maitstream novels. The first chapter of A Spark of Heavenly, More Deaths Than One, and Daughter Am I are in the Mystery Sampler. The first chapter of Images of Betrayal and Fate and Destiny are in the Romance Sampler.

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The Magic Of Mysteries: The Art (And Joy) Of Misdirection

Ian O’Neill, the one-time advertising copywriter turned award winning freelance journalist, is the author of Endo, a mystery/suspense novel set in Ontario, Canada. Ian has written for newspaper, magazine, radio, television and once wrote a dirty limerick on a dusty car but didn’t sign it. Ian writes:

I worked for Parks and Rec when I was younger and on a rainy day managed to bring in a magician to entertain the kids in our program. It was fascinating to not only watch him perform but also to see the looks of amazement on the kids’ faces. Like watching a magician, reading mysteries is one of those instances where we want to be misdirected. Let’s face it, if the clues are easy and laid out for us with bold, capitalized letters, there’d be little joy in reading the book.

I was certainly old enough when watching that magician to know that he was intentionally misdirecting us. He’d open a hand and hold it high in the air like he was trying to get a teacher’s attention. To ensure we were all looking at his raised hand he’d tell us to keep our eyes on the magical hand, or something to that effect. I didn’t watch his raised hand, I tried to watch his other hand, but there was no way I could because it was either behind his back or under a cloth or behind the volunteer he’d pulled from the audience. Even knowing that I was being mislead, I couldn’t see how.

That is writing a mystery story in a nutshell. A reader knows they’re going to be mislead and as the writer, you can’t let a reader feel like they’re being mislead. Readers will be watching your magic hand, but they know you’re up to something and you can’t let them know what it is until the end of the final act. If that isn’t magic, I don’t know what is.

Planning The Grand Illusion

You set the mystery with a criminal act like a murder, kidnapping, theft or some other problem that needs to be solved. This is the grand illusion of the story since whatever logical reason for the crime at its discovery made by your detective will likely change. If he/she nails the circumstances of the crime immediately, it would be like a magician explaining his illusion while performing the trick. Though the detective could be right but change their reasoning throughout the story only to come right back to their first conclusion. There are always options and nothing is static.

At this point I’d suggest reading my article, Games Have Rules, Writing Has Guidelines, on the so-called ‘rules’ of writing a mystery.

MacGuffin Is Not A County In Scotland

A Maltese Falcon, a very large diamond, a chalice, a massive shark, destiny, a ring (that rules all others)…all of these have something in common. They are all MacGuffins; an object, event, or character that serves to set and keep the plot in motion. Remember, though your major plot device may be the murder, kidnapping or other crime, it won’t necessarily be the MacGuffin. Consider the Da Vinci Code. The murder of the curator was the main plot device that started the entire journey, but the Holy Grail was the MacGuffin. The major plot device and MacGuffin are not always the same thing.

Once you have sorted out your MacGuffin and your major plot device you can move on to building your story to a satisfying solution. You’ll lead your reader on an adventure, not directly to the solution, but on a meandering path you must ensure is an enjoyable one for them.

There are those capable of writing on the fly, using few notes or plans. Others go through the outlining process and use the finished product as a sort of road map to help them stay on that meandering path. I need the outline. I never consider my outlines to be carved in stone. They are malleable and easily changed. An outline for a chapter can be a single word, sentence or paragraph. I wonder why anyone would write pages for the outline to a single chapter – save that for when you write the actual chapter.

An outline allows the writer to carefully craft the slights of hand and misdirection of the story. Readers are like detectives, registering information and filing some of it under clues. The crime scene will have its clues, what the protagonist sees and hears yields a fair share of clues, interviews will have an impact, actions of characters will give up clues as well. You need to have this straightforward, legitimate clues mixed in with false ones. All of these can be worked out in an outline, then flushed out in the writing.

The Planting Of Evidence – Slight of Hand

I must admit that building a mystery story was at times both enjoyable and excruciating. There is a lot of misdirecting going on and none more powerful than the creation of suspects. My novel is filled with interesting characters, unfortunately a great deal of them are less than admirable, at least on the surface. The victim has family, friends, co-workers, bosses, current or ex lovers, who are all potential enemies. As entertaining and enjoyable as it was to create these characters, it always turned into a precarious balancing act. If I reveal too much then a part of the illusion is revealed. Keep information too close to the chest and you eliminate a suspect crucial to maintaining the illusion. That was where the outline truly was a blessing in managing the balance.

Red Herrings – The Ultimate Misdirection

Though your readers are not bloodhounds and their quarry is not an escaped convict, nevertheless they must be thrown off the trail in order to maintain the illusion and to continue the enjoyable chase. Every writer will put their own stamp on this device.

Many stories revolve around characters who inevitably throughout their daily lives come in contact with many different people and places. Was the victim involved in criminal activity like selling drugs or stealing? Did he abuse his wife? Did she cheat on her husband? Was she blackmailing someone? So many questions surround a victim, the answers to which reveal facts and inevitably, red herrings. The reader, upon discovering the answers right along side the detective, is understanding of the misdirection and likely feels closer to the detective for having gone through the process with them.

Writers of mysteries and crime novels have to be careful with how often they use  any device. Readers will tire of them quickly if there are so many that they become easy to spot, redundant or just plain boring. In other words, be selective. As with the example above, use secondary characters to chase down leads and return with an answer. Yes, the questions should be followed up but the protagonist need not follow every lead in front of the readers’ eyes. Get creative and have the detective, or someone else, do some of the sleuthing off the page.

What’s Up Your Sleeve

Magicians and their assistants take oaths never to reveal how their magic works (under punishment of hanging upside-down in a straightjacket over a frozen lake). Readers need to know how all that evidence and all those clues worked to find the solution. It all must fit together like fantastical magic tricks. Once revealed, everything that lead the detective and reader to the solution must make perfect sense for if it doesn’t, the result could be disastrous to the relationship. Maybe not hanging upside-down in a straightjacket over a frozen lake, but something far worse – the loss of a reader.

Magicians practice for hours to perfect their magic. Writers should consider the rewrite their practice – time to hone their skills, the story right along with it, to the best they can possibly be. Write, rewrite and rewrite some more. Only then will you see the flaws in the illusion and be able to smooth them out. In the end, the mystery is indeed magic.

One lucky commenter, chosen at random from Ian’s two guest posts will receive a copy of Endo, which will arrive in an evidence bag with a toe tag, five fingerprint card strips and a few ‘crime scene tape‘ bandages.

Also see:
Never Be Afraid to Ask by Ian O’Neill
Keeping it Real in a Fabricated World

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Keeping It Real in a Fabricated World

Ian O’Neill, the one-time advertising copywriter turned award winning freelance journalist, is the author of Endo, a mystery/suspense novel set in Ontario, Canada. Ian has written for newspaper, magazine, radio, television and once wrote a dirty limerick on a dusty car but didn’t sign it. Ian writes:

Writing a fiction novel can be oxymoronic since we fill the fabricated story with facts. In my novel, Endo, I made up a detective, his life, the world around him, but added facts to keep the reader grounded. I used real towns and cities but fabricated the buildings and addresses he visited. I created numerous characters but gave them real jobs: park rangers, crime scene investigators, a coroner and most of all, police officers.

I didn’t kill anyone but I did research what happens after a body is discovered. In storytelling there needs to be a mix of truth amongst lies. It’s a delicate balance that keeps the reader walking a fine line between what is real and what isn’t. As writers, we must suspend our reader’s disbelief. To do that, we need to understand how far is too far. Sometimes we miss the mark and readers are more than pleased to point out the error of our good intentions.

I’m not the first writer to bend the truth to benefit his story and I know that all of the writers reading this piece will do the same. But, I caution you on just how far you’ll go to make a story plausible because too far means the reader will not believe. Even in genres where you’d think anything is acceptable, you still have to maintain the parameters that you set out in the story. So, in chapter two you introduce a woman who can read minds; any mind, anywhere, as long as the person she’s trying to read is in her sight. Then, chapter 29 rolls around and she is miraculously able to read the mind of a killer in a basement apartment in Arkansas when she’s in California. But it made the story plausible, right?

Our focus here is on crime and mystery novels and I’m not going to spend a lot of time on formula; suffice to say most mystery novels begin with a crime.

The usual suspects: murder, kidnapping, bank robbing, theft of some kind. Regardless of the crime you choose, it must be believable. If it begins with an outlandish crime then it’s your job to talk the reader into believing it could happen.

Writers have the best job in the world. We get to make stuff up for a living. We create the crime, make it seem implausible or difficult for anyone to accomplish. We throw in obstacle after obstacle in hopes of stopping our heroes from getting to a solution. We muddy the waters with all kinds of distractions including love, lust and greed to name a few. In all of that, our reader must never stop suspending their disbelief. It sounds like a very tall order and that’s because it is.

Cops and detectives are different in all parts of the world, each operating under a different set of rules and guidelines. It would be best to find out specific rules and laws in the country or area of the detectives, cops or P.I.s in your story. For the purposes of this article, let’s have our hero be a cop from the States.

A policeman being first to arrive at a crime scene acts in similar ways to a detective in the same situation. Their eyes are wide open to the possibility that the perpetrator is still at the scene. Once they check the scene and realize they are alone, what do they have at their disposal to take in the scene. Well, at first, as I said, their keen senses but eventually they’ll use what every person in law enforcement carries, a pad and pencil.

Mundane, yes, but a necessary tool not only for the cop in question, but also for the writer. Balance is key. It offers reality at a time when you’ve introduced a fake crime. Besides, the pen or pencil could be a weapon, right?

Detectives often draw out the scene as accurately as possible. Sound familiar? I’m not sure how many of the writers reading this article do this, but I draw out my main characters’ homes’ floor plans. Or, the floor plans to any buildings that appear frequently in the novel. Just as I can check back to ensure my accuracy and not test my memory, your detective can do the same.

The scene is secured. By that, the detective or policeman will ensure that no one enters the scene thereby contaminating evidence. Anyone already at the scene, including the first on the scene, will not smoke or use the sink or toilet. No one will touch anything at the scene. This is as real as it gets considering Locard’s exchange principle. Dr. Edmond Locard, considered to be the father of modern forensics, in 1910 opened the first forensics lab in Lyon, France. He postulated that a criminal would leave behind evidence and take evidence from the scene, therefore an exchange would occur. Today we call it trace evidence.

Can shit be traced?

When writing always remember that you must keep your reader’s belief suspended. It will impact every word you put on the page. I watched a show about real cops on a case and all were huddled around a door while a crime scene analyst (yeah, a CSA), took a shoe impression from a door. One of the lead detectives looked into the camera and with sarcasm dripping from every word said, “And now we’ll just enter this into the shoe database.”

This very scenario is believable if handled correctly. Remember, too, that readers want to believe. If a person’s stomach contents can tell investigators what the victim ate, they have a good chance of using that information in many ways. They can use it as a timeline or trace them to a location. This happens and is believable. A victim’s fecal-matter can be traced but you have to ask yourself if a reader wants to follow along with that lead?

I wrote a scene and posted it to my online writing group. It was in a courtroom during impact statements – when the victim’s loved ones, family and friends convey to the court how they have been effected by what the convicted person has done. These are usually part of a murder trial and my story was no different. I painted a picture of the courtroom and how, after one man had told the killer he would rot in hell and be damned forever for what he’d done, people applauded and cheered. One of my critics refused to believe this could happen. I never explained to them that I’d seen it happen a number of times in documentaries that followed murder cases to their conclusion. It wouldn’t have mattered. They had a right to not believe this situation. There is always a chance that some reader will no longer suspend their disbelief based on their own morals and sensibilities.

Situations are difficult to predict amongst readers, but using existing investigation tools and better, the personnel who perform them, will cement a reader’s belief. And, there are a lot of different experts one can draw on to balance out fiction with facts. Crime Scene Analysts are responsible for photographing a crime scene as well as recovering evidence and processing latent fingerprints. Document Examiners work mostly in a lab to examine documents and document-related evidence which includes handwriting, printing and signatures. There’s also a Firearms/Tool Mark Examiner who is responsible for performing scientific analysis on firearms and tool mark evidence. One of the least known jobs of this expert is to examine and compare footwear and tire tread evidence.

There are an abundance of individuals responsible for tracking and taking down criminals: Evidence Custodians, Criminalists, Photo Technicians, Lab Technicians and probably one of the most recognizable, Latent Fingerprint Examiner. Job descriptions are available on the internet for these positions or in several excellent books on forensics and criminology.

While crafting your mystery referring to these facts will enable you to suspend your reader’s disbelief – what could be the biggest fact about fiction.

One lucky commenter, chosen at random from Ian’s two guest posts, will receive a copy of Endo, which will arrive in an evidence bag with a toe tag, five fingerprint card strips and a few ‘crime scene tape‘ bandages.

Also see:
Never Be Afraid to Ask by Ian O’Neill
The Magic of Mysteries: The Art (and Joy) of Misdirection

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The Writer’s Journey

Malcolm R. Campbell, my guest today, worked as a college journalism instructor, corporate communications director, technical writer and grant writer before publishing The Sun Singer in 2004.  Malcolm says:

Writers’ journeys are filled with highs, lows and limbos, and down at the what’s-my-next-word level the path often looks like a mess. Joseph Campbell suggested that our lives often appear disorganized when viewed close up. Yet when the point of view is pulled back far enough, the route from here to there and back again stands out as perfect and well orchestrated. 

I wrote my fantasy adventure novel “The Sun Singer” in 1983 because there was a story inside my head that I thought I ought to tell. A young man suddenly becomes psychic when he visits a bronze statue of Apollo. At first, it’s fun. Then he sees a tragedy and his gift is immediately tarnished and he tries to ignore it until he ends up in a mysterious alternative universe in the western mountains. He needs the gift to survive and to complete a mission his avatar grandfather couldn’t complete. 

When I found an agent who liked the novel, that was definitely a “high.” While she thought literary fiction with a teenaged protagonist would be a challenge to market, she liked the story and settings and wanted to try Within a month, I withdrew the novel when she told me one of her other clients books suddenly became a bestseller. That meant my novel would sit on her shelf for potentially a year before she could actively work with it. This was definitely a “low.” 

The low got lower when the manuscript was rejected by about 100 publishers, many of whom liked the book but said that nobody could successfully sell a literary novel to teens or a teenager’s story to adults. This was pre-Harry Potter! They wouldn’t touch the book unless I added ten years to the character’s life. This began a 20-year period of limbo when “The Sun Singer” sat at the bottom of the sock drawer forgotten until I self-published it in 2004. 

The agent did me a favor. She saw the novel in a pre-PC era. The book was a paper manuscript typed with an electric typewriter. When I took it out of the sock drawer in 2004, I had to scan it into a file with an OCR program. What a mess. In the process, I fine-tuned the book a great deal. It became a much better story. 

I suspect most writers can tell similar stories. Manuscripts that look hot, then look cold. Stories buried in the back of a file cabinet that suddenly come to life years later. 

My upcoming novel, “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire” is quite a different story. I had been trying to market a companion book to “The Sun Singer” for over a year when a publisher told me that in today’s market, no publisher was going to take a risk on a 240,000-word, push-the-envelope literary novel by an unknown. 

Intended or not, I heard a challenge in those words: do something to become known. That meant putting another manuscript in the sock drawer and writing a much shorter book for a mainstream audience. I wrote the first draft straight through without stopping. The story seemed to tell itself because it was sitting right under my nose. My alter ego “Jock Stewart,” a hard-boiled 1940s-style reporter, had been running a blog called Morning Satirical News with exactly the style and focus I needed. 

After taking 20 years to publish “The Sun Singer” and 10 years to write the companion book, writing a book without all the angst of creation was a very empowering experience. It represented a jog in my writer’s journey that I had never foreseen. I’m still rather stunned by what’s happened. I have a feeling, though, that one day I’ll stand back and see everything from another perspective and feel that what happened had to happen as though the trail was always clearly marked on an old map I’d forgotten about.

See Also:
Pat Bertram and Malcolm R. Campbell Discuss the Writer’s Journey
Celebrating Five Years of The Sun Singer

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The Most Unexpected Truth About Writing

My guest today is Lazarus Barnhill, author of the wonderful and profound Lacey Took a Holiday and The Medicine People, available from Second Wind Publishing. Laz talks about destiny, which is a perfect topic for his guest appearance here on my blog. We met in November 2007 during an online writing contest (TruTV Search For the Next Great Crime Writer Contest on Gather.com) where we finished consecutively  — 10th and 11th — out of over three hundred entries. Now we are colleagues again — this time at Second Wind Publishing. Lazarus says:

“We are not accustomed to thinking that God’s will for us and our own inner dreams can coincide.”  –Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

It was Monday, August, 20, 2007, and I was driving home from down east North Carolina in a driving rainstorm.  After I dropped off my daughter at her home, I turned on the local NPR station.  As it happened, I tuned in precisely in the middle of an interview.  It became clear within a few seconds that I was listening to an author who had just had his first book published.  Because I was trying to catch up on the information in the report, I paid especially close attention and was able to piece together that there had been an online contest, the winner of which received a contract to have his book published by a major house.  As an aside, the interviewer concluded the report by saying that the same literary website was about to host a second contest.  This second one was for romance novels.

At that particular moment, I was sitting at a stoplight.  I remembered how, a few months before, I had finished a novel that-if you closed one eye and squinted just right-could be considered a romance: Lacey Took a Holiday. The light was still red, so I took out my extra fine point felt tip pen and scribbled the site on the back of my hand: “Gather”.

This commenced a twenty-month string of the most unlikely events: the following day was the last day to enter the romance contest and I made it in just under the wire; in the process of reading the romance chapters of almost 300 other authors, I became well acquainted with a number of them and for the first time recognized a “great miscarriage of publishing justice” (there were far, far more worthy romance novels than there were agents and publishers to snatch them up); many of the quality writers began to coalesce into writing groups and I was actually invited to join in with them; a third Gather contest — crime/mystery novels — commenced soon after the conclusion of the romance competition and I had, only days before, finished a crime novel (The Medicine People); once again I encountered and befriended a number of outstanding writers and experienced the reality that only one of them was going to receive a book contract; at the end of that contest, a blended group of romance and crime authors decided to take matter into their hands and start up a publishing company; that company (Second Wind Publishing), ten months after its inception, has twenty books available for purchase in multiple venues with another twenty waiting in queue.

The other day I was marveling at the uncanny string of events that brought me so many wonderful new friends (by the way — thanks, Pat, for the invitation to be here!), saw the publication of my first two novels and empowered me to express my artistic vision in ways that I never imagined.  Ironically, as I participated in the Gather contests, I had assumed I would be one of those writers who might pen a worthy story, but never get picked up by an agent or contracted by a major publishing house.  In retrospect, I’ve gotten to the point where I feel pretty lucky that I didn’t.  In fact, as I read Julia Cameron’s remarks in her wonderful book, The Artist’s Way, I began to wonder if in fact what I saw as a lucky string of chance events was really a matter of listening to a still, small voice that has always intended better for me than I could have imagined for myself.  If Julia Cameron is right, that same little voice has something to say to all of us.

My premise is this: whatever force there is out there in creation (call it God, destiny, a Higher Power or whatever you want) actually wants you to write. When you write, you are fulfilling an essential aspect of your truest purpose for existing. What do you think?

Here is another far out, mystical question: for the sake of argument, let’s say the universe wants you (in fact the whole perverse group of us literary creative people) to write. Is there such a thing as praying for help with your writing? What would you pray? “Get me unstuck, O literary angel”? What about this, “Let my writing muse guide me to express my truest self as a writer, and trust the outcome to be in greater hands than mine”?

What if your literary angel has a purpose and story in mind for your writing that is greater than anything you can currently imagine? Of course that implies that being on the NY Times bestseller list may not be the greatest destiny.

See also: Pat Bertram And Lazarus Barnhill Discuss Writing as Destiny

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DeForest Kelley: A Harvest of Memories, My Life and Times with a Remarkable Gentleman Actor

My remarkable guest today is Kristine M. Smith, author of The Enduring Legacy of DeForest Kelley: Actor, Healer, Friend, and DeForest Kelley: A Harvest of Memories, My Life and Times with a Remarkable Gentleman Actor. And she writes a blog with a perfect name: Almost Famous by De’s Fault. How cool is that? Kristine talks about writing a personal memoir:

It’s funny. No one showed me how to write a personal memoir before I sat down to write one.  I hadn’t studied the genre, and although I had read numerous memoirs over the years, that hardly qualified (or qualifies) me as an expert in the field. So please accept everything I say with a grain of salt.  What success I’ve had with my memoir may have had as much to do with “luck” (a sad, secular substitution for what is actually “unrecognized divine intervention”!) as it did with anything else.

The memoir I wrote had a built-in niche audience: STAR TREK. 

The STAR TREK aspect of my story began in earnest on May 4, 1968 the day I met actor DeForest Kelley, who portrayed Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy on the original series.   I was so impressed with his graciousness and appreciation for his fans that I went home and wrote an article about meeting him for my creative writing class.  My teacher thought it was so good that he insisted I should send it to Mr. Kelley for him to read and enjoy.  Oh, boy, that was nerve-wracking!  I wasn’t in the habit of writing to TV stars.

When De and his wife Carolyn read it, they, too, thought it was exceptional and forwarded it to a New York publisher with a suggestion that it might make a good piece for their magazine, TV STAR PARADE. When the publisher agreed, De wrote me a letter letting me know I was about to become a published author.

My parents had to peel me off the ceiling for a week.

Over the course of the next thirty years, the Kelleys and I established an on-again, off-again correspondence, and I continued to flail away at my typewriter, since the Kelleys and the publisher had convinced me that I did, indeed, know how to string words together to good effect.

I kept notebook journals, of course.  (Doesn’t every writer? If you don’t, start now. The reason will become clear momentarily.) As I accrued experiences with the Kelleys, every detail of our interactions went into scores of notebooks. Over time, I segued from a giddy fan to a point where the Kelleys began to encourage me to move to Hollywood and find a place in the entertainment industry where I might be able to utilize my writing skills in a major (lucrative) way. 

They helped me get my foot in the door in the entertainment industry, helped me find a landlord who would allow me to keep my hand-raised serval “son” (a knee-high African wildcat) in the backyard of the house I rented, and continued to encourage me in every way, all without any thought of paybacks or rewards.  (It took me a while to realize that they truly were as benevolent as they seemed. I don’t trust very easily, especially when it comes to denizens of Hollywood!)

Toward the end of De’s life, I became his personal assistant and caregiver. He was already hospitalized and would never again leave the hospital except for brief forays to visit his bank, doctors and home. Mrs. Kelley, his usual helpmate, was already hospitalized with a broken leg. 

All of this, too, went into my journals, sometimes only in “talking points” because I was so exhausted (after fourteen and sixteen hour days near the end) from the stress and busy-ness of being their almost-constant companion, helper and confidant.  My hours were my choice, not a demand of theirs.  It was my way of paying them back in some small way for the thirty-plus years of devotion and encouragement they had extended to me.

A few weeks before De passed away, he gave me permission to write his biography, or a memoir, or anything else I wanted to do with the story of our association.  I handed off the biography to Terry Lee Rioux, a tried-and-true historian (now a history professor at Lamar University) whom I had met at a STAR TREK convention several years earlier, because I’m an anecdotal writer, not a researcher or interviewer.

After De passed away, I served Carolyn for another eight months.  I pondered writing a book, but figured I probably didn’t have much of significance to say except for how wonderful they were and how much I loved them. End of story. (?)

Then Terry Rioux came to Hollywood to do research at various regional motion picture libraries in preparation for writing De’s biography and to interview De’s co-stars, producers, writers, friends – and me.  At one point she asked me, “How did you go from being a fan on the outermost regions of fandom to being at his bedside when he died?”

I was speechless.  I had no answer.  

I finally responded, “That’s something De would have to answer. I have no idea how that happened.”  Terry insisted, carefully and pointedly, “You know the answer.  Just connect the dots.  I need to know the answer – and so do you.”

Wow. What an assignment!

Then she said, “I think you somehow became the daughter they never had.”

I started bawling, right there in the restaurant. “Oh, no! Don’t say that!  If that’s true, I didn’t do enough for them.

Terry said, “You did everything you could, everything they would allow you to do for them.”

That was true . . .

Then I remembered the journals – six large plastic bins, sitting out in the garage, crammed with my journals, with the entire adventure, from beginning to end!!!

I dug them all out, laid them out in order, and began the journey anew, connecting the dots, following the crumbs. There were hundreds of small details I had completely forgotten about.  It was like discovering a gold mine!

I watched as a cordial first meeting morphed into an association, then built to become a familiar, comfortable relationship. Then I watched as the relationship swelled into agape love, trust, and mutual support.

That’s when I knew I had to write the memoir, and that’s when I knew I could write it, that I had enough material for it. 

Had Terry not asked me the one question about the Kelleys that I could not answer without researching and writing a book, I never would have written it – would never have remembered all those journals tucked away in the garage!

So I became my own historian.  I became a memoir writer.  It took three solid months of 12-14 hour days, six days a week.  It took lots of guts to go over the last months again and put them down in a way that would inform without half killing the reader.

But it resurrected the man, and – in conjunction with Terry’s bio – it has extended his legacy far beyond what fans would otherwise be able to learn about him.

So, to me, writing a memoir is all about diving into journals we’ve written and culling from them the nuggets that resurrect a place, a time, and the crucial people who helped mold us into what we have become, whether for good or for ill.

If you do the task well, the person or people you resurrect don’t have to be TV stars and the times you depict don’t have to be historical in nature.  All that needs to happen is that the reader connects, lives with you in your past for a time, and comes out changed in many of the same ways that your history has changed you. The reader “gets” you, your times and your loved ones (and others) in ways they never did before.  That’s the essence of a good memoir.

Kristine has agreed to answer questions and respond to comments, so feel free to leave a comment for Kristine. And don’t forget to check back later for her responses.

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On Writing: Perseverance

My guest today, Steven Clark Bradley, has been to or lived in 34 countries, including Pakistan, Iraq and Turkey. He has a master’s degree in liberal studies from Indiana University. He speaks French and Turkish. He has been an assistant to a prosecutor, a university instructor and a freelance journalist. Bradley is the author of four novels, including Patriot Acts. Bradley says:

I have always been a storyteller. It seems to have been something I was born with. It was actually my son who challenged to stop writing as a hobby and to start publishing my several manuscripts I had written. As a child, I started writing dreams and ideas and it was all part of the process of learning how to paint a tableau with words. Probably the hardest thing was learning to get over what I call ‘the middle of the book’ syndrome. Perseverance is one word that best describes the main character trait that all dedicated writers possess. I can attest to that as I developed the characters, setting, atmosphere and all the million things that go into holding a story together.

Winston Churchill said, “The Pessimist sees problems in every opportunity, but the Optimist sees opportunities in every problem” Once we get into the middle of a novel, we need to get over the hump of taking the story to the next level by pouring ourselves into it. Sometimes, when we find ourselves wanting to quit something, we feel pulled in two directions. Have you ever heard these voices in your head? “There’s no use in continuing!” or perhaps “I have failed and I give up!” These feelings are almost always untrue and are usually caused by depression, fatigue or loneliness. There are so many other personal things in our lives that cause such feelings of hopelessness. We are also drawn by voices in our heads that tell us not to give up. “Think of all the time you’ve invested!” or “Think how hard you have worked!” It’s that second voice that helps you continue on and is what I call “Wise Perseverance.”

To wisely persevere, you need to see the costs or difficulties and benefits or positives of what you are doing. An honest and good decision requires honest and good information. The more you understand yourself, the more certain you will be about your decisions and the more likely you will find the strength to persevere until the story starts to write itself. Some call that this “Literary Critical Mass” when the story becomes a living thing and logic flows and literary inertia seem to take over. Actually, this drive makes all of the characters come alive so that eventual readers will become one with the story until you accomplish your task! All of this serves to develop your own writing style and makes you unique and singular in your message. You’ll probably find that you’re having more fun than you actually thought you would!

I can say that each novel feels like another one of my literary children was born. All the hard work, all the revisions, the TLC that goes into making it powerful and readable and clear, expressive and addictive to the reader comes together when it sits in my hand. The greatest thing is to finally read it in book form and I forget that I am the writer and loving it. It is one of the greatest feelings I have ever had. My novel, Nimrod Rising represented more than 12 years of hard work. There is no feeling like that.

See also:
Interview with Steven Clark Bradley
Steven Clark Bradley reviews Pat Bertram’s novel More Deaths Than One

On Writing “Shadows”

My guest today is Joan De La Haye, author of Shadows and co-founder of Rebel e Publishers. Joan writes:

I started writing Shadows a few years ago. I was in the middle of editing and finishing off another book, which is now collecting dust in the back of a drawer, when the idea for Shadows hit me. In fact it did hit me, in the middle of the night, in the guise of a very freaky nightmare.

I decided that since it frightened me, it probably would also frighten others. I couldn’t go back to sleep so poured a glass of wine, switched on my old computer and started writing a story that seemed to come from somewhere else. It was one of those rare moments when the muse strikes and there’s just no arguing with her or in this case him. The story just flowed out of my fingers and onto the keyboard.

I spent a year working on the first draft. This time I took Stephen King’s advice and wrote with the door tightly shut. I’d made the mistake with my previous book, the one that’s collecting dust, and allowed too many people to influence it. As a result it ended up not being my book.

The first draft was only Sarah’s story and written from her perspective. It ended up being way too short, so I added Kevin’s story and tied them together. They fitted together seamlessly, but there was still something missing from the story. I couldn’t figure out what it was until I sent it off to a local publisher. The submissions editor loved it, but said that it was too short and she then suggested that I added some additional scenes.

The additions she suggested were all great and incredibly helpful, but she also got me thinking about another side. One I hadn’t even thought about. Carol’s story was written in a matter of days. I couldn’t focus on anything else until her story was written. Shadows became the interwoven story of three very flawed individuals struggling with their own demons.

I re-submitted it to the local publisher, who then unfortunately didn’t like the extra scenes that they’d requested. It wasn’t what they’d wanted. It took a year from my original submission to the day the publisher passed on Shadows.

Needless to say I was devastated. I’ve never been very good in handling rejection. What I did to get over the rejection can be found on Pat’s other blog: Book Marketing Floozy.

See also: Pat Bertram Introduces Jack, the Torment Demon from Shadows by Joan De La Haye

Submitting to Literary Magazines 101: Professionalism

I am truly honored to have Vince Gotera as my guest today. Vince writes poems and stories, as well as the occasional creative nonfiction. His books include the three poetry collections Fighting Kite, Ghost Wars, and Dragonfly, as well as the critical study Radical Visions: Poetry by Vietnam Veterans. Vince serves as Editor of the North American Review, originally established in 1815, the longest-lived literary magazine in the US. He has been a Professor of English at the University of Northern Iowa since 1995. He earned an MFA in poetry writing and a PhD in English from Indiana University. Vince’s blog is The Man with the Blue Guitar. Gotera writes:

In a couple of days, I will be starting my tenth year as Editor of the North American Review — a tremendous privilege and honor since the NAR is the longest-lived literary magazine in the US, originally established in 1815.

About a year and a half ago, in a Facebook group titled “MFA in Creative Writing,” as part of an online discussion of editing and publishing, I dashed off an impromptu list of my pet peeves as NAR poetry editor. This list quickly took on a life of its own and was re-run on at least one other writerly blog and perhaps others. (As the movie Dorothy said of the Munchkins in Oz, blogs “come and go so quickly” so I can’t be certain how widespread the list “viraled,” so to speak.)

In any case, here (officially) is the precise text of that offhand list, originally written on 29 August 2007:

Okay … for me, the “turn-off” is different for each poem I ultimately reject. Here are a few immediate turn-offs, in no particular order:

• Botched ending … forced, too explanatory, too “universalized”
• Clumsy use of form … for example, if sonnet or sestina, etc.
• Slow getting going … should rock from first line down
• Too much full rhyme … I prefer slant rhyme
• Uninformed line breaks … be aware of lineation effects
• Abstract or image-less … unless experimental
• Superficial topic or handling
• Obviously unaware of poetic tradition(s)
• Cover letter explains poem … inexperienced submitter
• Poem sent with vita or résumé … very inexperienced submitter
• Says “copyright …” … does writer think I’ll steal the poem?
• Centered lines … unless important for theme
• Badly edited … errors, typos, grammar, etc.
• Font too small … many editors are older and have old eyes
• Monotype font or font too fancy … hard to read quickly
• Pseudonyms … let’s back up our writing with our names, ppl
• Handwritten … usually from prisoners, though I’ve accepted poems by prisoners.

There are other turn-offs but that’s all I can think of at the moment.

I do want to say that I don’t just drop the poem. My eyes touch every word. I read very quickly and wait for the poem to say, “whoa, you’re reading too fast.”

I also want to say that not every poem we take is already “perfect.” if a poem has something good going for it but has errors or whatever, we are willing to work with the poet in the proof stage. Not full workshop of course … that would be inappropriate … but suggestions and queries. In the long run, though, the writer’s in charge, of course.

Well, I’m grateful Pat has offered me a slot here as guest blogger. I would like to use this opportunity to expand on and clarify some of the items in that offhand list above. And maybe, if she’ll allow me, devote some later guest blogging slots to other pet peeves.

Today, I want to address professionalism in submitting to literary magazines. Five items above plus one other are germane. What I will say below about these six items are part of what many people — both writers and editors — refer to as “unwritten rules.” Oh, incidentally, what I’ll say below pertains directly to poetry, but of course writers of other ilk are welcome to adjust my advice for their own genre(s).

(1) The Cover Letter. Many writers don’t include a cover letter at all. The reasoning, I suppose, is that the editor will of course know why the poems are coming to the magazine. That’s okay, but I personally like to get cover letters because I think they’re polite. If they’re handwritten and say something like “Some poems for the magazine,” that would be fine. Our grandmothers told us we should send nice notes, and that’s what the cover letter should be. Sorry if I seem fussy here; I just think the transaction between the writer and the editor should be civil and friendly. A cover letter certainly can dispose me favorably (a little) toward the submission. Especially if a cover letter is fun or entertaining.

But … don’t try to impress me in your cover letter. Don’t tell me you were published here or there. Or that you have published so many books blah blah blah. When I see that in a cover letter, I don’t read it. For me, the poem and only the poem can get itself into the magazine.

Definitely do not explain the poem in your cover letter. As an editor, I’m trying to gauge how readers will understand the poem, and I don’t really care how you read your poem. Or what you meant. Or what poetic form or style you used. If the poem can’t “say” all that for itself, it’s not getting into the NAR.

It’s a good idea to list in the cover letter the titles of the 3 to 6 poems you’re sending. This will make our lives easier should your cover letter get separated from the poems. Not likely to happen but it could.

(2) Résumés and Vitas. Sometimes writers who know the cover-letter pitfalls listed above will instead send a list of publication credits. From my point of view, that’s equally annoying. Actually, more so, because it’s not as friendly as an actual letter.

What ever you do, never send a résumé or a vita; that really smacks of inexperience. Of not knowing the “unwritten rules.” There may be fields or disciplines in which one sends a vita with a submission, but not in the literary magazine world. Sending a résumé or a vita could possibly dispose me against your work. What I mean is that your poems will have to work that much harder to catch my attention. It could happen … the poems could be so good that they make me overlook the résumé faux pas but that would be a rare occurrence indeed. It’s never happened, actually, in my twenty years of poetry editing.

(3) Copyright. The experienced writer should be aware of how copyright law works: that as soon as you write something, you own its copyright; in other words, you only have to show that you wrote something and when to defend your copyright. Inexperienced writers, on the other hand, will sometimes fear that their poems are leaving their hands and could be stolen by someone at a magazine. So they will include a copyright notice on the poem itself.

This is quite an insult. An arrogant one. First, this practice suggests that you think your work is so good that the editor or some other staff member will, instead of publishing your work, be driven to steal it. Second, this tells us you think we are thieves. Do you think this makes us friendly to your poem?

There are how-to articles and books out there that say put a copyright notice on your piece. That is old advice for an older time and is no longer necessary in today’s copyright environment. So just resist doing it. Your chances of getting published will increase. What I mean is that the poem will have a chance of a better reading without a copyright notice.

(4) Fonts. Something that we see quite often is a poem that has been printed out in 9- or 10-point font. Sometimes even smaller. I’m not really sure why people do this. Perhaps they’re trying to save postage. Or they want to squish their entire poem onto a single sheet. Who knows?

Look at it this way. When you are interviewing for a job, do you make it difficult for the interviewer? Or annoying? Do you dress in garish colors that make it hard for the interviewer to look at you directly? Do you whisper your answers to the interviewer’s questions so that you can almost not be heard?

What you do with fonts can be equally deleterious. Let’s face it, editors are writers who have some mileage on them; and that mileage takes years. So quite often, an editor will be someone with older eyes. How do you think the miniature font you’ve used to get your poem all on one sheet will be received by that editor with the graduated bifocals or trifocals? There is no problem with having continuation pages. In fact, when I send out poems, I use 14-point Times to make sure they are readable by all.

Speaking of Times font: I would dissuade you from using a typewriter font like Courier. Those are harder to read than Times or Palatino or Georgia or some other standard non-typewriter font. Remember that the editor must read quickly. For example, at the NAR, we read 7,000-10,000 poems a year. If the poem is hard to read fast, there’s a possibility it may not be read at all. Ditto with fancy curlicue or script fonts. Hard to read. Bad. Also sans serif fonts like Helvetica. A little easier to read but not as easy to read as Times. You may think Times is boring but it could help you get published.

(5) Pictures. No. Very bad. No pictures with poems. Even if you’re sending an ekphrastic poem — one based on a painting or a sculpture, for example. The enclosed or attached picture is a definite tip-off that the writer is inexperienced. An ekphrastic poem has to be good enough to stand on its own without the visual image next to it. In a blog, including a picture next to a poem is a plus. In a submission, BIG minus. Just say no.

(6) Pen Names. This last one is not the same kind of no-no as those above; it is not patently a bad idea. Nevertheless, it is still a no-no (at least for me). Pseudonyms were important to publish in previous decades for many reasons; one of these is that women or minorities had a harder time getting their work accepted without a “good old boy” name. This situation has changed, however, and people who use pseudonyms often do so now for romantic reasons. Or because they feel their poems are somehow NSFW (“not safe for work,” as we sometimes say in Internet slang).

A pen name some poet might think romantic, like “Valentine Lovesmith” or “Genevieve Queensryche,” is just straight-out silly; the real name of an American 19th-century romance writer, Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth (Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte), helped to make her a bestselling success story, but taking on a name like that won’t work today. I feel writers should stand by their own names; their poems should carry the weight and significance of their real names. Not all editors will probably agree with me on this, but I suspect a majority of them will.

Okay, that’s it for now. I hope you will see the sense of these “unwritten rules.” Basically, for me, it’s about friendliness and civility, again. Editors are your friends. They want to publish your work. They want to discover the next great poet. So make the submission easy for editors, professional, and your poems will be able to shine on their own as they should. Good luck with your writing and with your submissions.

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