Month: March 2012

Contracts

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There are a couple of reasons literary agents are still a go-to force in publishing–and not only because they tend to be the gatekeepers to large publishing houses. Beyond helping get you a publishing deal, agents can help you negotiate a contract once have a deal.

Of course you don’t always have to get an agent to get a book published. Neither of my books coming out this summer were sold with help of an agent. There are some good things about that, should you choose to go agent-less (namely, not having to give an agent a cut of your earnings) but then, what are you going to do about the contract? After all, a bad contract can seriously hurt you in the future.

Many people I know of suggest going to a lawyer to look over a contract. Of course you can always do that, but at least for me, I don’t find that necessary (I never have/I don’t know anyone who has personally). Of course I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice, but from my personal experience, it’s possible to keep from getting into a bad situation by just fully reading your contract and having a good head on your shoulders.

As someone with experience on both sides of publishing contracts, here are a few tips I would give authors going it alone.

1) Unless you chose to work with a vanity publisher, never sign a contract that says you will pay the publisher for services. Be them editing services, start-up costs, or anything else, legitimate publishers won’t ask for you to pay to have your book published. The general rule you can keep in mind is: Money flows to the author. Not from. Publishers make their money by selling your book. Big or small, traditional publishers won’t make you pay for them to edit, layout, get a cover artist, or market your book. They also won’t require you to purchase a set number of books. There are a few “back-end” vanity publishers out there that are flying under the radar of fledgling authors by not asking for money up front but asking questions like “How many books are you planning on buying?” with the intent of putting a nonstandard clause in a contract requiring the author to buy at least 75 (if not more) copies of their book once it’s published. They don’t ask for fees, but they’re making their money by having at least that many sales and making it the author’s duty to sell those copies under the guise of “normal author promotion” Yes, authors can buy their own book (generally at a sharp discount from the publisher) but they won’t require you to buy a certain amount of copies to agree to publish you, much less write it in to your contract.

2) Don’t jump at just any contract. You’ve gotten lord knows how many rejections, and finally you’ve gotten a yes! That’s always an exciting feeling, but especially if it’s your first sale. One of the biggest mistakes you can make, however is to sign that contract and sent it straight back. As with any contract read it throughly. Maybe you’ve found a less-than-honest publisher that has some nonstandard clause in it that will hurt you later on. You won’t know if you don’t read it.

Furthermore, even if the contract is completely legitimate, you might find something you want to negotiate. Negotiating is something your agent would do normally, but if you are selling your book yourself, you are your own agent, so it’s up to you to negotiate any points in your contract you are unhappy with. You don’t want to be difficult or argumentative, but if you feel there’s something you’d like to discuss before signing bring it up. By myself, I have negotiated e-book/print releases and higher royalties. Just because you aren’t a professional agent doesn’t mean you should let a publisher do whatever they want without question.

3) Know what you want. Maybe you just want to get your book out there. It doesn’t really matter who publishes it, or how much you make. If you are happy going with an untested publisher, or are fine with only having someone produce an e-book, that’s fine. Everyone wants something different from publisher. If you aren’t happy with a contract, however, and they won’t negotiate you don’t have to settle. Know what you’re willing to take for your work, and if one offer isn’t that, you can always walk away and look for another publisher.

4) Never sign away your rights. A publisher may help you with the copyright office, but your contract should never sign over artistic rights of your book (unless you were specifically hired as a ghost writer). Publishers are contracting the right to exclusively distribute your book, not buying the copyright to it. The book will stay in your name, and once the contract period is up (generally a few years) the book is once again yours to do with what you wish. You can re-contract it with the same publisher (if they wish to as well) or you can move to someone else. They don’t own your book. Likewise, do not sign over movie rights, audiobook rights, or anything similar. If you see a clause like that, you’re likely not dealing with a legitimate publisher.

5) If something seems fishy, ask someone before signing. Never discount gut instinct when reading a contract. If something doesn’t seem right to you, it very well might not be. In that case, you can always look for some outside help. Search the publisher online. There are some great sites like Writers Beware, Preditors and Editors, and Absolute Write Water Cooler that talk about known scam publishers. Likewise, you can also often find known scam publishers by typing in the publisher’s name followed by “scam” in a search engine (e.g. Weird Contact Publishers Scam). You can also ask others who might be a little more well-versed in publishing than you are, or, of course, consult a lawyer.

As I stated before, I am not a lawyer, and so none of this is true legal device, but I am very willing to help anyone out there who has questions about something that seems a little strange in a publishing contract. Anyone who is agent-less (or just wants a second opinion) is free to contact me, I’m always happy to help.

For now, I will leave the name of some publishers that have been complied by sites such as Writers Beware and Preditors and Editors as some that might not be on the straight and narrow. Anyone thinking of working with them are strongly advised to look into their contracts/what is written online about them (I have not seen most’s contracts so I can’t speak personally):

  • AGoodBook.com
  • Algora Publishing
  • American Book Publishing
  • Archebooks Publishing
  • ASA Publishing Company
  • AuthorHouse (formerly 1st Books)
  • Black Rose Publishing
  • Black Wyrm Publishing (for more on Black Wyrm’s contract, see here).
  • BooksAmerica
  • Cambridge House Books
  • Dandelion Books
  • Dorrance Publishing Company
  • Diggory Press
  • Helm Publishing
  • Hilliard and Harris
  • Oak Tree Press
  • Park East Press (formerly Durban House and Oakley Press)
  • PD Publishing
  • PublishAmerica
  • Renaissance e-books
  • Royal Fireworks Press/Silk Label Books
  • SterlingHouse Publisher (imprints include, among others, Pemberton Mysteries, 8th Crow Books, Cambrian House Books, Blue Imp Books, Caroline House Books, Dove House Books, and PAJA Books)
  • SBPRA/Strategic Book Publishing/Eloquent Books (formerly known as The Literary Agency Group and AEG Publishing Group)
  • Tate Publishing
  • Whitmore Publishing Company
  • Zatz
  • Zeus Publications

Note: These are only a few. Always use caution when submitting.

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Info Dumps

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In a recent blog post, I briefly touched on the topic of Info Dumps, that is, a long section of text that gives a ton of back story all at once. In that post I was suggesting to look at chopping down info dumps as a way to decrease the word count of an overly long novel. Now, since then, I have gotten the question:

“Could you elaborate on how to turn info-dumping into story-telling?”

It’s a good question. After all, in any story there is going to be background information a reader needs to know. This is especially true in stories set in other worlds (be them fantasy, sci fi, alternate universes…) where the reader can’t know everything already (who’s in charge? how do they live? what is the weather like?) but it also happens in modern-day stories. Perhaps the majority of your readers will understand it being cold in winter, but who is your character? Who are their parents? How did they end up doing what they do? Depending on the story, all of that could be important. So how do you get all of that in without falling into an info dump?

1. Figure out if the information is actually important. As I pointed out in my earlier article, we authors tend to know the entire history of a character/world (or at least we should since it helps in writing a story). Perhaps you even know what the character’s favorite color is and what time they get up for work in the morning (depending how in depth your planning is and if you’ve filled out character questionnaires). All of that is important to you as a writer, as who your character is shapes a story. All of that might not be important to the reader, however.

Did your character have a pet they really loved as a child? All right. Does that pet come up in the story? Is it still alive and mentioned? Does the character not want another pet because of its death? Did it’s death strongly influence how the character is acting now? If so, you can bring it up. Does the pet never show up? Did its death not really affect the character at this point? If so, it might be an interesting bit of information to you, but it probably doesn’t need to be in the story.

2. Figure out if the important information needs to be known now. Perhaps the aforementioned pet is going to be important later in the story (it turns out that the mild-mannered pet your character’s had for 14 years can actually talk and will lead them into Never-Never Land) do you have to get all of the information about the pet innow? Of course you always want to mention important things before you actually need them in a story (otherwise you risk sounding something like, “Oh no, what’s that sound? I can’t go outside for whatever reason, so I’m going to send the dog I’ve never mentioned before but had for years! That’s totally not a cop out!”) but you don’t generally have to put in everything all at once. In one scene you can mention the pet. A couple scenes later your character can say something about how long the pet’s been around. You probably don’t need to give a long paragraph of all the information at once.

3. Figure out other ways to get the information in. The end of point 2 touched on this a little. Just like spreading information out, information doesn’t always need to be given in a chunk of narrative. Rather than starting a story:

“Jennifer was an average looking 17-year-old girl with blonde hair and brown eyes who went to school at Centerville High, the school she had been at for the past three years with her best friend Maya…”

You can work all that information in throughout the story. Even in the first chapter if you need it there.

“Jennifer pulled up to Centerville High and sighed. She’d already suffered through three years of the place, but obviously that wasn’t enough….

“Her best friend, Maya, ran up to her, ‘Happy Birthday! How’s it feel to be 17?’…

“Jennifer tossed her long blonde hair over her shoulder…”

And so on and so on. All of the information makes it in, it just isn’t all one large chunk.

4. Don’t rely on narrative. Narrative is meant to tell people things, so it’s completely understandable that it’s easy to fall into an info dump when you’re using a lot of it. You’re talking about the Main Character’s job, and, Oh! How did they get the job? You should probably put that in…but if you do that, you really should talk about college…and…and…

Dialogue is a good way to stop yourself from info dumping if you’re finding it a problem, since it feels more awkward to do (people don’t generally give their entire back story in one long monologue when meeting someone–except perhaps Bond villains). But even with dialogue, you still have to be careful. Good dialogue sounds natural, trying to force information in doesn’t make for any better dialogue than it would narrative.

Try to say away from “As you know, Bob”s (“It’s been 11 years since we last talked, Bob, as you know. So why I’m saying so makes no sense, but I thought I’d say it anyway” “Indeed, I’m glad, after 11 years, we’ve been able to meet in San Jose, as you know, a town on the coast of California…”) and don’t force lead in questions (“Hey, Tony, how long have you had that dog?” *End of what can fit in a plausible answer* “Oh yeah? Well where did you get it?” “It really is special to you, isn’t it?”) It sometimes takes practice, but you definitely shouldn’t feel like a character is interviewing another to get necessary information in (Tip: Remember you can space it out. You don’t need to get everything in all at once).

5. Trust your readers not to be idiots. This could be joined with the first point, but personally, after years of editing, I think it bears repeating. You definitely don’t want to lose readers, but also trust that people reading your book tend to have a basic level of intelligence. If there’s something important put the information in, but don’t feel the need go too far in depth, especially if it’s something the reader is likely familiar with.

For example, perhaps not everyone has a bed, or has slept in a bed, but it is likely that the vast, vast majority of people reading your book will at least be aware of the basic concept. You do not, therefore, have to give a ton of information about it (“The bed has been made five years ago out of panels of wood that had been nailed together to make a frame, with slats between them and a mattress placed on top…”)

You can also tend to trust most of your readers to be able to draw some conclusions without spelling it out. “Jennifer walked to class as the first bell rang” will let people know that Jennifer is probably a student. “The teacher added a final 4 at the end of the equation before turning around” will tell people that Jennifer’s probably in math class (or at least a science class). Bits of detail that come naturally in a scene can serve just as well to get information in, you just have to trust your reader not to need things spelled out.

“Intensive Purposes”

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Ok, I’ll be the first to admit I haven’t always gotten sayings right. Homophones, similar words, it’s easy enough to get a phrase wrong. Some are so common, it’s likely you might not realize they aren’t the actual saying. Here’s a few I’ve recently cleared up in my editing:

(For the purposes of this article, the incorrect phrase will be bolded with its intended meaning following. The proper saying will be bolded and underlined in the paragraph following)

– Intensive Purposes. (Meaning: “For every functional purpose; in every practical sense; in every important respect; practically speaking.”)   The one I saw this morning editing, and what sparked this blog post. I actually thought this was the saying myself up until a couple of years ago when I was corrected. It makes sense, “for all intensive purposes…” the purposes are important, intense…but no. The correct form is Intents and Purposes. So why isn’t intensive purposes correct? Because the saying comes from a 16th century English law, originally “to all intents, constructions, and purposes.” Shortened to “intents and purposes” it’s now easily mistaken for “intensive purposes”

– Per Say. (Meaning: As such; as one would expect from the name). A mistake that’s easy to understand (after all, it basically just comes out and says “as it says”, right?) the saying is actually Per Se. Why? Because it’s Latin. Se might not be an English word, but in Latin, “se” means “itself” (or himself or herself depending, but we’ll just stick with “itself”). Therefore, per se means “by itself”.

– Wallah. (Meaning: There it is, ta-da, presto). Another misunderstanding of a foreign word. When people write “Wallah!” they generally are trying to write what they’ve heard “Voila!” (a French word coming from the words vois [to look] and la [there or it]) as. While it might more technically come out to “look there!” it’s generally used (in France and in the English-speaking world) as “Here it is!” or “Ta da!” (for example “You add some ribbon, and voila! A new dress!”)

As added incentive to use the proper spelling, “Wallah” is itself a word meaning: “One employed in a particular occupation or activity” (coming from a Hindi word [vala] meaning “pertaining to or connected with”). Not what I think people mean when they say something along the lines of “Wallah! A new dress!”

– Say “I”. (Meaning: I agree). Perhaps it isn’t a foreign language misunderstanding, but this one is a replacing a common English word with one a little more obscure. Aye. Say “I” generally makes sense in the context (If you consider it something along the lines of: “If you agree, volunteer yourself.”) but “Say ‘Aye’”  makes even more sense, quite literally meaning “yes“. So “say ‘aye’ ” is asking people to say yes to a vote.

– Bunker Down. (Meaning: to take shelter; to assume a defensive position to resist difficulties). This mistake comes from a combination of places, I think. 1) taking the military phrase “bunk down” (meaning to go to bed) and 2) misunderstanding the proper phrase Hunker Down. While it might make sense to have “bunker down” as an extension of “bunking down” a bunker generally is “a bin or tank especially for fuel storage, as on a ship” or “an underground fortification” While it is possible to make “bunker” a verb, the verb forms are bunkered, bunkering, and bunkers, never just bunker. Hunker, on the other hand, means “To squat close to the ground”, “To take shelter, settle in, or hide out”, or “To hold stubbornly to a position” Bunker might make sense if you ignore the noun/verb problem, but hunker undoubtedly makes more sense.

– Reek Havoc. (Meaning: to cause a lot of trouble or damage). The “havoc” part of this saying doesn’t need much explanation. After all, havoc means: “wide and general destruction : devastation”. So, since you have the destruction part of “cause a lot of damage” all you need is the “a lot”. Reek means “to give off or become permeated with a strong or offensive odor” so, metaphorically, it could make sense. Someone who “reeks charm” gives off a lot of charm, so someone who “reeks havoc” causes a lot of destruction. The saying, however is Wreak Havoc , which makes slightly more sense with one of the meanings of “wreak” being to “inflict or take vengeance”. Rather than giving off havoc (“reeking” havoc) someone is inflicting havoc (wreaking havoc).

– Hone In. (Meaning:Directing yourself towards/zooming in on a target). Like the others, hone in generally makes sense. Meaning “to sharpen” or “to perfect” it’s possible to understand hone in as sharpening your direction or sight towards a target. The correct saying, however, is Home In. Coming from the idea of homing pigeons which were commonly used in the 19th Century to deliver messages, home in now covers anything that’s directing itself towards a target (such as missiles). So HOMing pidgeons=HOME in.

Of course, this might be starting to fall under the “popular use changes the lexicon” phenomenon. With enough people using this saying incorrectly, it’s possible it will start being accepted as “hone in” (even if that’s not the original saying).

– Maul It Over. (Meaning: take your time to think about something). One of the funnier mistakes I’ve found, I’m sure it comes from “maul” sounding similar to “mull”. Of course, a maul is a heavy hammer and to maul is to beat, bruise, mangle, or handle roughly. While I suppose it’s possible to maul a thought, people generally are looking for the slightly less violent Mull It Over. While interestingly enough, to mull something can mean to pulverize it, mull over a thought is using mull’s second meaning: “to consider at length : ponder” You are considering a thought at great length, not beating it up.

– Mute Point. (Meaning: a point that has been rendered irrelevant). While this “mute point” might have originally meant “[a point that is] to be definitively determined by an assembly of the people” it currently means (at least in the US) that the point is irrelevant to whatever is happening. And that’s why mute makes sense, yes? Someone who is mute can’t talk, you don’t need to talk about that point, wallah (cough, voila) you have a mute point. Properly, however a “mute point” is actually a Moot Point While the definition of “moot” might not help explain why it’s “moot” not “mute” (moot meaning “subject to debate, dispute, or uncertainty”) a moot point comes from a law student practice (starting in the 16th century) of participating in “moot cases”. Using these practice or hypothetical cases, the students could discuss hypothetical case law. Thus, a point in a moot case was hypothetical, and often not relevant to actual cases, bringing us Moot Points.

– Squash Their Hope. (Meaning: Kill someone’s hope; stop someone from hoping something will happen). This mistake may make the most sense to me. You’re trying to kill someone’s hope. If you squash a bug, you kill it. Ergo “Squash their hope” makes sense. Though a valid conclusion, the saying is actually Quash Their Hope. Perhaps a little more obscure (but two hundred years older than the word “squash”) quash means “to make void, annul, crush.” So, while “squash” might be the same sort of idea (crushing something) quash brings along all sorts of other fun meanings. (Not only are you crushing someone’s hope, you’re defeating it forcibly.)

– Ripe with Conflict. (Meaning: Conflict abounds). Ripe makes some sense here. Something that is “ripe with conflict” means there’s a lot of conflict going on. Ripe fruit means it’s really full and ready to eat. It doesn’t completely make sense, but who says idioms have to? Well, idioms don’t, but the proper saying (Rife with conflict) makes just a little more sense. You see, “rife” means: “plentiful” or “abundant”. So something “rife with conflict” is abundant with conflict. Makes just a little more sense than “ripe”.

The main problem with these misunderstood sayings is, as I’ve pointed out, most generally make sense if you don’t think about them too much (you can even make an argument for some going both ways, as I know since my fiance and I spent the better part of a meal debating “hone in” and “bunker down” when I originally talked about writing this article). As long as a saying generally makes sense, people don’t tend to think about them too much. After all, someone might tell you to “take a knee”. If you aren’t a sports person, it might not make sense why, as Urban Dictionary puts it, that means “taking a temporary break from an activity” but you can come up with some reason for it (kneeling would be taking a break…) If you heard the saying a few times as “take a T” you could likewise more than likely come up with a reason for it (T…it’s a sports metaphor…Take a timeout? That works).

Misusing several sayings isn’t about not understanding the words, it’s about not hearing something correctly, and coming up with something that generally makes sense. Idioms are, after all, figurative. They only generally have to make sense.

Just, generally, the actual saying has a reason it’s the way it is, and thus makes a little more sense than its alternatives.

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The Unneeded Words

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Recently, I talked about how long novels (generally over 120,000 words) can have problems getting published.

Beyond all of the generally valid reasons publishers may have for saying away from long novels for business reasons, there is the added fact that many long novels could do with a harsh editing before publishing–something the publishers likely don’t want to spend their time doing.

As I said before, if a story demands for a long book, and the 200,000+ length is nearly entirely action-packed or, at least, interesting, there’s no problem with it. If the story drags, however, you have more of a problem. Even if the writing isn’t quite up to purple prose levels, there are very few reasons to be wordy in most forms of creative writing.

And so, if you’re trying to cut down on your word count, keep some of these things in mind:

1. Unnecessary Scenes. Not every scene you write is necessary to your plot. There might be a cute date night or someone running into an old friend that gives you some fun banter, but while reading the story…it does nothing to advance the plot. Unless a scene serves a purpose, it sadly might be better to cut it–especially in a long book.

– Is the scene necessary to the plot?
– Does it show us something about a character that hasn’t been shown before?
– Does it have necessary background information that has to come out now (hopefully not in an info dump [see below])?

If not, seriously consider cutting it. If you can’t bear to see the conversation go, you can always save it elsewhere (I have folders for each project on my laptop with outlines, manuscripts, and a document with all the cut scenes that had to go but I still love–most just because the dialogue amuses me).

This likewise goes for laundry lists of actions. It’s perfectly allowable to have time jumps in novels. The characters get in their car, and then, scene break, they pull up to their destination. You don’t need pages of them talking about nothing in the car, playing the license plate game, explaining how they’re changing their clothes, brushing their teeth somewhere…unless it’s somehow important, you can time jump.

2. Info Dumps. For those not wanting to click over to Wikipedia, an info dump is a long section of text that gives a bunch of back story all at once. Worst thing about info dumps? They’re often unneeded (or at least parts of it are). While we authors do (or at least should) know the entire history of a character (where they grew up, how long they’ve been in a job, who their parents are, why they don’t like so-and-so) it may or may not be important to the plot. An info dump slows down the action (Oh no! It’s the villain! Looks like the Main Character’s (MC) is really going to have to run for it…oh, five pages about how the villain became a villain and how he doesn’t like the MC…what was going on again?) and more than likely, it isn’t necessary.

Pick out the important bits (do we need to know the villain was abused as a child? Does that come up later? Do we need to know he went to Villain University?) and then find a way to weave that information in later. While hopefully your weaving it in doesn’t surface as an “As you know, Bob” even that is preferrable, in my personal opinion, to an info dump. “As you know, Bob”s will likely take up less space (with the unnecessary parts already clipped) and keep the action moving.

3. Too much description. Now, description is good. As I’ve said before, it’s a sad fact, but readers don’t see what’s happening in our heads while we’re writing. Without description it’s either just a bunch of people moving around empty spaces, or worse, floating dialogue. What you don’t need is every last detail in a room (see my comment about skipping those three pages of description about that tree in Return of the King).

Like everything in writing, how much description to use is a fine balance. Tell me the MC is in a classroom. You can say there’s a whiteboard, tables, a podium…whatever you see. You don’t, however, need to spend a page giving every last detail, especially if it’s not important. Is the exact pattern of the carpet going to come up later? Do we need to know how many posters are up and what each is of? If not, consider cutting back a bit–or at least not doing it all at once.

Like an info dump for exposition, description dumps aren’t good. Maybe the pattern of the carpet will be important. Can that come up later? Say a little while later the character looks down at their feet because they’re bored. They can start counting how many stars are across the floor? That way you get the pattern in without, “The room was large with X number of tables. Whiteboard took up one wall, there were 7 posters on the others. In the back… The carpet was… Three windows faced east… yada yada yada.”

4. Wordy phrasing. While not everything has to be in its most succinct form, it’s possible to cut down on your word count and make your writing/imagery stronger a lot of the time by rephrasing things. For example:

“The sheets were soaked through, made a squishing sound when Sam moved.”

Not awful, and it’s good to get senses involved in a scene (too often people forget smell and sound for sight when writing). But I would edit it like this:

“The sheets were soaked, squished when Sam moved.”

Squishing would also work, but since squish is an onomatopoeia, “squished” gives me the same sound as “made a squishing sound” You have the same effect, and give a stronger feeling without all the words couching the sound. Now the sentence has gone from 12 words to 8 words. Chopping out 4 words at a time in a 100,000 word novel can add up quickly.

5. Redundancy. Has it been said before? Cut it. No matter how important a fact is, repeating it over and over isn’t just space consuming, it gets annoying.

“All the same, she was happy to be there.”
Two paragraphs later.
“Happy to be there, she…”
A paragraph later.
“She really was happy to be there.”

We get it, we get it, she’s happy to be there. If a point is very important, maybe say it twice, but more likely than not, the reader will get it after one time. That means you can take out at least 11 words there (“Happy to be there” and “She really was…”) Again, that adds up.

This likewise goes with scenes that are redundant. Did your MC already talk about how he really wishes he could go home? Maybe you need to restate that later, but you don’t need to spend multiple scenes with the character talking about the same thing. Especially not if it is something the character is complaining about. A lot of complaining, whining, or angsting gets old quickly. Namely because a character is continuously complaining about something, but doing nothing to fix it. The plot doesn’t move forward and the character seems one-note.

6. Unneeded Words. And, last but not least, what this blog is titled after–all those little words that sneak in that really don’t need to be there. I believe, so far this year, I have yet to return an edited manuscript that isn’t at least 1,000 words shorter than when I got it (even with adding in needed words/sentences). Even without the other things on this list, there always tends to be unnecessary words.

Now there are plenty of words that can be unnecessary depending on context, but the three I find myself deleting the most are “up”, “very”, and “that”.

Now, if you have someone look up, yes you need up, but often I find “She stood up” or “She raised her hand up” For the first, there isn’t much difference between “She stood” and “She stood up” Up is contributing nothing. For the second, raising implies “up” You don’t “raise your hand down” thus you don’t need to specify.

“Very” is a modifier that “very” often gets abuse. I know I use it all the time (you can probably find plenty of “very”s in this blog). Mostly, though, “very”s get cut before adverbs/adjectives in my editing.

“He ran very quickly.”
“Her singing was very beautiful.”

Very can bog the sentence down, and they change “very” little. It’s still possible to picture someone running quickly or singing beautiful without modifying it with “very”

As for “that” I have a bit of a vendetta, I admit. Lets look at some examples:

“I hope that I don’t fall.”
“It was comforting knowing that she wasn’t alone.”
“He couldn’t believe that he had been there so long.”

There’s nothing technically wrong with those sentences, but let’s get rid of those “that”s:

“I hope I don’t fall.”
“It was comforting knowing she wasn’t alone.”
“He couldn’t believe he had been there so long.”

Have the sentences lost any of their meaning by taking out “that”? Not really.

So, depending on how often you use unneeded “up”s, “very”s, or “that”s in sentences, you can cut your word count down substantially just by taking out words that don’t serve a purpose.

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Word Limits

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Today’s post: Word Limits or: Why won’t they publish my 300,000 word novel?

People write some long novels. James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans is 145,469 words long. Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead 311,596. And, of course, as the king of long novels, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace is 587,287. With most novels clocking in around 100,000 words (give or take 20,000), Tolstoy has arguably written six books in one, and Rand a one-book trilogy (with the shorter of her two most famous works).

Word counts can be funny things. Interestingly enough, I seem to have some sort of power over my novels. If I’m aiming for a 80,000 word book, I tend to get one somewhere within that range give or take 5,000. My first NaNoWriMo novel, which had the goal of 50,000 words, wrapped up at around 50,500. Aiming for 80,000 with my latest project The Copper Witch (which has just moved into the submission stage) I finished up around 86,000.

Continuously managing to write a story within a general word count, though (be it through subconscious tinkering, or anything else) , doesn’t seem to be a universal trait amongst writers. And that’s something I completely understand. A story has a natural progression. It’s done when it’s done.

So what is there to be done when how long (or short) your novel is seems to be what’s keeping it from being published? Aren’t the word counts they give generally arbitrary anyway? As one NaNoWriMo Forum poster puts it:

“I’ve read somewhere that 120 K is the upper limit for a new fantasy writer, which seems really… short for a fantasy novel…I still can’t believe it’s set as the upper limit.”

Now, first, I’d like to say I’ve never found 120,000 words short. My fantasy novels tend to be around 80,000, but perhaps that’s because I don’t write Tolkien-style epics.

Second, as the earlier books I’ve listed in this blog show, it’s possible to get a book published that is more than 120,000 words. You should never say “can’t” when it comes to publishing. Doing certain things can make it harder to get published, but nothing I have yet seen makes it impossible to get a book published.

But why do publishers even care about word counts? Sure, if the story drags on and on, that’s a problem, but if it’s action-packed and engaging for those 200,000 words, what’s the problem?

Having worked on both sides of publishing–as a writer and as someone working at a publishers–I can only point to one fact that is all to easy to forget as a writer. Your manuscript might be your baby as an author, but as a publisher, the manuscript is a product. Writing might be art to you, but writing is business to a publisher. Unless writing is your only source of income, money is something that might just be an added perk to us writers that coincides with seeing our books in print. To a publisher, however, those books are all business. It’s an added plus sometimes to give a first time novelist a shot at their big break, but if even a book you love isn’t likely to make a profit, it just isn’t something a publisher with a good business plan will take on.

So why does a publisher keep putting out the same generic vampire books? Because they sell. Why doesn’t a publisher put out any more vampire books? Because the market seems oversaturated and they aren’t as likely to sell (or the acquisition editor is sick to death of them).

And word counts come from this same need to mitigate risk and maximize profits. Beyond the fact that it’s likely many long manuscripts could do with a harsh paring down, there are two big problems with books over 120,000-150,000 words:

1. The longer the book is, the more expensive it is to produce. Unless you are going through a vanity publisher (and thus paying the press to put your book out) the general rule is money flows to the author, not from. A reputable publisher will pay for formatting, cover art, editing…and just about every other “start-up” cost there is to putting out a book. Focusing on the editing aspect of that, the longer your book is, the more they’re going to end up paying there editors. After all, there’s a reason I charge more editing a 200,000-word book than a 10,000-word one. The longer the book is, the longer it will take to edit. Especially edit well. If you’re paying an editor per project, you’re going to be paying for them more for a long project. If you’re paying an editor hourly, they’re going to have to take much more time to edit a long book. Even if you’re paying an editor a set salary, they may only be able to get one book done when  they generally would have three ready to go. Since most publishers worried about quality have at least three rounds of edits, that can add up to a lot of extra man-hours.

And then, of course, there’s just the production cost in general. With ebooks it’s changing a little, but as long as print books are popular, the longer a book is the more it will cost to print (ink, paper, etc.) Printing an initial run of 1,000 300,000-word books basically uses the same amount of supplies as 3,000 100,000-word books.

2. The longer a book is, the harder it is to sell. Now, this isn’t a “people don’t like reading long books” point. Obviously people are willing to read books that are longer than “average”. Going back to the fact that the larger a (print) book is, the more paper is needed to print it–the more paper in a book means the more it will cost to ship, and the more shelf space it takes up. Most bookstores prefer to have a range of books out, and thus don’t like taking many thick books, especially ones by unknown authors.

Likewise, with shipping and printing costs quite a bit higher for long books versus short ones, to make money off longer books they need to be priced higher. Now, not only do you have  to sell the story to someone (since not all plots are loved by all people) but you have to find someone who is willing to foot the cost of all that extra time and material. Someone who’s willing to pay for a book at $14.99 might not be so willing to by it at $24.99. There’s a psychology to marketing, and how you’re able to price things is a big part of that.

Add the fact that you have fewer books in general to sell in one run to the fewer buyers, and publishers see a lot of warning lights going off.

With the growing popularity of ebooks, perhaps the word count barriers will start to come down. The cost of pixels doesn’t go up with how long a book is. Even if you can’t decrease editing costs, you at least would be able to save money on printing and be able to price a long book close to a shorter book. But for now, limits on length when it comes to submissions makes complete sense to me.

Limits might be annoying to writers, but publishing isn’t about pleasing writers. You want the authors you work  with to be happy with edits, and cover art, and all of that stuff. But as a publisher, how the book sells dictates whether or not you get a raise, get promoted, or heck, even still have a job next month.

And so, with the surplus of manuscripts floating around out there, publishers can be picky about where they spend their time and money. While anything can happen based on whose desk a manuscript comes across, things that pose a financial risk (too long a book, an unknown author, a plot that doesn’t quite seem to fit any one genre) are often looked at critically.

After all, a book is art to an author, but business to a publisher.

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Wy I Hayt Fonetik Axsents

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All right. Be honest, how long did it take you to figure out the title? Did you even bother? All right, if you did, what is easier for you to read, that title or “Why I hate phonetic accents”?

Ok, I’ll be the first to admit that the English language makes little sense. It’s a Germanic language that was morphed by Anglo-Saxons, too far away to remember original German, adapted by the French during the Norman Conquest, and then had a thousand years to go through a vowel shift, changes, and added words (it’s reported Shakespeare alone invented 1,700 now common English words). Standardized spellings weren’t common for long after the Elizabethans (after all, Noah Webster decided to standardize “American” spellings in 1780) and many grammatical rules have come and gone, made by people often referred to as “pedantic” (split infinitives were only classified as “wrong” in the 20th century by scholars who more than likely believed English should follow Latin grammatical rules [where it’s quite literally impossible to split infinitives]). So why isn’t “phonetic” spelt “fonetik”? Because it comes from a Greek root, transcribed from the Greek Alphabet as ‘ph’ in the Latin alphabet, and it’s been that way since.

So, all of it is made up. So why can’t we make sure our character’s accents come out properly by having one say “dahlin'” one “dahrling” and one “derlin'”? The same reason people standardized language in the first place. It’s harder to understand. 

Truly, language as a whole is made up, if you want to argue it. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s purpose is ultimately to have one person understand another. That vastly increases when you’re a writer. If you want to write something out phonetically as you understand it for your own notes, it doesn’t matter. If you’re expecting people to understand you in a novel/short story/article you’ve written, eet prabalee shudent b ritten liek dis.

Furthermore, how an accent sounds to you and how it sounds to someone else can be two very different things. Think of a British accent. How would someone with a British accent say “Really” to you? Reelee? Realeh? Rehleh?

Does it change if they’re speaking with a Kightsbridge Accent? London Accent? RP Accent? Cockney Accent? So now, not only is the phonetic spelling subjective, it can also be insulting if you don’t actually speak with that accent. Personally, I’d think I [in DC] say “really” something like “reelee” but I don’t speak with British accent. How do I know what sounds correct to someone from [insert place character is from]? After all, I’ve never heard someone say “pip, pip, cheerio” even though that’s supposedly British from what TV tells me. If you suddenly try to make your Irish character sound like the Lucky Charms Leprechaun saying top o’ the mornin’ to ya everywhere, you risk people considering you ignorant and/or insulting.

So is there any reason to write out an accent? In my opinion, no. In a novel I recently edited, there was an Irish character speaking with the thickest phonetically spelled attempted-accent I have ever seen (even sounding it out it didn’t sound Irish to me). Eventually I gave up trying to read what that character was saying (reading shouldn’t be that difficult in my opinion), leaving a note along the lines of “please, please, please don’t do this” but I do still remember one perfect example of the confusion spelling things out phonetically can cause.

“Fairreh”

Any guesses on that one? Perhaps some context, unphoneticized:

“Look, a fairreh!”

What I heard saying it? Fairy. It was a fantasy novel, so I thought, all right, fairies are showing up.

Too bad the author meant “Fire”

Just a small difference in the tone of the scene there.

Now, I’m not saying you can’t throw in small changes like “gonna” or “haveta'” if you feel the need to (e.g. “Tommy! Why haven’t you taken the trash out?” “Ah….I was gonna.”) but I highly, highly suggest staying away from trying to show your character’s accent bi mayking ehveree wurd fonetik.

But then, how do you show someone’s accent if you don’t spell it out?

I’d suggest some less intrusive (easier to read) ways:

1.  “He said with an X accent.” It’s simple, but showing accents in writing might be best suited with simple mentions. There are many ways to get it across in the same way:

“Hi,” he said with an Irish accent.

“Hi.”
She smiled at his lilting accent. It made even “hi” sound magical.

“Hi,” he said.
“Oh, that’s an interesting accent. Where are you from?”
“Ireland.”

“Hi,” he said, noticing how much his accent seemed out-of-place in the new school.

They all let you say he has an accent without  obscuring the actual words and making it hard to read.

2. Use speech patterns to show differences, not phonetics. Again, this is another one you have to be careful about not being insulting, but people from different areas don’t only have different accents, they use different grammar. Where I say, “I was going to go…” My great-uncle in West Virginia says, “I was fixin’ to go…” Where most people I’ve met say, “Turn off the light.” My college roommate from Brooklyn used to say, “Shut the light.” Don’t overdo it with regional slang (especially when you aren’t familiar with the region) since you’ll be in danger of going back to that “insulting” thing, but it tends to be a better way to show accents than, “I whas goeing too goe…” and “I whus fixen ta goh…”

3. If necessary, use phonetic spellings tastefully. As I said above, if your character doesn’t say “going to” properly, it might be all right to put “gonna” It’s a generally well-known version, and “I was gonna go…” would more than likely make sense to the bulk of your readers. Same with fixin’. Putting “fixing” just wouldn’t sound right in my head for “I was fixin'” Without the ‘g’ though, it’s still possible to generally understand what is being said. “I was fixin'” isn’t quite the same as “I whus fixen” The average reader will be able to read small changes like that easily. It’s when you start making people sound out every word that it gets tiring.

Now, can people write out phonetic accents well? I’m sure they can. Should they? In my personal opinion, no. Of course, that’s my personal opinion. As with everything else on this blog, people can take or leave what I say. They are all just suggestions after all. But, as I see it, anything that makes your writing difficult to understand isn’t generally good for it. After all, we standardized the language to be understood. And, as writers, it is our job to use language well.

How to Write When You Just Don’t Feel Like Writing

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Hope Daylight Savings hasn’t screwed anyone up too much for those in places that observe it (like DC sadly…) So, for while all of us in a sleep-lacking daze, today’s post on how to write even when we may not feel like it.

For the most part, I am pretty lucky when it comes to avoiding writer’s block. I have enough ideas in my head at any one point I can jump back and forth between works when I get stuck on one or another. What does hit me, however, are times when I just don’t feel like writing. Now, these generally coincide with times I really don’t feel like doing anything, but working a full-time job along with freelancing and attempting to have a social life doesn’t leave me with a lot of time to both be able to not do anything for long stretches and be able to get some writing done (maybe when I’m a best-selling author with a 7-book deal, but for now…)

And so, that leads to a sad fact: Write even when you don’t feel like writing, or don’t write at all. Since I don’t see the latter as much of an option, that means I have to find ways to write even when I don’t feel like it.

Some of you might be lucky and have time so that you only have to write when inspiration takes you (as I used to be back as a student a while underemployed), but for the rest who are trying to juggle work, school, a family, loved ones, friends, sports, hobbies, and everything else you might have to do in your already busy life, here are some of my tips to getting past that “I just don’t wanna” feeling:

1. Work on something else. This is my big one. Even if you don’t have multiple novels going at once, it’s possible to get past a block on one story by working on something completely different for at least a little bit. You can start a piece of flash fiction, which is easily completed in one sitting. You can toy around with an idea you had a while ago (just put some characters down and see where it goes for a couple of pages). You can even write a “fan” fic of your own larger novel. Always want your characters to go to Italy but there’s no way that would work in your story? Send them now and chalk that writing up to character building.

2. Word Sprints. What is a word sprint, you ask? Obviously you’ve never been on the NaNoWriMo Forums. Word sprints are timed writing exercises where you do your best to write anything and everything you can think of in 1, 5, 10… minutes. You try to reach personal goals (100 words in 2 minutes) or can add a little more motivation by finding someone to race against (in person or online) or using a program like “Write or Die” where, depending what setting you put it on, after a certain time frame (5, 10, 20 seconds) of not writing, the program will have a pop up reminding you to keep writing, set off a rather unpleasant siren that won’t stop until you keep writing, or (on kamikaze mode) begin un-typing everything you’ve written.

3. Do something “avant garde”. Generally write in third person past tense? Write in first person present. Have a character pop up that has medium awareness or breaks the fourth wall. Throw yourself into the story. You might end up deleting the entire section, but that’s fine. Not everything you write has to be perfect and make it into the final (or even second) draft. It can give you a jump-start to get you back into writing in general just because it’s so different from what you’re used to.

4. Reward System. Ok, maybe you don’t want to eat a cookie for every word you write (unless you’re also working on being a competitive eater, because then, hey, two birds with one stone) but it’s sometimes possible to tempt yourself into writing the same way you bribe a kid into eating his/her vegetables. Really want some chocolate? You get some if you write 1,000 words. Thinking about getting yourself a new DVD? 2,000 words and it’s yours. It can even be something as simple as telling yourself you’ll let yourself sleep in Saturday morning an extra hour if you just get a chapter done.

5. Switch up how you write. For me, I tend to type a lot of what I write, just since it’s simpler come editing time, but there is definitely something to be said for handwriting when I’m in a slump. It also means it’s possible to write in bed while completely lying down (hard to type when on your side since you only have one hand). Bonus: It keeps me from getting bored and ending up on Facebook or reading Cracked.com.

6. Don’t Stress. The most important (and perhaps hardest) of the “get past a slump” tips. The more you stress about not wanting to write, the harder it’s going to be for you to write. If you feel like you’re forcing yourself, either your writing is going to sound, well, forced, or you’re not going to be able to write at all. Sometimes you just won’t be able to motivate yourself to write. It isn’t that big of a problem as long as it’s not every time you sit down. Take a coffee/hot chocolate/beverage of your choice break, watch a TV show, calm down and come back to writing later.

But They Did It…

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First, sorry for being away a couple of days. As much as I do love my editing, it can take up a lot of time (luckily my most recent projects have overall been very good. It’s always nice when you truly enjoy reading what people are having you edit) but as I am feeling like a bad blog-poster, I wanted to make sure to get today’s post up. And what is today’s post, you may ask? Best Sellers and Good Writing.

Now, what are some of the best-selling books/series of all time? – Lord of the Rings – Harry Potter – The Da Vinci Code – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Twilight Some of these books have sold over 100 million copies. But does that mean they’re well written? No, not necessarily. Now, I’ve already touched on some of my problems with Twilight in previous blog posts, but of all of the books listed, do you think we could get a consensus on one that everyone thinks is entirely brilliant without any flaws? Though I haven’t read all of the books I’ve listed, I have read a couple. But even the ones I enjoyed didn’t come off to me as faultless. J.R.R. Tolkien can overdo it with the description–the world is brilliant, but I totally skipped that three page description of a tree in Return of the King. Dan Brown’s characters can be one-dimensional–I read The Da Vinci Code in about a day, but couldn’t say I connected with/saw anything all that interesting in the characters. And, as much as I have enjoyed the Harry Potter series, there are plenty of people who point out J.K. Rowling’s writing problems:

“Rowling’s prose is as flat (and as English) as old beer, while Harry himself is not a boy of depth or subtlety.” — Guardian (U.K.)

“In any decent story, the plot is advanced as characters make decisions. In Goblet of Fire, Harry has to enter a tournament because his name pops out of a cup. And he can’t decide not to enter because… the rules of magic say so! Things are just being thrown at Harry because the writer wants to throw them. (It’s even worse than an episode of 24).” — Daniel Radosh In his comment after his main article criticizing Rowling’s adverb use.

Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way saying that these books are awful–as I said, I enjoyed many of them–but they aren’t perfect. As one poster on a yahoo forum put it: “I know that JK Rowling is a popular writer, but she is not a good writer. Many people use the argumentum ad populum fallacy to argue that JKR is a good writer. (AKA: The books are popular so the books must be written well). Popularity may sometimes be a result of high quality writing, but it can’t be used as evidence that the books are well written.” And truly, that’s what it comes down to. There is no test you have to pass to be a writer. Writing a best seller isn’t about carefully crafting a book after years of study under a master writer. J.R.R. Tolkien was a linguist who ended up making Middle Earth partially out of his love for foreign (often made up) languages. J. K. Rowling supposedly wrote down the idea for Harry Potter on a cocktail napkin. Stephenie Meyer was a receptionist and then a housewife when she wrote Twilight. Years of dedication and work–while it can help–isn’t what makes an author write a best seller. Honestly, part of being a best seller seems to be, at best, luck. It’s being in the right place at the right time with something someone likes. Some people might write brilliant works that are never seen in their lifetimes. Some people might write a so-so novel they don’t care about in a week that sells 500 million copies worldwide. It might not be fair, but that always seems to be the nature of writing. What it does mean, though, is that best-selling authors aren’t any more infallible than anyone else. Copying one won’t save you from making writing mistakes any more than just trying to write something on your own.

This is especially true if you end up copying things that many people don’t like about the best-selling author’s writing (for example, J. K. Rowling’s use of adverbs or Stephenie Meyer’s purple prose). If a book you’ve read inspires you (best seller or obscure) think about what it is about the book that reaches you. What you’ll often find is that the books that generally reach you most do so because of their plot, characters, or something much more broad than just word use/writing style. Writing flowery prose, like Meyer, won’t make your book as popular as Twilight. Spending five pages describing every detail in your world, like J. R. R. Tolkien will at times, will not mean your book will be magically as well received as Lord of the Rings. Gain your inspiration from other authors you admire, but don’t use them as the end all be all for what writing should be.

Write what feels natural to you, learn, grow, take critiques, and become your own author. Not someone trying to emulate X. It’s likely you’ll write better that way.

How -Not- to Take a Review

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Recently I posted about how to take a critique, since I know all to well how hard it can be to see your work red-lined after an edit or sit there listening to someone tell you all the problems they had with your work. It’s hard, but very helpful in making your writing the best it can be, be the critique from a friend, writers’ group, professional editor, or your publisher.

Coincidentally (I’m doing my best not to use “ironically” incorrectly, so coincidentally it is) not too long after I posted that article, I got an irate email from an author I recently wrote a review for (as I am a reviewer over at ePublish a Book) demanding the review be removed.

*Before continuing, I would like to say here that this article is in no way meant as an attack against said author. There will be no mention of the author’s name, her book, or links to the review in question. Instead, as with most of my blog posts, I am attempting to use personal experiences to give advice and clear up misconceptions about writing, editing, publishing, and reviewing. All of the following is meant to help those with misconceptions about how the review process works, and I am more than happy to answer additional questions left as comments, tweeted, or emailed to me.*

Now to start, I fully admit I can be a critical reviewer. I do my best to never be unfair, rude, or mean, but I am completely honest in what I think about the books I have read. If you get a good review from me, you have fully earned it. Still, even if I didn’t like a book, I do my best to point out what the author has done well. Unless there is absolutely nothing redeeming about a book, you will not see a review that is only disparaging either.

As that’s my goal as a reviewer–not lampooning ok books and only gushing about great books–I tend to write many mixed reviews: reviews along the lines of “I liked the story, but the prose was needlessly flowery” or “The characters were amazingly realistic, unfortunately the plot didn’t live up to their well-constructed depth” (Neither of those are from actual reviews, but you get the idea). The review in question was likewise mixed.

Obviously the author wasn’t pleased with the critical parts of the review, as not long after it posted I received an email along the lines of:

“Take it down. If you are going to punish an effort, at least tell people first.”

Now, I won’t post the rest of the emails back and forth (there were quite a few with me telling her I wasn’t going to take it down and how reviews generally worked) since that would make for a needlessly long blog post and I don’t think it’s entirely professional to divulge the entirety of private correspondences when they aren’t exactly flattering, but I would like to hit on a few points for anyone who might have some misconceptions about requesting reviews.

1. Unless you are paying for a review, you have no control over what the reviewer writes about your book. As much as I might like to, as it says on my reviews and editing services page, I accept “no money or gifts from authors seeking reviews.” Now, the reason I don’t accept money or gifts is not because I hate gifts nor because I believe reviewing is a job that no one should get paid for. It’s because it’s a conflict of interest. There are some “reviewers” out there that you can send money and they’ll give you nice blurbs to put on your front cover, but I am not one of them. If it were possible to buy a good review from me it would  undermine my credibility as a reviewer. How would people know if I actually thought the book I’m reviewing is a good book or a book I hated but was paid to say good things about it? If I think it’s a good book I’ll say so, if it’s an ok book, that too. If I think it’s a bad book, well, sorry, you’re getting a bad review. Since you aren’t paying me, you don’t get to decide what I say.

2. No control means you do not get to edit the review nor determine whether or not the review is posted. Going back to the “at least tell people first” part of that first email, later emails made clear that–in the event that the review was not glowing–the author expected to get a copy of the review before it was posted to edit (or at least approve) it. While I’m not inherently opposed to the idea of giving an author a copy of what will be posted (though I’ve never heard of that happening outside of the aforementioned reviews-for-hire) it would not give the author the power to pull the article or edit it (e.g. “I don’t like what you say here about my book, can you make it nicer?”) so mostly that would just give the author time to see the review the day before everyone else does.

3. This fact (the author not getting to edit or having to approve a review) is, as far as I know, an industry standard. I can’t say I’ve talked to the entire industry, but no one I have talked to (reviewers/editors I know) has ever given someone asking for a review a copy of the review before hand, nor have they allowed edits. As an author you give them your book and wait until it’s posted. Assuming that you are going to get some say over the review shows either you have no idea how reviewing works or you have only ever paid for reviews/asked for people to give you good blurbs for the dust jacket. Basically, if you act as though you get a say, it makes you look unprofessional.

4. By asking for a review, you are taking the chance of getting a bad review. Going along with the fact that you don’t get a say in what is said in a review if you don’t pay for it, you have to accept that it is possible you won’t get a good review. If you’re extremely worried, try reading other reviews the reviewer you’re contacting has written. Anyone who reads my reviews will see that I don’t often gush about how wonderful a book is, and will point out anything I especially don’t like even in books that I generally like. If you want a review that’s 100 percent amazing you can cut and post to your website, you should either hope your book is completely brilliant or find a reviewer who writes more 100 percent positive reviews. I aim for totally honest reviews as a matter of principle.

5. If you absolutely will only accept a glowing review, ask upfront if the reviewer will refrain from posting a bad review. Now, first off, I DO NOT SUGGEST YOU DO THIS. It again comes off as unprofessional, but if you are absolutely insistent on not having any bad reviews up anywhere of your book, ask up front about it (otherwise it probably won’t cross the reviewer’s mind [see: not industry standard]). Personally, if someone asked that, I’d pass on reading their book entirely. Perhaps there’s someone who’d agree to it, but I’m certainly not one of them. It’s your choice over whether or not you’ll accept a bad review, but you have to accept you’re also passing up a possible good review in your quest to have nothing bad ever written about your book.

6. There’s no such things as bad publicity. Ok, so there is technically (say it comes out that you’re a serial killer or that your book causes brain aneurysms), but in general the old adage is true. So you got a critical review. So what? Not everyone is going to love your book. Ask someone what their favorite book is. They could gush, it could be critically acclaimed, and… there will still be people out there who slam it. Part of being a writer is accepting that fact. If you have a thin skin, you don’t have to look at anything posted about it, but it’s going to happen. Anyway, it’s better to have a so-so review on a heavily trafficked site to get your name out there than it is to only have a couple glowing reviews somewhere no one’s ever going to see them. Who knows, perhaps someone will like the sound of your book, no matter the review, and buy it. They aren’t going to if they’ve never heard of it, even if you have some people gushing about it.

7. A bad review isn’t punishment. Going back to the first email, I’m not sure what effort the author was talking about (requesting the review or publishing a book) but as it isn’t hard to request a review (just send an email) I’m going to assume “punishing an effort” refers to the book. First, as an author you unfortunately don’t get any points for effort. It would be sort of awesome if you did, honestly, but your work is going to sink or swim based on its own merit. If a book you wrote in a week is great, you’re more than likely going to get a great review, if a book you spent three decades working on and edited fifty times is bad, you’re still going to get a bad review. Second, a bad review–like a harsh critique–isn’t personal. The reviewer isn’t trying to punish you, discredit the work you put into the book, or attack you as a writer. They’re just honestly giving their opinion of the book they’ve read.

8. If you disagree with a review, it’s ok to say so, but ranting won’t help you. So you’ve decided to go ahead and ask for a review, and it unfortunately is overwhelmingly negative. FIRST, take a couple of hours, an afternoon, a day, however long it takes until you can think about it rationally. Bad reviews sting, I understand, perhaps even more so than critiques. However, it is not the end of the world. One bad review isn’t going to stop people from buying your book or make people think you’re obviously an awful writer.

Now, it’s hard to get any part of reviews changed (they’re opinions, so there generally aren’t factual errors to dispute and if the reviewer didn’t “get it” you at least have to take partial blame for not writing clearly enough for them to understand) but if there’s something you strongly disagree with, go ahead and contact them about it. You’ll likely get a “sorry, that’s how it is” email back, but it’s possible your reviewer will at least talk to you about why they felt a certain way, if you’re nice. Sending several angry emails and making demands will not get you anywhere. We get it, many reviewers are writers too, we know how you’re feeling. That doesn’t change the fact that our reviews need to hold up to certain standards, otherwise it undermines our credibility.

If you feel a review is unnecessarily rude or unfair, you can likewise email the writer’s editor and nicely try to make your points. As they posted it, it’s likely they too will support their writers (if they thought it was awful, they wouldn’t have put it on their site) but most will at least be willing to explain their decision, and if you’re lucky they may be sympathetic. Ranting at them about how awful and unreasonable a reviewer is being about a review they chose to post isn’t going to endear you.

And so, I hope that helps anyone who is unclear about the reviewing process. Like authors who want a pat on the head while editing, authors who want a pat on the head from a reviewer (and assume they’re going to get one) just makes for unhappy authors and unhappy reviewers. Never a good thing.

He said, She said

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Not too long ago now, I wrote a post about Showing and not Telling. While it’s always a good idea to show people what’s happening than tell them it (makes for more interesting reading for one) I didn’t agree with the method my old high school English teacher gave me for trying to stop yourself from telling–don’t use “to be” verbs.

You can read the rest of that post here, but today’s blog is going to focus on a different hotly debated, often hated aspect of writing: The Dreaded “said”.

As someone who’s written a lot of  dialogue, I’m sure I have used more than my share of “he/she/I said”s, and I never much thought about it until I started seeing posts like this in the NaNoWriMo forums:

“When I’m writing dialogue, it’s so hard to think of words besides ‘said’.
Does anyone have any websites that could give me, and other writers, lists of words that could be used besides ‘said’?”

And, “300 Ways to Say Said” a post complete with a list of 300 words you can use in tags, from “he/she/it/I accused” to “he/she/it/I yowled”

So, should you worry about using “said” too much in your novel/novella/short story?

Personally I agree with the post following the last of the list, “and ‘said’ is better in 99% of the cases.”

All right, that answer might be a little extreme, but as a whole, I have to say I agree with the sentiment. There is a time and a place to use other words (is your character whispering, yowling, or screaming? Go ahead and say so) but like trying to avoid using “to be” verbs, avoiding “said” to the point where it makes your writing awkward is much, much worse than having a far share of he said, she saids around the page.

1. People are trained to skip reading “said”s. It’s an odd phenomenon, but it’s a real one. Tags are added to dialogue to make sure the reader doesn’t get confused about who’s talking. For example, if Bill, Tom, and Nancy are having a conversation, you can’t have something along the lines of:

“I’m here!” Bill said.
“Welcome.”
“Took you long enough.”
“Yeah, what took you so long?”

How would anybody know who’s talking? Did Tom say “Welcome” or did Nancy? Is the person who said “Welcome” also asking what took Bill so long, or is there actually a fourth person in the room?

Half of the reason we use tags is just to have the name there. Even without any extra words, it would make more sense if the dialogue read:

Bill, “I’m here!”
Tom, “Welcome.”
Nancy, “Took you long enough.”
Tom, “Yeah, what took you so long?”

That’s basically script format, but it at least tells you who’s speaking. Said is nearly the same equivalent. People glance at the tag long enough to see the name there, and the said tends to roll right off them. Put in other words, though, and their attention starts being draw straight to the tag.

“I’m here!” Bill exclaimed.
“Welcome,” Tom soliloquized.
“Took you long enough,” Nancy scolded.
“Yeah, what took you so long?” Tom contributed.

Maybe you aren’t using said over and over again, but suddenly the attention is on the tag rather than what’s actually being said…and that’s generally a bad thing. (For the record, all of those tags are suggested in the “300 Ways to Say Said” thread).

2. Instead of replacement words, you can tag things with actions. Going back to the first point, let’s look at the words replacing “said”. Ok, let’s keep exclaimed, Bill’s really excited, no reason not to say that. But the others? We can use action tags instead. So, rather than be stuck with “Bill said, Tom said, Nancy said, Tom said” you can have:

“I’m here!” Bill exclaimed.
Tom looked up from his work. “Welcome.”
“Took you long enough,” Nancy said.
“Yeah.” Tom frowned. “What took you so long?”

You still have the names close enough to the tags that you know who’s speaking, but you aren’t using awkward sounding words to keep from using a natural word.

Bonus: You’re showing people rather than telling them. Say you had “Tom scolded” rather than “Tom frowned”. You could do that, but what does scolding really look like? Is he shaking his finger? Frowning? Pursing his lips? ‘Scolded’ doesn’t have a strong picture attached to it. ‘Frowned’ does.

3. People aren’t always yelling/whispering/screaming… There’s a reason using replacement words sound weird when reading dialogue tags–and it’s not just we’re all used to the word said. Words that replace said are often strong ones. If someone is saying something quietly, whispered is probably a better word to use (it means someone’s speaking quietly after all). More than often, though, people tend to just say things. When was the last time you had a conversation where a person was exclaiming, shouting, and yelling everything they were saying in a normal conversation (i.e. not a fight or in a mental ward)? If your characters are having a perfectly nice conversation, but one person keeps whispering, or yelling, or scolding, I’m going to wonder exactly what’s wrong with them. Good if your character is trying to reach Hamlet levels of insane. Not so good if they’re supposed to be rational characters discussing where their friend went.

4. Too often, it feels like you’re trying too hard. As I talked about in my earlier article, “Hey Look! I’m a Writer!” Syndrome, trying to be fancy with your writing doesn’t make you look like a good writer, it makes you look like someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing, and thus are trying too hard. You shouldn’t be lazy or cavalier about your writing, but that certainly doesn’t mean you have to labor over every word to make sure it fits with every other artistic gem. Just like it’s perfectly fine to say “The sun rose” rather than “The golden orb floated into the azure sky” it’s perfectly fine to say “He said” rather than “He exclaimed with a fervor”. There’s a time and a place for poetic/flamboyant language, but using it just because you don’t want to be boring or think that’s what good writers do is almost always a bad thing.

And so, with everything else with writing, I always say, say what you mean, but don’t make your writing unnatural just because you think you need to be doing something else to be a “good” writer.