Tag: writing

Worth the Wait

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If there is one thing that I wish I could go back and tell my younger self about publishing, it would be ‘take your time’. With my newest book ramping up for release, I have received a number of emails/IMs/Facebook messages from aspiring authors asking questions about how to get published (or If I can help them get published some of the time). While the answer the second question is “I can help tell you about the publishers with whom I have worked, but no, I can’t go and tell them to publish you”, my general advice is to slow down.

As far as answering questions, I am always happy to help just about anyone who asks for it. Far too often I read posts from new writers stating it’s “impossible” to get a book published. Unfortunately, this sentiment is often what has authors fall into the trap of working with a vanity press (a press which charges authors to put their books out). It makes sense why many new writers fall into that trap (and at least enough do to support all the vanity presses around) but being in that much of a rush only leads to problems later down the line.

Recently, I received a question from an author who had published their first book with a vanity press which shall remain nameless and was unhappy with how sales were going. After having paid over a thousand dollars in “start-up costs” (something no reputable publisher will ask for) she hadn’t made even half of it up in sales over the year. She asked if I thought she should now try to find an agent to go with traditional publishing with the hopes that the time/rejection that meant would lead to better sales.

While I would recommend anything over vanity presses (either self-publishing through a platform like Createspace or Lulu) or pursuing traditional publishing (through a large or small press), that ship has sadly most likely sailed. While it is true that some previously self-published books are picked up by traditional publishers later on in their careers, most publishers contract “first publication rights”. What this means is publishers are buying the right to make your book available to the public before anyone else. Once your book as been published (be it through a self-publisher, vanity press, or public novel blog) those rights have been used up and publishers won’t contract the book outside of it being an independent commercial success. The likelihood of them picking it up from a vanity press, especially with the book not selling particularly well, is slim to nil. It’s just not worth their time, effort, or money.

All is not lost for the question asker, of course, she is not forever blacklisted somewhere. Any new book she writes she can either self-publish through a non-vanity press platform or attempt to traditionally publish. This first book is just a bit of a costly mistake.

And so, never be in a rush to publish. Is pursuing traditional publishing confusing sometimes when you’re starting out? Definitely. Does it mean a lot of rejection/effort? More than likely. Is it better than paying someone to publish your book for you? You can bet your socks.

This is not to say that self publishing is also a bad. There are several writers who have found success through self-publishing. Not, however, by rushing. Authors chose to self publish for a number of reasons, amongst them more creative control or writing something that would have a hard time finding a traditional outlet. “I want it published now” should not be the main reason for pursuing self-publishing either, however. Some self-published books are as good, if not better, than traditionally published books with amazing quality. It is up to the author however to make it that way which can take a fair chunk of time and effort, especially when it comes to paying for editors/cover artists/etc. (in self publishing you will be paying upfront for publishing, but namely for freelancers, not a package from a company. Combined with a platform that lets you post books for free, such as the ones mentioned above, this is almost always cheaper than a vanity press without tying yourself to a less-than-reputable company). Self-publishing will likely be a quicker route to publishing than traditional publishing (unless you’re one of the lucky ones who find a publisher on their first query) but to make a quality product it still takes time. You control the release date, but there is no reason taking another six months or a year to make your book the best it can be will make or break the project.

Especially because, as an author, your name is your product. And the internet has a very long memory. If you pay to have a vanity press produce a book (especially a vanity press that doesn’t do a good job editing) people will end up finding that press and book tied to your name even after you’ve moved one to bigger and better things. If you rush a self-published book that just isn’t ready (one with typos and bad cover art) you might later be able to remove it from print, but copies/traces of it online won’t magically disappear.

As an author you will always be improving. Even now, with my third novel just about to come out and over five years of editing under my belt, I don’t pretend I’m a perfect writer. Each new book that comes out will likely be a little better than the last (I would hope) simply because the more you do something the better you tend to get at it. There is no need to chase perfection, but there is also no need to rush. Do your best to only put things out that your future writer self will be proud to have their name on. True, that’s sometimes easier said than done, but truly, there’s no rush. Take your time to make a brilliant product. After all, as an author, your name is your brand.

Professional Writing from A to Z

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Today’s post comes to us from Nikolas Baron, part of the Grammarly marketing team. Find more about him on Facebook or Twitter or Check out Grammarly (billed as “an automated proofreader and your personal grammar coach”)

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There are some practices that not all professionals share. Some writers have the luxury of working at home. If so, they might spend the day in pajamas. Why get dressed if no one is going to see? What about the days that they have a conference call with an editor? They might keep on the pajama bottoms, simply putting on a nice shirt for the camera. Anyone who would criticize this practice is probably jealous. Professional attire is not as important for telecommuters as it is for other professionals. Nonetheless, there are some things telecommuters can learn from their colleagues in other industries. Let us examine a few to see what we can apply to the writing field.

  • Astronauts

Years before a mission, astronauts begin preparations. They learn special procedures to perform important tasks in space.  Because of the lack of gravity, they learn to swallow special toothpaste instead of spitting it out. They practice what to do in case of an emergency. They rehearse hundreds of times before a launch. To produce a high-quality product, writers also prepare. They take writing classes to learn procedures that will aid them in the writing process. They learn to use computers. They might perform hundreds of writing exercises before they ever begin a novel, but this time is not lost. Practice does make perfect.

  • Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs)

EMTs have one of the most challenging professions of all because life and death depends on whether they perform well under pressure. Timing is essential. Writers often have deadlines, but focusing on them can cause writer’s block. Rather than panic, writers can draw from emergency response advice: Decide what needs to be done, and then do it! Try not to obsess over deadlines. Grab a drink, find a comfortable place, and write. Once you relax, the words will begin to flow.

  •  Jockeys

Jockeys are great at staying on a moving horse. You, too, can ride your work to victory again and again. Many writers do not realize that they can resell their articles. Imagine you wrote a short story and sold it to the imaginary Amazing Tales magazine. You could develop the same characters and themes into a novel. Or vice versa; you could use one of your novels as the basis for a series of short stories. What happened to your characters before or after the novel? Think of these stories as deleted scenes from a movie. Many of your fans would love to read something like that. It is also a great idea for a blog! Other journals, such as Reader’s Digest, welcome reprints. Remember, though, that you must own the rights to any article that you sell.

  • Zoo Keepers

Zoo keepers have fun, dangerous work. These professional caretakers must learn the habits of the animals that they keep; otherwise, they could get hurt. Writers hurt themselves if they fail to use the tools of the trade. If they do not take advantage of free proofreading online, they could lose time and money. If they do not attend writer’s groups, they miss out on encouraging association and valuable feedback. There’s no need to spend a fortune on education. Local colleges often offer writing and computer classes to the community. Learn what is out there and take advantage of it.

Lemonade stand workers set a great example. Their business may consist of only a sign, a table, and a pitcher of lemonade. The venture may be small, but the young entrepreneurs create a great product. They offer it to the community in attractive packaging. Simple though their business may be, they know the importance of creating a great product and treating customers well. Whether you identify with jockeys, jewelers, or janitors, you will be successful if you take a look at other professionals. No matter what kind of professional you look at, there is always a lesson to be learned.

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NikolasNikolas Baron discovered his love for the written word in Elementary School, where he started spending his afternoons sprawled across the living room floor devouring one Marc Brown children’s novel after the other and writing short stories about daring pirate adventures. After acquiring some experience in various marketing, business development, and hiring roles at internet startups in a few different countries, he decided to re-unite his professional life with his childhood passions by joining Grammarly’s marketing team in San Francisco. He has the pleasure of being tasked with talking to writers, bloggers, teachers, and others about how they use Grammarly’s online proofreading application to improve their writing. His free time is spent biking, travelling, and reading.

It’s been done

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Because I haven’t learned my lesson about having to many things on the fire at once, joining my third novel The Copper Witch coming out next year is my fourth, Between the Lines, with REUTS Publications.

Written for the most part in 2009, I remember rather jealously guarding the idea for this novel, which seemed entirely unique at the time. While the world, I still think, is unique–mostly because it’s one I created, and no one shares my exact thoughts (yet)–having more experience with writing, publishing, and books altogether, I have now learned that ideas are relatively cheap. Some are more unique than others, but the idea is not what makes a story. 

And that leads me to today’s post. The question I saw while browsing in the NaNoWriMo forums:

“How do you get over the fact that everything’s been done before?” 

As I said above, ideas are cheap. There are a million different ideas out there floating around at given moment and another couple million people ready to write them. Perhaps there’s a brilliant idea out there that the rest of humanity has someone missed, but as of today, I fully believe that if you haven’t found anything out in the world that shares the slightest similarity to your new idea, you probably haven’t yet looked enough.

And so, how do you get over the fact that everything has already been done?

Know that your writing and your characters are what are going to make or break the idea. 

Yes, it is important to have an interesting idea in that you have to be interested in it enough to write it. If you don’t find your story intriguing enough to write, you are never going to actually sit down and get anywhere with it. The fact is, though, even if two writers were fed the same idea, even if they were told to write the same basic plots, their books would not be identical. The characters would be different in how they thought, acted, how they related to one another. All the little things that make a story interesting would reflect the author writing it, not end up as an exact carbon copy.

So write what you like. Write what interests you. Write something brilliant or stupid or derivative. It is who you are as a writer that will make your story unique. If you hold on to that, the fact that everything has already been done but trust in your writing, you’ll always be in good shape.

Does Length Matter?

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As December and the holidays firmly take hold, the authors who did NaNoWriMo tend to either wander off to nurse their wounds and take some well-deserved time off or dive right back into trying to finish their novels (if 50k words wasn’t the end of their story) and/or edit some sense into the words they managed to churn out over the month.

I, personally, am doing my best to finish up the tail end of my NaNoWriMo project and it’s seeming the novel will likely be topping off around 75k words–a little shorter than I was hoping, but respectable all the same.

For you see, though it is called National Novel Writing Month, the 50k word goal of NaNoWriMo often leaves authors in the odd nether-space when it comes to the work they end up with (if authors stop at the 50k word mark). While 50k words is long for a novella, it’s not really considered a novel by many publishers.

Looking at the Wiki article on word count, it is listed there:

Classification Word count
Novel over 40,000 words
Novella 17,500 to 40,000 words
Novelette 7,500 to 17,500 words
Short story under 7,500 words

 

 

So what am I on about? 50k is certainly over 40k words. That makes a 50k word book a novel! When you start looking around at submission guidelines however you start finding things like:

“Preferred word counts are between 75,000 and 120,000.”

or

“We rarely publish anything under 80,000 words.”

And so, with a 50k word novel, many authors find themselves too short by a third to have many traditional print publisher take their works seriously. And that can feel like a bit of a kick in the teeth.

So what should you do? Try to whittle the story down into a novella? Beef it up into a novel? Well, there are a few things to consider.

1. EDIT.

This should be a no-brainer, but it is undoubtedly a bad idea to take any first draft you have written (especially one written in a month), pop together a query letter, and start sending it out to agents/publishers. It’s a bad idea to even think that your first draft will be exactly what you’ll have once you’ve gone through and edited. Perhaps there are useless scenes you’ve thrown in just to keep writing that you’ll chop lowering the word count over all. Perhaps you’ll realize there was an entire subplot you never fleshed out and add several thousand more words to your novel working that out. Don’t assume 50k is the office length your manuscript will be when you start shopping around. (And please, please, please don’t throw your new NaNo out into the world without edits. Publishers and agents will thank you)

2. Look into standards for your genre.

Yes, many publisher don’t really like to look at things that are under 70k words or so, but there are some genres where 50k is exactly in line with what publishers want (for example, mid-grade fiction and Romance novels). Don’t read this blog post and automatically start beefing up your story because you think you need to. You might have written something in a genre that doesn’t want long stories.

3. Consider your publishing goals.

So you’re writing in a genre that does want something longer than 50k (Fantasy, for example, is notorious for wanting longer manuscripts). Consider if those are the presses you want to go after. Want to go after big-name publishers/agents and fight for that big advance and first run? Conforming to industry standards will definitely make it a little easier for you along a undoubtedly hard trail. Planning on self-publishing, or even going after small/e-presses? You might not have to. Many e-presses quite like shorter books (even some big presses are doing e-imprints now) and small presses aren’t under the same pressure to look for things that only fit with what is out there already. If you’re happy with your manuscript as it is, look for places that won’t punt it because of word count.

4. Consider subplot

So you want to beef up a story but it really seems like your story tapped itself out at 50k. Consider if there are any subplots you want to add. When I first started writing short stories (after starting off as a novelist) I was told the main thing to keep in mind is that short stories tend to follow one or two characters from A to B and that is the end. Novels, on the other hand, have a full range of characters, and don’t have to only tell A to B. A to B can be the most important part of the story, but other things can be happening at the same time. Often there is a romantic subplot in stories (characters are going from A to B, but Male Main Character [MMC] and Female Main Character [FMC] are also falling in love) but there is no reason a subplot couldn’t be something entirely different. The characters are going from A to B, but MMC is also dealing with a severe illness. They’re going from A to B, but FMC is also doing her best to get into a good college. Think about the world around your characters and see if there is something that can be added that builds the story up.

5. Add descriptions/dialogue.

If you’re like me and tend to write large amounts of dialogue, go through your novel and look for places where you can add more description. What does the room they’re sitting in look like? What are your characters seeing? Don’t overdo it, but there should be plenty of places to build up your world while also increasing word count.

Alternatively, if you are primarily a narration writer, look at where you can add dialogue. More than once while editing I have come across something along the lines of “He told them about X” in a narration-heavy piece of writing. If the reader already knows about X, there’s no reason to rehash it, but if it’s the first time it has been mentioned, why not expand it into actual dialogue? Not only will you expand word count, you’ll also move from telling your reader about what’s happening to showing them.

6. DON’T add in meaningless filler.

Adding a subplot does not mean adding “filler” There shouldn’t be scenes that don’t have some purpose (slowing down the main story to show two characters grocery shopping just to add words is not a good idea). Likewise, adding description/dialogue does not mean throwing in walls of text/meaningless dialogue just to make a piece longer. Tolkien may have been able to get away with it, but taking three pages to wax poetic about a tree is a good way to have readers stop reading. And there is only so long readers will read seemingly meaningless dialogue before they put the book down. If your story is tight and flows well as it is, don’t sink it just for word count. Quality is still more important than quantity.

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Typing, Print, Cursive

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With news of the standard curriculum changing to no longer include cursive making the rounds, there have been a number of arguments surrounding the usefulness of teaching children to write in script. While many make the argument that it is an antiquated skill (and they possibly have a point, what with more and more documents being produced electronically) I have a much more personal connection to cursive than it seems many my age.

You see, when writing, I often prefer to write my first drafts out long hand. Sometimes I actually find it necessary (more than once on my most recent work in progress, I’ve only been able to write long hand while I just end up staring at the cursor on a word processor).

A sample of what nine out of ten notebooks in my house are filled with

When writing long hand, I also tend to solely write in cursive (print is reserved to mark what I intend to italicize when typing everything up). While I am able to write in both print and script quite legibly (I believe), I find writing in print much slower than writing in cursive (what with having to lift  your pen between each letter). The printing shown above was very deliberately my “nice” printing. In fact, if I try to print as quickly as I write in script, it ends up something more like this:

Why it also wobbles up and down, I don’t know.

Still legible, perhaps, but certainly not as pretty as cursive tries to sneak its way back in (I seem to be unable to separate the ‘h’ and ‘e’ in ‘the’ when writing in a hurry). As I tend to write whatever comes to me, I am thus not able to print quickly enough to keep up with my mind without the letters beginning to resemble chicken scratch (perhaps what those who knew me in middle school would remember as just my writing…)

But Jessica, you may be asking, if you don’t like printing, why don’t you just type? That’s what kids will likely find most useful in the future anyway. To which I say, fair question, rhetorical person. Typing likely will be a more important skill for children to learn in their lives–especially if their writing ventures tend to consist of school papers and emails.

As a writer, though, I still must make my case for writing longhand (and thus cursive) for a just a few reasons:

1. You think better writing longhand.

Seriously. There have been entire articles about it. While I don’t know if it is the reason (or only reason) I have been able to power through writer’s block with a pen when Microsoft Word fails me, there have been plenty studies that prove students learn better when writing things out by hand than with typing. To quote the article linked above:

“Writing stimulates a bunch of cells at the base of the brain called the reticular activating system (RAS). The RAS acts as a filter for everything your brain needs to process, giving more importance to the stuff that you’re actively focusing on at the moment—something that the physical act of writing brings to the forefront.

“Dr. Virginia Berniger, who studies reading and writing systems and their relationship to learning processes, found that children’s writing ability was consistently better (they wrote more, faster, and more complete sentences) when they used a pen rather than a keyboard…The difference, Berniger notes, may lie in the fact that with writing, you use your hand to form the letters (and connect them), thereby more actively engaging the brain in the process. Typing, on the other hand, involves just selecting letters by pressing identical-looking keys.”

Of course, some people are much more comfortable typing and that allows them to work more easily when not worrying about writing, but the very act of writing longhand engages the brain in ways typing does not, and that is helpful for many.

2. You can write on the go.

As smartphones and tablets become more and more common, pen and paper may begin to lose their advantage here, but for now, pen and paper wins out for easy writing on the go. You can get a small notebook from Office Depot for 99¢ (you aren’t going to get the cheapest tablet for that) and throw it in your purse without giving up much space, worrying about it running out of battery, or having to figure out how to type with any speed on a touch screen. Even lacking a notebook, you can almost always find a scrap of paper somewhere to scribble down ideas. There’s something poetic about starting a best seller on a napkin (like J.K. Rowling!) that just isn’t there trying to type out something on your smartphone before it dies.

3. It streamlines the editing process.

“But you’re just going to have to type it up anyway,” rhetorical question-asker argues. “Agents/publishers aren’t going to take handwritten manuscripts.” Well, yeah, but you also aren’t going to (hopefully) be sending in a rough draft of a work to an agent/publisher in the first place. Once you have finished your first draft, you then have the chance to start first-round edits as you type up what you have already written. Really hate this one scene? Rewrite it. Think that sentence could be better? Tweak it as you’re typing things up. Rearrange. Cut scenes. Add scenes. You can do it all while typing what you’ve written up. It’s all stuff you should be doing anyway.

4. You always have a backup .

Hopefully you already have a backup of your manuscript (or multiple), but in the event that the machines finally rise up and become our masters, it’s always comforting to know that there’s at least a draft of what you’ve done somewhere to work with rather than losing everything (or, perhaps more likely, should your laptop and external hard drive get stolen, it’s far less likely for a burglar to grab a stack of already-used notebooks on their way out). Can you lose a notebook? Of course. Could it be destroyed? Yep. But it isn’t going to be taken out by clicking on the wrong link one day or an airport scanner wiping your computer hard drive (latter one has happened to me in the past. Thank god for external hard drives).

5. You won’t get (as) distracted.

Ok, there’s really no limit in being able to find distractions when you don’t want to write (I really should reorganize this bookshelf…) but by writing on paper, you have one less potential time waster easily accessible. Sure, there are writing programs that allow you to write “full screen” these days, so you don’t see things popping up to distract you while you type, but really, it’s so much easier to hit that little escape button and check Facebook “just for a second” then it is when you’re writing in a notebook.

5. You have something to auction off when you’re rich and famous.

I know, I know, this one’s a bit wishful thinking…but what author really doesn’t want to think about their first drafts being auctioned off for big money once they’ve hit Stephen King levels of fame? Selling a flashdrive with an old draft of your Word Document just doesn’t have the same draw.

And so, there are my reasons for still writing longhand (beyond “it helps me write” and “I like it”). Do I begrudge schools for finding other skills than cursive more important these days? No, I completely understand the argument. Do I plan on teaching my children how to write in script all the same? If at all possible, you can bet on it.

There’s a Word for That?

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Recently, Buzzfeed.com ran an article titled,  25 Things You Had No Idea There Were Words For. While you can find the full article here, here are the ones I think writers should not be without:

– Denominalisation: using a word that isn’t a verb as a verb

– Auralize: to mentally create  a sound (the sound equivalent of “visualize”)

– Estival: pertaining to summer (the summer version of “autumnal” or “vernal”)

– Brumal: pertaining to winter

– Yonic: the opposite of phallic

–Susurrus: a whispering or rustling sound

– Sesquipedalian: a word that is polysyllabic -or- someone who uses such words, often while attempting to appear smart.

Honorable mention:

Semantic satiation – a psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning.

Read more at: http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/things-you-had-no-idea-there-were-words-for and feel free to add your own words below.

Truth is Stranger than Fiction

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Happy December! Hopefully as everyone starts coming back down from the craziness of NaNoWriMo you’re all enjoying family time, sleep, and all of that sweet, sweet editing.

For anyone who doesn’t already know (hi to the three of you!), I tend to spend a lot of my free computer time hanging around the NaNoWriMo Forums. One of the forums, the Reference Desk, is also a great place for authors to get information they might not be able to easily research online. Need to know what a social worker in Alaska would do in X situation? There very well might be someone whose day job is being an Alaskan social worker hanging around to answer you. It truly is a great resource for any matter of questions, November or no.

So, going through posts on the Reference Desk recently, I came across a post asking about recovery times from a stomach wound. Namely, they had a character they didn’t want to die, but did want to suffer a sword wound going clean through their stomach in a crusades-era setting (doesn’t specify which crusade, but sometime between 1000-1200 A.D. presumably). And so, after outlining what they wanted to happen to the character and asking how long it would take to recover from that wound, the poster ended up with a resounding, “They’re not going to recover” phrased in a number of ways:

“They better have a saint on hand to perform a miracle”

“Magic, time travel, and divine intervention would be the character’s only hopes.”

“From right away to three or four agonizing days. That’s assuming that “heal” and “die” mean the same thing.”

“About nine months, after which your reincarnated body is ejected from the host you are going to have to learn to call ‘mommy’.”

A little snarkier than the NaNo Forums tend to get, but a fair enough point. Finding the responses amusing on my end (my apologies to the Original Poster if they found any of the responses mean, or are upset I found them amusing) I ended up reading a couple out loud to my historian husband. Being him/us this got us into a debate about ancient health care.

Now, since I’ve recently been working on projects that take place in historical fantasy worlds, I’ve gotten very used to hearing about all the little quibbles my husband has with “Hollywood” history (things movies do for plot reasons, or because the writers don’t know any better, that perpetuate things that are widely debunked by historians at this point). For the most part, it’s very helpful to have (I’ve gotten lazy by being able to go “Honey, what kind of guns would they have in the 15th century?” and have him rattle it off without me having to look it up) but this particular debate went something along the lines of this:

Husband: “I’m not sure that’s entirely fair. They helped people with crazy injuries back then. It’s not like they didn’t have any medical knowledge or something.”

Me: “They didn’t have antibiotics.”

Husband: “No, but some battlefield techniques were already highly advanced.”

Me: “People would still die from a wound like that today. It’s not saying ‘Look at those people who don’t know anything’ It’s saying, ‘If you run someone through the stomach with a sword and pull it out to leave all that acid and blood and bile eating away at the guy, he’s most likely going to die.”

Husband: “Painfully.”

Me: “Exactly!”

Husband: “But ‘most likely’. People did survive crazy, crazy injuries now and again…”

And then he trailed off into a number of examples that he of course knew off the top of his head about people surviving being stabbed, bludgeoned, and shot any number of ways while at war, because he somehow keeps a fully-indexed encyclopedia of facts in his head. It really should be studied by science.

Anyway, while, yes, I will fully admit crazier things have happened in real life, this argument got me thinking about the old Mark Twain quote: “It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.”

And that, really, is the crux of the original NaNo poster’s problem. While maybe, had this character the author is writing been real, they could have been that one in a billion to survive through some absurd act of god. The chance is so small, however, that writing about someone surviving that wound would shatter just about every reader’s suspension of disbelief. In this case, saving the character would still be an act of god, but only insofar as the author is acting “god” over their story. And so the real difference between the two is that authors are held to a higher standard as far as what is believable. As creator of our story worlds, we can say the sky is green or people can fly or rabbits talk, but only on Tuesdays and as long as that is established, the reader will for the most part go along with it.  When using things based in reality, however, having things so improbable they’re nearly impossible in your story seems as though the author is suddenly using their ability to turn the sky green just because they can. And that’s jarring.

So, sadly, while you generally have god-like powers over the characters in your stories as an author, fiction still sometimes finds itself held to a higher standard than even reality when it comes to the improbable. And so, for our NaNo poster, that character is either going to either have to have a new wound or die for there not to be an outcry.

This Totally Makes Sense

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A while ago I wrote a piece about Dei ex Machina (singular: Deus ex Machina), an inadvisable plot device where–when all else is lost and the protagonist is backed into a corner–something comes out of nowhere to save the protagonist from an otherwise hopeless situation. Meaning “god from the machine” dei ex machina get their name from Euripides’ play Medea where a god (in a mechanical chariot) quite literally comes down at the end of the play to life the titular Medea out of the mess that forms at the end of the play.

DoDMedeaonChariot300

Medea on Chariot
Source: Howling Frog Books

While you don’t generally see gods popping up to fix everything in modern literature, the plot device has kept its name, generally seen these days when a character suddenly develops a magical power they didn’t know about at the climax (oh yeah! She totally has the ability to teleport right when there’s no other way out of this corner I’ve written myself into) or less flashy acts of god (He’s about to be killed, but oh! A tree branch fell on the bad guy. The end). While I have already addressed Dei ex Machina specifically, more and more while editing/critiquing/reviewing, I have begun to see Deus ex Machina’s less offensive cousin in stories, the “Oh yeah, this is important” (doesn’t quite roll off the tongue in the same way, but work with me).

Perhaps related to both foreshadowing and fixing deus ex machina, writers should always keep one thing in mind: If it’s going to be important later, mention it when it might pop up logically before you need it.

  • If your character is going to need to teleport out of the climax, show that they can teleport earlier on.
  • If your character is going to use a “prop” later in a scene, show they have it with them the scene before.
  • If your character has done something that doesn’t really make sense, don’t later explain why it makes sense three chapters in.

I understand why these things happen (especially points two and three) while authors often have climaxes planned out and know to avoid using a deus ex machina, when writing quickly (cough, NaNoWriMo, cough) sometimes you realize later on you haven’t explained something you meant to or you need something in a scene you didn’t of until the moment you need it.

What you  don’t want to do, however is end up with something like:

  • He pulled out his glasses, which he had put in his backpack that morning before leaving the house

-or-

  • [after a chapter of helping someone it makes no sense to in a zombie apocalypse] But she had always had a softness for people who limped. It made sense she couldn’t leave him behind.

Why? Because it makes those moments seem, at best, an afterthought, at worst, an author trying to write themselves out of a corner.

What should you do instead? Put the information in ahead of time where it logically fits.

Is your character going to need glasses he doesn’t generally bring with him later in the scene? Show him grabbing them on his way out the door the scene before. Is there an explanation for why your character is risking their life for someone they just met (which isn’t part of a larger reveal)? Put that information in when she decides to help them.

If there is a logical place for an event to happen/information to be placed, don’t put it where it will feel like an afterthought (or at least move it once you go back to edit if you’re still working on a rough draft). It’s a quick fix, and makes a world of difference to the reader (they don’t have to jump back and file that information away where it makes more sense themselves), the story (you don’t have to stop the action to explain, “oh yeah, this totally makes sense once you know X”), and your perceived ability as a writer (you don’t have a reader thinking “man, this writer had to throw something in at the last minute to make up for their poor planning”). Keep up with a little internal logical.

He said, said he.

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As we turn into the third week on NaNoWriMo an interesting question has popped up in one of the forums about dialogue tags. Now, I have previously touched on the subject of why it is not a problem to use “he said” and “she said” rather than trying to find random replacement words. This question, however, asked:

I’m wondering if there is any difference between using ‘she said’ and ‘said she’. I feel like I tend to use ‘she said’, but both sound grammatically correct to me…

First things first, grammatically, yes,both are correct. The reason this forum poster might find they are using “she said” more than “said she”, however, is that “said she” has slowly fallen out of favor in the past 150 years or so:

He said, said he

Going above and beyond for this OP, WriMo doublej compiled this handy graph of the use of he said and said he over the past two centuries. As can be easily seen, “said he” was the more popular form of dialogue tag in the beginning of the 19th century before it started to lose quite handedly to “he said” sometime around the American Civil War. And so, while it is not grammatically incorrect to use “said he” in your writing, it does give a distinctly “old” feel to the prose.

If this is a conscious decision in your writing, go for it. Otherwise, it might be wiser to just stick to the more popular “he said”–especially if that is your first instinct. It doesn’t feel as old, and certain publishers will be less likely to find your writing “antiquated” (seriously, I’ve done editing work for a publisher who’s house guide included replacing any “said he”s with “he said”s in editing to keep the books from sounding, in the words of the editor-in-chief, antiquated).

And so, with that taken care of, get back to writing. November’s not over yet!

Happy NaNoWriMo

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It is November, and that means once again it is National Novel Writing Month. Hopefully everyone participating had a productive first weekend of it. I know it is always my goal to get as far ahead as I can before the first week buzz dies down and fatigue sets in (I’ve never run a marathon, but this is totally the same thing, right?)

Still, no matter how far you got (or didn’t) this past weekend, there is no losing until you entirely give up. After all, 50,000 words or 500, you are going to end the month with more down on paper than you started with–and that’s never a bad thing.

And so, since I really should still be writing, I will leave this blog off with this for now. If anyone needs any help going forward with their own NaNo projects, or just something they are working on in general, drop by the NaNo Forums or feel free to contact me. I’m always happy to help.

Happy writing!

(Note: For the month of November, normal blog posts will be decreased to once a week on Mondays rather than my normal Monday/Thursday schedule. If you have a question you still want addressed, please feel free to contact me any of the ways listed on this website. I’ll do my best to fit it in ASAP).

Current NaNoWriMo Stats:

Stats from the NaNoWriMo site as of sign off 11/3/13