by Lynne | Nov 18, 2013 | Uncategorized
Should You Hire a Pro?
A writer friend asked me whether it was really a good idea to pay a professional editor to read her manuscript. My immediate response was yes, but the question made me pause and reflect on my personal experiences.
I have had all three of my novels edited by pros. In addition I participate in a read and critique group (every week now for about 15 years.) I won’t go into critique groups here since I previously blogged about that subject.As to professional editors, here are my thoughts.
There is huge value to editors who “copy” edit, that is, they read for spelling, grammar, syntax, etc. You always miss something: a comma where it doesn’t belong, the incorrect use of a semicolon. In terms of the broader picture: the plot, characters, structure, tension, conflict, on and on, the pro can be very helpful. . . or not.
In my Triangle book, the professional editor I hired was so intrigued with the historic story that her suggestions would have made me totally change the book. It would have become a historic mystery rather than a historic mystery that is solved today with modern technology. She had her own vision for the book. But who was writing this?
The editor I hired for my Civil War book, however, was extremely helpful. He gave me an idea for a dynamite ending that I hadn’t even considered. It totally changed the story for the better.
Before you consider hiring a pro, however, do your own self-editing. Believe it or not, there is a lot you can do to improve your writing before it gets the going-over by someone else. Some suggestions:
Edit in small sections at a time. If possible, reread the section before and then edit the current 5 to 10 pages. Also, read aloud (or to your dog or cat.) I can’t emphasize enough how important this is. You’d be surprised what you hear that you didn’t think you wrote. Dialogue may sound stilted, tension weak, setting inappropriate. Often I will come away from my reading out loud thinking, ugh, did I write that?
Some things to look for when you’re self-editing:
1. Do you want to turn the page?
2. Did you stumble over awkward phrases or clunky words when you read aloud?
3. Were you confused by your own plot twists?
4. Did punctuation mess up your reading?
5. Were your characters boring, too flawed (yes, that’s possible) or totally unbelievable (unless you write Bourne thrillers)?
6. Were there plot inconsistencies ie: a character appeared after she was murdered?
7. Were there setting inconsistencies? It was hot as Hades one day, snowing the next?
8. Did you get your facts right? Very important if you want authenticity.
You can be your own best editor. But, just to be sure — reread, rewrite, read aloud. And again x 3. Now hire a professional for the final read.
by Lynne | Nov 11, 2013 | Uncategorized
Dialect Can Be Deadly
One of the major characters in my book, “Time Exposure” is Alexander Gardner, a famous, and real, Civil War photographer. Gardner hailed from Paisley, Scotland and arrived in Washington, D.C. in 1856 with a thick Scottish accent. How was I to handle dialogue? I wanted to make sure that the reader knew Gardner was from Scotland. So, I added a bit of dialect. Check this out:
“I must speak to ye, Joseph.” Gardener took a deep breath. “I’ve had a special offer I must consider. Mind ye now, it doesna preclude my maintaining an association with Brady. But, I want ye to be part of me decision.”
I also sprinkled in lots of dinnas, shouldnas, couldnas, ayes, me for my, etc. Ugh. The reader couldn’t possibly forget that Gardner was from Scotland. Or care. He’d already given up on the book.
Thanks to my critique group my eyes were open to this dialect dilemma. I began to notice it in other novels. Too much of an accent: “How vould you vant me to wote?”
Or overuse of slang: “He needs to mellow out, he’s bonkers and that’s too dicey for this girl.”
Or clichéd idiomatic expressions : “Once in a blue moon, we see eye to eye, but you’re usually on the fence, which only adds insult to injury.”
Eeek. The use of “casual” spelling such as lemme, or gimme, can be used . . . sparingly. Dropping “g” for a word ending in “ing” gets tiresome too if used every other sentence. We have to give the reader credit and assume that by dropping a slang word, accent or expression in, they’ll get the point and as they continue to read that character’s dialogue, they’ll naturally hear the dialect.
Some of the worst examples of overusing dialect can be seen when characters have southern or New York accents. Like the use of “Ah” for “I” or “y’all for, well, you know. Then there’s the exaggerated Brooklynese – “toidy-toid and toid street” or “poils for the goils.” (These may actually need translation!) I grew up in Brooklyn and, frankly, you do hear this. It’s one thing, however, to add it to a movie, where you can hear the character say it. It’s another to read it in a book ad nauseum.
So how do you get the character’s geographical location, or educational background across? The best way is through the rhythm of the dialogue and the words you choose. One “aye” from my Scotsman and the reader hears his accent through the rest of the dialogue. To portray a well-educated German you might avoid contractions and use the full words to make the speech more formal sounding: “I should not bother with that if I were you. Do you not think so?”
In the end, you need to do your homework. Learn the true dialect, accent, slang expressions of the region your characters come from, both geographically and historically. Depending upon the time period, speech was often more formal than we’re used to today.
Practice yourself. Once you know how the dialect really sounds have your character try it out in dialogue in a scene. Read it aloud. Very important, to really hear the effect, you must read it out loud. You’ll find you will most likely want to eliminate all but a smidgen of the dialect. What will be left is the essence of your character.
Then fuhgeddaboutit!
by Lynne | Nov 4, 2013 | Uncategorized
Chapter Endings Are as Important as Beginnings
I’ve started the second draft of my next book and as I reread several chapters I realized my endings were not very riveting. Ho hum, shall I turn the page? If I don’t want to turn the pages of my own book, why would any reader be willing to? So I took a closer look at the problem and started focusing on endings that would compel a reader to keep going.
I skimmed through some books to see how those authors ended their chapters. Here’s one from Deception Point by Dan Brown. “Rachel felt weightless for an instant, hovering over the multimillion-pound block of ice. Then they were riding the iceberg down – plummeting into the frigid sea.” The reader is not likely to put the book down at this point, at least until they find out what happened to Rachel and her friend. Brown could have ended with something like: “Rachel stood motionless on the block of ice and prayed the block wouldn’t fall into the sea.” Nah.
Here’s another. “Emergency Room. Code Blue. Susan ran for the elevator.” This is from Chelsea Cain’s The Night Season. What if Cain had stopped at Code Blue? Would it have the same impact as her running for the elevator?
I believe this idea of compelling endings is not only important for fiction but for non-fiction as well. Take Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken. “Sometime that day, or perhaps the day before, he had taken off his uniform, picked up a sack of rice, slipped into the Naoetsu countryside, and vanished.” Vanishing, dying, running, falling, are all great ways to end a chapter on a high, cliffhanger note.
Scene endings can follow this rule to some extent, but it might get tiresome if every scene did. I think you have to let the reader rest once in a while and catch up with the action.
Not all chapter endings must end on an action note either. Many can end with inner conflict or conflict between characters. Gives the chapter tension. What happens between these two people next? Does Anna May leave her husband? Does mom throw Maynard out of the house? Does little Davey start crying? Is Barbara in danger of being fired, of losing her health insurance, of missing a plane to an important event? If you care about the characters, (a blog for another day) you will turn the page.
I’d love to hear some chapter endings you think are great . . . or terrible. When we can recognize what works, our writing benefits in the long-run.
by Lynne | Oct 28, 2013 | Uncategorized
Can Your Blog Drive Book Sales?
My last blog hit a nerve with many writers. The dilemma of spending time marketing your books vs. writing your books clearly resonated and drew lots of responses. I’ve tried to practice what I preached in that post and have cut down my time on social media. Some. Yet, here I am writing something that is not my next book. How effective is this use of my time?
There are two sides to this new dilemma of blogging. Both sides take time from writing your book. The first is writing blogs. The second is reading them — other writers’ blogs, that is. Writing them takes a great deal more time. Is it worth it? Actually, yes. It’s difficult to know whether my blogs drive sales, but I do know it drives people to my web site. I can measure the number of hits on the actual blog. That’s a good thing.
The other positive about writing blogs is that I actually learn from my own blogs. When I write about characters or scene or POV, I am focusing on the good, the bad and the mediocre. I am reading and re-reading other writers’ to see what works and what doesn’t, which characters shine and which fall flat, which scenes and settings have atmosphere or how point of view affects the story.
One of my blogs was about how to use animals to give your characters character. The topic forced me to think about my animals. How does my character interact with her dog or his parrot? What does it say about them if they leave them alone for days at a time, or if they are constantly worried about them? Great device for character development.
Another blog dealt with the forensics of fire. The fire took place in 1911. What was arson forensics like then? The blog helped me organize the details of my research so I could determine what was missing in the mystery.
So, the answer to the first side of this dilemma, is yes, writing blogs can be very valuable to the writer. After all, it is writing. However, I have no hard evidence that it drives book sales. As to the second part of the conundrum, reading blogs can also be a valuable use of time. There are some blogs I find extremely helpful. A good blog has a message that is of particular interest to me as a writer. I probably won’t read a blog about cookbook recipes, auto mechanics or pit bull fighting.
I will definitely read blogs on forensics, crime-solving, digital photography, art, and many historical subjects. Once the topic is of interest to me, I will take the time to read a well-written blog (yes, that’s important), and hopefully, one with a sense of humor. I will often share those with writer friends. Here are a few I can share right now:
http://barbararogan.com/blog/?p=711#! Specifically on how to create a good scene.
http://writersforensicsblog.wordpress.com/ Great, knowledgeable forensics Q&A and more.
http://www.blogher.com/bloggers-beware-you-can-get-sued-using-photos-your-blog-my-story How not to get sued as a writer using photographs. Handy info.
For the moment my dilemma is solved. I’ll keep writing weekly blogs as long as folks keep reading them. I’ll keep reading blogs that can help me write better. In the end, I hope both of these activities will help drive book sales.
by Lynne | Oct 21, 2013 | Uncategorized
Tracking a Van Gogh is Not Easy
I have trails on my mind since I recently returned from a trip to the National Parks and Indian Reservations in the Four Corners area. I kept my eye out for my beloved missing Van Gogh, but, alas, spied only (only?) 
petroglyphs and ancient cave dwellings dating back to 1200 A.D. 
No “Vase with Oleanders.”
If you’ve read my blogs in the past, you know that research into my last book about the Nazi confiscation of art and a missing Van Gogh painting led me on a hunt for the missing artwork. Along the way I crossed paths with many people in several countries who gave me advice and guided me to web sites and other contacts to pursue. No luck to date.
I’m not giving up, however, and am now working with a dear friend who is German and has close contacts in Germany. Happily, she will help me with the language barrier. The trail has now led me to a “lost art” web site and the coordinator of archives in Magdeburg, a medieval city on the Elbe River in Germany.
At this juncture I have been asked by German officials whether I have authorization from the claimants. These would be members of the Bernheim-Jeune family to whom the painting belongs. I have tried several times to contact the Bernheim-Jeune family in both English and French, through their website (they still own an art gallery) but have had no response. I will try to find other avenues to reach them.
I have also been fortunate to have made contact with two notable authors in this area. Lynn Nicholas, author of “The Rape of Europa,” and Jonathan Petropoulos, author of several books about lost art, have been very helpful. For the most recent updates on my search check out my web page: https://lynnekennedymysteries.com/the-hunt-for-the-missing-van-gogh/ A brief aside on books: “The Monuments Men,” a fascinating book, will premiere as a movie on December 18.
My last blog dealt with my dilemma with marketing. A second dilemma is this time-consuming search, which cuts into my writing time. Perhaps hunting for this painting falls in the marketing category since I’ve had quite a bit of publicity on it. The difference is that this is such a fascinating way to spend my time, while social media marketing and publicity are, well, not. Here I am, stuck again. Do I spend time reading, searching and researching for a lost Van Gogh? Or writing my next book?
Why is nothing ever easy?
by Lynne | Oct 15, 2013 | Uncategorized
Don’t Let Social Media Take Over Your Life
I attended an all-day Mystery Writers of America conference last Saturday. Got all sorts of good tips and ideas, met fellow writers and, overall, enjoyed the day. The best tip came at the very end, however, when the speaker, Hank Phillippi Ryan, told us to be careful not to let the “marketing” of your book overpower the writing.
It dawned on me that that’s exactly what was happening to me. I’d been so wrapped up in social media, blogging and publicity that I haven’t made a dent in my next book. What’s wrong with this picture?
Even when I made the cover of the San Diego Union Tribune about my search for a missing Van Gogh (and my book, of course) — imagine, front page, above the fold –I still had not very impressive results in the sales department. Ironically, I’m not even in this business for money or fame. This is a second career, one that was originally a hobby I adored. Now much of the time I feel stressed and guilty about how to best spend my time.
As I was about to sit down and write this blog, I chanced upon another writer’s take on social media and wanted to share. Randy Ross has some very interesting statistics about his experience with social media and how much it did not help his sales. Here’s his blog:
http://www.theloneliestplanet.com/2013/10/18-months-of-social-media-one-writers.html#!
The conference session and Randy’s blog were a wake-up call for me. It’s so easy to get sucked into spending time on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, et al that there’s little time and energy left for actually writing.
So, I’m going to take Ryan’s advice. I’m allotting only a few minutes, several times a day for social media connections. The rest of my day will be spent writing my next book. Blogs are important to me, so I will try to continue those weekly. I hope they offer something of value to other writers. For now, I’m off to meet with the witches of Salem and my next mystery.
