Do Your Characters Sigh Too Much?

It's Wordy Wednesday, and that means...

...time for some reflections from the editor's desk!

Today we welcome a guest, Rayne Hall, author of more than forty books and editor of the Ten Tales series.



In thirty years as an editor, I've found the same words blight and bloat the style of many authors. One of them is "sigh".

In real life, people who constantly sigh soon get on our nerves. Few folks enjoy the company of sighers. The same applies to fiction: readers don't like characters that sigh a lot.

Yet, sighs creep into fiction and multiply like vermin.  If you're not on your guard, your novel soon reads like this:

He sighed.... She sighed deeply.... He heaved a deep sigh... A sigh escaped from her lips.... With a sigh, she did this... Sighing, she rose.... He looked at her and sighed...

Moreover, a character that sighs at the slightest trigger comes across as a wuss.

One sigh is enough for the reader's subconscious to file that character as a wimp.  Two sighs make the character a wimpy wimp. By the time your heroine has heaved her third sigh, the reader has lost respect for her.

It's raining - sigh.
Aunt Agatha is coming - sigh.
Little Laura misbehaves - sigh.
The kitten scratches - sigh.
Work needs doing - sigh.
Another Monday - sigh.
Life goes on - sigh.

Use your word processor's Find & Replace tool to count how many times you've used "sigh", and then cut most of them.

By cutting the sighs, you'll make your writing tighter and your characters spunkier.

I recommend keeping just one or two sighs in the whole book: one for a wimpy minor character, and one in the second half of the book where your protagonist has real reason to sigh.



Rayne Hall is an author and editor. After writing and editing, her great love is teaching, and she teaches online classes for writers. To find out more, visit: https://sites.google.com/site/writingworkshopswithraynehall/

Passive Voice

It's Wordy Wednesday, and that means...

...time for some reflections from the editor's desk!

English is a funny language. We want our stories to compel our reader’s attention, from the first sentence, all the way through to the end of the book. Just do a Wikipedia search of passive voice. It will make your head spin. However, the rules of passive voice affects us all, especially in fiction. We want our prose to carry power and punch. Passive voice generally creates sentences that lack those ideals.

Here is an example of a sentence in passive voice. The man was bumped by the elephant. In passive voice, the recipient of the action becomes the subject, making the subject the man. But he is not active. He’s just the receiver of the elephant’s action. Contrast that with the sentence below in active voice. The elephant bumped the man. In an active sentence, the subject commits the action. So the elephant, the subject, is doing the action.  He bumps the man. The man is the object of the sentence. Grammar lesson over. I know this is a confusing subject. I found a great example on Grammar Girl, using a Marvin Gaye song title. “I Heard It through the Grapevine.”  "I" is the subject, the one who is doing the action. "I" is hearing "it," the object of the sentence. If you wanted to make the title of the Marvin Gaye song passive, you would say, “It was heard by me through the grapevine.” -- not such a catchy title anymore. You can see how the active voice carries so much more punch, and makes a more compelling read. How do we fix this in our own work? Sometimes, just flipping a sentence can help. Like this example: Her books were piled in the center of the table as she peered at him from over the top. vs. She peered at him over the top of her books piled on the center of the table. It’s a simple fix, and it changes the cadence and the strength of the sentence. When you do your next spelling and grammar check and a passive sentence pops up, these tools can help you make your sentences and your manuscript stronger. However, you might find sentences where the method of flipping won’t work: Daniel grinned to himself as the velvet curtains were pulled shut. This sentence doesn’t lend itself to a complete flip with "were pulled shut quickly." But one good fix is: Daniel grinned to himself as the velvet curtains twitched shut. Monica Britt is an editor at Champagne Books.  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/authormjbritt Twitter: @mons1954

The Scene - What’s it all about, Alfie?

It's Wordy Wednesday, and that means...

...time for some reflections from the editor's desk!

Okay, who remembers that 1966 song by Dionne Warwick? And am I dating myself when I say I do?  The introductory lyrics to that song say:

“What's it all about, Alfie?
Is it just for the moment we live?
What's it all about when you sort it out, Alfie?”

So, let me ask you, can you answer these questions when you look at each and every scene in your story?

What’s it all about? As an author, I dread being asked this question by my critique group or partners. Yet it’s one of the most important question to ask ourselves. What is this scene all about? Is it just plunked there to fill space or does it move the story forward? Is it just Sally chatting with her girlfriends over wine at a local bar, or does it show Sally’s disgust for muscle men as one walks past and the others ogle him? (Of course, that probably means she also is about to meet the muscle man of her dreams, right?)

Is there an entrance, a focus, and an exit/cliff hanger?  Using the scenario in the paragraph above, Sally sits on the stool her friends saved for her (entrance) and the conversation they have tells us more about who Sally is (the focus). This focus can have two purposes. One, it shows us more about the character. As the friends chat, maybe we find out where Sally works and whether she’s a wine snob or prefers to drink beer out of a bottle. We certainly find out she’s not into muscle-bound men. Focus can also set up a future event (foreshadow).  For instance, I bet Sally will end up tripping over her own feet on her way out of the restaurant. Muscle man will save her from hitting the cement and she looks up into the deepest blue eyes she’s ever seen. At which point, he’ll make some sort of comment about how handy muscle men can be and leave her standing there. (And there’s your exit/cliff hanger for the scene.)

As an editor, I’m looking for that. I’m looking for whether or not there is a reason...to the dialogue, the internalizations, the setting.  All of it. I want your reader to feel like they can’t turn the pages fast enough. In order to do that, even with the ebb and flow of a story, there must always be forward momentum.

And remember, when it comes to a scene, enter late and leave early. You don’t need to show her walking in to the bar. Just have her plop into that chair. And when muscle guy walks off, don’t let her think about it. Leave her with her mouth hanging open.  I guarantee you the reader will turn the page. So will your editor.

If you look at your scene and can easily tell why it’s there, then it’s done what it should. If you can’t, then take a closer look at it. Does it move the story forward? Does it have a purpose? If not, it might be time to grab those digital scissors and start cutting.

Laurie Temple is an editor at Champagne Books and writes under the pseudonym Laurie Ryan.
www.laurieryanauthor.com
Twitter: @lryanauthor
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/laurie.ryan.79

When It's Done

It's Wordy Wednesday, and that means...
time for some reflections from the editor's desk!

Today we'll talk about the editing process and how it differs from revision.

Every writer knows about editing. It's that thing that happens after you're finished toiling over your prose, getting it all to hold together. Sometimes, it's ninety percent of the work. If you're unpublished, then you might go over your manuscript time and time and time again, perfecting it before submission.

But that's not editing.

After getting published, an author is disabused of many fallacies about the book production process, and this is one of them. All that time you spent obsessing over your work? Well, it has a different name: revision.

As a writer, you don't do any editing. Now, granted, you can pretend to edit, but you're going to miss all sorts of things. I am an editor and an author, and while I catch many things I can anticipate my editor might, I'm still missing a key ingredient - the thing that differentiates editing from revision - namely, the objectivity only a third party professional can add.

Editing is done by the editor, the author responds to his or her editor's suggestions, and the editing process becomes a partnership between the two. That's the goal. Sometimes it takes a few bumps to discover this ideal, though.

If you've had one or more books published, you might be able relate to this common first experience. It's been six months since you signed the contract. You waited and waited, built your platform; you've probably moved onto a new manuscript. Then, you get your manuscript back, full of red font - in line changes, comments, questions, suggestions for revision. It's hard to look at that and switch out of "writer mode". After all, you will be doing some rewriting, per your editor's requests. But then you start swimming in all those comments, and never mind responding to them - your eye catches an unmarked paragraph and suddenly you're sweating.

"What was I thinking?" Geesh! Let's do this editor a favor and revise the whole thing!

You get through it all, adding in monologues, touching up dialogue tags, tweaking some descriptive paragraphs that somehow your editor missed. That scene you never felt belonged? Well, you finally took it out, and now everything flows wonderfully. You're proud of your work, and feel like this book is up to your standard, and you expect your editor will be impressed.

What authors might not realize, though, is that this "fix-it syndrome" is every editor's worst nightmare. When we go over your manuscript, line by line, we weigh everything that needs editorial consideration, then send you the manuscript so you can respond accordingly. That paragraph we left unmarked? It was because it didn't need changing. But, since you have changed it, this means we have to edit yet new material, which is simply not fair. When you submit your manuscript, we assess it based on what's there, not based on what could be there. Granted, things will niggle, and it is totally fine to change them - after a friendly email to your editor for some consultation, of course!

To modify Da Vinci's famous saying, "A story is never finished - it is abandoned." You, the author, must decide when it's time to let your story go, but that time comes before you submit it to your publisher. Revise, revise, revise, then accept that what you're sending out is finished. When it comes time to edit, trust your editor, respond to his or her changes, doing your best as a writer to take your manuscript to that new edge.

As an author, I can sympathize - it's hard restraining that urge to fix all the things you want to, after your manuscript has been sitting for months in the production queue. You've moved on to other projects, discovered new techniques, and might feel like you're looking at an older version of yourself. But that's okay! Readers love to see growth and development in writers. Put that energy into your new project - it will show. Trust that, at the time you submitted your previous manuscript, you made it the best you could.

Happy writing
Happy revising,
and happy editing!


Graeme Brown
Junior editor
http://www.graemebrownart.com/the_pact.html
Twitter: @GraemeBrownWpg

Wordy Wednesday - Reflections from the Editor's Desk: In which no one said anything…

All my authors can attest to the fact I get a little delete happy when I see the word ‘said.’

I also go a little delete crazy when I see scoffed, asked, whispered, yelled or any other one word-add-name kind of tag. I don’t do it every time…

Just most of the time.

“I don’t want to go,” she said.

Seems like a perfectly good sentence, right? Why would I delete the said in that one?

Well, it shows me nothing of the scene. In a perfect world, when we’re storytelling, the reader gets this lovely movie going in their heads. They can get lost in that world to the point of getting annoyed at an interruption.

To keep the movie vivid, and leave the reader unable to put the book down, action tags can be substituted a majority of the times you would type the word ‘said.’

“I don’t want to go.” Daphne stomped her foot, her lip protruding in an obvious pout.

Her mother glanced at her watch. “We’re going. She’s your grandmother. If she says make an appearance at dinner, we go.” She tied up the loose ends of the garbage bag and hefted it.

“She’s old. Who cares what she thinks?”

The quaver in Daphne’s voice gave away more than her dramatics. Her mother stroked her hair before carrying the garbage to the back door. “You do. Shoes, now.”

Using action tags instead of said allows a storyteller to bring life to the setting, to the characters. You can show tells and/or important tidbits about the characters through the use of this peek into the world.

So, the next time you type the word ‘said’…hit delete four times and think about your scene, your characters.

Can you breathe more life into them by telling a story where no one said a thing?

Virginia Nelson

Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

Wordy Wednesday - Reflections from the Editor's Desk: PRIDE OF PLACE

How many of you remember Northern Exposure? That show could only have worked in a small town set in the middle of nowhere. Specifically in Cicely, in the frontier-like atmosphere of Alaska. The place limited the actions of the characters, exaggerated their quirks, and forced them all to accommodate to each other in order to survive. In other words, place acted the way a character would.

Or am I dating myself? Okay, how about Downton Abbey? Great show. What’s the first thing you think of when you picture it in your mind? Is it the lord of the manor, the servants, the lovely costumes? I’ll bet the first image is that great square pile of a house in its impeccable grounds. The entire show is driven by the needs of the house, and the family is bent, constrained, and molded by the idea of maintaining the estate. Remember that chilling line when the eldest daughter gives birth to a son who will inherit it—“Downton is safe.” Again, the place acts the way a character would, bending characters to its will. 

Where people are affects the way people act. For instance, here in New Hampshire we don’t worry a whole lot about earthquakes. The earth is pretty secure under our feet. Folks in Haiti don’t have that luxury. How does that affect the way they feel about their lives? Does it encourage a sense of fatalism? On the other hand, Haitians don’t know a thing about driving in a snowstorm. Most New Englanders have learned either to cope with it or to stay home. Does that give them courage or make them feel like cowards? Desert peoples don’t carry umbrellas; seaside peoples learn to watch the tides. Small towns are different from big cities; those who live in the mountains see the world differently than those who live on the plains; heavily industrialized places demand different attitudes than agricultural ones.

To be true to life, fiction must always take into account the way a place acts on its characters. Place is more than an accent. What impact do local weather, geography, ecology, population mix, job opportunities, and history have on the people who live there? Place can have as great an influence as upbringing does on a person’s outlook. If you don’t believe me, think about where you grew up. Now try transplanting yourself into a different place. Say you grew up in NYC; what would you be like if you were raised in the upper Midwest?

I don’t have to imagine it. I was 13 when my family moved from a working class, largely Catholic neighborhood of small houses, where a garage was a status symbol, to an upper-middle class, largely Jewish area of spacious homes each accompanied by a two-car garage. The differences in outlook between me and my younger sibs (the youngest of whom was not even born when we moved) are enormous. Religion, politics, the areas where we feel most confident--suffice it to say place has made us so different we talk about the New Jersey family and the Pennsylvania family. And those homes were only fifty miles apart.

When you take place into account in your work, you add another layer of depth that enriches the reader’s experience. It’s a powerful tool in your writer’s toolkit, so don’t be afraid to use it.

Nikki Andrews is a content editor at Champagne Books as well as a published author. Visit her at www.nikkiandrewsbooks.com or at www.scrivenersriver.blogspot.com.

Wordy Wednesday - Reflections from the Editor's Desk: How a Small Press became "The Best Place on the Web"

You’ve just written the next blockbuster hit. What now? The options these days are unlimited. You could pursue an agent and submit to the big New York publishing houses. But getting an agent is easier said than done, and once you have one, he or she still has to submit your work to editors for consideration. I’ve seen otherwise stable authors broken to bits during this process.

Or you could avoid the submission process altogether and self-publish. But there are so many doing that these days, and quality is often, though not always, an issue. You’d have to arrange for an editor, a cover artist, and formatting, and pay for all those services. Some want the absolute freedom self-publishing offers. But for the rest of us, we want the advice and guidance of known experts.

Small e-publishers like Champagne offer the best of both worlds. You’ll get cracker jack editors (she says; modestly *grins*) and cover artists that our authors rave about. And we’ll do the final formatting for you. Best of all, you can still submit directly to Champagne; no agent is required. While this doesn’t guarantee acceptance of your manuscript (we publish quality fiction only) you can still expect a courteous letter back. Possibly, if your story is good but needs too much work for our editing cycle, you may receive what we call a revise and resubmit request. That’s not offered just to be nice; it’s a statement that we see possibilities in your story, but want you to do certain things before we accept it for publication. And if we do accept you for publication right off the bat, you know you have a great story that is well presented. Once you’re in house, new submissions can be sent directly to your editor, someone who you’ll know and hopefully trust by the time you’re submitting a second manuscript.

But perhaps the biggest advantage in publishing with a small house like Champagne is our support for the promotional process. Most authors I’ve encountered dread the word “promo.” Yet promo is a necessary step if you want to sell your book. In today’s world, you have to do the bulk of the promo yourself, even if you have an agent and publish with a big New York house. Most small presses offer chat rooms for their authors where you can share ideas. Champagne goes a step further, offering biweekly meetings devoted to promo and lead by our Senior Editor. Ideas are shared by all, including the editors, most of whom are also published authors. If you need help or advice to set up a website or to learn social media, it’s available through these meetings. You won’t be all alone in the vastness of cyberspace trying to publicize your book.

In case you’re wondering if Champagne’s quality equals that of the big publishers, I can assure you it does. Even well-known authors are now seeking out Champagne for their books. Support, a friendly atmosphere, quality. Our authors call Champagne “the best place on the web” for a reason.

Diane Breton

Editor

Champagne Book Group