Image acquired without permission from (multiple) Facebook postings
Blog
Editing Rant: Suddenly, A New Year
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Suddenly, A New Year for Editing Rants
Happy New Year. Are you Finally ready to look over your 2016 NaNo manuscript? You know it Eventually had to happen; it shouldn’t Suddenly be hitting you. The change of year should be a time shift, and you should be Starting to change your writing focus, Finally. A new Beginning and all that.
With thriller, mystery, and major choreography (fight or sex scenes), time is a driving focus. Adverbs are used to express time more than any other part of speech. As such, the normal drill of removing adverbs from the manuscript runs into a snag. Without the pulsing time adverbs, the ticking clock starts winding down.
On the other hand, I have a reason for my Time Adverb Editing Rant.
Finally, Suddenly, Eventually, … Please, please do not use more than one on a page. Certainly not two or three times in a paragraph.
Why?
“Finally” is … I don’t know … FINAL. Use it too much and the reader starts wondering if it ever is going to end.
(Gif from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Movie 1992))
“Suddenly” is SUDDEN; too many and you get whiplash. etc.
Yes, the manuscript I edited had two “finally”s in the same paragraph. I dislike seeing more than one per chapter.
And often the feeling of “suddenly” can be much more effectively shown in the manuscript than using the word “suddenly”. About half the time the word “sudden” is used, the action wasn’t very sudden at all.
EDITING EXERCISE: Search on the words “Start”, “Begin”, “Final”, “Sudden”, and “Eventual” in your present work-in-progress (WIP) (this search will also return the words ending in “-ly” and “-ing”). How close together do these appear in your document?
Flash: Half-Empty
Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Rating: Mature
Jeremy was safe. He had always been safe from the time they met at the orthodontist in sixth grade getting their braces tightened through Junior Proms for their respective high schools to today, when Anthony let her know he was leaving her because she was the ice queen of the Queen City. She wasn’t an ice queen; God knows, they had sex often enough. She just wasn’t into the weirdness he started introducing after they had moved in together.
It was good to feel safe again after the last six months of Hell, before she had to go back for her things and figure out where she was going to live. Maybe she shouldn’t have drunk the half bottle of wine. She pushed a little away from Jeremy to stare into his black eyes for a moment, “I did it again didn’t I.”
A rueful smile crossed Jeremy’s boyishly handsome face, “You seem to pick them just like your mom.”
For a second Gwyn leaned her forehead against his. They used to do that as kids trying to exchange thoughts. Jeremy had been determined to learn telepathy, sci-fi geek that he was. She dropped her eyes to his drenched shirt, “And you warned me, like you always warn me.” A sob-laugh escaped. “I always look for guys that live on the edge, the rebel. I should let you choose my next boyfriend.”
His arms tightened around her back for a moment, making her feel even more secure. “Maybe you should,” his tenor voice dropping.
“I just don’t want to hurt any of your friends’ feelings.” Gwyn explained, glancing at his face a moment before focusing on the drying herbs over the stove. “I know it will happen just like that time in college when I tried to date a nice guy and I ended up jumping into bed with his roommate. I just am not safe for good people.”
Jeremy’s grip loosened in a manner that made her naturally step a little back. “You could try dating me for practice.”
Surprisingly her nipples tightened at the offer and she felt a twinge in her pussy. Gwyn licked her lips before responding. “We dated already, remember.”
Tipping his head to the side to try and capture her eyes that were darting around his immaculate kitchen. “Group dates for pizza don’t count as dating.”
She shook her head, focusing her eyes on the recognizable mortar and pestle among his more exotic kitchen gear. Whispering she said, “I don’t want to lose you. I destroy everything, and you are such a nice person.”
“Not as nice as I should be.” The twenty-six year old said as his hands slipped down a moment to grab her ass before letting it go. “Let’s go get your things from Tonedeaf; you are going to move in with me.”
Gwyn’s head spun a moment. Maybe from the wine, maybe from the surge between her legs when he grabbed her ass, maybe from Jeremy’s sudden taking over the situation. “No, no Jeremy, you shouldn’t. Anthony will still be there. You could get hurt.”
He smiled, evilly, protectively. “Somehow I doubt that.” He picked up his man-purse. Okay, leather-satchel, but Gwyn knew it was just another part of Jeremy’s being a peaceful, kind, safe guy. The purse was filled with stuff from his florist cum health food shop, including ointments he always offered to people when they were out in public. He called it marketing; she called it helping people where you find them.
Jeremy stood by the front door, holding it open so she could see the Gaelic welcome mat and his bright green Prius. Giving up, Gwyn followed him out the door. She guessed it was time to destroy him, as she had every other guy that she had ever touched.
(633 words – originally appearing Sunday Fun on Breathless Press 10/28/12, adjusted slightly and published on old blog on 11/11/2012, republished new blog format 1/8/2017 ** May become base for first story in Novella series on Queen’s City Coven)
Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words October 30, 2012
Image Courtesy of franky242 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
The Play’s the Thing
“Dialogue – live it, learn it, write it”, a blog posting by John G. Hartness on Magical Words.
Why to writers write? “because they have something to say”. How do writers say it? “through characters”. How do characters say stuff? “through dialogue.”
Where can you find dialogue? In plays.
Takeaway advice to become a better writer, read plays. See the full blog here: http://www.magicalwords.net/really-i-mean-it/dialogue-live-it-learn-it-write-it/
Bonus advice for editing – Read all dialogue out loud after you have completed your WIP to make certain everything scans. I find this very useful to make certain each character sounds unique.
WRITING EXERCISE: Read a scene from a MODERN play or screenplay (not musical) no more than 20 years old (yeah, you may need to go looking). What makes the conversation feel real?
Book Review: The Human Division
Book Cover from Amazon
BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON
Following the events of The Last Colony, John Scalzi tells the story of the fight to maintain the unity of the human race.
The people of Earth now know that the human Colonial Union has kept them ignorant of the dangerous universe around them. For generations the CU had defended humanity against hostile aliens, deliberately keeping Earth an ignorant backwater and a source of military recruits. Now the CU’s secrets are known to all. Other alien races have come on the scene and formed a new alliance―an alliance against the Colonial Union. And they’ve invited the people of Earth to join them. For a shaken and betrayed Earth, the choice isn’t obvious or easy.
Against such possibilities, managing the survival of the Colonial Union won’t be easy, either. It will take diplomatic finesse, political cunning…and a brilliant “B Team,” centered on the resourceful Lieutenant Harry Wilson, that can be deployed to deal with the unpredictable and unexpected things the universe throws at you when you’re struggling to preserve the unity of the human race.
Being published online from January to April 2013 as a three-month digital serial, The Human Division will appear as a full-length novel of the Old Man’s War universe, plus―for the first time in print―the first tale of Lieutenant Harry Wilson, and a coda that wasn’t part of the digital serialization.
Old Man’s War Series
#1 Old Man’s War
#2 The Ghost Brigades
#3 The Last Colony
#4 Zoe’s Tale
#5 The Human Division
#6 The End of All Things
Short fiction: “After the Coup”
MY REVIEW
Mr. Scalzi attempted a new format of releasing 13 episodes as mini-ebooks; similar to the old method of serializing a story in newspapers or magazines (everything that is old is new again). A format option popular with self-published authors. After the episodes were all released, his publisher put together the whole thing in book format, adding two extras.
I did not read this during the episodic releases, and discovered the hard-copy book did not work very well as a straight read-thru. The characters’ lives had ebbs and swells that needed a break every three or four episodes. After getting about half-way through the book, I needed to set it aside for a week. Since my work was asking for 60 to 80-hour weeks during the time I was reading this book, it actually functioned well. Every Saturday I would set aside time to read three more episodes.
The writing is typical, brilliant Scalizi – a combination of humor and observations that are just too much fun. He continues to create a new character voice for each book. I love that his characters are unique – Zoe’s Tale had a teenage girl voice; The Human Division had a combination – each episode had a different POV (point of view) of diplomatic approaches. As such the diplomatic-POV did not have the pure snark factor of his first book of the universe (Old Man’s War).
I should note the uniqueness of the universe is beginning to wane simply because of familiarity of the World – now in book five – but the universe hasn’t reached comfortable glove status. So, in places, this book felt … awkward… like a teenager – no longer a cute, shiny baby to ooh&aah over, but not fully mature like a George R. Dickson Dorsai! universe story.
This story is essential to the ongoing Old Man’s War Universe. It clearly sets up the conspiracy for the next story.
Worth the read, just do it in chunks for maximum enjoyment – the way it was originally published on the Internet.