Please Don’t Feed the Writer

I got this via my wife in email. Just another reminder of why even journalists and editors, who are trained to pack as much information into a headline as possible, should probably still ask the secretary to look over their copy before sending it to press.

I wish I had the list of publications that these were printed in.

Doesn’t anyone proof read anymore ???

THE YEAR’S BEST [actual] HEADLINES OF 2006:

Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says
[No, really?]

Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers

[ That’ll stop ‘em!]

Is There a Ring of Debris around Uranus?
[Not if I wipe thoroughly!]

Panda Mating Fails; Vet erinarian Takes Over
[What a guy!! ]

Miners Refuse to Work after Death
[No-good-for-nothing lazy so-and-sos!]

Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant
[See if that works any better than a fair trial!]

War Dims Hope for Peace
[I can see where it might have that effect!]

If Strike Isn’t Settled Quickly, It May Last Awhile
[You think?]

Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures
[Who would have thought!]

Enfield (London) Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide
[They may be on to something!]

Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges !
[You mean there’s something stronger than duct tape?]

Man Struck By Lightning: Faces Battery Charge
[he probably IS the battery charge!]

New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group
[Weren’t they fat enough?!]

Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in Spacecraft
[That’s what he gets for eating those beans!]

Kids Make Nutritious Snacks
[Taste like chicken?]

Local High School Dropouts Cut In Half
[Chainsaw Massacre all over again!]

Hospitals are Sued by 7 Foot Doctors
[Boy, are they tall!]

And the winner is….

Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead

Now. run out and get yourself a copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.

Hurry! Don’t let this happen to you!

You’ve created the perfect character, or so you thought. You’ve done your homework. You’ve given her a past, an outlook on life and you know what drives her. You’ve got her physiological details down so well that you can rattle off her height, weight, body type and exact location of any scars without referring back to your notes. But no matter what you try, when you’re writing her, she comes of as flat and a bit two dimensional.

I’m not talking about a character who keeps baffling you with trying to do her own thing. That is an entirely different (and very good) thing to have happen. This character follows along with what you tell her to do complacently. She blindly follows orders and emotes and interacts with characters like a low paid extra on a television serial. She’s got no soul.

In How to Write a Damned Good Novel James N Frey describes his method for getting to know your characters. His method is to write a journal entry. From the way I understood it, he was asking the character to introduce themselves and then tell their own story in their own way.

Not a bad thing at all… Too bad it doesn’t work for me. the rest of his advice is priceless, and I’m sure that method of character building works for other people, but it hasn’t for me. (more…)

This morning started pretty slowly. I got the word last night that my daughter had had her baby, Cecyllia Ann Hamilton. So I start today as a grandfather as well as everything that I was before. Life is interesting at times, to be sure.

I grabbed a copy of Straight Talk from the Editor, 18 Keys to a Rejection-Proof Submission from Amazon.com for a quick read over my morning Java. I found it to be quite informative, and would recommend it highly.

(more…)

I stumbled across an article by Deanna mascle that I thinnk is worth reading, especially if you’re just starting out. Take a look here : Writing Style, Are You A Real Writer?

Happy writing!

At some point in your career as a writer you’ll be asked to write an article on the subject. What you do with that request is completely up to you, but be assured, the call or email will come eventually and you should be prepared for it.

Articles can be a very good thing. For one thing, they help pay the bills when you don’t have anything else coming in at the moment. They tend to be fairly quick and easy to get out to the editor, and rarely require a ton of rewrites. They can also give your readers and contemporaries a unique glimpse into what goes on in your mind.

Before you accept the request for an article however, there are a few things you should keep in mind.

(more…)

There’s not much for me to report on the writing front today.  I’ve taken a much needed break from everything, and spent most of the day staring at FoodTV, which in itself could sound boring if I wasn’t an avid foodie.

Tomorrow will bring some very useful information, I’m sure.  I have to dive back into a tale I started a bit ago.  Since conception I’ve re-thought the story, however, and I think it has a much brighter future now.

Again, more on that tomorrow.

For now, I’m off to enjoy the last of Emeril.  Have a good day.

My dear friend Dawn Montgomery has just gotten news of her first release. It’s really what we all live for as writers. She has just crossed the line to Author.

For those of you who do not appreciate adult overtones or story lines, then her tale is not for you. For those who don’t mind a spin through the world of erotic romance, you might just enjoy this ride. You can get her title at Aspen Mountain Press on January 5th. Look for the title “Own Me”.

Well, I’ve got Elves and Dwarves to write, so I will excuse myself now, if you don’t mind.

I wrote a chapter of “Fae Death”, a work I’m collaborating on, the other night. It wasn’t very lengthy, only around 2,000 words, but by the closing sentence I was exhausted, both physically and emotionally. I couldn’t bring myself to do so much as look over what I’d written until the next morning.

Was I forcing the story? No. The dialogue very nearly wrote itself. My characters had veered slightly from my original road map, but that’s almost never a bad thing, it’s what gives them character after all. All that was needed was a slight nudge on my part to move them back in the direction they needed to go. The chapter ended well. Very well. So why was I so tired by the end of it?

The simple answer is that my characters were having a fairly heated discussion through most of the chapter. Their emotions were high, and their level of emotion forced me to pour a lot of my own into their conversation. If I hadn’t poured that level of intensity into them, the whole situation would have read as flat. By the time their conversation had ended neither they, nor I, had anything left to give. It was only by sheer coincidence that the scene was set at night so both my characters and their writer headed off to bed.

It’s this level of emotional involvement with your characters that makes them jump off the page and into the hearts of the reader. If you find that you’re writing what is supposed to be a deeply emotional scene, but you’re not feeling the emotions yourself, then you might want to try to put yourself a little farther into the minds of your characters. If you aren’t feeling what they are, how is your reader supposed to feel it?

And in the end, it’s the reader that we all write for, isn’t it?

It all begins with the first sentence. Whether that be “It was a dark and stormy night” or “The clouds boiled over Dunnigan’s head, but the torrents of rain they poured on him were far lighter than his spirits”. Either way, the tale has begun. (I prefer the second, don’t you?)

In the same bent, this blog is begun. I will attempt to make it worth your time and effort for stopping by.

I m a writer, among other things. To that end, I have read many books, perused many websites and tried many different things in the quest to hone my skills. Am I a better writer than you are? I have no idea. I’m sure that there are writers in the world far better than I am myself. I’m just as sure that regardless of the skills possessed by two writers in any given room, they can and will both learn from each others methods if they choose to look at them with an open mind.

I hope you will take what I have to give here with an open mind. You may just learn something. On the other hand, feel free to comment or contact me with your feelings, methods, tips or tricks, and I will probably learn something. It’s a wonderful trade-off, and I think it will be beneficial to all.

This blog begins on January 1st 2007. I wish you all a happy and productive new Year.