Boo, hiss, groan I say.

The hero and heroine have been captured by the villain. He’s taken them to a dungeon to torture them. 

“Tell me all your secrets or I’ll kill you,” hissed the villain, waving an enormous sword.

“Oh dear, my precious. I think we’re in trouble,” groaned the hero.

“Perhaps we should run away,” wailed the heroine. 

Now you say it all out aloud. Hiss the villain’s line, groan the hero’s line, and wail the heroine’s line.

You can’t do it can you? Apart from the fact the hero’s line is laughably unheroic, you can only hiss sibilants. If the villain had hissed “Yessss,” that might work. But he really ought to be yelling or threatening, or even “said” would do.

Save “groan” for the hero until after he’s been stabbed by the sword, and keep the words to something he really could groan. “Ow” for example.

Wailing is a little harder. Perhaps, “Let’s goooo.” 

Before you pull out a thesaurus and find sound effects for the critical moment of your book, practice saying the lines out loud. You may save yourself from having your reader laugh when she should be biting her nails with fear. 

Helen Woodall

helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Begin with a hook

Most writers and readers know that the best books begin with a hook. The hard part is coming up with an intriguing line, sentence or paragraph that really will hook the reader in and make them keep reading. And it really does need to be the very first line or paragraph, because that’s all the time many readers will give the book.

Snoopy’s famous for typing,  “It was a dark and stormy night”, a book opening originally written by  Victorian novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton at the beginning of his 1830 novel, Paul Clifford. In case you were thinking of using that line, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, sponsored by the English Department of San Jose State University, recognizes the worst examples of this sort of writing.

A better suggestion is to begin with a question. In solving it, the reader is drawn into the story. Another technique is to begin in the middle of something dramatic, which again pulls the reader along. In this case the author then needs to be careful not to use chapter two as a massive dumping ground for backstory to bring the reader up-to-date, but which is much more likely to have them throwing the book away from boredom.

Something else to avoid is the “crook”. That’s an enchanting hook that isn’t fulfilled in the book. With a crook, the hook is a major conflict that’s all solved by chapter three, or drama that fizzles out mid-book, or a promise never kept.

Your hook needs to involve a character or plot point from the story, introduced briefly and fast, but in such a way that the reader burns to know what happens next.

 Helen Woodall

helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Professor Finds Fiction-Readers Do Better In School

I’m pretty sure that this won’t be news to primary school teachers (elementary school) but an official study has found that kids who read for fun do better in school.

Southern Connecticut State University professor Louise Spear-Swerling found that kids who read fiction are better readers than kids who prefer non-fiction.

 

She also discovered that better readers are willing to try more complicated books (duh!) but was unable to say whether that was cause or effect—they read more difficult books because they could understand them, or, they could understand them because they were better readers.

Heightened reading skills seem to appear early in a child’s life. By sixth grade, the students who find reading more difficult, may avoid complicated books to spare themselves frustration, she said.

“There’s a huge interest in how we can improve reading. Reading is the key to academic success. Kids who read more do better academically. Those who do not, don’t,” she said.

Unfortunately, the children in the study seemed to confirm what some reading experts and social scientists call the “Matthew effect.” In practice, this means that good readers will become better readers, while those with difficulty reading will only sink lower over time. Or so some think.

To me, the obvious answer would be to encourage every child to read more books!

Helen Woodall

helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

How do you see your editor?

Don’t Get Confused 2.

Back in April I listed some commonly confused words authors need to be aware of.

http://helenwoodallfreelanceediting.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/dont-get-confused.html

Here’s a few more.

Dessert/desert: Dessert is that yummy stuff that comes after you’ve eaten your main course. There is no dessert to be found in the desert. No water either.

Verses/versus: How many verses are there in that song? Today my football team, the Mighty Hawks, versus that pathetic team, Collingwood.

Conscience/conscious: Your conscience tells you the difference between right and wrong, but only if you're conscious at the time.

Rigid/ridged: Rigid means stiff, hard. Ridged means it has ridges along the surface. Like the sand as the tide goes out at the beach.

Off of: The compound preposition off of is generally regarded as informal and is best avoided in formal speech and writing: He stepped off (not off of) the platform. Off is informal as well when used to indicate a source: formal style requires I borrowed it from (not off) my brother.

Helen Woodall

helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Who or Whom and some adverbs

Grammar book explains when to use who and when to use whom really well.

http://www.grammarbook.com/grammar/whoVwhom.asp

 Use the he/him method to decide which word is correct.

he = who

him = whom

Examples:

Who/Whom wrote the letter?

He wrote the letter. Therefore, who is correct.

For who/whom should I vote?

Should I vote for him? Therefore, whom is correct.

We all know who/whom pulled that prank.

This sentence contains two clauses: We all know and who/whom pulled that prank. We are interested in the second clause because it contains the who/whom. He pulled that prank. Therefore, who is correct.

We want to know on who/whom the prank was pulled.

This sentence contains two clauses: We want to know and the prank was pulled on who/whom. Again, we are interested in the second clause because it contains the who/whom. The prank was pulled on him. Therefore, whom is correct.

I know many publishers/editors/agents hate adverbs, and that is because often if you delete them you have not removed any additional information.

 The old man’s bones creaked and groaned as he slowly, gradually lowered himself into the armchair.

Take out gradually or slowly and you still have a clear picture of what happened.

 Words like “just” and “actually” can almost always be deleted without changing the sense of the line.

I just walked in the room and saw him.

I walked in the room and saw him.
I actually walked in the room and saw him.
I walked in the room and saw him.
 

Some authors seem to think if they delete the suffix from a word it magically is not an adverb. Ah no. if you are using it as an adverb you’re now using incorrect grammar instead of the adverb.

When she stood on my toe I yelled loud.

No. You yelled loudly.

But since you can’t yell softly just When she stood on my toe I yelled would work fine.

 

Helen Woodall

helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Read the Contract!: Caveat Emptor!

Caveat Emptor: Latin, Let the buyer beware. A warning that notifies a buyer that the goods he or she is buying are "as is," or subject to all defects.

Nowhere is this warning more important than when an author signs a contract to publish their book. Now I know that for an author who has been struggling for years to be published, the euphoria of actually being an offered a contract for their book may be overwhelming. So sing, dance, get out the champagne. BUT before you sign the contract READ it. Read every single word. Look at what is there and what isn’t there. Just because your good friend talked her advance up from $1000 to $3000 doesn’t mean you will. Just because she increased her percentage of royalties from 35% to 50% doesn’t mean you will do that either. Especially if you don’t have a dozen bestsellers under your belt already.

Does the company help you promote your book? Do they challenge book piracy? Who pays for cover art and editing? How often do they send out your royalties? Have you heard stories about authors not getting their checks regularly? What happens of the company goes bust? This is very important as companies go belly-up with distressing frequency. Do you automatically get your rights back or not?

Google the company and do some research. You really should have done all this before you submitted your book to that publisher, but if you didn’t, at least do it now before you sign the contract. And if you can’t understand the contract, warning lights should be going off in your brain. Get someone to explain it to you. Whatever happens don’t just sign it and hope it’ll be okay. It’s much better to submit the book somewhere more reputable, or self publish it.

Helen Woodall

helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

True heroes do not smirk!

Warning rant ahead.

Smirk: http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/smirk#smirk_4: to smile in an unpleasant way because something bad has happened to someone else, or because you think you have achieved an advantage over them

Now if you don’t believe me, please feel free to go to: http://onelook.com/?w=smirk&ls=a  where 36 other dictionaries will all tell you a smirk is a cruel, unkind, nasty kind of smile. 

Yet in every second romance novel I read, the hero smirks at the heroine. Often he smirks at her in almost every chapter of the book.

Ladies, read that definition of smirk.

Now, would any self respecting heroine want a hero like that?

I think not.

A true hero smiles.

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/smile#smile_4: to raise the corners of your mouth when you are happy, pleased, or being friendly, or when you think something is funny

If you need a synonym try grin, laugh, or even beam, or look amused. But please, save all that smirking for the villain.

Helen Woodall

helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Word of the Day

Want to expand your vocabulary? Fascinated by weird and wonderful words? Like reading neat little clips from classic books?

“Word of the Day” has, as it suggests, a new word every day with a little bit about its history and some examples of its usage.

http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/

Today’s word was “surfeit” which is pretty well known, but earlier this week the words on two consecutive days were mumpsimus, then sumpsimus, which were kinda cool. 

She is a master of sumpsimus , more anal in language usage than Doc in his rigid professionalism. She insists on saying, "It is I", or "He gave the book to John and me".

-- Ann Burrus, Astride the Pineapple Couch

Helen Woodall

helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Paraprosdokians

Paraprosdokians are those crazy phrases where the first sentence makes a statement, and the next phrase changes the meaning in an unexpected way. Thanks to Jean Hart Stewart for these. 

Where there’s a will, I want to be in it.

The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it’s still on my list.

If I agree with you, then we’d both be wrong.

We never really grow up. We only learn how to act in public.

War does not determine who is right. Only who is left.

They begin the evening news with ‘Good evening’. And then tell you why it isn’t.

I used to be indecisive. Now I’m not so sure.

http://www.jeanhartstewart.com/

http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/funny-words-and-clever-too.html

Helen Woodall

helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.