An Impressive Beginning

For a book to succeed in drawing readers into the plot and characters, the beginning needs to be impressive. Polished, entertaining, catchy, something that drags the reader along until she doesn’t even realize she’s halfway through chapter two and her coffee is cold.

Often it’s an action scene. Sometimes it’s a puzzle the character begins to solve. The ways to do it are as varied as the number of books out there. What it isn’t, is long flowery descriptive phrases about people or places. Get the reader racing along with you first, and add a few scenic details briefly along the way incidentally, or as dialogue.

It’s very important that each word in these first scenes is exactly right, because one wrong word (or typo!) can throw the reader out of the story before she’s fully hooked. A reader may hate a word or typo later in the book, but once she’s invested in the story and the characters she’s more likely to keep reading. At the beginning one single error can be enough for a reader to put down that book and choose one of the other hundred in her To Be Read pile.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

The Pen Is Mightier Than The Keyboard

"Psychological Science" recently published a research article showing that taking notes by hand is a more effective method than typing them on a laptop when it comes to processing information conceptually. Sixty-five college students watched various TED Talks in small groups, and were provided with either pens and paper or laptops for taking notes. The students were tested afterward. While the groups performed equally on questions that involved recalling facts, those who had taken longhand notes did significantly better when it came to answering conceptual questions.

Laptop users were trying too hard to transcribe the lecture rather than listening for the most important information and writing it down by hand

Another 2012 study indicated writing is particularly important in the cognitive development of pre-literate children.

So there you are. It would appear that the pen is not yet irrelevant.

The original article is here: http://writerscircle.com/cs-longhand-benefits-research/

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Writing prequels

Book Daily has published a "How To" article on writing prequels. It has some good ideas about how to make a story that captivates a reader, even when the reader already knows exactly how the story ends.

Adding a cameo and/or a plot twist, and growing the character are all good ideas. Some of the other suggestions I’m not so sure about. But this article certainly provides excellent food for thought for anyone considering a prequel or side story.

The original article is here;
http://www.bookdaily.com/authorresource/blog/post/1865666

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Writing Vivid Dialogue

Instead of adding an adverb to a dialogue tag to describe how a person speaks, consider using an action. First, some editors and publishing houses hate adverbs with the fire of a thousand suns. And secondly, an action tag can depict character so much more vividly. Does she hesitate or blush when she answers him? Does she fiddle with her cell phone, or pick at her nails, or twirl her hair? All are so much more descriptive than “shyly” or “hesitantly”.

Also consider painting some of the background into the conversation. Are they standing on a street corner in brilliant sunlight? Is it too hot? Is it winter and her toes are freezing inside her sexy pumps and she’s wishing she’d worn her boots?

Dialogue doesn’t have to be just words. The best, most fulfilling dialogue includes body language, scenery, and actions.

For more ideas on this topic check out http://www.bookdaily.com/authorresource/blog/post/1860002

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Book covers

Many authors agonize over their book covers. Some drive their cover artist crazy wanting every tiny detail of their hero/heroine exactly perfect. Some publishers have a series “look” which can make an author cry when they see their voluptuous red-headed heroine portrayed as a blonde stick figure. Other authors love self publishing because finally they can get the cover of their dreams by hiring their own cover artist.

But one thing all readers and authors will relate to, is the cover that has nothing to do with the book inside it.

Bustle.com has compiled a list of the sixteen most misleading book covers of all time.
http://www.bustle.com/articles/161333-the-16-most-misleading-book-covers-of-all-time

It also has a link to another article showing book covers so bad they’ll make you laugh.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/lukelewis/hilariously-bad-book-covers

Enjoy!


Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Opposites and contronyms

English is a weird language, but that’s why it’s so much fun. A particular favorite of mine, grammatically speaking, is the contronym.

The contronym (also spelled “contranym”) goes by many names, including “auto-antonym,” “antagonym,” “enantiodrome,” “self-antonym,” “antilogy” and “Janus word” (from the Roman god of beginnings and endings, often depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions. That’s how January was named – looking back to the previous year and forward to the new one).

“Dust” is a good example of a contronym. The forensic specialists dust your furniture (add dust to it) to check for fingerprints. Then you have to dust the furniture to remove the dust.

“Fast” is another one. The Olympic athlete ran very fast holding fast to his javelin, then threw it.

And how about “garnish”? You garnish the salad by adding parsley or mint to it. But if you garnish someone’s wages, you take money away from them.

For a lot more examples check out: http://mentalfloss.com/article/57032/25-words-are-their-own-opposites and http://www.dailywritingtips.com/75-contronyms-words-with-contradictory-meanings/ which has some great examples including “refrain” which can be something repeated over and over (the refrain of a song) or to not do something.

Happy reading.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

A Novel Written By A Computer Actually Beat Human-Made Novels In Japan…

We’ve all heard about computers that operate all kinds of household appliances, ensuring that the temperature remains appropriate, lights turn on and off, and even control window furnishings that open and close at set times. But recently technology stepped up to a whole new level.

The Nikkei Hoshi Shinichi Literary Award is named after a famous, Japanese sci-fi author and it accepts non-human applicants. The 2016 prize included 1,450 novels, 11 of which were created using artificial intelligence. However, in order to criticize submissions fairly, the identity of entries (human or otherwise) was withheld from judges.

One computer-written submission made it through the first round of the competition. It was a novel called “The Day A Computer Writes A Novel”. The L.A. Times said, “Humans decided the plot and character details of the novel, then entered words and phrases from an existing novel into a computer, which was able to construct a new book using that information.”

“The Day A Computer Writes A Novel” didn’t make it to the second round of the competition, but it did freak out a lot of people with its final sentences: “The day a computer wrote a novel. The computer, placing priority on the pursuit of its own joy, stopped working for humans.”
Brilliant!!

For the full story check out, http://writerscircle.com/ai-novel/

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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