It’s a brand-new bouncing baby WORD

Merriam-Webster has just released the new words to be added to the 2012 dictionary. Some are a foregone conclusion like “bucket list”. After all, by the time there’s a movie based on the idea, the dictionary was bound to go with the flow.

Same with “systemic risk” (from the Global Financial Crisis), “cloud computing”, and “sexting”.

For a couple of fun articles on the newly approved words, check out:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenmakovsky/2012/08/27/new-words-in-the-dictionary/

http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/newwords12.htm

 

Helen Woodall

helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Scraping the bottom of the barrel? Avoid clichés.

 

 

According to the dictionary (in this case, Merriam Webster) a cliché is

1: a trite phrase or expression; also: the idea expressed by it

2: a hackneyed theme, characterization, or situation

3: something that has become overly familiar or commonplace

All of which translates as something not to be used too often in your story. Sure the occasional cliché may be clever, or funny, but too many of them, and it starts to sound as if the author has no fresh ideas of her own, and is merely churning out a loosely cobbled together arrangement of other people’s words.

Pick a few clichés and think about them for a minute. If the hero says to the heroine, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” do you really think the heroine will say, “Oh, my. He knows Shakespeare”? or is she more likely to say, “I’ve heard a lot better pick-up lines than that.”?

Or, “The villain has an ax to grind”. Or possibly he’s “made of money”, but then again “money is the root of all evil”.

If the heroine is “walking on eggshells” while she’s “waiting for the dust to settle” she probably needs better dialogue.

Clichés are boring.

Get your head in the game, get your ducks in a row, go the extra mile and give it a go. Write your own dialogue!

 

Helen Woodall

helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

 

Have fun!

When I send edits to authors I have always signed off my emails saying, “Have fun”. No, I’m not being sarcastic or unkind, even if the edits may be rather demanding of the author. I’m stating a fact. If you aren’t getting enjoyment from what you’re doing, something is wrong.

Now, yes, sure, some days will be better than others. Sometimes life will be hitting you over the head with stuff that is most definitely not fun. But overall, an author needs to believe in herself and what she’s doing. Apart from the very few, an author is not going to become rich and famous, even if her book is better than some who have achieved that honor and glory. So if you aren’t having fun, at least some of the time, why not?

Relax, take a big breath, and think. You want to write, or you can’t help but write. And you are writing, so that’s all good. Now, have fun!

Helen Woodall

helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Let’s just delete those justs

Sometimes I give an author a comment along the lines of, “You have used this word three times in this paragraph. Do a find and remove two thirds of the uses of this word in your story”.

The comments I get back run from, “Rats! I’d used ‘but’ too often and replaced some with ‘just’. Now I have too many ‘justs’.”  To, “Help! How do I do that?”

So first, to avoid the problem, you need to remember that although your heroine’s luminous jade-green eyes, are the most striking thing about her to you, your reader is not stupid and doesn’t need to be reminded about them on every second page. Tell us about them once or twice near the beginning of the book, preferably in someone else’s POV, then only mention them once or twice again in the story.

Then read through your book looking for “crutch” or unnecessary words. “Just”, “actually”, “then”, “approximately”, can often be removed without changing the meaning of your sentence in the slightest.

Now, if we’ve identified a problem, do a “find and replace”. Delete your crutch word and replace it with a symbol so you can easily notice the sentence when you read through your story. As you read through, often you’ll find nothing is needed, and all you have to do is delete the symbol. Sometimes you do need to replace it with a word or phrase. But watch out that you don’t just collect a new crutch word. Try to keep it fresh.

Helen Woodall

helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

I’ve sold my book. When will I be rich?

The honest answer? Probably never. Yes, a few people do make it to the top. E L James of "Fifty Shades of Grey" is the most recent proof of that phenomenon. But for every E L James there are a couple of thousand ordinary writers. A handful of them will be doing quite nicely. Able to quit the day job and concentrate on writing. A bigger group of upper mid-listers will be making enough money for an annual vacation somewhere pleasant with their family or friends. But for most of them, their royalties will vary from a celebratory dinner out, to a new laptop, or possibly both.

The average advance for a new author is about $1000. A nice amount indeed, and worthy of celebrating, but nowhere near enough to leave the day job for. Especially when you consider how difficult it is to sell more than one or two books per year to a print publisher, and how infrequently authors earn much more than their advance.

Digital publishers rarely pay advances but they do permit an author to publish four or even six books per year. Since e-book royalties tend to be much higher than print (frequently around 45% instead of 8%) it is more than possible for e-published authors to earn that much in a year.

So my advice to you is to enjoy your sale. Celebrate being a published author. Cherish the fan letters. Perfect your craft, making each book better than the previous one.

But don’t quit your day job yet.

Helen Woodall

helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

How to write a good villain

The most gripping stories always have a villain. It may be the hero's own weaknesses (or the heroine's), it may be wild animals or nature, or it may be a person, but there needs to be something keeping the hero and heroine from achieving their happy ending, or the book would be all over by about page ten.

The best villains are ones clearly explained, fully developed characters that the reader can't help but want to hear more about. No one really cares about the villain who is so totally evil he's practically a cartoon character. In fact, the best cartoon bad guys are pretty awesome themselves.

Your villain may be just an ordinary Joe, caught up in evil. Or not smart enough, or just too nice, to see he's being misled or used by someone else. He may be stuck in a tradition, not seeing that times have changed. But even if he is pretty bad, he will still have redeeming features. Even ax murderers love their wife, their kids and their dog. And the more followers he has, the more the villain will believe he is right. He has too much invested in himself and the followers to change easily. Besides, they probably keep telling him how wonderful he is and how right his plans are, making it ever harder for him to see another possible path.

If your villain is insane, make sure you have your facts right. Don’t give him some malady that's easily treatable with a bottle of pills, or your plot will be too weak to make the story good, even if "the voices in his head" tell him not to take them. A smart heroine could feed them to him in his morning coffee!

Happy writing! 

Helen Woodall

helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

But I like semi colons.

Semi colons and colons may be very nice pieces of punctuation, but they are not used much in fiction writing as they tend to slow the reader down. Commas and full stops (periods) are the punctuation of choice. For the same reason sentences tend to be short, with fewer minor clauses. The reader wants to know who the villain is, or when the hero will get his girl, not have to wade through a sixty-word sentence and read it two or three times to be sure of the meaning. Three twenty-word sentences will keep her reading and understanding everything much better.

Having said that, all publishers have their own house style. If you, as an author, take your writing very seriously, and tend to cry when asked to change your semi colon into a period and a new sentence, I suggest you read your contract carefully before signing it. Most contracts have a paragraph about the book following house style and the author being expected to accept reasonable edits to conform with house style.

Check this out:

The heroine, her long golden locks flowing in the breeze, her cerulean blue orbs filled with fear, her hands clasped to her heaving bosom, her knees wobbling in a terror so great they could hardly keep her upright, turned and cast an anguished glance behind her; the villain was right there, his wicked hands clawed around her precious Princess Pettlepie’s furry frame, as Princess Pettlepie gave a plaintive little meow, demanding the heroine rescue her.

I bet you can all turn that into four or five much more dramatic sentences without changing the meaning at all.

Helen Woodall

helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Anachronism 2

There's a reasonably well-known novel where the heroine time-travels back to Regency Britain, breaks an expensive vase, and while still in that time period hops onto EBay and buys a new one. Now if this had been in a steampunk novel with an author who was pretty good at world building, it may have worked. But as a historical setting no, no and no again. No electricity. Therefore no computers, no internet and no EBay. Also no credit cards to pay for the purchase.

But there are other common concepts that need to be avoided in historical novels too.

Until Sigmund Freud started working on the idea of psychoanalysis, you couldn't say a person made a Freudian slip. Nor could you talk about an Oedipus Complex. Sure, Oedipus had been around for hundreds of years, but the psychological premise of his complex had not. See the difference? And that's the trick about historical accuracy. Your characters can psychoanalyze each other as much as they like. But they can only do so in terms the people of that era would have used. So "That man reminds me of the character Oedipus we had to study at Eton, because…" would work.

"That man has an Oedipus Complex because…" would not.

Another thing. Please don't have characters say, "You’re welcome", unless they're inviting someone into their house, before 1907. The phrase wasn't used until then.

There's 10 anachronisms in the picture. Did you find them all? 

Helen Woodall

helen.woodall@gmail.com

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