11 books people will judge you for reading

The “Daily Life” blog has assembled a list of books it considered make a statement about the reader. I definitely don’t agree with some of the things they say, but it’s certainly an interesting concept that will make you think. Or laugh. Or possibly even argumentative. But anyway, here are some of their suggestions.

It’s no surprise to find “The DaVinci Code” and “Fifty Shades of Grey” on the list. Or possibly even “Twilight” but some of the others might surprise you. Just a warning, this is an Australian list and some overseas readers might not recognize one of the books.

The article is at:
http://www.dailylife.com.au/photogallery/news-and-views/dl-opinion/the-11-books-people-will-judge-you-for-reading-20130606-2nt7x.html

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Happy New Year! Australia had it first!

Australia doesn’t just head into the New Year (and every new day) when most of the world is still asleep (sixteen hours ahead of US east coast, eleven hours ahead of London, UK) but it seems we’re much faster to pick up on new words as well.

The social media buzzword ‘‘selfie’’ is likely to be included in the Oxford English Dictionary after being picked as the ‘‘word of the year’’ for 2013. The first recognised use of the term - shorthand for a self-portrait photograph - was in 2002 on an Australian online forum.

“Selfie” pipped ‘‘twerking’’, ‘‘showrooming’’, ‘‘binge watch’’, ‘‘bitcoin’’ and ‘‘bedroom tax’’, to the top prize. Previous winners include ‘‘chav’’, ‘‘credit crunch’’ and ‘‘omnishambles’’.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

The seasonally adjusted story

Christmas, or indeed any holiday, seems to bring out a bunch of authors determined to write the "perfect" seasonal story.
This is an old article, reprinted to remind authors of the main points of a holiday story.

Dearest Editor,
I know you will be wanting to buy some Christmas stories with Christmas just around the corner so I am sending you my latest masterpiece. I just know you will love it as much as I do.
Originally it was going to be about Halloween but life intervened – you know how it does – and I didn't get it finished but I just changed the pumpkin pie into mince pies so I am sure everything will be fine.
Love from,
Your Favorite Author.

Hello Author,
I am sorry to inform you your book is not acceptable as it is. You need to do some more revising.
I can quite understand that it may snow at Halloween and Christmas where you live, but you sent your hero and heroine off on vacation to Uncle Charlie’s in Australia – and December is summer there. They need sunscreen and flip flops, not coats and snow boots.
And in Australia chrysanthemums flower in May not December.
And birds do not fly south to escape the winter. South is the Antarctic. It is very cold there.
Your Editor.

Dearest Editor
Since it took you a whole month to read my book I am not going to be able to get it ready in time for Christmas now, so I have made it into a Valentine’s Day story. The pumpkin pie/mince pies are now jelly cakes in the shape of a heart – so very romantic.
I have changed the flowers and the birds. Did you know Begonias flower all year round – I can use them in every book I write and never have to worry again!!!
Love from,
Your Favorite Author.

Hello Author
Maybe because you have changed the dates of your story so much there is now nothing at all to make it a real Valentine’s Day story. Jelly cakes in the shape of a heart are indeed a lovely romantic gesture but they do not specifically say “Valentine’s Day”. Nor do Begonias.
Perhaps you should decide on a holiday and stick to it. Do some research specifically about that holiday and then weave those items into your story –spooky details for Halloween, maybe some carols for Christmas, and something unusually romantic for Valentine’s Day. Really the whole point about writing a holiday story is that the season is an integral focus of the plot – it brings the characters together for a reason or to a specific place or to do something different from normal.
If you send your characters to some special location you should use that location in the story. Uncle Charlie lives in Queensland – there is a very famous coral reef there that I am sure would make a wonderful background for a romantic scene.
I am sorry to inform you that your book is still not acceptable in its current form.
Your Editor.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

The importance of using correct grammar at work

The Wall Street Journal has been running a discussion on grammar in the workplace and it’s fascinating reading. They complain about things like misusing is and are, me and I, and saying things like “I could care less” when you mean you could not care less. You don’t care at all.

Well these people certainly care about grammar. One company will no longer hire anyone at all who fails their spelling and grammar test. Several other companies are running in-house grammar training sessions. Another company insists that every outgoing email is proofread by a resident grammar guru before it’s sent.

In a survey of 430 employers taken earlier this year, a stunning 45% said they planned to increase training programs to improve employees’ use of grammar and other skills.

For authors, this is just another reason to make sure their book is polished before it’s published. If the wheel is turning back to insistence on good grammar, it’s smart to stay ahead of the curve. And for everyone else, maybe it’s time to ensure any important business documents are proofread before they’re sent out into the world. You never know if your project will be read by a grammar Nazi or not, and for the sake of your next pay rise, it’s better to err on the side of grammatical correctness.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Don’t Feed the Trolls

Every now and then a reader or an author’s friends take a dislike to a certain author and/or her book/s. This dislike typically takes the form of posting negative reviews on the various public forums distressing the maligned author. Often the reviewers attack the author, not the book. Sometimes they give away key parts of the plot, spoiling it for any future readers. Sometimes the “reviewer” hasn’t even read the book, but their friend “told” them it was bad so they give it a 1 star rating anyway.

The worst possible thing the author can do is reply to the troll trying to explain about the book or berating the troll for publishing spoilers. Just as bad is the author asking other people to reply on her behalf.

This is called “feeding” the troll. The troll becomes even more angry with every counter argument and the fight escalates.

The best thing an aggrieved author can do is ignore the review and hope that the excitement dies down quickly and everyone forgets about it.

Even better is for an author to ignore every review, good or bad, and never get involved in public discussions about personal opinions. A treasured 5 star review is celebrated in private or with trusted friends, and a poor review is also only read in private and never ever commented on publicly.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Tips for a great book cover

“The worst thing an author can do is consider their cover design like a blank canvas and add whatever they want, wherever they want,” says Derek Murphy on the Creative Indi website.

Authors want their book to stand out and he says the secret is contrast between the main focus of the cover and the background. He says many authors want far too many elements included on the cover which makes it look too busy.

Murphy says that non-fiction appeals to the brain, whereas fiction appeals to the heart, so fiction covers should be bursting with color, vibrancy, and action. They should be beautiful. The art alone should make the reader feel something like longing or loss or passion immediately. He suggests adding a subtitle, a teaser or even a review can help the book sell.

Regarding fonts, he suggests buying one because it will be much less used, therefore more noticeable. The same with photos. He says if a stock photo is really good it will be used on many covers and suggests hiring a friend to do a photoshoot so the pictures used are different. But he warns that if the book requires many highly detailed items on the cover it’d be better to go with something really simple instead.

Finally he points out that text placement can be a form of branding, so is well worth considering.

For the full article with pictures see: http://www.creativindie.com/8-cover-design-secrets-publishers-use-to-manipulate-readers-into-buying-books/


Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Old fashioned words we need to reanimate

I came across a list of old words that have been forgotten yet are a lot of fun. Obviously I’m older than I thought, because I clearly remember some of them, including my dear friend snollygoster, the subject of a previous post. http://helenwoodallfreelanceediting.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/snollygoster.html

Does anyone else recognize scurrilous, thrice, or blithering? My dad used to call people “a blithering idiot”.

Uglyography is easy enough to guess. But how about ultracrepidarianism? For those of you who love words, go to: http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/oldfashioned-words-that-should-be-brought-back-into-modern-language/story-fniym874-1226768577929
and see if there are some old friends you remember, or new friends you could add to your vocabulary. After all, I’m sure some of you are confirmed librocubularists.


Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Grammar Quiz

Here’s a grammar quiz for you to play with. It covers things that I’ve spoken about before: apostrophes, I/me, lay/lie, who/whom, your/you’re, hear/here, less/fewer, that/which, weather/whether and more.
Go and have fun.

http://m.staples.ca/sbdca/en_CA/cre/programs/grammarquiz/

Helen Woodall

Why kids can’t read

Every few years educationalists start arguing about whether or not children should learn reading by rote, by being taught their letters, by phonics, by whole word, or any of a dozen other methods. Each method has wonderful success stories and appalling failures. It seems that reading is most definitely a situation with no “one size fits all” solution.

A new Australian study has shown that children who are lagging behind at reading don’t speak “school English”, or Standard Australian English, at home. They may speak a language other than English, or Aboriginal English, or a creole, or “bogan” English – the kind where words like “youse” feature. I expect this is the same in America, the United Kingdom and many other places as well.

But it’s not school English; it isn’t how the teacher speaks and it certainly isn’t what international tests or NAPLAN (National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy tests) reward. So, it is the school’s job to teach school English to ensure everyone gets equal access to the learning that happens at school.

The number of non-Standard Australian English speakers in schools has grown over the years, and Australia’s education system doesn’t cope well with “non-standard”. I expect most overseas programs don’t either.

Teachers who grew up speaking and reading school English fluently are less effective with the students who write “I seen that at the movies”, or “My sister go to shopping on a car”. All teachers can correct those errors but far fewer can explain why they’re wrong to the students. Students who hear the language being spoken all around them exactly like that all the time.

What these learners need is good literature, and teachers who have a strong understanding of how the English language works which they can convert to meaningful teaching.

You can read about the study at: http://www.essentialkids.com.au/younger-kids/kids-education/why-the-best-literacy-approaches-are-not-reaching-the-classroom-20131031-2wid6.html#utm_source=FD&utm_medium=lifeandstylepuff&utm_campaign=literacy


Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

What are some of the most common mistakes that fiction writers make in forensics?

I have always been intrigued by old movies where the bad guys are outside the house carefully trying to shoot through the windows at the good guys. In real life a couple of bullets through the wall of the house right beside the window and the program would be over and the good guys dead.

I read a fascinating, but very very long article on the 10 Most Common Mistakes in Fiction Regarding Forensics featuring D.P. Lyle & Jan Burke.

Here is my take on the most important ones.

Jurisdiction: Make sure you have who handles what correct. A sheriff, the police, the FBI. Also, in hundreds of places, the coroner is a political appointment, not a doctor, far less a pathologist.

Get the gun right: Does it have a safety? How many shots does it hold?

Dead bodies smell yucky and there can be insects and all kinds of gross stuff. Death is almost never instant or pretty. Also note that curtains are hung and people are hanged.

Be accurate about how long people stay unconscious after a fight or hit on the head. Generally it’s not very long at all.

Lab tests can take a long time. Only TV shows solve everything in an hour.

It all boils down to the need to do your research and get it right.

For those of you who write mysteries/thrillers, check out the full article at: http://www.thebigthrill.org/2013/10/special-to-the-big-thrill-10-most-common-mistakes-in-fiction-regarding-forensics-by-d-p-lyle-jan-burke/

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Check your facts

When I was a kid the only way to find out something Mum or Dad didn’t know the answer to (or wouldn’t tell me!) was to go to the local library and look it up in the encyclopedia. My school didn’t have a library.

Things hadn’t changed a whole lot when my kids were very small, although by then I did have thousands of books of my own, and my smarter (lazier?) offspring usually chose to do assignments or “projects” on topics they knew I had books about. Although we still seemed to be down at the library most weekends looking up something or other until, in desperation, I bought a set of encyclopedias.

These everyone just Googles or looks up Wikipedia. Which is fine as a place to start, and usually gives a decent overview of a topic. However, the stuff in Wikipedia, and the things you Google, are not necessarily correct. Anyone wanting to know the whole truth (or just wanting the research for their book to be accurate) needs to check multiple references.

For example, Google Street View and Google Maps both show a bank within walking distance of where I live. That bank hasn’t been there since the middle of 2009. People, it’s almost the end of 2013 now and if you use that bank in your book you’ll get hundreds of complaining emails. Although your heroine might decide to buy some fresh vegetables from the Asian grocery store on that site these days.

Wikipedia is built and maintained primarily by volunteers. That’s good. Unfortunately there are also thousands of accounts of sockpuppets, paid by companies and PR firms to delete any information the company paying them doesn’t like or considers adverse to their interests. There are many stories about the sockpuppets (although possibly not on Wikipedia itself!) But the message is clear. Check your facts using several different sources and don’t believe everything you read on the internet.

For some sock puppet stories read this: http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/is-wikipedia-getting-worse-20131025-2w6cf.html#ixzz2ixuBFWuI

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Snollygoster

I subscribe to dictionary.com’s “Word of the Day” and one of its most recent offerings was “snollygoster”. Isn’t that a brilliant word? The meaning is even better: “a clever, unscrupulous person, especially a politician.” We definitely have some politicians here in Australia that fit that description, and judging by America’s latest shenanigans they have them there too.

So I followed up the history of the word, and found that it emerged in America at a similar time, and with a similar meaning to “carpetbagger”. Which had me remembering reading Harold Robbins’ book, “The Carpetbaggers” (which wasn’t banned in Australia).

Another really cool word is “lagniappe” meaning a small gift. It’s a friend’s favorite word, and it rolls off the tongue as evocatively as “snollygoster” but it has a far prettier meaning. It’s also derived from the Quechua language, and I have friends who worked with the Quechua people for many years, which makes it even more relevant to me.

So, what words inspire you, or make you think and remember?

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Ending Well

The final article in my three-part series about writing your book.

There are two main mistakes authors make with the ending of their book. And they’re complete opposites.

First we have the author who has been warned about leaving loose threads, so she goes through her book very carefully and in the final chapter she makes reference to every single character, however minor, and what happens to them, their house, their gun, their cat… The book is tied up so tightly with so many pretty pink bows that there is no possible way of ever writing a sequel, or even another book in that world.

Loose threads are bad. Leaving the reader wondering what happened to the main characters is bad. The reader left feeling saddened that there’ll never be another book in this world because there’s nothing left to say is also bad.

The second type of mistake is the author who introduced a ghost in chapter four and forgets to mention him again, has the hero’s three best friends standing on the edge of a crumbling cliff in chapter ten, and never mentions them again, and generally has so many unfinished story threads the reader is left wondering how the heroine could ever be happy in that world.

It is fine to leave an overarching plot thread hanging. It’s not fine to have a character the reader cares about in deadly peril unless book two is edited and scheduled for release a month after book one. Even then the author’s email account may well be filled with anguished emails from readers for the next few weeks.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

The sagging middle

No, not yours, the book’s.

Many authors spend huge amounts of time getting the beginning of their books just right. Everyone knows an author must attract the attention of the reader/editor/publisher/agent with the opening page or they won’t keep reading. Also many writing competitions use the first few chapters as their test, so authors polish, polish, polish the start to get it perfect.

Then authors work hard on the ending to tie up all the plot threads, make sure there’s no loose ends, nothing unfinished, and satisfy the reader with the Happily Ever After. Again, they check and recheck, polishing the ending to make it fulfilling for the reader.

But the middle? Ah, that’s another story.

The author has worked so hard on the start of the book they’re relaxed by the time they reach the middle and relaxing into the story is good. But it’s not so good if the dialogue waffles, the plot meanders off here and there, and the action slows to a crawl. The entire book doesn’t have to be fast paced, but it does need to keep progressing steadily toward the denouement.

Authors, don’t forget the middle. Polish it too. Tighten up saggy storytelling. Delete unnecessary dialogue and description, keep the book moving and you’ll keep your reader happy.

Helen Woodall
Helen.woodall@gmail.com
Need help? Helen is available to critique and edit your book. Rates on application.

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.

30 books you should read before you’re 30

The “Huffington Post” has assembled a list of thirty books they think people need to read before they’re thirty. They say some books simply resonate better with a younger audience, whereas other books are just so good everyone should make the attempt to read them.

While I don’t necessarily agree with every book on this list—as an Australian I’m not too sold on “A People’s History of the United States” for example—I do very much approve of the idea of readers trying a little bit of everything and potentially being surprised to find that things they were forced to read in school and hated, aren’t as bad as they remembered.

Happy reading: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/20/30-books_n_3949614.html?utm_hp_ref=tw


Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Capitalization

Capitalizing random words doesn't make you look classy. It makes you look like you are in a time warp from the 1700s when it was considered classy. If you want to emphasize something, use italic instead of a capital letter. The simple rule is to only capitalize the first word of a sentence, the pronoun “I”, and proper nouns.

An example of a proper noun is someone’s name or title. Sir Thistleworthy; Annie Applegate; Madam Attorney-General. Place names are also proper nouns: Melbourne, Victoria; the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Also watch out for changing the meaning of what you’re saying by adding capital letters. “I live in the White House”, has a very different meaning from “I live in the white house.” It would be much better to say, “I live in the white house” as your friend is about to enter the green house, or even the greenhouse (It’s never Greenhouse).

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

12 letters that didn’t make it into the alphabet

Oh, wow. This is truly fascinating stuff.
Enjoy!

http://mentalfloss.com/article/31904/12-letters-didnt-make-alphabet


Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Does this need a hyphen?

Whether something is one word, two words, or hyphenated, often drives writers crazy. Is it goodbye or good-bye? Fairy tale? Fairytale? Or fairy-tale?

A quick way to check is to go to onelook.com.

It has 18 hits for good-bye and 23 for goodbye. A good rule of thumb is to go with the majority, so in this case, that’s goodbye. However, Merriam Webster is one of the 18 for good-bye and since many companies use Merriam Webster as their dictionary of choice, here, good-bye is an equally good pick.

Fairy tale is even worse. There are 11 hits on fairy tale, 8 on fairy-tale, and 17 on fairytale. And in this case Merriam Webster has it hyphenated, so any of the three is a reasonable choice.

My advice would be 1. Stick with the majority. Or 2. Stick with Merriam Webster. That is, unless you are targeting your book for a certain publisher. In that case always follow their style guide.

Do I hear you asking, “What about compound adjectives? Why is it a red-hot fire, but a brightly lit room?”
Now that one is easy. Words ending in ly are (usually) adverbs. By definition an adverb can never be a compound adjective.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Editors edit. Writers write.

I’m surprised I need to blog on this, but apparently some people still don’t understand what an editor does.

A writer writes a book. It is her vision, her story, her words. The editor then edits the book.

There are two main types of editing, content editing and line editing. The content edit comes first. This is where the editor checks there are no plot holes or silly things happening. Maybe one scene waffles along for far too long slowing down the story, or two scenes follow each other leaving out an important link that is clear in the author’s head but missed by the reader.

This is often also where POV changes are noted to be fixed and a scene rewritten without too many POV changes or even in a different character’s POV.

Once the big changes are done there’s a line edit where grammar and minor inconsistencies are fixed. The heroine whose eyes miraculously change from blue to brown. The town that is named Steele, Steale, and Steel, and so on. All the spelling, punctuation and grammar errors are corrected now.

An editor DOES NOT rewrite the fixes. She tells the author what is wrong and the author writes them. The editor might change a comma to a period and reign to rein, but she does not rewrite messy paragraphs or even convoluted sentences. The book is the author’s and the words should all be the author’s.

An author requesting an editor to “rewrite my novel to the suggestions of the publisher” is not looking for an editor. What she needs is a co-author or a ghostwriter. A good ghostwriter will do the fixes in the author’s voice.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Author Sales Figures

A blog by Miral Sattar on the Mediashift website said, “According to the Library of Congress, the average book sells 250 copies a year and the average self-published book sells 150 copies a year. These numbers need to be taken with a grain of salt because no one database has all the data. Bookscan, Nielsen and Bowker all provide general numbers and stats with the limited numbers they track, and the sales numbers can be vastly different.”

There are other “fudging” factors as well. As every print author knows many books will be returned to the publisher unsold as “returns”. Yet they had counted as “sales” as soon as they left the publisher’s warehouse. In the past, some publishers and bookstores very deliberately have played this game. Either the publisher sends hundreds too many books out to stores to try to push a particular title up the best seller lists, or bookstores order far too many books so they can return them and not need to pay their bills.

Even authors sometimes play the game with both print and digital books, buying dozens of copies of their own book to push it up the sales charts.

But nevertheless, these figures give us something to work with. An author might receive 40% of the digital price of a book. It sells for $3.99. So she sells 250 x $1.60 = $400. Not exactly a fantastic annual income. Which is why most “full-time” authors have a very large backlist bringing them in sales, as well as continual new releases.

Another fascinating fact from Ms. Sattar’s blog was this: "According to a recent Smashwords survey, $3.99 books sell more units than any other price point (this does not include free downloads). A $3.99 price point earns authors total income that is 55% above the average compared with all price points."

But it was her final paragraph I liked best: “Regardless of the sales of the books, the important thing to remember is no pricing strategy will work if your book isn’t in its best shape. This means having a well-edited book, eye-catching cover, an error-free book and selecting the right categories for discovery.”

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

10 misused words

Language is a living thing, and the meanings of words can change over time. When computers first became popular there were endless jokes about wood chips/potato chips/computer chips.

But also often people hear a word in a sentence, think it means something, and use it incorrectly for weeks, months even years, before they learn they’d misunderstood the true meaning.

Hello Giggles has chosen ten words they consider to be misused far too often: travesty, ironic, peruse, bemused, compelled, nauseous, conversate, redundant, enormity, terrific.
Peruse, in particular, is one far too many authors get wrong.

The blog is: http://hellogiggles.com/10-words-that-youve-probably-been-misusing


Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Absolutely excellent article on self-editing

Adverbs, metaphors, similes, stage direction, lost body parts, physiology, passive voice, and “said”, all in one easy to read article.
Go. Read it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristen-lamb/six-easy-tips-for-selfedi_b_3838124.html

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Trademark start up

Well, it appears that Apple has decided to trademark the word “Startup” in Australia.

Romance authors may remember the kerfuffle a year or so ago when a romance author writing under her own birth name was ordered by a multinational company to stop writing under that name. Even showing her birth certificate which proved it was her legal name didn’t deter them from pushing their claims that she had to change her name. Eventually The Powers That Be saw the light, but it was an interesting situation for a while.

Meanwhile I shall sit here at my computer and watch with fascination to see if it becomes forbidden to talk about startup companies, racing drivers starting up their engines, and a huge range of other possibilities.

You can read the article (with screen grabs) here:
http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-law-brief/78013-apple-wants-to-trademark-the-word-startup-in-australia

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

But my character told me his name was X’qwertyuiopl’hgfdsazxz

Dear Editor,
I know you said character names should be chosen that the reader can relate to, but my hero woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me his name was X’qwertyuiopl’hgfdsazxz.

Dear Author,
I’m sorry, but X’qwertyuiopl’hgfdsazxz is going to make your reader give up, or question my sanity in not getting you to change his name. Or possibly both. Please ask him to tell you a nice short, easily pronounced nickname he’d like to be called in the story.

Dear Editor,
X’qwertyuiopl’hgfdsazxz hates nicknames and X’qwertyuiopl’hgfdsazxz isn’t all that hard to pronounce. My readers are intelligent people who’ll cope just fine with his name. By the way, I’ve decided to change the heroine’s name from Cherry Blossom, to PalePinkBudsofSummerCherryBlossom. Isn’t that a pretty name?

Dear Author,
Perhaps I haven’t explained myself clearly enough as yet. Readers want to dive into your story and read it. They want to share the adventures of the characters, fully immersed in their lives, lost in the fantasy and romance of your book. Really, dear author, you don’t want them stopping every few sentences to think, “What’s his name again? Why didn’t she just call him X?” or even worse, “What was the author drinking when she named these characters?” Your main aim is to draw the reader into your world and keep them there fully engrossed in the story until they hit the final line of your book.
How about we introduce your characters as X’qwertyuiopl’hgfdsazxz and PalePinkBudsofSummerCherryBlossom and just call them X and Cherry after that?

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com
Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Time to Laugh

Is this story giving you whiplash?

Princess Perfect knelt beside the pond, carefully ensuring her new white lace dress didn’t get in the dirt. She didn’t want Nanny yelling at her again. “Hello, Mr. Frog. Are you there?”
Mr. Frog was hiding at the bottom of the pond, under his favorite lily pad. He decided to wait until she’d called him three times. Three was always the magic number in fairytales.
“Princess! Princess! Oh there you are.” Nanny was all out of breath. She hated having to walk all the way down here to the pond. And she just knew the Princess’ dress would be dirty and she’d be the one having to wash it then iron all that horrible, fiddly lace.

Have you worked out the problem with the story? (Apart from the fact that it’s terrible.)
Did I hear you say POV? Yes indeed it has POV issues. Head hopping. Headbanging headhopping, in fact, with every paragraph from the point of view of a different character.

This, dear author, is not allowed. Many authors struggle with the need to keep a scene all in the point of view of one character. If the fight scene begins in the POV of the villain and the princess drops a brick on his head rendering him unconscious, the scene has to end then. It can’t continue because he doesn’t know what is happening anymore. The new scene can begin immediately, after a scene break, in the POV of the victorious princess, but the author can’t just switch POVs mid-scene. Even worse is the author who tells the fight scene by switching back and forth between the villain’s POV and the princess’ POV. No, it does not give a “more balanced” view of the fight. It gives the average reader whiplash and a desire to not read the rest of the book.

The trick is to plan whose POV the scene will be in and to make sure that person can see enough of the action to tell the story with clarity, emotion, and immediacy. That way, only the villain will end up with a headache.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Why you should rewrite parts of your book

On my blog under the title “Writing Fast” (http://helenwoodallfreelanceediting.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/writing-fast.html) I talked about the misconception that a “real” author can only possibly produce one book per year. Some authors simply write faster than others. A book takes as long as it takes, be that a week, a month, a year, or a lifetime.
Now I want to talk about a few reasons why an author should consider rewriting a chunk of the book.

The reason why scenes or paragraphs need to be rewritten, is not because maybe you can do it better next time. That’s why you write another book! It’s to fix a problem – too many POV changes, inconsistencies, sagging middle, lack of tension, info dumps etc.
The reason to add scenes is when there is lack of connectivity between events, or when characters are not developing or act out of character. A character can act however they please, but there always must be a reason for them to act that way. The most shy, scaredy-cat heroine might be as brave as a lion if the villain threatens her best friend for example.

Some authors are linear. They commence writing at chapter one scene one and keep going until they reach the end. Others write scenes as they come to mind and stitch the book together later. There is no right or wrong way. But when a book is written over a long time span, or not in chronological order, the author does need to check that the actions flow and the characters develop along the way. Scenes may need to be moved or rewritten if a character loses a skill they’ve already used in the story, or “forgets” important facts or people.
That’s why it’s good to have a trusted critical friend read the book before sending it to an editor, a publisher, or self publishing it. A fresh eye can see things the author is too close to the story to notice.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Flashbacks

A flashback is used in a story to tell some backstory that happened either before the book started, or to fill in details (often from a different character’s perspective) to something that has already happened. Too much information can become an infodump, slowing down the story, bogging the reader in details that are either unnecessary, or that could be delivered much better in bite-size, digestible chunks in dialogue.
But a short flashback can be very useful in increasing tension, telling some details or an event the reader needs to know, while holding the reader back from what will happen next in the book.

Flashbacks usually begin with a line break so the reader knows the scene has changed. If they’re not too long, they can often be set in italic font, which clearly shows the reader something is different. In that case they can be written in present tense, as they happened, because the reader is well aware this section or scene is not the main story.

If they are written in normal font, flashbacks are usually written in past perfect tense to show the action is a completed event in the past.

If an author plans to include several flashbacks it’s usually a good idea to decide on the method to be used and write them all in present tense in italic font, or all in past perfect tense in normal font, for internal consistency inside the book.
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.

Grammar Errors Bosses Hate

I was fascinated to see an article in the news entitled, “Grammar mistakes that could cost you the job”. Some days I think it’s only editors and English teachers who care about grammar, but apparently not.
Top of their hate list was spelling the company name incorrectly. (Well duh!) But also considered unforgiveable was using “irregardless” (this is not a word. It’s “regardless”), could of or should of (it’s “have” not “of”), and mixing up a whole long list of homonyms - words that sound alike but have different meanings. (Spell check can’t help you here. Look them up in onelook.com or any other dictionary).
Next on their list was getting wrong things like I versus me, your/you’re, adverbs and adjectives, it’s/its, than/then, and finally things like split infinitives.
If you’re planning to apply for a new job, or a job promotion, better brush up on your grammar first. It really does matter.
This is the article in full:
http://au.pfinance.yahoo.com/money-manager/career/article/-/18427804/grammar-mistakes-that-could-cost-you-the-job/

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Is there a synonym for that?

LinkedIn has published a list of the most overused words in its profiles. In Australia that word is “creative”. Guess what? It’s America’s most overused word too.

Here’s the list:
1. Creative
2. Effective
3. Motivated
4. Extensive experience
5. Track record
6. Innovative
7. Responsible
8. Analytical
9. Communication skills
10. Positive

The most overused buzzwords worldwide:
Australia: Creative
Brazil: Experimental
Canada: Creative
Egypt: Multinational
France: Responsible
Germany: Creative
India: Effective
Indonesia: Multinational
Italy: Responsible
Malaysia: Motivated
Netherlands: Creative
New Zealand: Creative
Saudi Arabia: Motivated
Singapore: Creative
South Africa: Motivated
Spain: Specialized
Sweden: Creative
Switzerland: Analytical
United Arab Emirates: Motivated
United Kingdom: Motivated
United States: Creative

Now that might help you write your next job application, but you can also use this information in storytelling as well. That word you keep reading in every second book? Make sure you don’t use it in your book. Find a better, more apt synonym instead.
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.

Finally, some grammar rules you can ignore.

I know some of you just spilled your beverages on your keyboard while reading the heading of this blog, but there are actually some grammar rules that can be ignored in fiction writing, and even in technical writing unless it’s for very pedantic publishers.

“Between” must be used only when there are two items. If there are more than two items, use “among”.
The ‘tween” in between means the number two.
Among is clearly better when there are a large number, or an unknown number of items.
The robber band divided the gold among themselves.
But if there are only three for example, most people wouldn’t care whether you wrote,
The three robbers divided the gold among themselves.
Or
The three robbers divided the gold between themselves.

Don’t use “since” when you mean “because”.
“Since” is obviously correct in a phrase like: “Since time immemorial…”
But these days it’s okay to say either, “Since he hates cricket, he’s watching the football.”
Or “Because he hates cricket, he’s watching the football.”

Unquote versus endquote
It used to be that one said, “quote” before beginning a quotation, and “endquote” at the conclusion. For obvious reasons, because the quote had ended. Now it’s quite acceptable to say “quote…unquote”. However if you say “begin quote”, you should then say “endquote” for consistency.

As always, however, when in doubt, follow the rules. The person reading what you wrote might think you are a fraction old-fashioned, but that’s better than having them think you are ill-educated.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Do I need a new name?

Writers sometimes agonize over whether or not to change names when they change genres. They worry that all their cowboy fans will hate them and stop reading their cowboy books if they start writing fantasy.

But the problem with a second name is all the promotion. A second website, a second blog, another Facebook account. Then there’s Pinterest, Twitter, Google circles and more. Since most authors also have a day job, they’d rather be writing their next book than trying to think up two totally different blogs.

There’s no right or wrong decision here. It has to be what works best for each individual writer. But I would make a couple of cautioning remarks.
If you decide to write two very different genres under the same name you must be very clear on each blurb which genre that book falls under. Your cowboy readers have little grounds for complaint if the blurb clearly says, “Prince Handsome and Princess Pretty climb on their unicorn and depart for the Magical Kingdom…”

If you decide to keep a different name for each genre be aware that unless you change your writing style some readers will work out who you are. An author’s voice seldom changes much between genres. Be prepared to be discovered and plan how you’ll deal with that.

Some writers choose a middle path. They write under two different names, but their blogs and Facebook accounts etc are all linked. They make no secret of the fact they’re the same person, and that the different name is just to keep the two genres clearly delineated.

Whatever you decide ultimately needs to be what will suit you, personally, best.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Twenty-two fascinating fact about the English Language

How many of these did you already know??

1. The most commonly used letter is E.
2. The least used letter is Q.
3. Skiing is the only word with double i.
4. Dreamt is the only word that ends in 'mt.'
5. There are only 4 words which end in 'dous': hazardous, horrendous, stupendous, and tremendous.
6. 'Bookkeeper' and 'bookkeeping' are the only 2 words with three consecutive double letters.
7. The word 'strengths' is the longest word with just one vowel.
8. The word 'testify' derived from a time when men were required to swear on their testicles. (fr. Latin, 'testis').
9. All pilots on international flights identify themselves in English regardless of their country of origin.
10. The word 'almost' is the longest with all the letters in alphabetical order.
11. The most commonly used word in conversation is 'I'.
12. Defenselessness and Respectlessness are both fifteen-letter words with only one of the vowels.
13. RHYTHMS is the longest English word without the normal vowels, a, e, i, o, u.
14. Excluding derivatives there are only two words in English that end with -shion. They are CUSHION and FASHION.
15. 12 words can be formed from the word “THEREIN” using consecutive letters: The, he, her, er, here, I, there, ere, rein, re, in, and herein.
16. There is only one common word in English that has 5 vowels in a row – QUEUEING.
17. “One thousand” contains the letter ‘A’. None of the words from one to nine hundred and ninety nine has an A.
18. Two words having all the vowels in the reverse order are SUBCONTINENTAL and UNCOMPLIMENTARY.
19. These are the only six-letter words that begin and end with same vowel and there is no other vowel in between: Asthma and Isthmi.
20. The longest English word is a 45-letter word which is the name of a disease: “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.”
21. A superlatively long word of 27 letters having 13 vowels which alternates consonants and vowels: HONORIFICABILITUDINITATIBUS. Some more examples are Antidisestablishmentarianism and Electrophotomicrographically.
22. UNDERGROUND and UNDERFUND are the only words in English that begin and end with the letters “und”.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Swear Words

In my opinion some of the worst four letter words are ones we use every day: cook, iron, bake….

But seriously there are some swear words that have been so overused they cease to hold much meaning at all. Like 140+ uses of the F-word in the movie, “The Heat”.

I am not suggesting the author swallow a thesaurus and busily add every polysyllabic adjective from A to Z to the book. But there should be a blend of the kind of word even a hero might utter when the villain drops a large rock on his head, and what he might say to the heroine about the spooky trees in the forest they’re driving through. A balance between descriptive, well-thought out language, and the kind of dirty, sexy talk a couple might use in the bedroom together.

There also needs to be a balance between what a hero who heads a construction crew might use, and what the billionaire CEO of a company might say. The words they use, the way they express themselves, are just as much a part of their character as their sparkling silver eyes. And sometimes bad language can actually be exciting and good. But don’t be misled into thinking there needs to be a swear word in every paragraph. Each word needs to be relevant and important in its own right. Always use the most appropriate word whether that is an expletive or a kinder adjective.


Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

I don’t believe you

I was asked last weekend to explain the different needs for accuracy in fiction novels when dealing with those gray areas between fact and fiction.

The most important thing is that your reader must believe the story. You can have blue people, three purple moons and red and white striped flowers in your world, as long as they’re consistent and logical. Those people/flowers/moons must stay the same, or be logically different (the moons can set) throughout the book.

I have mentioned before in a previous blog about an author who won a major literary award for her semi-autobiographical story about how she escaped from a country by walking across the border. The problem was that the country she said she escaped to, does not share a border with the country she left. The editors, publisher, and judges all missed that point but the readers didn’t. They stopped believing her and the award was withdrawn. If only she’d made a country name up, no one would have had a problem with her story. They’d have thought she was protecting the people who helped her, not telling a lie. It turned out later after investigation the entire book was made up. Again, this would not have been a problem if she’d used imaginary place names and said it was fiction. She then would have deserved the award she won so briefly.

Which takes us back to the key point. The reader has to believe what you’re telling them. If your villain is using an automatic rifle and doesn’t hit the escaping-on-foot heroine, the villain needs to be a very bad shot, half-blind, or distracted, or all of the above. And if that heroine is running barefoot through the woods at midnight how can she see where she’s going, why doesn’t she cut her feet on rocks and what was she doing there in the first place?

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Things I learned from reading romance books

A sheik/squillionaire/CEO of a multinational corporation will have had dozens of mistresses and girlfriends, but that sweet, innocent virgin daughter of a friend/secretary/nanny/nurse will cause him to have a one-night stand with her, with no condom in sight, and she will inevitably get pregnant and decide to raise the child alone, in dire poverty, rather than tell him about the baby.
Should he happen to find out about the child, he will refuse to believe it’s his and he never demands DNA testing to prove his case. He’d rather just trust his feelings. After all that’s how he got to be a squillionnaire.
The virgin never asks him to use a condom. Of course she knows of his dozens of mistresses, but she also “knows” he’d never give her a sexually transmitted disease. (He never does either. Just a baby).
No heroine ever has a headache and no hero ever rolls over in bed and goes straight to sleep. Neither of them snore or drool in their sleep either.
No one anywhere ever goes to the toilet. Ever.
Whenever the heroine is invited unexpectedly to a party/ball/wedding no matter how poor she is, or where she comes from, she always has the perfect dress to wear to the occasion.
When the hero and heroine are running away from the bad guy, no matter how far they travel or how long the pursuit lasts for, they never run out of clean underwear or need to do a load of laundry.

And do you know why this is so?

Because it’s a romance story. It’s fiction. Fantasy. If the virgin caught genital warts from the CEO, and the hero had erectile dysfunction it’d be real life! And no one wants to read about that!

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Writing Fast

Back in the old days, creating a book was a long, slow process. Originally they were written by hand, the labor of a life-time with decorated, painted borders on each page, and embellished capital letters, each of which was like a tiny painting in itself. Even when printing was invented each letter was a miniscule piece of metal that had to be physically placed in a tray, by hand, to make every word.
Times have changed, but the attitudes of some people have not. They feel that unless a book takes a very long time it can’t be of value. They forget that many famous authors actually wrote their books chapter by chapter to be published in weekly newspapers. Charles Dickens pioneered this with “The Pickwick Papers” but it became the “normal” way most popular books were written.
In other words, the huge time gap was not in the creation process by the author (he was writing a chapter a week, minimum) it was in the length of time actual physical publication took.
The “one book a year” model was also needed for the production process in many of the traditional print publishers last century. Even when the actual physical printing became faster and easier, the publisher had added many more layers and stages the book needed to pass through—cover art, marketing and more.
Some writers assumed that if they could write more than one book a year their work simply couldn’t be good enough. They wrote and rewrote, edited and reedited or lost their self confidence and stopped writing all together.
But if a reader takes a critical approach to a book, they will be unable to know which chapter an author sat down and wrote in a day and which chapter was agonized over for a month.
Today a self publishing author can line up her cover artist, her editor, her book formatter, and her marketing team, so that the moment she types, “The end” those people are ready to do their part. The book can be written in a few months, edited in a week, and ready for purchase on a dozen third party sellers forty-eight hours after that.
It is for the reader to decide if a book is what they want to read or not. The length of time taken from the author typing the final sentence until the book is available for sale is not a guide to the excellence of the writing. Some authors simply are prolific.
Besides, just as Charles Dickens changed a few things between when his books were serialized in the newspapers, and before they were published as books, so, too, the twenty-first century author can make changes and digitally republish their books overnight if a lot of readers don’t like something or - gasp - find an error.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Review of Ken and Barbie book cover doll set

This is hysterically funny although decidedly irreverent. Warning. Do not attempt to eat or drink while reading this “book cover” review.

http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/blog/barbie-the-raider-the-washboard-and-me

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

25 signs you’re addicted to books

How many are true of you?
http://www.buzzfeed.com/summeranne/signs-youre-addicted-to-books-reading



Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

How Reading Books Fosters Language Development around the World

This is a long, heavy, scholarly article about reading development worldwide.
Let me give you just a few interesting points from it.

The years from birth to age three are very important to later literacy. That’s when babies learn about language so reading to preschoolers is vital. Language teaches children how to categorize things – how to organize their world so they understand it.

Using gestures with children not yet able to talk helps them learn.

Kids will learn words much faster if they’re interested in the item or topic under discussion, and they learn faster when an adult responds to them.

Children learn grammar as they learn vocabulary. This is why reading books together helps so much. They learn sentences, they are with an adult and the story is usually interesting to them.

The frequency of reading is more accurate at showing children’s educational success than socio-economic status.

Giving kids an exciting book to read is a great start. Reading it with them is even better.

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/cdr/2012/602807/

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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

Ten Fascinating Obsolete Words

Sillily: In a silly manner; foolishly.
- Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850

Groak: To silently watch someone while they are eating, hoping to be invited to join them –www.ObsoleteWord.Blogspot.com

Stiricide: n 1656 -1656 falling of icicles from a house

Jirble: To pour out (a liquid) with an unsteady hand: as, he jirbles out a dram —www.Wordnik.com

Vocabulation: The use or choice of words.
- William Craigie's New English Dictionary, 1928

Curglaff: The shock felt in swimming when one first plunges into the cold water — John Jamieson’s Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808

Uglyography: n 804 -1834 bad handwriting; poor spelling
Your uglyography conceals the cogency and brilliance of your ideas.

Englishable: That which may be rendered into English — John Ogilvie’s “Comprehensive English Dictionary”, 1865

Unthew: A bad habit or custom; a vice [c. 900-1400];unthewed, ill-mannered, unruly, wanton [1200- late 1300s], unthewful, unmannerly, unseemly [c. 1050-early 1300s]. - William Craigie's New English Dictionary, 1926

Resistentialism: The seemingly spiteful behavior shown by inanimate objects —www.ObsoleteWord.Blogspot.com


Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

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