Know Your Sh—, uh, Stuff

By JAMES R. RIFFEL

I am an unapologetic generalist. I know some about a lot of things. It is typical that in the same day at work, I can end up writing articles about an election campaign, a local government struggling with budget woes, a new health care discovery, and a local singer’s success. Another day, it could be a major announcement in sports, an audit of a public agency, a real estate sales summary for the region, and a Navy ship deploying into harm’s way.

The one common thread in all of these stories is that the writer needs to have some background on what is going on in the world and have a basic understanding of how things work. The worst thing that can happen to a writer is for a reader to sense a lack of credibility. If you try to write about a court case, and you don’t know what follows a preliminary hearing, compared to what comes after a trial, you will look bad.

That’s what you want to avoid. It is true that in Science Fiction and Fantasy, you can create your own worlds. You can make everything how you want. The reader, though, has certain conventions in his life that you can only stretch so far, so you have to be careful. Most other genres, of course, tighten the bounds of realism.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re writing a newspaper article or a full-length novel, you have to know how long someone whose been arrested has until he makes his first court appearance, or that politicians might hold certain offices for a maximum of two terms in one state, but an unlimited time in another. Insert countless etceteras here.

I’ll close with a real-life situation. I used to hold a management position at a small-market AM radio station back when such places actually had more than a few employees. Our sports director was an older gentleman who unfortunately passed on, and we had a young guy on staff who loved sports, had previously worked for an NBA franchise and wanted to succeed him. I told him he could handle more sports reporting responsibilities and we’d see how it goes.

One day, not long after, this graduate of one of our more prestigious universities came to me while he was writing a sports update and urgently asked me how many divisions there were in the NBA. After staring at him in a perplexed manner for a moment, I informed him there were four. Mind you, I much prefer the college game and don’t follow the NBA. Some things you just kind of pick up along the way. He didn’t. He was never made sports director and departed a couple of weeks after he figured that out.

Now, it is not imperative that you personally know how many divisions exist in the major professional basketball league, but if you like sports and worked for a pro team, well,…

Bottom line is, know your stuff. If you embark on a topic in which you’re unfamiliar, research first. Extensively. Don’t let your readers doubt your credibility. Best of all, don’t live your life in a cave. Read newspapers and magazines, (watch several channels of television news), Discovery Channel and, yes, if it will give a boost to your writing career, even a little ESPN.

Book Reviewing Exercises Different Muscles

by Lee Polevoi

Any good writer reads, a lot, because there’s plenty to learn about crafting sentences, setting moods, introducing characters and simply moving them from room to room. But a different muscle gets exercised when you review books—novels, in particular. The critical faculties go into gear, when normally you try to keep these in check. Enthusiasm and critical distance co-exist, and though I’m still a novice, reviewing is a different approach to experiencing a work of fiction. Not better or worse … just different.

I learned quickly that reading a bad novel or, worse, a merely so-so one, makes for hard work when the time comes to write the review. Only scoundrels and sociopaths can take pleasure in panning another writer’s novel, especially when you have a visceral sense of all the hard work that went into it. On the other hand, try coming up with 1,000-1,500 words about a novel you felt kind of just laid there on the page, stirred to life once or twice, but which now you’re obliged to describe and critique—and in amusing fashion, no less. Not as easy as it looks.

Best to write about a book that excites you and displays genuine talent and maturity. Only a few of the books I’ve reviewed met this harsh, self-imposed standard, but when it happens, you delight in plucking brilliant bits off the page and sharing with the audience. Communicating why you love a book can produce insights that help your own work, so the activity isn’t wholly without value. Don’t look to get rich from it, you’ll get more by asking the question: “Do you want fries with that?”

Lee Polevoi reviews for online publications such as Highbrow and Los Angeles Review of Books. His latest review concerns a novel called The O’Briens by writer Peter Behrens. You can find the rest of his reviews here.

Don’t Make Your Writing Labyrinthine

Do you ever travel up and down the aisles of the supermarket, searching for that one item, yet never finding it? Or worse yet, perhaps the store has conspired against you and rearranged your carefully mapped out aisles. It’s enough to make you want to drop bread crumbs or tie some yarn to the front door.

As banal as this scenario sounds, it happens all the time in our writing. We lead our readers down serpentine paths linked together with semicolons, dependent clauses, and em-dashes. We must stop.

I lose my mind when I have to read a sentence twice (or more) just to figure out what a writer has meant. And it’s not just the long sentences that are culprit. Staccato or choppy sentences can be just as hard to glean the true meaning.

The solution to mazelike prose is reading the dang thing out loud. Many times you’ll trip over the vary phrases you thought were perfectly clear. Even better, read it to some friends or peers. They can’t see the punctuation or paragraph breaks. If it sounds iffy to them, try a rewrite.

Please, Theseus suffered enough with the Minotaur the first go round. Don’t drag your reader through the labyrinth again.

Tim Kane

Add Layers to Your Characters with Each Appearance

Each time you have the same character show up in the main plot, add another detail. Nothing is worse than rehashing the same description over and over. You don’t have to have your character change outfits. It’s not a fashion show. Your goal is to deepen the knowledge and mystery about that characters.

Not all layers are superficial. Your character will already be defined in the reader’s mind by the actions he took in previous scenes. Honor that, but also surprise us. Have him take a different tact. Novels are not sitcoms or comic books. We like characters that evolve and change. Even the secondary characters. This is how you create a journey for your character. One where he’s not the same at the other end.

A fellow writer (I’m looking at you Lee Polevoi) slipped me this gem the other day. I plucked it. Try it out for yourself. Let your character’s subtext bubble to the surface. Give us more than just a cardboard cutout.

Tim Kane

Link Your Way to Book Promotion

Every writer wants a simple way to promote. After all, if we were tremendous marketers, we probably would be selling cars rather than writing. I know that I prefer to churn out plot and characters over marketing. Give me a cliffhanger any day over promoting.

One easy way to boost your exposure and discoverability is through links. It takes only a bit of effort at the start and the benefits can be huge.

Amazon
Have books on Amazon? Put a link back to your blog or website. You want to funnel traffic toward you.

Cross-Promote
If you have any friends who publish on Amazon, consider trading links. You can post a link to her page and she can post a link to yours. You might get more curious hits that way. I’d recommend only doing this with two or three other writers. Try to pick those that are in a similar genre.

Social Media
You don’t have to be a Twitter fanatic or a Facebook fiend, but you do need a presence on these platforms. Make a profile and for God sakes put a link to your website or blog. Make it easy for people to find you.

Tweets
Rather that spew spam about all those books you have to sell, tweet about some interesting blog posts you have. Perhaps you can write some posts related to your book. That way, when folks click the link, they are one step closer to buying your book. They’re interested at least. Then, on your blog, you’ve got a link to some of your books.

Pinning
If you blog, then pin images from your blog onto Pinterest. That way, when folks click over to check them out, they’re already at your site. Don’t make all your pins self serving. That would be obscene.

Most of these only take moments to accomplish. Your goal is to create a net of links, all pointing back to you. That way everyone can find you.

Tim Kane

Don’t Get Dragged Down by the Power to Change

Just because you can change an ebook or a webpage, doesn’t mean you should. We’ve reached an age  where edits can be made in seconds. Books can be revised and put back in circulation in a day. The temptation to edit ad infinitum is terribly strong.

I recall I had a story put up by Amazon Shorts (since defunct and replaced by Amazon Singles). I edited that story like no other. Amazon posted it up. Then a friend bought and read it, only to discover a glaring typo. My protagonist cries her fool head off at one point. I typed “balling” rather than “bawling”. I was mortified. Given the opportunity to rush in and change it, I certainly would have. But I couldn’t (at least not with Amazon Shorts). God knows, every time I type the word “bawl”, I remember the error.

Since Amazon Shorts went down, I retrieved ownership of my story once again. The first thing I did was change the spelling back to “bawling”. Yet I’m glad I had to wait. Writing needs a deadline. A cut off point, after which you abandon it to the landscape of literature and move on.

It’s the moving on that’s important. It’s not the one book you’re remembered by (unless you’re Harper E. Lee). It’s writing many books and stories and tales. Keep writing. Learn from your mistakes. And let them be your mistakes.

I often tell the students in my class that mistakes are the only things that are truly yours. Own them. You learn more by messing up than succeeding.

Tim Kane

Improve Your Writing With Music

Penned by the Mighty James R. Riffel

These days, I pretty much limit my music listening to two acts—The Beatles and Pat Metheny. Couldn’t be more opposite, huh? Classic vs. current, rock and pop vs. jazz, short vocally-based tunes vs. long and complicated instrumentals, most popular group ever vs. someone you’ve probably never heard of.

They have similarities, however, that can be applied to our writing and help make us better. Both broke and, in Metheny’s case, continue to break, new ground with every album. From “Meet The Beatles” pop to the thematic “Sgt. Pepper’s” to the revolutionary-toned White Album and on, everything The Beatles did was new and different. They broke more molds than concrete flooring.

Metheny is the same way, from “American Garage” when he applied the teen garage band sound to the jazz format, to the sweeping “The Way Up” and his one-man show “Orchestrion,” every album is a totally new experience.

Does your work in progress break the mold? If you have completed multiple stories, does each one offer the reader a new experience or, as is the case with many writers, does it seem like the same book written over and over?

These questions come with a major mitigating factor. The Beatles had a harmonious sound that made them unique, whether it was “Help” or “Let it Be.” Metheny’s guitar picking is so distinctive that, once you’re acquainted with him, you can always pick out one of his tunes if you hear it somewhere.

So, while you break the mold and offer readers new experiences, you also have to be true to yourself. Readers want to read one of your books because they liked your style from having read you before. Quite a balancing act, huh, but the greats pull it off.

Here are some examples of how The Beatles can improve our writing. Once they broke away from the teen-pop sound of their early albums and explored their creative talents, they were great at using tone to back up their lyrics. The driving, hard-edged guitar backing (for them, at least) placed us in the right frame of mind for “Revolution.” The instruments on “When I’m Sixty-Four” are appropriately jaunty for a novelty song, but the mood carries a somber undertone in a couple of spots to reflect the reality of our aging.

Is the mood appropriate for your WIP? When a major supporting character dies, is the reader overcome with emotion? Are we thrilled with triumph? It takes more than a few well-written lines by themselves to carry us away with your characters, just like, for The Beatles, there was more that made us fall in love with their songs than clever lyrics.

Two things stand out about Metheny, other than being a great guitarist.One, when he decides to explore an area musically, he is going to go everywhere he possibly can. If he were an archeologist, he would leave no stone unturned. The song that best captures that magic is “And Then I Knew.” Everywhere he can go within the confines of that one catchy tune, he goes. Especially in the second half of the song, there are four or five significant changes in musical structure.

I don’t suggest dramatic structure changes in your writing, but when you start a story, you open up opportunities for exploration. The reader senses that too, and wants you to take him down the various paths. As a writer, you need to sense where your opportunities are and how to take advantage of them so you don’t let the reader down.

The other thing about Metheny is he forces you to listen, because you never know what’s coming. While recording the album that included the previous song, a storm moved over the studio and a lightning bolt struck particularly close. The lightning was recorded and used to conclude a wild guitar solo in “To The End of the World.” In the concert tour for the album, the crash of the lightning never failed to get a rise out the audience, and shock those who didn’t know it was coming.

A more subtle example is in the love theme for some artsy Italian movie called “Cinema Paradiso,” for which Metheny composed and performed the soundtrack music. Around the 1:50 point in this song, he goes off in an entirely different direction. It works musically, but it also forces you to sit up and pay attention.

Can you make your reader sit up and say, “Whoa, I didn’t expect that!” Sure you can. Now, can you do it well, like Metheny does? It can’t be contrived. In my current WIP, my main character’s first career choice stalls, so he also goes off in another direction. Members of my critique group were flustered, not impressed — and not the reaction I wanted. I didn’t pull it off well and have since been working on improving the set up so when the change comes, it will be interesting to readers and surprising in a good way.

The Beatles and Pat Metheny are my examples, but there can be many others, from the virtuosity of classical to the raw anger of street rap. The elements that make up their excellence can be captured and applied to writing.