Writing to Entertain

by guest blogger Lee Lopez

Ever since I was very young I was a natural storyteller. What followed was the desire to see my stories in print. That is where my dream shifted and changed. I had no idea how hard it would be to become published. In my infancy of writing, during those naïve day dreams, I thought I wrote the story, sent it to an agent, they’d love it, (of course) and the deals would come rolling in.

Then reality hit the fan, splattering me with rejection letters. I was pelted with them.

To be honest, there were times in my writing life, when I was close to quitting. I have a file filled with standard rejections, and even one written on the back of my query with a very distinct coffee cup stain. Whatever drove me deep in my oracle genes kept running a full tilt, because I didn’t stop writing.

When the Indie publishing phenomenon hit, it was the place for me. I could control my own career, choose my own covers, titles, without deadlines or someone outside my story ordering me to change this or that to please the public. I released She Cried Wolf in April, to see my dream become the best part of reality.

As an author, I’m not really sure what I expect from my book. It’s selling decently well. I’ve received five star reviews, and I love the cover. I’m a happy girl.

Do I expect to make a fortune? No. As authors our mantra is, “Don’t quit your day job”. When an indie does climb up the list, it’s always a pleasant surprise, because they had to do it all on their own. No publisher to buy a spot on the NYT list. The book had to sell on its own merits.

What I wanted to do with my book was entertain.  When it started to sell I had a Sally Fields moment, “They like me! They really like me!” I was entertaining someone out there in the cyber world.

I think most authors will agree, they are compelled to write. It’s not about fame and fortune, it’s an uncontrollable compulsion. No matter if I’m indie published or someday get a dream contract, I write stories because it’s engrained deep in my DNA. Instead of sitting around a fire exaggerating a hunt into a fable, I sit at a computer and reinterpret life onto the pages of what will become a book.

Are you compelled to write?

Lee Lopez is a retired Sheriff’s Deputy, who lives in San Francisco Bay area with her husband and two black cats. Her debut release is She Cried Wolf.  You can find her on Facebook Lee Lopez-author, Twitter, www.leelopez.com www.twoindieladies.wordpress.com  and www.thehappyhealthyholisticpet.blogspot.com

 

Guest Blogger: Kathy Bennett

Authentic Crime…Arresting Stories

The title of this blog is part of my author brand. It took me two weeks to come up with those four words. Some things are worth waiting for. That little catch phrase is perfect for describing my writing and me.

Prior to becoming a full-time writer, I was a Los Angeles Police Officer…for twenty-one years. While a police officer, I experienced a lot of things that most people can’t even imagine. But I’ve found there are many people who are interested in those events. They just don’t want to put their lives on the line to experience similar occurrences themselves. I totally get that and understand it.

That’s why I was so careful with the ‘tag line’ of my brand. I wanted to be able to stand behind it and know it was true. It’s my promise to the reader that while the situations and characters I put in my books may be fictional, the atmosphere and the possibility of those circumstances being true are dead on.

But being authentic is a delicate balance in several ways. First, there is a saying in police work that the job is 95% sheer boredom and 5% sheer terror. That statement is pretty darn accurate. So, as a writer, if I were to tell you all the boring things that go on in police work you wouldn’t want to read my book. The trick is to show you those boring things about the job, and yet, still make them interesting.

It’s like pulling back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz. You might be disappointed that your preconceived idea about how powerful the Wizard is turns out to be false. But it’s pretty darn cool how he’s able to turn a wheel at his command center and get fire to leap 25 feet into the sky.

It’s the same way with police work. You probably have predetermined ideas how cops live their lives – much of your knowledge based on what you see on TV and in the movies. I’m here to tell you it isn’t all about pursuits and shoot-outs. Oh, those things can and do happen, but the normal behind the scenes stuff is interesting too. And that’s what I authentically deliver in my stories.

But being realistic can have its drawbacks too. In my book, A Deadly Blessing there are story lines and language that are true to life. And those situations occur every day in this country. I didn’t use those story lines for shock value. I used them because cops all over the country face those circumstances, or worse, on a daily basis. That’s what cops sign up for – and handling those types of problems is what they do.

The cop is bound by duty and integrity to face those challenges, while a reader of one of my books can feel all the emotions and the excitement of being a cop from the safety of their recliner…which, I think, is a pretty good balance.

And that is what I’ve promised you with my brand…Authentic Crime resulting in Arresting Stories.

 

Guest Blogger: Alexa Bourne

I spent 9 years teaching in my own classroom. It’s a rewarding career, but so very challenging. I signed my first book contract in December 2011. Since then, being an author has also been rewarding, but you know what I’ve realized since my book hit the cyber shelves? Being a writer is a lot like being a teacher.

In both jobs, you have a lot of disappointment. Teachers must deal with difficult children and/or parents and administrative requirements. Writers must deal with rejections and bad reviews.

In both jobs, the pay doesn’t really reflect the work we do. Teachers spend hours outside of school preparing and planning lessons. Many teachers work part time during the year or work during the summer. Writers spend hours outside of actually writing. We have promo work to do and I’m learning how amazingly overwhelming that can be! Now, some authors can say they make beaucoup bucks, but the majority don’t. Many writers still hold down day jobs to pay bills.

Both jobs are definitely 24/7. I used to drive around my city on errands and see something that would remind me of my students. I would create an activity for an individual student who was having trouble or I might create a game for the entire class in hopes of exciting them to read or write. Teachers often get home at night and pull out papers to grade while they watch TV.

I also have come up with some awesome plot points while driving around. A simple thing like a police siren once led me to an entire plot for a full-length manuscript. I, as a writer, often have my laptop while I sit on the couch watching one of my favorite shows. I now get up 15 minutes to a half an hour earlier each work day so I can check or send emails that have to do with my books. (And anyone who knows me knows what a sacrifice this is. I HATE mornings!)

There are, of course, many positives too. In both jobs you have many pleasant surprises. A student or parent might bring a teacher a treat to thank her. A student might make a card or poster for you. (I had a rough start to one day last week and a boy walked up and handed me a poster he’d made for me and two pens with flowers made out of colored duct tape on the ends.) When a student “gets it”, there’s no better feeling. In much the same way, writers get that feeling when people say they loved the book. (I’m still giggling when people say that to me!) Writers might get awards or letters from readers that truly touch the heart. Making a best-seller list or readers’ choice list is much like getting nominated for Teacher of the Year.

And the biggest similarity between writing and teaching? People who aren’t teachers or writers have no idea how much blood, sweat or tears we shed for each student and each book. But that’s okay. We teachers keep teaching so we can help shape the future. And we writers keep writing so we can help people escape their own lives if only for a few hours. Why? It’s what we do.

 

 

Guest Blogger Kathy Carmichael

Bestselling author Kathy Carmichael is known for her award-winning romantic comedies and humorous mysteries. Her popular titles include Hot Flash, Diary of a Confessions Queen and her Texas Legacy Romantic Comedy series.

Kathy resides on Florida’s west coast, along with her Scottish husband, two not-so-wee-sons, and a bevy of cantankerous felines. Kathy’s romantic comedy, Hot Flash, was named as one of the top 10 Romance Fiction titles for 2009 by the American Library Association’s Booklist magazine. Please visit her website http://www.KathyCarmichael.com.

HOW TO IMPROVE STORY DIALOGUE

No matter what genre or type of story, it’s important to use dialogue effectively.  Good dialogue gives a sense of movement to the story and increases the pacing.

Dialogue serves to move your plot forward.  Skilled use of dialogue increases conflict, exposes motivation and increases the story stakes.  Narrative can’t develop character in the same way that dialogue can reveal your character’s essence.

Tips for Creating Dynamic Dialogue

1. Envision the scene.  Pretend you’re the camera watching your characters in their setting.

2. Strive for no more than three pages of straight narrative.  You need dialogue to keep the reader from tiring.

3. A character talking to herself or an animal doesn’t count as real dialogue.  Dialogue is an interchange of either speech between two or more characters or a speech/physical reaction sequence.

4. Stand in front of a mirror.  Pretend the image you see is your POV (point of view) character and that you are the camera.  Read your manuscript aloud.  What is your character doing?  If she’s just standing there, then nothing is happening.  If she’s talking, reacting to another character’s dialogue, you’ll see that.  Those body/stage movements should be recorded in your manuscript along with the conversation.

5. Action sequences (moments of change) are “scene.”  The character’s reaction to the action/change that occurred in the previous action scene is “sequel.”  If it’s sequel rather than an action scene, you still don’t want your character static.  To keep the pacing from bogging down, a useful device for sequels is have it occur during conversation scenes or interspersed within action scenes.

6. Long paragraphs of unbroken narrative are harder for the reader to read and can slow the pacing.  Can you put some of it in dialogue?

7. Shorter sentence structure in the narrative can convey a sense of action or faster pacing.  You won’t want to use this all the time, but it can really speed up a slow scene and increase the pacing of your dialogue.

8. Talk your scenes into a tape recorder.  Listen to your dialogue on playback to see if it sounds natural and not stilted.  Strive to make conversations have a natural ebb and flow.

9. Listen and watch the people around you.  Restaurants are very good for this.  Conversation is give and take.  Often speakers are interrupted and sentences are incomplete or fragmented.  There aren’t generally long pauses during these conversations, so, too, you shouldn’t have long pauses except for intentional ones during your dialogue/action scenes.  Narrative (internal thought and description) creates pauses in the action.

10. Your job as a writer is to show the story rather than narrate it.

11. Ignore all of the above whenever story requires it.  The story itself is of primary importance and trumps all rules or guidelines.

12. Buy a second copy of a beloved book and four different colors of high-lighter markers.  Go through and highlight the dialogue with one color, description with another, internal thoughts with a third, and action/body movements/stage direction with the fourth.  After doing this for a few chapters, you’ll get a feel for the balance between these elements.  Then take a couple of chapters of your manuscript and do the same.  You’ll then have a visual of where you’re off and what element you’re using instead of dialogue.  Nine times out of ten, it’s because you’re not taking the time to fully develop each scene — instead you’re telling the scene in narrative.

13. Avoid summarizing action and dialogue.  Show it.

Here’s an example of what you shouldn’t do:

As Mary took her seat in the crowded classroom, the teacher placed the notes on the overhead projector and began to read from them.  He stopped for a moment and chastised her for being late again, then told her to stay after class.  As he read some more, she bit her lip, worried that he’d find out she wasn’t really a student after all.

Here’s an example of what you might consider doing instead:

Mary entered the darkened classroom, fumbling for a chair.  The teacher read from his notes on the overhead projector.  Suddenly he stopped, then spun and glared at her.

“Late again, I see.”

“I’m sorry, Professor.”  She ducked her head, hoping that in the dimly lit classroom he couldn’t see the blush rising on her face.  She hated lying.  She hated living a lie.

“Do you have an excuse?”

“No,” she rasped out.  “Sorry.”

“You will see me after class.”

“Yes—sir.”

“And don’t be late again,” he warned, his voice imbued with that deadly tone known only to college professors used to having their commandments obeyed.  He went back to reading his notes aloud.

She bit her lip.  She simply had to keep her cover for a little longer.  It was imperative that he not find out she wasn’t really a student.

14. An exercise: write a three page scene using nothing but dialogue.  You only have the words to convey setting, who the characters are and their emotions.  Because it’s pure dialogue, for the purpose of the exercise, it’s okay to venture into melodrama territory.  Here’s a possible scenario: Man and woman seated in busy restaurant and woman’s goal is to dump the man.

Use the tips above to give your dialogue that zing of reality.  It’ll make your characters spring to vivid life.

 

So You Want to be a National Bestselling Author!

By guest blogger, Terry Spear

You can be anything your heart desires, if you want it badly enough. That was what my father always told me when I was growing up. He’s been dead for many years now yet I still recall so many of his words of wisdom—well, maybe not all of them were words of wisdom. Like the: Eat your spinach. It’ll grow hair on your chest.

NOW you know where I get some of my wry humor!

At one of the writing conferences I attended, a NY Times bestselling author said that we should reach for the stars. Dream big. Don’t just shoot for something little. But have a lofty goal. Something that seems unattainable. Like—“I’m going to be a NY Times bestseller.” That was her goal. And then she made it.

I’m thinking: that’s easy for her to say. A big publisher picked her up and so sure, she made it.

But there’s some truth in what she said. Ever enter a contest just for the judges’ critique? Or do you hope to final? To win? To catch an editor or agent’s interest?

Do you write a novel, several, just because you have to quiet the demons running rampant in your head and once you tell their story, you can have a break? Or do you want to share your stories with readers and hope they fall in love with your characters, their worlds, their plights as much as you do?

Unfortunately, to get anywhere in this business, you have to work hard at it. Writing the story is the key. Revising it over and over again until it shines is one of the most important things you can do. But once you’ve submitted, and gotten the rejections, dozens maybe, what do you do?

You can be anything your heart desires, if you want it badly enough.

Always remember that.

What I do is start from scratch. I’m an eclectic reader and writer. So if one genre wasn’t working, I’d try something else. My critique partners LOVED my vampire romances. They said I’d found my niche. I had loved Dracula ever since I was 13 and my mother had taken me to see him at a college play. My mother was really ahead of her times. She loved Star Trek and vampires, and how cool is that?

But I hated that the vampire had to die, that he was unloved. So I created my own version. But what happened about the time I was shopping my vampire stories? No, not Twilight. That came much later. Everyone was writing them. Everyone. If the author was a NY Times bestselling romantic suspense author, she was now writing vampires. If she was a NY Times bestselling historical romance writer, she was writing vampires. If she was a NY Times bestselling romantic comedy writer, she was now writing about vampires.

What is the key phrase in this scenario? NY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR

Yep. No chance there. Most of the houses already had their own vampire authors…the authors probably didn’t love vampires from an early age like I had, but they were published, already had a huge following, and that’s all that mattered.

Moving along—what else could I write that would be as sexy as my vampires, with the same light darkness/dark lightness—I love romantic suspense, but I can’t write without humor—so my writing is something in between.

I had grown up also on werewolves. And they had the same problem as vampires. They were unloved. Yet the poor man couldn’t help what he was. I always wanted the underdog to have a happily ever after, even if it was supposed to be a horror story.

At the same time, I had also loved Jack London’s tales, Call of the Wild and White Fang and so I decided to write a werewolf story where the shapeshifters are like real wolves, not beastly characters, and in their human form they still have the wolfish senses.

I never ever ever thought that one story, that had been requested by several agents and publishers and consequently turned down by every agent and publisher until Sourcebook’s editor, Deb Werksman, gave it a read might want it. Here’s what happened.

She called me and I thought she was a telemarketer, and I even asked if she was selling something.

*smile*

She was not a telemarketer and we had to sort of start over again with introductions.

She had only read through half of the book and loved it, but wanted to know if I’d sold it yet. Nope. She would read the rest and get back with me if she liked where I went with the story.

Some notes: She wanted to know if it was unique. Long after I had written the book, I’d judged some contests that had a couple of werewolf stories. One, the shifters turned into beasts, dogs, all kinds of stuff. In the other, not really based on wolves. Others that I hadn’t read, but looked up were historical. And I also gave her specifics in my story that were truly unique to my world.

She got back to me about it sometime later, can’t recall now when, but it seemed like FOREVER, and said she loved it and wanted to take it to the acquisitions board. YES!

But it wasn’t a done deal until they bought it. And they might not like it!  It took FOREVER to get back with me because the board didn’t meet like it usually did. When she did, the book was sold! And she wanted to know what else I had. HEART OF THE WOLF made PW’s Best Book of the Year, only 5 mass marketed books that made it that year, and the first for Sourcebooks in their romance line.

I was over the moon. I still never thought that I would become a bestselling author. My daughter would tell me, “Mom, if you don’t think you will be, you won’t be.” Which brought me back to my dad’s saying, “You can be anything your heart desires, if you want it badly enough.”

I always wanted to make bestselling status, and I’ve worked hard with promoting in every way, shape, and form that I can think of. But basically after 15 years of writing, revising, submitting, and tons of rejections, and 9 books into the werewolf series, I finally made the USA TODAY bestsellers list the first week out with A SEAL in Wolf’s Clothing!!!

My advice: Keep writing. Switch genres and see if another might be the one that suits your writing style best. Make your book as unique as it can be so that readers will be able to identify with your world and know it’s yours. Never quit learning the craft. No matter how many books I’ve written, I’m always learning how to improve my writing. “Never give up. Never surrender”~~Galaxy Quest

Write as if the next book will be “the one” that will make it. That’s what I did and it finally worked!

Set writing goals, finish the books, and with each new story, fall in love all over again. And remember you can do whatever your heart desires if you want it badly enough!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

USA TODAY bestselling author, Terry Spear has written over a dozen paranormal romance novels and two medieval Highland historical romances. An award-winning author, Terry’s Heart of the Wolf  was named a Publishers Weekly’s Best Book of the Year in 2008. A retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves, Terry Spear is a librarian by day and spends every spare moment writing paranormal romance as well as historical and true life stories for both teen and adult audiences. Spear lives in Crawford, Texas, where she is working on new paranormal romances! For more information, please visit http://www.terryspear.com/.

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