Category Archives: Self-Editing

Music as Creative Inspiration

Posted on by

Please feel free to listen to this album as you read this post and its links.

For the past two weekends I was taking a course given by Antolina Ortiz Moore on Creating A Universe With Words sponsored by the Quebec Writers Federation.

During the course, one of the elements which was discussed was the usage of rhythm in our writing and how the sound of words is important for the flow of ideas.

That got me thinking about an interview I recently heard on CBC radio with the Neo-Classical pianist Jean-Michel Blais on the creation of his latest album, Aubades – a piece of music appropriate to dawn.

Blais composed this music in the midst of confinement where, because of gentrification, he had been evicted from his apartment and his studio and to add to all of this, had a breakup in his relationship.

Understandably, he was depressed, lonely, felt he had reached bottom and worried that he would never again compose. (Sound familiar?)

Alone, in his new apartment, he felt that he needed something to get back to his creativity and so he set  up a room for his studio and decided to record a new record – his pandemic therapy album.

 To feel awake again he challenged himself by asking how he could remain creative. What would happen if he let himself go, tried to surpass himself by writing new stuff and used the confinement as opportunity to transform a dream into reality?   

The result is an album that is simply gorgeous. Filled with hope, open to what’s new, uplifting and  inspirational.

 You can read the interview with Piya Chattopadhyay and listen to a great composer talk about the process of creativity.  

Ten Tips On Writing Mysteries

Posted on by

First off, these writing tips are not just for mystery writers. Gail Bowen is the author of the Joanne Kilbourn mysteries. She’s written 16 of them so far and if you’re a fan of Joanne Kilbourne you’ll learn a lot about her in this book. Secondly, the tips aren’t just for writers of series although quite a long section in a chapter titled Creating a Robust Series is devoted to that.

  1. When writing take breaks. Well, this is hardly new advice but the author suggests writing for twenty-five minutes and then take five-minute breaks. I’ve tried it and set my timer for twenty-five minutes which works marvelously well and am always surprised at how quickly the time goes by and how I get into my writing although my five-minute breaks tend to be much longer.
  2. Write early in the morning. She gets up at five am to write claiming that two hours of writing in the mourning is worth four hours of writing later in the day. I’m with her on that although not that early!  
  3. Select brief but telling details about weather and its effect on character in order to create a mood to draw the reader into the story.
  4. Make your characters deeply flawed so that your reader will be able to identify and connect with them.
  5. Use minor characters to lighten the mood while still keeping the plot moving.
  6. Give your first draft a rigorous edit before sending it off. Rigorous being the operative word.
  7. Try to give your book a title as early in the process as possible. This will guide you in keeping to the theme of your novel.  
  8. Almost every piece of writing can be improved if you cut it by a third (ouch!)
  9. Your first obligation as a writer is to offer a powerful human story.
  10. If you can’t imagine your life without writing, then you’re a real writer. Stay the course.

Getting Organized

Posted on by
Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

I am a messy writer. When I am working on a story I have notes on index cards, in journals, on random pieces of paper lying around my apartment, on my computer. Piles and piles of notes.

I kept telling myself  

YOU NEED TO GET ORGANIZED

And so I did. I made myself two notebooks in which I could keep a few facts about my characters and settings and a place to keep ideas together.

Note that the preview may not be working. To look inside click on the titles or the links at the bottom of this post.

Author Notebook: Characters

Facts matter. Organize your writing by keeping track of your characters in one easy to access space while saving you time.

No more scattered notes, or messy files on your computer. No more having to search through your manuscript for factual information about your characters that keep your writing consistent.

 The details that are on the worksheets include the character’s physical appearance, place of residence, education, family ties, childhood, mannerisms, jobs, flaws, traits and goals.

Whether this is your first book or you’ve written several or have characters that appear in a series the Author Notebook will help you stay organized and focused on your writing.

The notebook has two parts. On the right is a fact page for you to fill in for each of your characters. On the left is a blank page for you to add notes as reminders, inspirations and ideas as you go along writing your book. It measures 6 x 9” (15.24 x22.86 cm) in size and has 102 pages.  

Author Notebook: Settings

A setting can bring life to your book, especially if it is fresh and unique. That is why it is so important. However, it is also important to vary your settings so as to keep your reader interested.

This notebook on settings is to help you keep track of the places your characters inhabit and their physical and emotional interaction with the setting.

A setting can conjure up memories that can help advance the plot and while different characters can be in the same setting, depending on their mood and past experiences, they will notice and react differently to the details of the setting.

The Author Notebook sheets help you to describe places, weather, seasons, sensual details, feelings and memories which a setting can trigger. This enables you, the author, to notice at a glance, whether you have varied these details and how your character relates to them.

The notebook has a sheet on the righthand side with the title of your book and the character’s name followed by three blocks of setting details.

On the left is a blank page to add your notes as you go along creating your story world. It measures 6×9” (15.24×22.86 cm) and contains 102 pages. 

Both notebooks are now available on Amazon:

Character Notebook

Setting Notebook

Free Online Crime Writing Course

Posted on by

How to write crime fiction

Just thought I’d pass this along:

Free Webinar on how to write a crime novel presented by The Writers’ Academy at Penguin-Random House.  Thursday March 29.

It sounds interesting. 

Here’s more info: 

http://www.course-enquiry.com/webmail/107002/360067594/c40d1da3646c3c2495bd94d88c24286b5b903de9a8966d1b7ddcab0276647878

Self-Editing Your Work

Posted on by

It’s my pleasure to have Kristina Stanley over to explain her latest project. Although she is well known for her mystery series she also is very much involved in helping authors sell their work. She is the author of The Author’s Guide to Selling Books to Non-Bookstores and her latest non-fiction is Fictionary – helping writers edit their first drafts.

 

 Fictionary

I’m very pleased to be invited onto Carol’s blog to share my writing and editing journey. I’d love to tell you why we created Fictionary and how it can help you.

I’m an author who loves to edit, and I believe today’s author must be also their own structural editor.

The difficulty with editing is keeping track of writing knowledge, the time it takes, and the cost of an editor. So what if I could have writing tips focused on my manuscript, speed up the process, spend less money, AND write better fiction?

This is the story of how we created Fictionary.

What is the Fictionary?

 Fictionary will help writers turn a first draft into a great story by becoming their own big-picture editor.

 

With Fictionary, you can focus on character, plot, and setting. Fictionary helps you evaluate on a scene-by-scene basis or on the overall novel structure. Fictionary will show you the most important structural elements to work on first and guide you through the rewriting process.

Why a structural editing tool for writers?

Creating Fictionary began when I finished the first draft of my first novel. By then I’d read over 50 how-to-write and how-to-self-edit books. I’d taken writing courses and workshops, and had 100s of writing and rewriting tips swirling about in my head.

I knew I had to begin the editing process and improve the quality of my draft before sharing my work, but I didn’t know how to go about it.

My Worry:

How was I supposed to remember the torrent of advice and apply it to each scene? A spreadsheet, that’s how!

I created a spreadsheet with a chapter-by-chapter, scene-by-scene structure. Then I listed the different writing advice I needed to consider for EVERY scene. I ended up with over 75 “key elements of fiction”. I used the reports from the spreadsheet to visualize my novel.

The process I used was then developed into the Fictionary online tool for writers.

Did Fictionary Work For Me?        

After the hard work of self-editing, the quality of my fiction was validated when my first two novels were shortlisted for prestigious crime writing awards and I landed a two-book deal with publisher Imajin Books.

My first editor said: “If every manuscript was this good, my job would be so easy!”

The next exciting moment came when DESCENT, my first novel, hit #1 on Amazon’s hot new releases. Descent was published by Luzifer-Verlag in Germany, and I sold the audio rights to Auspicious Apparatus Press. Imajin Books also published BLAZE, AVALANCHE and LOOK THE OTHER WAY.

Building Fictionary

 I wanted to share my process, SO OTHER WRITERS COULD BENEFIT FROM AN IMMEDIATE APPROACH TO SELF-EDITING and rewriting first drafts. But who would want to use a spreadsheet?  Perhaps a fun, fast tool that helps writers visualize and self-edit their novels would be better.

I joined forces with author Michael Conn and business specialist Mathew Stanley, and we formed a company called Feedback Innovations just to build this tool for fiction writers.

You can find out more about Fictionary at https://Fictionary.co

Turn Your First Draft Into A Great Story

You can try Fictionary for free (no credit card required) for two weeks.

Download our free eBook, BIG-PICTURE Editing And The 15 Key Elements Of Fiction, and learn how big-picture editing is all about evaluating the major components of your story.

I’d love to hear in the comments what your biggest structural editing issue is.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

Kristina Stanley the co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Feedback Innovations: a company created to help writers rewrite better fiction. She is the best-selling author of the Stone Mountain Mystery Series. Her first two novels garnered the attention of prestigious crime writing organizations in Canada and England. DESCENT, BLAZE, and AVALANCE are published by Imajin Books. THE AUTHOR’S GUIDE TO SELLING BOOKS TO NON-BOOKSTORES is her first non-fiction book.

 

You can find her at:

 

The Writing Job Description

Posted on by

It’s been ages since I’ve posted and it feels great to flex these muscles again. But, like any activity, it’s best to go easy at the beginning of a routine. So, I’m going to start off by re-blogging Belinda Williams’ witty and spot-on article on The Writing Job Description.
See if you have what it takes to be a writer.
Please leave all comments on Belinda’s blog. I’m still not 100% back!

Belinda Williams

Whether you’re a writer or not, you’ve probably come across one of these memes:

What writers do

While you chuckle, there is an element of truth to some of these. And that truth is:

Writing is about a hell of a lot more than just writing.

When I started writing, I had a vague idea of what I was getting myself in for. With the release of my latest contemporary romance, The Pitch, later this month, I’ve got a much clearer idea. It’s the third book I’ve released (with two more due for release late this year and next).

A writing job description (Or, if only someone had told me all this earlier . . .)

Here’s all those things I’ve discovered are part of the job description for ‘writing’ but are not actually writing:

  • Editing. That’s writing, you say! Huh. To a writer, editing is not writing. Editing is the…

View original post 745 more words

The First Ten Percent Of Your Novel

Posted on by

In my last post I wrote about an article written by Jane Smiley, the acclaimed American novelist, on the Purpose and Practice of Revision This led me to her book 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel.

Front Cover

This is what Jane Smiley said about her book in We Wanted To Be Writers. com :

13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, (which) is a book about the anatomy and the history of the novel. And there are two chapters in there called “A Novel of Your Own Part I” and “A Novel of Your Own Part II.” Half of the book is about analyzing the form of the novel and half of the book is a sort of lengthy bibliography of about 105 or 6 novels that I read in order to write the book. (Jane Smiley on teaching writing)

Smiley, has a distinguished teaching record in the department of Creative Writing at the University of California so it’s no surprise that in reading her book I fell into the student role with Smiley as my teacher.

With clarity and generous spirit Smiley shares her insights on what makes a good writer. 

Because I am in the middle of editing a draft of my own, I was most interested in how she approaches “bettering” her rough drafts, specifically the first ten percent.

You, as the author, have about 10 percent of your novel to show the reader “who”, “what”, “where”, and “when.” “How” is for the rising action… You have only a certain number of pages to get the reader used to you as a writer. The more you pack into those pages, the more likely the reader will trust you and be willing to go on to the rising action.

So, what about this first 10 percent? What exactly does Jane Smiley suggest one pack into these pages?

PLACE: Where is everyone? When is the action taking place?

TIME: How is time going to be organized? Straight, continuous chronology? Chronological but in forward jumps? Some sort of looping structure?  Backward?

What makes your protagonist worth writing about?

These are the kind of interesting questions which Smiley throws at you, the writer, to help you go deeper. Another question which made me sit up had to do with the last 10 or 15 percent of the novel:

THE CLIMAX.

So the first thing you are going to do is turn to whatever page comes 90 percent of the way in your rough draft…That one page of the climax of your novel can tell you a lot about both what you have done and what you want to do, if you let it. Reading it, and a couple of pages around it, is your first diagnostic. (p.233)

There is so much that I got out of reading studying 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel.

If you are in the process of editing a novel, I highly recommend that you have a look at this book, particularly parts I and II of the chapters titled A Novel of Your Own.