Critiquer 1: “I love it! Delightful characters, beautifully developed scenes, lovely story arc, I cried at the end!”

Critiquer 2: “You’ve got a good idea, but frankly Sam falls flat. Can a man really just think of only one thing all the time? Surely you can add a little depth. And I’d develop the relationship between Susan and her mother a bit more, and tone down Jennie’s attempts at humor—they’re not really relevant.”

Which critique would you rather get? Critique 1? Sure, it makes you feel great! And Critiquer 2 just doesn’t understand what you meant. You’re headed straight for a Pulitzer, right?

I disagree. I think Number 2 is more useful. You’ve got to take into consideration your relationship with Critiquer 2, of course—perhaps he is trying to be hurtful. But the chances of that are slim, assuming you’ve chosen your critiquers carefully. Critiquer 2 gives you real Read more…

Writing: Dialog

It’s true that fiction has to make sense, whereas real life doesn’t. You’re asking your reader to willingly suspend disbelief and take your story at face value. Sure, they’ll let you colonize Mars. Or they’ll buy a new breed of dogs that can walk on water. Talking squirrels. That’s all fine. But if your make-believe world doesn’t hang together conceptually, you’ll lose your reader.

Even when you throw in some strange plot twist, your reader must say, “I didn’t expect that, but now you mention it, it makes sense.”

And how’s that going to happen? You do it with foreshadowing. What’s that? You must plant clues so that your reader is prepared. They don’t have to be big clues—in fact, the more subtle the better (but not so much as to pass unnoticed).

Here’s an example of foreshadowing:

Mary rifled through the letters on her elderly father’s desk, looking for bills he hadn’t yet paid. She worried he was succumbing to Alzheimer’s more rapidly than the doctor had predicted. Electric bill—unpaid. Gas bill—same. And so on with a his Visa account and trash collection. She sighed, wondering if now was the time to talk to him about entering a nursing home. Three of the envelopes were not bills, but appeared to be letters from old friends, and another was from a Masonic Lodge he’d been a member of many years before. Mary smiled at memories of being a Job’s Daughter as a teen. She stuffed the bills into her purse, left the letters on his desk and dropped the Masonic note on top. Looking around for any last-minute chores and seeing none, she turned out the light and pulled the door shut softly behind her.

Ok, what’s being foreshadowed here? Read more…

Writing: Style

Don and Sally met, fell in love at first sight, married, and lived happily ever after. Their children were tall, smart, bronzed, and talented. They all married happily. And their children….

How boring. So what?

It’s human nature that we don’t learn from good times. We learn from the bad. If you have bad times as a youth, you’re irresponsible. If you have bad times as an adult, you are “down on your luck.”

Today the Montrose County School Board announced that on average, the pupils in their charge are average. The dropout rate was exactly as expected. The Wilson brat, Johnny, whom nobody has ever liked and who has been arrested 15 times for everything from drug dealing to car theft, turned himself around in his senior year with straight A’s, 95-th percentile on his SAT, voted the “Friendliest Senior,” and is headed to Harvard on a full scholarship.

Now how much of that last paragraph do you really want to hear about? You want to hear about the exceptions to the norm. The norm is the old, boring norm and is the same every day. No news there. But what about that Wilson kid? Johnny??? Everyone knew he was a loser. How did he Read more…

Writing: Plotting

You may be expecting to read the standard advice: don’t give up! Keep at it! You’ll get published someday!

Bunk. Don’t quit your day job. Look at this realistically: for every book published through one of the major publishing houses, there are probably a thousand submissions. The odds are seriously stacked against you.

But, you say, someone has to be published, right? It’s just a matter of marketing yourself! Well, this is true, someone will be published. Perhaps that will be you. But think of professional sports. Count up the number of major league baseball teams and multiply by how many players they keep around (maybe 30). Now multiply that by the number of high schools in the country that have baseball teams. How many aspiring ball players? Tens of Read more…

Writing: Business

How do you like this:

Hank walked into the living room where Mary was serving breakfast. He spoke to Mary as he wolfed down his eggs.

Compared to this:

Mary heard Hank’s familiar footsteps as he entered the brightly lit kitchen. She pulled the sizzling pan off the stove and pushed the bacon onto a plate, concerned it smelled just a bit burned. Hank pulled back the curtains and looked out at his wife’s petunias, just now flowering with the first red and blue blossoms. He offered his morning greetings before he let go of the curtains, and when he turned to face her, she was smiling and whistling slightly. She put his plate on the table, the eggs still steaming. She came up behind him and put her arms around his chest and kissed his neck just where his hair was shortest. She could smell his shampoo. He reached up to touch her at the same time he spooned salsa on the eggs, trying this time not to overdo it.

What’s the difference? Well, not much happens in the first instance. We learn that Hank eats quickly and that he talks with his wife.

But in the second, we tickle all five Read more…

Writing: Style

To whom are you writing? To kids? Retirees? Ham radio operators? There’s one thing they all have in common.

No one likes being talked down to.

Treat your audience as an equal. That means assume they are smart people and can remember what you tell them. Even kids!

When you reveal new information, you need do it only once. If you don’t refer to it again until the end of the book, you may insert a quick reminder, such as “Eunice, Ron Storter’s evil sister, said…” Read more…

Writing: Style

Dialog is a tricky thing. I hold to the idea that every bit of dialog must push the story along in some way. It can be used to round out a character, or perhaps reveal some information the hero doesn’t know.

But be careful. Dialog, like everything else in fiction, must be believable. Your readers get to know your characters, so the dialog must sound like something a character would say. For example, if your character were a 15-year-old male, he likely would not say Read more…

Writing: Dialog

Mt. Sneffels Press uses PayPal for payment and order information. When you click on any of our “Buy Now” buttons, you’re taken to a PayPal screen that has the Mt. Sneffels Press logo at the top. You enter your credit card and shipping information. All I see is the shipping information: your credit card information is safe.

You DO NOT have to have a PayPal account to buy books from Mt. Sneffels Press. When you press the “buy now” button, look down Read more…

American Flying Broomstick, Mt. Sneffels Press

I’m changing the price of Broom 1 from $17.76 to $9.95. Why? Because I’ve decided to let Amazon sell the copies they have and then drop it. Amazon takes 55% (!) which forces the book price out of reach. So, by dealing directly with you, I can drop the price to something far more reasonable. Broom 1 and Broom 2 are now each $9.95. I’ve had to raise the shipping a bit to cover increases in postage—the shipping per book is $2.75, or, if you use the special, you can save a bit on the combo plus the shipping is $3.00 for the pair. See the American Flying Broomstick website or order via our Catalog page.

By the way, Amazon has only 7 copies left. I’ve instructed them to drop the price to $9.95 in a few days. So, if you combine that with other items to qualify for free shipping, you’ve got a great deal!

American Flying Broomstick, Mt. Sneffels Press

One piece of advice you’ll get from everyone concerns sentence length. A long sentence is long, therefore it must meander, therefore you aren’t really sure what you want to say. Short sentences are short. Really short. Short! (And therefore non-fattening and good for you.)

What difference does it make? Why should you care?

In general (and note that caveat well!), longer sentences convey a sense of ease or comfort. When the narrator can speak in long sentences, he or she is not stressed. So go ahead and put in your entire thought. In fact, if two sentences are closely related to the same idea, just put a semicolon between them; you may find this keeps things together. Or, if you’re trying to tell your reader something then do this: use a colon and spell it out! And, quite frankly, Read more…

Writing: Style