Coming September 17th: The Ghosts of Evergreen by Erin Elizabeth Long!
All Claire Gorecki wants is to be like other girls.
But Claire can talk to the dead…and the dead talk back.
1. Watchmen
Any list of great graphic novels includes Alan Moore’s classic Watchmen. There’s a reason this is the only graphic novel to appear on on Time’s list of the 100 greatest English-language novels. It’s a gritty, dazzling story that spans decades. It’s as much about the post-Vietnam American psyche as it is about superheroes, and I strongly recommend it–even if you think you don’t like comic books.
2. Sandman
Neil Gaiman’s graphic novels are gorgeous and haunting. Sometimes the stories are sad, or terrifying, or even funny–just like our dreams. The main character is Dream, one of the seven Endless (the others are Destiny, Death, Destruction, Delirium, Desire, and Despair). His sister Death is one of my favorite characters in literature; the standalone volumes “Death: The High Cost of Living” and “Death: It’s The Time of Your Life” are also worth a read. Gaiman recently announced the revival of the long-dormant series.
3. Fables
The trend for procedural-style fairy tales on TV (Grimm, Once Upon a Time) owes a lot to Bill Willingham’s Fables. In fact, the shows basically ripped him off. Characters from classic fairy tales are exiled to New York by a sinister threat in their homeland. Their circumstances force strange alliances, but there are also underlying patterns–archetypes, really–that the characters can’t escape. This series is still running, and I confess that I haven’t kept up with it recently.
4. Girl Genius
This long-running webcomic, which is also collected in print volumes as well as two prose novels, is a delightful steampunk romp. The heroine, Agatha Heterodyne, is the unwilling heir to an powerful clan of mad scientists, and the the comic follows her adventures as she slowly explores what it means to have the “spark” of genius. Best part: you can read it online for free, here: http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
5. Chew
It’s rare to stumble across a new idea, but John Layman’s graphic novel about a cop who can pick up psychic impressions from his food. This makes eating a hamburger difficult, but it’s useful in his line of work. Chew is kind of gross, honestly, but it’s also funny, compelling, and refreshingly different. If you like your procedurals with a heavy dose of weirdness, you’ll enjoy this ongoing series.
6. Castle Waiting
Gory comics are not to everyone’s taste. Linda Medley’s Castle Waiting is a charming series of linked fairy tales that play off conventions with gentle humor and beautiful art. Even though it often gets shelved in the Juvenile section (mostly because it lacks offensive content), the tales often have a subversive or feminist bent that make them suitable for grownups and well as children.
7. Gunnerkrigg Court
This ongoing webcomic from UK artist Tom Siddell is beautifully drawn, full of strange and sometimes funny events, realistic drama and friendship, robots, and a cast of mythical creatures. I never miss an update. http://www.gunnerkrigg.com
8. The Professor’s Daughter
This lovely book follows the unlikely love story between an Egyptian mummy and the daughter of an Egyptologist. Set in Victorian London, this odd little tale is strange, but sweet.
9. The Unwritten
I just started reading The Unwritten, and I can’t get my hands on new issues fast enough. Imagine a world where Harry Potter’s fame is eclipsed by another boy wizard. Tommy Taylor is beloved by the entire world, but not Tom Taylor, the adult son of the author who was the inspiration for his father’s famous character. This series is mind-bogglingly metafictional–kind of like if Jasper Fforde and Borges got together and read the entire Harry Potter series while on mescalin. It weaves together famous stories and passages from the (sadly) made-up Tommy Taylor books into an adventure in which stories might save the world…or end it.
10. 
I never know if I’m going to laugh or cry when I check out Karl Kerschl’s The Abominable Charles Christopher. It’s like a grownup, magical-realist version of Calvin & Hobbes. Charles Christopher is a yeti–neither man nor beast–who finds himself somehow responsible for preventing the destruction of the forest where he lives. That description really doesn’t do the strip justice; there are so many genuine moments of loss as well as humor. http://www.abominable.cc/
Since my first post on grammar & creative writing was so popular, I thought I’d do a follow-up series. It’s important for creative writers to know the rules of the language–even if it’s just so we can break them later.
Adverbs
Cthulhu hates adverbs
At some point in most writers’ lives, we’re told to avoid adverbs like the plague. (We’re also told to avoid cliches, but I’ll save that for another post.) We develop a Pavlovian response to adverbs, mercilessly cutting them from our pages. But is it always necessary? And, in our quest to eradicate -ly words, are we missing the most pernicious adverbs of them all?
First, a refresher: The Chicago Manual of Style defines an adverb as “a word that qualifies, limits, describes, or modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb.” (16th ed., 5.153) When I taught Fundamentals of English, I would tell my students that adverbs answer the questions How?, When?,Where?, and How Much?
Ryan Gosling strode across the street.
Adverb Type #1: “How” adverbs, also called adverbs of manner, are the ones that most often have the suffix -ly. How did he walk across the room? Slowly, quickly, loudly, etc. I’m sure you can see the problem–why write “He walked across the room quickly” when you can use a stronger verb instead? At this point, I’d ask my students to brainstorm different verbs.
Example: He dashed/ran/sprinted/skipped across the room.
To drive the point home, I’d act out the verbs, since nothing reinforces learning like seeing your teacher making a fool of herself by hopping across the front of the classroom. Every one of those verbs is more descriptive than”walked quickly” because they convey different shades of meaning. Skipped connotes cheerfulness, while sprinted gives a sense of urgency.
I’m a believer in cutting the chaff from your writing. George Orwell’s rules for writing include “Never use a long word where a short one will do,” and “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.” If you’ve never read Orwell’s “Politics and The English Language,” I encourage you to do so. Orwell understood better than almost any other writer the way that language can be used to both conceal and reveal meaning.
“How” adverbs prop up listless verbs. Cut them out and use a stronger verb instead.
Adverb Type #2: “When” adverbs describe the time in which an action takes place. Usually, sometimes, never, frequently, tomorrow, yesterday, before, weekly: These are all adverbs.
Example: “Buddy went to Momma’s house yesterday.”
The adverb “yesterday” tells us when he went. Without it, we’re missing part of the puzzle. We’d know that he visited Momma, but we wouldn’t know when. If it’s important for the reader to know when an action happened, then it’s necessary to use an adverb.
The “Back” in “Baby Got Back” is a noun. Incidentally, I also used Sir Mix-A-Lot to illustrate the proper use of coordinating conjunctions.
Adverb Type #3: “Where” adverbs are weird. Some of them are perfectly fine: here, there, inside, outside, somewhere, anywhere. Others have a tendency to clutter the page like cigarette butts. “Back,” “up,” and “along” can all be used as several different parts of speech, but when they are used as adverbs, they should almost always be cut.
Example: ”She ran along beside me.”
How does the word “along” add anything to the reader’s understanding of the sentence? It doesn’t; cut it.
“Back” is the worst offender in my writing. When I was working on an early draft of Grey Magic, I ran it through Wordle, which creates artistic word clouds from text files. The size of the word is directly related to its frequency, so I wasn’t surprised to see “Grimoire” as the largest word. She’s the main character, after all. What did surprise me was the size of the word “back.” How the hell had I used it so many times?
I did a CTRL-F search of my Word document, and sure enough, I’d used it something like 900 times in a 50,000 word document. Almost all of them were chaff. Most instances happened in sentences like “She walked back to the room,” or “He went back to the tower.” “Returned” is a much simpler–and better–choice.
Brobdingnagian Rabbit
Adverb Type #4: Adverbs of extent, or “how much” adverbs, are the nasty ones. They prop up weak adjectives in much the same way that adverbs of manner prop up weak verbs. They include really, very, rather, quite, somewhat, extremely.
Example: “It was very big.”
There are dozens of adjectives that you could use instead of “big” to describe the size of something. Gargantuan, huge, enormous, elephantine. If you’re feeling fancy, maybe Brobdingnagian. And, you know, sometimes its okay for things to just be big. Like the lowly “said,” simple words are often the best choice, even if they don’t show off your mighty vocabulary to the ladies.
Unless they’re used to as a deliberate stylistic choice or to improve the cadence of your writing, adverbs of extent have no place outside of dialogue. A stereotypical stuffy British character might say “quite” and “rather” (just before his monocle popped off into his teacup, no doubt), while the title of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close uses adverbs to create a certain rhythm. These are okay. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they can be cut with impunity.
Welcome all newcomers! I’ve been overwhelmed by the number of comments and new followers today. Getting Freshly Pressed was amazing!
I just published a companion short story to my full-length novel, Grey Magic. For everyone else, it costs $.99, but for y’all, it’s free. Click on the picture or go to https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/208463 and enter the coupon code at the bottom of this post. Thanks again for visiting. I’m so happy you’re here.
Summary: Actors can’t always choose their roles. When a wealthy biscuit baron hires Locke & Oracle’s troupe of traveling players (and occasional pickpockets) to perform a bawdy musical about pirates, the show must go on–even if drunk wizards, bossy housemaids, and a rouge cannon get in their way. Grimoire Tobin, the heroine of Grey Magic, returns for a theatrical interlude in “The Command Performance.”
To get this story for free, please enter the coupon code: AZ26F
The code is good through October 1st, 2012.
I love writing dialogue. It can allow writers to deliver exposition, advance the plot, and, above all, develop our characters. It gives us glimpses into their inner lives and motivations. The things the characters say to each other, and sometimes what they don’t say, provides more insight than simply describing them or *shudder* telling us what they think and feel.
Step One: Punctuation goes inside the quotation marks.*
In example #3, his thought is broken up to let the “I wonder” linger. Since it is not a complete sentence, the tag is followed by a comma before continuing with the rest of his thought. In example #4, “You’re wrong,” is a complete sentence, so the tag ends in a period. A second sentence follows it, completing his thought.
In the last example, I’ve chosen to let the dialogue stand on its own. Adding a “he cried” or “he yelled” wouldn’t provide any new information for the reader; we can tell that he’s yelling already. Unless there is a question about who the speaker is, I tend to use tags every three lines or so. If two people are talking, we can assume that they alternate lines of dialogue.
In conversations with more than two speakers, it can get trickier, but I try to develop distinct voices for each of my characters. That is not to say that unique voices require gimmicks or (god forbid) corny dialect. There’s no reason to go all Huck Finn on your readers. Some of my characters use a specific nickname for each other (Only Lark calls Grimoire “Grim,” for example) or have a particular way of phrasing things. Arthur Lionheart likes to include lots of aphorisms in his speech, and I like to think that he sounds like a somewhat condescending college professor. His sister, Oleander, is a little less pedantic, but she peppers her speech with rules that she makes up to teach Grimoire various lessons.
If a character’s speech goes on for more than a paragraph, the correct way to punctuate it is like this:
“paragraph one.
“paragraph two.”
However, I think it’s unrealistic to let your characters natter on for more than a paragraph. Unless they’re actually delivering an oration, it’s unlikely that a single character would be allowed to talk for that long without interruption. If you simply must have them make a speech, I’d recommend breaking up the block of text with an action, even if it’s just the person fidgeting or pouring a glass of water. Unless, of course, the point is that the speaker is a blowhard who likes to pontificate long after his audience has stopped listening.
*Please note that grammar rules only apply to American English. If you’re British, well, you’re on your own.
Step Two: Keep it simple.
Action!
Nine times out of ten, a simple “said” is the best choice. “Said” is a perfectly serviceable, well-nigh invisible verb that allows you to identify the speaker without intruding on the dialogue. As writers, we have been taught to use robust, active verbs. We don’t litter our writing with listless wases; we employ verbs that leap and dash and spin across the page. In dialogue, however, fancy verbs are often redundant or even distracting.
How I hate “retorted,” and yet it sometimes still creeps into my writing. You have to remain vigilant; it’s easy to slip into sloppy habits. One thing that I like to do–and this is a personal preference, not a hard-and-fast rule–is to have one-sentence interludes of action or description in between lines of dialogue.
Step Three: Say it Out Loud.
You can’t hiss consonants. Dana from http://reasoningwithvampires.tumblr.com/, one of the best and most inspirational grammar/writing blogs I’ve seen, has a wonderful archive of terrible dialogue from the Twilight series. Bella & The Gang sigh, growl, hiss, murmur, and mumble their words, but very rarely say anything.
Sometimes you want a character to deliver a particular line, but it doesn’t really sound like something they’d say. I’m a huge Buffy fan, but there’s a scene in the fourth season episode “The Freshman” where Buffy and Willow visit the awesome library at UC Sunnydale. Willow geeks out and talks about how amazing it is, and Buffy quips, “Yeah, it’ll be great…if we ever need a place for the Nuremberg Rallies.” Later in the same episode, she confuses “reconnaissance” with “the Renaissance.” Buffy has many admirable qualities, but she’s not particularly brainy…nor is she particularly dumb. Joss Whedon, who wrote and directed the episode and should have known better, seized the opportunity to make the first joke even though Buffy really isn’t known for her interest in European history (or Nazis). The second joke is more at her expense. Xander might have said it, but not Buffy.
Aaaaand that paragraph probably tells you a lot more about me and my nerdiness than you really needed to know. The point is, not only do you need to develop a unique voice for each of your main characters–and that includes giving some thought to diction as well as the possible depth of their knowledge–you also need to read things out loud to make sure they don’t sound stilted or stupid. Unless you mean for it to sound stilted and stupid, as a stylistic choice. Test it out to make sure it flows nicely. Don’t be afraid to use ellipses (in moderation) and dashes to allow character to trail off or interrupt each other. Conversations in real life are rarely a measured exchange of complete, coherent, grammatically correct sentences. While you don’t want to write exactly the way people talk, I think striving for more authentic speech patterns makes your characters seem more alive.
Bringing It All Together
Here’s an example from my work in progress, The Ghosts of Evergreen:
“When I woke up this morning, it smelled awful, and there was all this ash in the sink,” says Chelsea, her blue eyes wide.
Matt rolls up three slices of bacon inside a pancake and dunks the whole thing in syrup. He gestures with it like a cigar and asks, “Are you gonna turn her in?”
“I don’t know. They’ll probably expel her, and then I’ll feel guilty.”
“Better than getting burned to death in the night by pyrogirl,” says Sara with a shiver.
“You’re right. I’ll tell Sandra tonight after class.”
At my questioning look, Lucy clarifies, “Sandra is the RA on the senior girls’ floor. She’s the Po-Po’s niece—that’s Mrs. Poole—and she’s a total hard-ass.”
I’m not trying to hold this up as a paragon of awesome writing, but I do think that it does some things well. Chelsea is identified as the initial speaker (she’s telling a story about her suitemate, who has a tendency to lock herself in their shared bathroom and set things on fire), and when she responds to a direct question from the other people at the table, I left off the tags because I felt it should be clear that she’s replying to them. This cuts down on clutter. Lucy has a distinctive voice–she uses more slang and cusses a lot more often than her peers, which I think says something about her character.
The Real Tuesday Weld
Iron & Wine
Explosions in the Sky
Bruce Cockburn
Chopin
The Zen answer to the eternal question “How long should me book be?” is “As long as it needs to be.” But that’s not particularly helpful, is it?
I was browsing Smashwords the other day, and I saw a huge variety of lengths. Some of the published documents were only 1200 words, while others were 170000. Neither of those manuscript lengths would be marketable to traditional print publishers. The 1200 word story is longer than flash fiction and a little too short to be a short story, while only a handful of bestselling authors could convince a publisher to take on the 170K behemoth.
Traditional wisdom (i.e. advice I found on the internet) says that a first-time novelist should aim for a book between 70-100k. Publishers are unlikely to buy anything over or under that rather narrow window although there are exceptions. Self-published ebooks don’t need to worry about shelf space or the cost of paper.
Here’s where my innate bias against indie authors (even though I am an indie author) raises its head. What can I say? I’m a product of traditional creative writing programs, and until about four months ago, I was still dead-set on shopping my book to agent in the hopes of getting a book deal with one of the Big Six. Anyway, these ebooks with word counts that fall so far short or long of the traditional window make me think that the short works aren’t fully fleshed-out, while the crazy long ones are in need of pruning. 30k does not a novel make. It’s barely a novella. If printed, it would be about 120 pages long. These distinctions are largely meaningless in the digital age, but I’ve still got that knee-jerk reaction: the person who wrote this didn’t do it correctly.
Of course, that 70-100k window that I’m so weirdly insistent upon is determined by publishing houses based on a ratio of cost to publish vs. expected returns. The “right” length for a novel has varied over time. War and Peace would never be published today, or if it was, it would be broken into three parts and marketed as a trilogy. I think there are quite a few series out there that are really just a serialized epic work. I’ve read quite a few YA books whose first and especially second installments function as part of a larger narrative without a solid beginning, middle, and end of their own. This irks me. It’s the reason why I didn’t love Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor, even though I wanted to–the pacing of the book and the overall story arc only make sense as the first act in a longer work.
Some of the greatest works of the 19th and early 20th centuries were originally published as serials. The episodic nature of publication informed the structure of the books, so that often each segment read like a short story. By the same logic, one could argue that the insistence on a narrow window of word count has determined the kind of stories that writers are able to tell. Without the mostly arbitrary limitations of traditional publishing, indie authors can write stories that are exactly as long as they need to be.
Names are important. They should capture the essence of your characters. I also think they should be pronounceable and appropriate for whatever world the characters inhabit.
Love the old-school covers, though.
Genres have certain naming conventions. You wouldn’t find an Arawyn Dawnstalker in a realistic coming-of-age story set in New Jersey, nor would you find a John Clarke in a high fantasy novel. I’m not a fan of fancy, polysyllabic names (with apostrophes!). I admit that I’ve never actually made it through the entire Lord of the Rings series, and part of that is because I get too bogged down in not knowing who or where anything is because it’s all in a made-up language. I mean, serious kudos for Tolkien for inventing several different dialects of Elvish, but the problem with totally invented fantasy languages is that NO ONE ELSE CAN SPEAK THEM.
May the odds be ever in your favor.
One of the things that Susanne Collins did best in The Hunger Games was to create a totally organic system of naming that was both unique and familiar. Katniss Everdeen is a perfect name. It sounds kind of like “real world” names, but it’s not. A reader can pronounce it easily without a glossary, and it rolls pleasantly off the tongue.
I recently read Hounded by Kevin Hearne, and, plot problems and general silliness aside, the names were impossible. It took me out of the story every time I had to trip over one. Most of the characters are from Irish mythology, and the main character’s real name is Siodhachan O Suileabhain. Even though he goes by Atticus O’Sullivan in the present day, half of the characters still call him by his original name. There’s a two-and-a-half page pronunciation guide at the beginning of the book, prefaced by the author’s statement that he doesn’t “wish to steal anyone’s marshmallows by telling them they’re ‘saying it wrong.’” Um, okay then, Kevin. I’m going to pronounce your name Key-VAHN now, if that’s all right.
You can call me “Hal.”
I’m not immune to Bad Names. Sometimes my characters arrive with neatly printed name tags, and other times they go through several different names until I find one that fits. Lark Wayland was originally Wren Smith, and Grimoire has gone through so many last names that I can’t remember them all. Alaric Bright was originally called Lucien Whitestone, and Archer was originally called Halberd. I actually have a little throwaway joke about that in Grey Magic because Halberd is such an atrocious name. I don’t know why I ever thought it was a good idea.
Locke and Oracle were always called that, and in my new book, The Ghosts of Evergreen, the main character’s roommate popped into my head fully formed as Lucy Fa. I don’t want to force my cast of characters to be a United Colors of Benetton ad, but at the same time, I’m taking pains to make it a bit less white bread. The main character is named Kat, but her last name is giving me trouble. I thought about Owens, but now I’m leaning more towards something Polish, like Kaczmarek. Or maybe that’s too out there. Kat Jenkins? Hell, I don’t know. There are so many weird–and sometimes not very pretty–names in the world, but it seems like we tend to pull from only the most common ones.
So, what’s the worst–or best–character name you’ve come across?
A really cool blogger stopped by yesterday (Hi, Lesley!), and after reading her blog–which is all about making lists of awesome adventurous things and then actually doing them–I thought I’d try something similar.
Since my birthday falls right at the midpoint of the year, I tend to take stock at both the calendar New Year and what I call my “personal-fiscal year.” My biggest goal for this p-f year was to finish and publish my first book. CHECK. But what am I supposed to do now?
Click for the etsy shop where I found this adorable little guy.
My Professional Goals for the Next Six Months:
1. Write and publish The Ghosts of Evergreen and its sequel, The City of Nevermore. I’m about 12K words into Evergreen now. (Due out September and October of 2012)
2. Write the 2nd book in the Isenland Trilogy, Lark Song. (Due out in Spring 2013)
3. Form a meetup group for indie authors, editors, designers, and publishers in Upstate South Carolina. I’d like to create a local community where people can barter for services (i.e. I’ll edit your manuscript if you’ll design my book cover!), learn and grow as professionals, and help each other build platforms via networking.
4. Query book bloggers for reviews, even though talking to strangers (nevermind asking them for something) terrifies me. Seriously, I can’t even order a pizza over the telephone–and yet I’ve been a classroom teacher without any problem. No idea why.
5. Figure out how to use Twitter. Even though I’m pretty young and tech-savvy, Twitter gives me a knee-jerk “These kids today with their tweets and their hoverboards” kind of feeling.
6. Do a seminar at the local public library to help other indie authors learn from my experience. I had to figure out a lot of things (i.e. what is a gutter, and why is it so big?) when I was laying out my book for print and choosing an eBook distributor. I read a lot of message boards and blogs, but it would have been really helpful to go meet with someone who’d done it before.
On the shelf at Sarah’s house.
Hanging out with Carrie’s cat, Thomas.
In Danny’s hand.
On my shelf at home.
In London!
When fifteen-year-old Grimoire Tobin discovers that her uncle is a sorcerer, she’s plunged into the struggle between the forces of light and darkness. One side wants her dead while the other will do anything to protect her–but will she be able to figure out which is which before it’s too late?
