Idea Generation

When I was a child my friends and I played outside. I didn’t live in a particularly poor neighborhood, but it also wasn’t a wealthy one. The best “toy” we had was our imagination. We spent a lot of time pretending, and made up adventures based on our favorite television shows. Some of the time we would need more characters than we had “actors” for. In that case, we just interacted with the invisible space they would have taken up if there was a body there, and one or another of us would provide the voices for the invisible characters. Playing cowboys and indians was a lot more fun if you had an entire tribe of warriors at your command.

As I grew up, I continued to interact with invisible characters, giving them voices and personalities. It was a lot of fun. When the adults in my life let me know that having invisible friends was beneath my age level, and that I ought to grow up, I simply stopped inventing and talking to invisible characters in places where people could observe my so-called childish behavior. I would walk home from school rather than taking the bus, because it gave me more time for long conversations with invisible characters. Though walking was slower than the actual bus ride, when you added in the wait for the bus, it only took ten minutes longer for me to get home.

I never lost my imagination, and I continued to polish my skill at inventing and interacting with invisible characters.

As a writer, I simply invent a new set of characters, interact with them, interview them, and discover the most important, exciting, and pivotal moments of their life story. Then I write it down as they tell it to me. Yeah, that’s where my ideas really come from.

~Marie

Take a Breath!

My friend Grrly Grl recently read a blog post which contained the entire post in a single “paragraph”. She told me it was hard to read, that it was hard to focus on what the writer meant, and that it was hard to keep her place on the page. She asked me to do a post on paragraphs; what they are and how to write them properly.

I had a few ideas on what was right and wrong in the writing of paragraphs, but before publishing them, I decided to do some fact-checking. Good thing, too, as I discovered that some of my thoughts were incorrect.

Grammarly Handbook says that the general rule is to break a paragraph when it has completely developed the topic sentence. However, some topics being more complicated than others, if you need more than five or six sentences, find a logical place for a break.

About.com had some interesting things to say on what most people incorrectly believe are the rules of paragraph writing, especially as it concerns essay writing. (Essay writing is a totally different art form than research papers, nonfiction, poetry, and fiction writing, which are also distinct from each other.) One of the debunked rules is that a paragraph must contain between three and five sentences, and another is to never begin a sentence with a conjunction such as and or but. Go read the article for some eye-opening information.

I think the best advice I’ve heard on paragraph structure came from my daughter’s 7th grade teacher. “A sentence contains a thought; a paragraph contains an idea, but never write a paragraph longer than you can read aloud in a single breath.”

Santa Has No Claws

Claws are long, sharp finger or toenails on animals. (Between the cheetah’s teeth and claws, the antelope was soon dispatched.)

A clause is part of a sentence, or a part of a contract. (You are in violation of clause b, subpart three, so the contract has been invalidated.)

Claus is Santa’s last name. (Santa Claus)

Keep them straight this way: Claws and Werewolf both have a letter “w”. Santa’s name begins and ends with the letter “s”. When a lawyer invokes a contractual clause, you might want to say, “eek!” Both eek and clause contain the letter “e”.

~Marie

Don't Censor the Sensor

A sensor is a mechanical device that takes in information and relays it to a human being in a different location. The rovers on Mars have a large variety of sensors to measure temperature, humidity, and the composition of rocks and soil. My front porch light has a light sensor on it that turns it on when it gets dark and off when it gets light.

A censor is an individual who decides what may be written, broadcast, and said in public, based on the prejudices of the ruling class of a given society. A censor is also a metal ball used to burn incense in, and waved around, generally in a religious context.

Keep them straight this way: Sensor is related to senses. A remote mechanical sensor takes the place of human senses, to a very limited degree. Both words start with an "s". Censor is either related to incense, or censorship...and all three of those words have the letters “cens” in them.

~Marie

Which Witch is Which?

Which is an interrogative, which is a fancy word for ‘question word’. You use it when you are trying to determine the difference between two alternatives (Which was better, the book or the movie?), or the best among a group of choices (Which is the best route to Apache Junction?)

Witch is a noun, commonly used with a negative connotation. It can mean someone who practices either good or bad magic (The Wicked Witch of the West or Glinda the Good Witch in Oz), someone with a bad attitude (What a witch! A phrase commonly used when we really want to use another word that rhymes, but consider ourselves too genteel to utter in polite company). People often dress up as wicked witches for Halloween.  The word almost always refers to a female, as a male practitioner of magic is usually referred to as a mage, a wizard, or a magician. The word is also often used to describe an adherent of Wicca.

Keep them straight this way: Witch has a t in the middle of it, just like that other word we don’t like to use. Both witch and the other word always refer to a person. Which has an h in it, just like other question words such as Who, What, Where, and When.

~Marie

I Know You Said No

The word no is a negative. It means, well, no. It expresses disagreement with something someone else said or did. It is a shorthand word that, depending on the context, can substitute for an entire sentence. No can mean anything from a refusal to cooperate (“Will you take out the trash?” “No.”), a negative reply to a query (“Did you remember to put gas in the car?” “No.”), or a plea to someone to stop what they’re doing (a child screaming “No!” as Mom takes them out into the hall during a church service).

The word know implies knowledge. If you know something, it is a piece of knowledge stored in your brain for some period of time.

Remember which one to use this way: the word know is the first half of the word knowledge. The word no is a very short and simple word. If you want to tell your kids no, then keep it short and simple.

~Marie

The Maid Made the Bed

Made is the past tense of make. I can make something in the future, I can be making it now, or, once it is finished, I can proudly say that I made it.

The word maid had old roots in the word maiden, which refers to a young, unmarried female. In the days when people lived in huge houses and had live-in domestic servants, the word maid took on a new meaning as the job title of the young, unmarried women who cleaned the house. An old maid is an older, unmarried woman. In both maid and old maid, the term usually refers to a woman who has never been married, rather than a widow or divorcee, and is presumed to still be a virgin. Yes, I know that often does not apply today, but language is not good at keeping up with the times. I’m discussing language here, not current sexual practices.

Today, the word maid usually refers to a person, male or female, who works at cleaning other people’s houses. They are typically not live-in, but work either for themselves or for an agency, and clean several homes in a day’s work.

Remember the difference between made and maid this way: Make and made both end in an “e”. At my house “I” am the maid…and both of those words have an “i” in them.

~Marie

One to a Customer

The word soul refers to something which not all of the human race even believes in. Those who do believe in it usually think of a soul as the spirit which animates our body in life, and occasionally haunts our surroundings after death. Many believe that the soul passes to another plane of existence after death. However this blog is not a place to debate philosophy or belief systems, it is a place to learn about writers, writing, and the words that make books possible.

The word sole has several meanings, ranging from only (as in the family’s sole supporter), through a fish (the sole was delicious), to the bottom of your shoe (I need to take my boots in to have the soles repaired).

Keep them separate by remembering that a soul is all about “U”, and if it’s not about “U”, then the word doesn’t have a “u” in it.

~Marie

Stop Five: An Unexpected Day at Home

Something must have gone wrong today. I have no idea what or why or how. Although I do know who, I have no way to get hold of the lady who had agreed to be my blog tour host other than the internet; and she doesn't seem to be able to get online today.

 

I was supposed to have been in Indiana today, but since it seems that this is not going to happen, I'll run with plan B. Yes, I have a plan B. I (almost) always have a plan B. In this case, plan B is that I will host myself for this installment of my blog tour. Mostly because I really want this post to be seen.

 

 

How Ebooks Have Changed Writing

 

I've had a lot of people ask me what I think about this recent craze over ebooks. They want to know how ebooks have changed the face of writing. I tell them writing has not changed. Publishing has changed a lot, and so has technology, but the art of crafting a story and presenting it in a permanent form has not changed in several hundred years.

No matter what the genre is, or the length of the story, all fiction writing has a few things in common. There must be a hero. The hero must have a goal. There must be obstacles between the hero and the goal. Some people may be surprised I don’t specify there must be a villain. There are many types of conflict and obstacles, not all of which absolutely require a villain; however, most heroes do have a flesh and blood nemesis throwing obstacles in their path.

Now, a little about publishing.

Some 700 years ago, Johannes Gutenberg put together several new technologies to create a new type of type of printing press. Before this time, all books were either written by hand or printed after a piece of wood had been carved for each page.

Somewhere around 150 years ago, Samuel Clemens is credited with being the first author to turn a manuscript in to his editor which had been written on a typewriter. Before that, all manuscripts were written out by hand. In fact, the very word manuscript means hand-written.

Some five years ago, ebooks became very popular with the invention of the Kindle. Ebooks had been around before that, but people like to carry their books around with them, and not have to sit at their desk to read them. The Kindle made the carrying-around part easy. Suddenly readers had the ability to go on vacation and take all of their favorite books with them. They would never run out of things to read.

However, because mainstream publishers were slow to make their books available in electronic format, readers became frustrated. At the same time, writers who for one reason or another were unable or unwilling to publish via mainstream companies were frustrated at the inability to get their books in front of willing readers. Self-publishing a book at that time cost a small fortune. By making ebook publishing affordable and available to all, readers and authors both found a cure for their frustration. Authors could afford to self-publish. Readers had more novels to choose from. Self-published ebooks made everyone happy except for the main-stream publishing companies who didn’t dare try the new technology.

Various inventions have changed the face of publishing over the years. The art and science of novel-writing has changed very little, however. An author still needs a hero, his goal, and a bunch of obstacles standing between the two. A good story is a good story, no matter how it’s produced, and it will continue to delight readers for many years to come. The method of its delivery to a reader’s eager eyes and hands is largely irrelevant to the writing process.

Instead of stories being written and revised and copied out by hand on voluminous amounts of paper, an ebook can be produced entirely with a computer and use no paper at all, yet still be totally engrossing to the reader. Thanks to my e-reader, I have just discovered a “new” favorite author...H. G. Wells.

Over the thirteen years I worked on Tanella’s Flight, I used a lot of paper. Many of the chapters were written in longhand, then typed into the computer. The manuscript was printed out, double spaced, at nearly a ream of paper per copy, for each revision. Ten copies were printed and sent to beta-readers. By contrast, The Siege of Kwennjurat was never on paper at all until the proof copy was printed. No paper! If you buy an e-copy, then between us we have used no trees in the production of an excellent novel. If you want a print copy, then the tree-consumption is still kept at a minimum, because only copies that are ordered get printed. There is no pile of paper books sitting in a warehouse someplace gathering dust.

The publishing process of both books was different, but the writing followed roughly the same path. I have a hero...and a goal...and a whole pile of obstacles standing in his path.

Stop Four: Bayside, New York

I'm in Bayside, New York today, talking about the ins and outs of research as my international blog tour continues in support of my newest novel, The Siege of Kwennjurat. Drop by for a visit, and leave a comment or two to thank Leonard for hosting me.


http://czhorat.blogspot.com/2012/10/writing-equals-constant-research-guest.html

Stop Three: Canterbury, England

Help! My characters have just taken over my book!
Stop three on my international blog tour.

http://sophiesthoughtsandfunmbles.blogspot.com/2012/10/when-characters-take-over-guest-post-by.html

Stop Two: Phoenix, Arizona

 

Stop two of my international blog tour takes me to Phoenix, Arizona, the home of the IronQuill.

http://www.ironquill.net/coming-up-with-ideas/

Wonky Ruminations

According to dictionary.com, ruminate has two basic meanings; chewing cud, and thinking something over. Officially, no one knows how the two are connected, but I have a personal suspicion that it’s because when a cow is laying there chewing her cud, she looks like she’s thinking over a very serious and complicated problem.

If something is wonky, it is shaky, unsteady, or crooked, and likely to develop a problem or break down at any moment.

Take some time today to ruminate over the wonky things in your life. See if you can fix them before they actually break!

~Marie

Devising a Device

Devise is a verb that means you are coming up with a plan to make or do something. It is the planning stage of any project. You can devise a plot for a book, or devise someone's murder...which would make a good plot for a book, come to think of it.

Device is a noun. It is a tool of some sort.

You might use many devices to carry out the plan you devised. Remember them this way: a tool is a concrete thing. You can pick it up and hold it in your hand. Device has a “c” for “concrete”. An idea is abstract. If you tried to pick it up, it would slip through your fingers. Devise has an “s” in it, for “slip through your fingers”.

~Marie

King vs. king

Nouns come in two basic varieties. Proper nouns are the names of people or places. All the rest of the nouns are called common nouns. Proper nouns are always capitalized. Common nouns are not capitalized.

The rule is easy enough with words that are always one way or the other. No one would forget to capitalize a person's name, such as John Smith, Sarah, or Jane. Likewise, no one would forget place names, such as Canada, Kentucky, or Topeka, Kansas.

It's also easy to know not to capitalize common nouns like dog, train, or camel.

The complications arise when there is a word that is sometimes capitalized and sometimes not, like river, king, or princess. Here's how to remember when a sometimes word gets the royal treatment. It all depends on usage.

If you are referring to that river over there, or any river, a river is a pretty common thing. It's a common noun and it gets no capital. If you are talking about a particular river, and the word river is part of the name of the river, then you use the capital letter. For example, you would write the river flowed past the campground, when it could be any river and any campground. In referencing a specific river, you would write In places, the Mississippi River is more than a mile wide. In this context, the word river is part of the name of the Mississippi River, and it gets its proper capital letter, because it is a proper noun.

The same rule-of-thumb applies to royalty and other titled personages. The princess crept quietly through the woods. However, Princess Tanella stopped for lunch. Likewise, a king can sit on his throne, but only King Fergasse can pass judgment on the people of Jurat.

~Marie

Composite Characters

Today I'm pleased to introduce Gabriel Fitzpatrick, author of the digital Romance, Rmnce, who has dropped by to teach a little about creating composite characters.

 



They say that creating characters from real people lies at the vertex of laziness and subliteracy. And when I say “they,” I mean the Bitchy Goblins That Live in my Head. Yet at the same time, a composite of a dozen people becomes more than the sum of its parts, or else less than the sum of its parts. In either case, there is art in it, beauty of an open and apparent kind. More over, in an attempt to capture the mind of a generation, it pays to take a few pieces from the individual, as well as from the collective.

Britney Morgan, the female lead of Rmnce, is one of those characters. She combines a sequence of men and women whose mannerisms were unique enough to remain steadfastly in my mind, some of them for years past our parting, whose tendencies and paradigms were both a product and a mockery of those people. The irony in this is that the character came out decidedly unlikeable. She demonstrates the point of the work as well as I could ever hope for, serving her purpose flawlessly and without alteration.

Yet, as I touched on in hated characters, she exists in my mind, a personality which I could almost put in place of my own were I to choose, and perhaps part of the reason she eats at me like a Herculean poison is that she exists as an unnatural aberration, a creature of a certain sort of beauty which nonetheless simply ought not be.

Beauty in all things. So chew on that, Bitch-Goblins.

Gabriel’s new book, Rmnce, hits digital shelves October 1st! Find it on Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords.

Rmnce series is a love story told in 4 parts. It follows a couple from the first drunkenly passionate days of their college romance all the way through a life together, often tumultuous, always overwhelming, and overridingly disquieting as only true love can be.

Rmnce is not, however, your traditional love story. Or perhaps more accurately, it does not appear to be your traditional love story. It is written entirely through the communications of the couple. Text messages, emails, and even a few old-fashioned letters make up the entirety of a story, what one early reader termed "A story not so much written as formed organically in the negative space."

It is, in short, a commentary on love in the digital age, a tribute to the great love affairs of the digital generation, romance not lost in the sea of text-speak and instant gratification, but merely obscured from the prying eyes of those too far removed from its cultural roots.

 

The Bare Naked Bear

I know I spend a lot of time here defining pairs of homonyms, but there are so many of them that get abused and confused, and I feel I need to defend them. Most of the sets I write about are prompted by seeing them misused, generally in people's message board posts or on one or another of the websites I frequent.

Today the homonyms are bear and bare.

Bear, as a noun, is a large furry animal which may or may not be interested in ripping you to shreds on sight. That was one big, ugly bear! As a verb, bear means to hold up or support something, to bear a burden, or carry an object, to bear the Olympic torch, or to bring forth young or fruit to bear a child, or a tree which bears fruit.

Bare as an adjective means naked (bare legs), without the usual coverings (bare walls), or unadorned (the bare truth). If you look at all of these meanings, they can all be replaced with the word naked. The girl's naked legs, the naked walls, the naked truth. They are all without anything extra added.

Remember the difference this way: if you can substitute the word naked, use bare. Both of these words  have an e at or near the end. On the other hand, you would never say an ugly naked, and you would never consider carrying the Olympic torch naked. If you wouldn't do it naked, get the e as far from the end as possible...spell it bear.

~Marie

The Quixotic Nature of Serendipity

According to dictionary.com, the word serendipity is a noun meaning an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident. The secondary meaning is simple good luck, as in something which has come to you, rather than wishing someone else good fortune.

Quixotic is an adjective which refers to the title character in Cervantes' work Don Quixote. The three official definitions are: resembling or befitting Don Quixote; extravagantly chivalrous or romantic, visionary, or impractical; and impulsive and often rashly unpredictable.

Quixotic serendipity would therefore be good luck which arrives in a highly unpredictable manner. I would hope my own serendipity is a little more reliable and a lot less quixotic.

~Marie

We're Altogether All Together

I often wonder why English has so many words that sound like each other and mean different things. It would be a much easier language to master without this problem.

The word "altogether" means something is whole or complete. Altogether, the warning signs gave me the impression the edge of the cliff was a dangerous location.

The two-word phrase "all together" indicates that people are gathered in a group. Make sure the children are all together before we leave the museum.

Remember it this way. If it's complete, then the words are one complete piece, altogether. If you have to group the two words together, they stand for a grouping of people, all together.

~Marie

Possession is nine tenths of the letter...

Today’s grammar lesson is courtesy of my friend Dzrt Bxr, who asked me to elaborate on the possessive forms of words which already end in an “s”.

Before I get to the possessive forms, I’d like to quickly review the rules on plurals. Today’s source material comes from Meredith College’s grammar page, found http://www.meredith.edu/grammar/plural.htm here.

The plural form is used when there is more than one of whatever it is that you’re talking about. To make most nouns plural, simply add an “s” to the end. If the singular word ends in s, z, ch, sh, or x, add “es” to the end. If the singular ends in y, drop the y and add “ies”. Irregular plural forms such as man/men, person/people, and species/species don’t conform to any rule and simply must be memorized. Never add an apostrophe when making a word plural.

The possessive form is used when whatever it is that you’re talking about owns or possesses something else. If the noun is singular, add an apostrophe and the letter “s” to the end. If the noun is singular and ends in an s, x, or z, add the apostrophe all by itself. Plural nouns that already end in “s” get only an apostrophe; plural nouns not ending in “s” get an apostrophe and “s”.

Sometimes you’ll have a sentence with a compound noun (more than one noun) as the subject of the sentence. This most commonly happens with people. If the people share joint ownership, then you only add the possessive to the second person, as in Jenna and Marie’s vacation reservations to Hawaii. If they each have individual ownership of similar items, add the possessive to both names, as in Marie’s and Jenna’s grades were similar over the course of their college careers. Marie’s grades are Marie’s, and Jenna’s are Jenna’s, and they are not necessarily the same grades, however, they share a single set of reservations for a trip to Hawaii.

Remember when to use an apostrophe this way: if something owns something else, then the sentence owns an apostrophe. If there’s no ownership involved, there should be no apostrophe involved.

~Marie