Writing 101: The Difference Between Toward and Towards

Are you moving toward success with your writing...or towards it? Make sure your use of grammar in writing isn't untoward, and figure out what your words mean before you use them. That's right: it's time to find the real difference between toward and towards. There's got to be some reason they're two different words...right?

 Toward vs. Towards

In the dictionary, toward means in the direction of. Contrary-wise, towards means toward (seriously, go look it up). Basically, the takeaway from this is that there is no difference whatsoever between the two words.

So which one are you supposed to be using? Either one you like. Both words have the same meaning, and I'm pretty certain the letter s simply showed up at the end of toward in order to confuse writers. The no-s version is actually more common in American English, while towards is more frequently seen in British English. Whichever one you like the best is the one you ought to use. Change 'em up, switch 'em around, use them both with maniacal glee -- you pretty much can't go wrong unless you totally ignore the definition. Usually, the addition of the s changes the meaning of words...but not in this case. Toward and towards just happen to be a strange word pair that know no rules, so feel free to go crazy.

Justice Reviewed, One Page at a Time

"Varden's writing was compelling and left me thoroughly entertained."

Danica Page has kindly reviewed Justice (Deck of Lies, #1) on her blog, Taking it One Page at a Time. Go and read the whole thing before you decide if you want a copy of your own.

Writing 101: How to Properly Write Numbers, Dates, Years and Times

It's time to clear up some confusion. Too many authors are all over the place when it comes to writing numbers, dates, years and times in their books. Find out if there are rules when it comes to writing numbers in fiction, exactly what the rules are, and what authors need to know to keep their work clean, readable, and formatted in a sensible way.

You Are Not Writing for a Newspaper

We all love AP style. It's an industry standard in newspaper writing, online writing and magazine writing of all kinds. It's a college course, and it's a requirement in English classes all over the nation.

It's also incorrect when you're writing a novel. When you're trying to figure out how to properly format your numbers, dates, years and times, the first thing you need to do is set fire to the AP style book. Do not follow these rules when you are writing prose for a novel -- fiction or non. The only time you'll need to know AP style if you write books, in fact, is if you plan to quote a newspaper article that appears in the book (but that's another post).

That said, you're also not writing for your college professor. So don't let me find out that you're using MLA style, either.

When it comes to writing a novel, you're not going to find a single, handy style guide that's going to help you out -- and I'm positive this is from where the trouble stems. Plenty of authors have published plenty of books on the topic, but I'm not about to recommend one of them because I don't own any them. I'm sure they're all wonderful. But when it comes to properly writing numbers, dates, years and times, you don't need an entire book to tell you how to do it. You only need to master a few very simple rules.

Writing Numbers in Novels

That subheading ins't there because I'm trying to be cute with my post. It's a reminder. When you are writing a book, you are writing -- so write it out. That's the first rule of properly formatting your text.

• Write it out

Again, because I can't stress this enough, you're not using AP style. So spell your numbers out in total, unless they're gigantic. Spell out everything above five, everything above nine, and don't forget to format your compound numbers. Whether it's fifty-seven or twenty-one, compound numbers are always written with a dash in-between and both numbers spelled out in full. Spell out large numbers like five million and three thousand. If you're writing a large and complicated number, however, say four thousand one hundred and eighty-four, it's going to read better and look better as 4,184. Always use the number comma in four-digit numerals.

• Fractions

Your fractions should likewise be fully written as compound numbers: Roughly one-half of the students in class were asleep by the time he finished explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis in full, bleak detail. How terrible does it look to write 1/2 instead? Isn't that the ugliest thing you ever saw? Now try reading it in a half-dozen indie books without running outside and screaming your head off. This is what I struggle with.

• Calendar dates

I have to put a lot of dates in my books, because there's a lot of detail about when people were born, when they died, and so on. Writing dates is very tricky, so when you're doing it make sure you're paying attention. My character can be born on January 17, but she can't be born on the 17th of Jan. You shouldn't ever use an abbreviation in your book, unless it's a common acronym (like PETA, or BA for Bachelor of Arts degree). It's not okay to write January as Jan unless you're specifically referencing something that appears in a text or an email (or something similar). It's not okay use 2nd, 11th, or any of the above. Write out second and seventeenth. It's just a few more letters, and it looks 100 percent better. You're writing a book...there's no rush.

• Years

Years should always be expressed as numerals except in very specific circumstances. It's cumbersome to write July 5, nineteen eighty-six, and looks silly. For years, it's always okay to use 1986, even in dialogue. It's also okay to use the year abbreviation in dialogue, for example '86 or '02, but make sure you use the apostrophe. Also, don't use the abbreviation in non-dialogue prose (example: Amber hadn't thought of Tim since '06, the year of the senior prom). Again, you're not in a hurry -- typing that extra digit isn't going to hurt you, and it looks better.

• Decades

Many writers get this wrong -- not just in books, but everywhere I look. In prose, you really should be spelling out your decades (back in the seventies, Mr. Hamm experimented a little too much). But if you've just got to use the numerals, please do so correctly. It's '80s, never ever ever ever 80's. Why? because when an apostrophe precedes the s, you're usually showing possession. Are you saying that the number 80 has ownership of something, or are you referring to it? It's 1980s. It's never going to be 1980's.

• Times

If I'm a character in a book, I might celebrate tea time at four o'clock or even 4 o'clock. I might go out for my date at 8 PM or eight PM, or end up running late and not make it until 8:10 PM. What I'm not going to do is go to my date at eight-oh-five PM, unless I'm doing so inside dialogue. No other formatting is correct for times. If you're using numerals (ex. 8:10 PM), you must always use the colon. You don't have to capitalize PM and AM, though this is the accepted abbreviation. Some writers find the caps a little jarring, so you can switch to the lowercase pm if it really matters to you.

Be Consistent

Most importantly of all, be consistent. Even if you break all the rules above and do your own thing, do it consistently to keep your pages from looking like a hot mess. However you want to write your numbers, dates and times, always do it the same way. Otherwise, you look like you don't know what you're doing, and your readers are going to be confused.

Death: An Exclusive Excerpt

 I'll be revealing the cover for Death (Deck of Lies, #3) in less than two weeks, and you've only got a little longer than that to wait for the book's release. Until then, I'm releasing this exclusive excerpt that you can't find anywhere else. Keep reading! 

     I nearly shouted with glee when I saw Fallon’s familiar curvy figure leaning against my locker door. She’s a little taller than me, but Fallon had a habit of slouching and turning her shoulders inward that made us almost look the same size -- at least vertically.
     “Where have you been?” I was so pleased, I leapt forward to give her a hug.
     “I wasn’t in the mood this morning,” she shrugged. “But I showed up in time for lunch. Thanks for not bailing on school again today.”
     “Yeah, I know. Sorry about that. I wasn’t feeling well.” It wasn’t really a lie. I’d been feeling terrible the last few days, but not in the way I was trying to suggest to Fallon.
     “Suuure.” She wasn’t buying it, anyway.
     “Listen, Fall, I need to borrow your car.” I finished shoving books into my locker and turned to look at her, straight into her vivid blue-green eyes so she would know how serious I was.
     “What? What for? Is something wrong with yours?”
     “No, not at all. In fact, you can take mine.” I reached into my Polo purse to pull out the keys and shoved them toward her.
     “Rain, what’s going on?” She didn’t reach to take them.
     “I can’t really explain right now, Fallon.” I took her right hand in mine and turned it face up so I could drop the keys inside. “Just hang onto them until I get back. I’ll meet you in the parking lot at the end of the school day. If something happens and I’m not back, just take the car for today and you can drive it to school tomorrow.”
     “Rain!” She tried to shove the keys back at me, but I’d crossed my arms. “I can’t take your car home. My mom will flip.”
     “Look, I’ll be back in time. She’ll never find out. Has it got gas in it? Where are your keys?”
     “Rain!”
     “Be quiet,” I hissed at her. “This is really important. It’s…it’s about Laurel, Fall.”
     “Laurel?” She looked down, hiding her expression with a curtain of long bluish-black hair. “Is it really, or are you just saying that?”
     “Fall,” I reached out to put a hand on her shoulder. “It is really about Laurel, and it is really important. I’ll be back in time. Wait for me.”
     “Okay. I guess.” I tried not to let her see me celebrate while she dug into her purse for the keys. Fallon held onto my hand after she slapped the keys inside, her bright gaze boring into me. “Not one scratch. And I want my seat put back the way I had it when you’re done.”
     “It’ll be just like I was never there,” I assured her. I sprang forward to give her a quick hug, then fled down the hall before she could change her mind. I would take Fallon’s car straight to the police station, explain everything to Edwards over the next two class periods, and then meet her when school let out for the day. The von Sheltons would never even know. It was a perfect plan.

     For once, everything seemed to work in my favor. I made it all the way to the parking lot without getting spotted, not even by another student who was sneaking away from school grounds, and saw Fallon’s tiny yellow Porsche convertible pretty quickly. She was parked way in the back, because she’d been late. I ran toward the car, weaving through the high-end automobiles that packed the student lot.
     Freedom was just a few steps away when I stepped into one of the wide lanes. My eyes were fixed on the distinct round headlights of Fallon’s Porsche, the keys gripped in my hand. Everything was going to be okay. I heard the squeal of tires at the same time the thought went whizzing through my head, and turned toward the noise instinctively.
     A Mercedes-Benz was barreling toward me at full speed. For a moment I was completely frozen, my legs turned to cement columns beneath me. The car was almost close enough to touch when I heard my own voice in my head, screaming at me to MOVE, and I jerked myself to the right.
     I hit the asphalt roughly, skinning a knee and the heel of my left hand as I went down on all fours. The car blew by me, and I realized how close I’d just come to certain doom. “Slow down!” I screamed, even though the vehicle had already reached the end of the lane and jerked into a screeching turn. I watched it as I picked myself up and tried to brush off my skirt, speeding down the lane next to me. At the end, the car wrenched into a left turn…and started coming down my lane again.

Writing 101: Are You Treating H Like a Vowel?

Do your characters wait for about an hour, or a hour? Does it make a difference that the word hour is pronounced without its H? Should I write that my books delve deeply into a history of a very deceitful family, or an history? Are you treating H like a vowel...and do you know any of the answers?

Why I Hate Words That Start with H

You might think every letter in the alphabet is equal, that all 26 of them are totally benign. The truth is, some of those letters are actually ticking time bombs -- and they may have already detonated inside your book. If you think Y is a tricky letter, you've never gone 10 rounds with the letter H.

The problem with H is that sometimes it audibly shows up to the word party, announcing itself loudly and proudly. Other times, it sneaks in with other letters uninvited. Before you know it, H has spiked the punch, set the carpet on fire and done who-knows-what to get A all bent out of shape. There goes your word party...now you're just breaking up fights between consonants and vowels. Before you know it, some reader's bound to call in the Grammar Police (and those guys are totally un-fun).

H is most troublesome when it starts off a word. Brits won't even pronounce it, and all the rest of us have to remember when it makes a noise and when it doesn't. In American English, H is always pronounced in words like hard, head, hand, hell, hair and heavy. It's sometimes pronounced in words like herb, but it's never pronounced in the words hour, homage or heiress. Words might have a hard H, a soft H, an H that can't make up its mind, or an H that pretends other letters aren't already in front of it (H totally takes the limelight in words like whose, for example, but never in why).

And when your H-word appears immediately after a single A, that's when all the trouble begins. It's common to say "an hour" and "an heiress," but the H never rears its ugly sound in those words. What about when you're using words with a hard H? Should you be writing "an history lesson" instead of "a history lesson?"

Do you treat H like a vowel all of the time, or only some of the time...and when do you know the difference?


A Heck of An Arduous Task

As we all know, the word "a" becomes "an" when it comes in front of a word that begins with a vowel. You have to write that your character picked up an apple and put down a banana. But what if she's eating ham or hummus instead?

It all depends on how she's pronouncing it, actually. Because ham starts with a hard H, your character can eat a ham...she can't eat an ham. The rule actually applies to every single word that starts with a vowel. You wouldn't write that after she eats her ham, she goes to the airport to get an one-way ticket, would you? The word one certainly begins with O (you don't need grammar tips to know that), but it's pronounced WON -- with a hard W sound.

So, if I'm writing a history of a deceitful family without an honorable bone between them, I might have a hard time with figuring out how to best present an H-word...and editing it for proper a and an usage is a headache. If you start having trouble with your a and an usage, just read your text aloud. The pronunciation that comes most commonly to you (herb instead of erb, for instance) is the one you ought to use for your read-along grammar check. Whatever sounds more natural to your ear is almost always the right decision.

Use an Online Grammar Checker to Perfect Your Work

I write a lot about grammar in my writing 101 posts, because it's always difficult. There are tons of rules in the English language, and they're pretty easy to forget. Every indie author has to proofread and edit their own work to make sure it's perfect, but it can't hurt to get a second opinion. Why can't that second opinion be a website?

Check Your Grammar Online

 If you're not sure about a certain sentence or a certain passage in your book, and it's something I haven't already covered in one of my writing 101 posts, an online grammar checker can provide a simple, quick spot-check. There are several of them online, not all of them free, but I like this one best. You simply highlight the text you're unsure about with your mouse, copy it, then paste it directly into the blank box on the site. The corrected text will appear in the second blank box, just beneath the first. Words that have been changed will be underlined in both passages.

It's a very convenient tool, but it's not at all a viable way to proofread your entire book. Most grammar checkers cannot handle huge chunks of text; anything more than two paragraphs probably won't go through the system smoothly. You could spend hours, even days, checking everything paragraph-by-paragraph. It's a huge waste of time, and you'll serve your work much better by proofing it yourself. But if you do have something tricky you want to double-check, an online grammar checker is an easy, quick solution.

If changes do need to be made to your work according to the grammar checker, make sure you know why. The more your own understanding of the rules of language expands, the better your writing will be. It's very easy to rely on Internet tools to do a lot of the work, and sometimes it might even be necessary, but it's the author's job to be the word expert. Don't let the Internet become a crutch, and don't let it keep you from understanding the craft of writing. Internet tools should be used to help you expand your knowledge, not to keep you from learning.

Kindlegraph Your Books

Traditional authors definitely have the edge on indie book writers. Their books are put in print as well as digital editions, and their books are available in book stores and libraries. But the gap between indies and traditionals is getting smaller and smaller all the time. With kindlegraph, indies don't even need to put their books on paper to give away signed copies of their work.

 eSignatures

What goes perfectly with an ebook? An esignature from the author, of course. If writers can sign their paper copies, why can't you sign electronic copies of your work? Kindlegraph says you can, and I'm fascinated by the service. 

Getting started is amazingly easy. Simply go to the site and sign in with your Twitter account. Look for the blue author sign up link at the bottom of the page, and get your Kindlegraph account all set up. The system may not recognize your name immediately, so you'll probably have to manually add your books. Doing so is quite easy; you just need to enter the ISBN or ASIN number of the book. You can add all your books to the system, and you'll be ready to go. 

Once you're signed in and you've added books, go right to your account and you'll find new requests for each of your books. It's a nice little addition of the system, and a chance for you to practice your kindlegraph. Once you're in the system, you're free to accept kindlegraph requests at will. Promote the service to let readers and fans know you're offering it, and you might be pleasantly surprised by autograph requests. You're not going to make money from it, but it is a very nice little extra you can offer to readers, and it takes you one step closer to all those more traditional authors out there.

Review: The Super Spies and the Cat Lady Killer

 Lisa Orchard contacted me about writing a review for The Super Spies and the Cat Lady Killer, and I'm glad she did. It's a fun mystery read for kids, but even though it's peppered with pop culture references and lots of humor that will definitely appeal to the age group, Orchard knows how to be dark. Fear, suspense, thrills, jokes -- it's all here. I'm definitely not in Orchard's target audience, but I absolutely enjoyed this book.

The formatting and justification are perfect, always an important point, and I had to search hard to find a single mistake in the entire book. At no point does the story feel slow, and I wasn't even tempted to stop reading before the final page.

I very much enjoyed the main character Sarah, who is brave to a fault when she's seeking justice; Jackie, the fiercely loyal fashionista; and Lacey, the loveable klutz with a big heart...and two left feet. Together, they form the Super Spies, a group which soon includes a potential love interest for one of the girls. But they're not just playing detective -- they're playing a dangerous game that involves kidnappers, killers and secrets that go back three decades.

The plot is easy to follow, and overall the story is quite well-written. Early in the book, the Super Spies find themselves knee-deep in murder and in very real danger. There's more than one edge-of-your-seat scene, and thanks to Orchard's vivid writing I was frightened several times. Who will stop them first: the police...or the killers? 

The story unfolds beautifully, and I truly enjoyed the relationships and interactions in Sarah's life. The quick, close friendship she develops with Jackie feels very natural, particularly the quips they trade back and forth. The relationship she has with kid sister Lacey is equally poignant. I look forward to seeing how the characters develop in the next Super Spies mystery.

The term mystery is stretched just a little in the story, though in the main it does qualify for the genre. The killer is revealed very early, so there isn't much of a mystery about that, and the big twist for the second crime was easy to figure out even midway through the book. Some of the references are a little hokey and borderline unbelievable. The reporter named Scoop, for example, is just a little too precious. The fact that everyone in town seems highly supportive of these teenagers, who are clearly playing a dangerous game, goes beyond being farfetched. A scene near the end where the Super Spies get some recognition for their efforts is, in a word, preposterous.

But at the end of the day, the book is written for kids -- and kids will surely delight in the pulse-pounding action, the terror-inducing danger and the fact that together, four teenagers just might be smarter than an entire police department. Sarah is a heroine that's easy to believe in and look up to, and the warmth of friendship that permeates each page is sure to inspire good feelings. The book gives children the idea that they can do anything, figure anything out, so long as they stay true to themselves and to each other, and that is truly exceptional writing. Next time I find myself in a quiet little New England town, I'm sure I'll be looking around at the shaded houses and peaceful streets, wondering about all the many secrets that lurk beneath the surface...and peeking in library windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Super Spies.