Writing 101: Not All Tips Are Good

When you're a writer, there's always room for learning. It's always good to expand your knowledge, and it's never a bad idea to look up information even on the basics of writing to brush up on your grammar, punctuation and wordcrafting skills. But there's something important you need to know if you go looking for ways to improve your fiction: not all tips are good. Sometimes, the writing advice you find isn't necessarily stuff you should always follow. 

Come Again?

It might sound strange coming from me, considering the nature of my blog, but it's true: not all writing tips you find should be taken to heart. In looking around the Internet, I've found more than a few that I just plain don't agree with. 

Bad Tips

In fact, there are an awful lot of bad tips out there. If you attempt to follow every single one of them, you might end up with a book that's so cautiously written it won't make you happy. Remember that you aren't writing to please writing bloggers who think they know better. You're writing for you, and with that in mind remember these writing tips that you can simply ignore: 

• It was a dark and stormy night... 

Some writing experts suggest that writers never begin a book with the weather. It's classically considered to be one of the biggest writing mistakes -- and I disagree. You know which book begins with the weather? The Bell Jar, for one, and The Secret History, for another. I mention them because they were ranked as two of the "10 Best First Lines in Fiction" by The Guardian. Other books that open with the weather? Orwell's 1984 and George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones.

• Tagging dialogue

I read a tip where one writer stated that no other verb than "said" should be added to dialogue tags. Meaning that, at the end of most of your sentences, you should have nothing more exciting than "he said," "she said," "Sheila said," and so forth to denote your speakers. Do you want to read that book? Of course not. Just throw this tip out the window right now.

• Adverbs

Adverbs are really just adjectives, descriptive words, with -ly tacked on at the end. In one tip I discovered, the writer cautioned authors against using adverbs with dialogue tags (she said sadly; he whispered gently). So if you follow all these bad tips, not only will your book be stuffed with he said and she said, but you can't even pretty it up by adding angrily to the end if you like.

• Exclamation point!

For some reason, some bloggers and writing critics seem to hate exclamation points. One tip I read said that writers should have no more than three per 100,000 words. They must be joking!

• Regional speech

Ever tried o read Pygmalion or Gone With the Wind? If you do, you'll notice  that regional dialects are depicted (in the case of the former, London cockney, the American Deep South in the latter) and that makes them difficult to read, at times. An actual line from Pygmalion: "Wal, fewd dan y' de-ooty bawmz a mather should, eed now bettern to spawl a pore gel's flahrzn than ran awy atbaht pyin." It looks and reads like ancient Greek, but verbally the line reads a bit like this: Well, if you'd done your duty by him as a mother should, he'd know better than to spill a poor girl's flowers than run away without paying -- only pretend I'm saying it in very broad cockney. Clearly the way it's written is confusing, so there's something to the idea that writers ought to avoid it, but regional language is a big deal in some books. It's the entire premise of Pygmalion, in fact, and without it the story wouldn't make a lick of sense.

There are already lots of rules in writing, and you can't possibly follow them all. Some writers, in fact, are well-known for breaking them. Lewis Carroll simply made up words for his books, and we still use some of them today. Emily Dickinson peppered her poems with punctuation that editors hated, and her style is considered to be definitive and delightful by critics today. Some writing tips are good, and it's always worth it to expand your knowledge, but you should never attempt to follow them at the risk of cramping your own writing style. Each writer has a voice that's unique to them. Don't stifle it by playing it safe and trying to follow everyone else's advice...not even mine.

Finding the Time to Write, and Do Everything Else, Too

I blog a lot, and work on my books a lot, and a I tweet a lot. Sometimes people ask me, how do you manage to do so much? Well, I'm finally ready to shatter the illusion and give you some answers.

Read my guest post, How Do You Find the Time, to learn all my scheduling and time-saving secrets. It's not possible to do it all...but you can make it look like you are.

Books on Film: The Outsiders

The Outsiders was one of the very few books I was forced to read that I actually really loved (and actually read all the way through). At least, I thought I loved it...but then I saw the movie. Sure the story's great, but when you add the likes of Rob Lowe to it the whole thing gets turned up several notches. On film, The Outsiders is a parade of up-and-comers in sleeveless shirts, and there's nothing wrong with that.

The Book

 S. E. Hinton started writing The Outsiders at age 15, and Viking Press published it when she was only 18. That was way back in 1967, but it still sells half a million copies every year. Hinton wrote the book about the two rival gangs at her high school: the Greasers and the Socials (shorted to Socs and pronounced soshes).

The book became iconic and extremely popular right away, solidifying S. E. Hinton as a beloved YA author. The story of The Outsiders, a group of poor greasers who are endlessly pitted against the rich and privileged Socs, struck a chord with readers of all ages.

The novel begins with Ponyboy leaving a movie theater and getting jumped by a group of Socs. Lucky for Ponyboy, his two older brothers Darry and Sodapop happen by and break things up. Right away, the reader sees the conflict. We start to become a part of the Greasers' world the next night when Ponyboy and his best friend Johnny go to the movies with Dally. Of all the Greasers, Dally is the most wild. He immediately begins flirting with two pretty Soc girls, Cherry Valance and Marcia, at the drive-in. Ponyboy and Johnny walk the girls home, because that's what you do with pretty girls.

But they get seen by Bob Sheldon and Randy Adderson, two Soc boys. Greaser boys aren't supposed to hang around with Socy girls. Cherry and Marcia blow their Soc friends off and they get home safely. So does Ponyboy, but he's late. Darry, the oldest brother, is stressed out and shouldering respnsibility far beyond his years because their parents are dead. Worried about Ponyboy and frustrated, Darry hits him when he finally comes home. Upset and hurt, Ponyboy takes off again and meets up with Johnny, who has a truly terrible home life. They go to the park to blow off steam and maybe try to get some sleep.

They run into five Soc boys instead. The Socs are drunk and pissed, and they take their rage out on Ponyboy by nearly drowning him in the park fountain. Johnny, terrified, pulls out a knife and stabs Bob. He kills him accidentally in this altercation, so he and Ponyboy run off to find Dally -- the only one who can help them without judging them, or going to Ponyboy's two older brothers. Dally gives them cash, a gun, and a place to go and hide.

At the abandoned church, the boys wash their hair and Ponyboy dyes his to make himself harder to identify. He reads a poem by Robert Frost, "Nothing Gold Can Stay," which becomes a theme for the book. Because they've got so much time on their hands, Ponyboy starts reading my favorite book, Gone With the Wind, to keep himself and Johnny entertained.

Dally eventually arrives with news. The Greasers and the Socs are angrier than ever following Bob's death, and there's a rumble (a huge fight between the two groups) in the works. Johnny, feeling guilty, makes the decision to turn himself in. He certainly would have done so, but when the three Greasers return from getting some fast food they see the church on fire. To make matters worse, several kids are trapped inside the inferno. Johnny and Ponyboy run into the building to save the kids, and Johnny is severely hurt in the process. Both are taken to the hospital. Darry comes to see his baby brother and in a tearful scene between them, Ponyboy realizes how much Darry loves him.

Johnny and Ponyboy are heroes, but that doesn't change the fact that Johnny is a murderer...or that his back is broken. The rumble is also still on, a decisive battle that will end the turf dispute between the two groups. Darry allows Ponyboy to attend, and the Greasers manage to carry the day. Dally and Ponyboy go immediately to see Johnny in the hospital, who dies. Dally can't take it.

He leaves the hospital and immediately "knocks over" a store, which means he robbed it. Because he's making a huge show of himself about it, the police are on his tail pretty much immediately. Dally points an unloaded gun at one of the cops, and they shoot him dead in the street.

Ponyboy tries to go back to his life, but he can't. He struggles in school, and has just one shot at passing English: write a great theme. He ends up turning to Gone With the Wind again, and finds a note that Johnny wrote to him before he died. The note tells Ponyboy to "stay gold," and talks about how proud he is that he saved those kids. So Ponyboy sits down to the write. The first line of his theme is the first line of the book The Outsiders.

The Film

Sounds fantastic, right? A librarian at an elementary school in Fresno, California, certainly thought so. She encouraged students to write to one of the best filmmakers of the day, and of all time, because she thought it would make a great movie. Lucky for the rest of us, Francis Ford Coppola agreed with her.

As Fate would have it, Coppola loaded the cast with young actors and actresses who would go on to big fame and success. The Outsiders boats one of the finest ensemble casts ever assembled, though at the time the film's stars were just a bunch of kids most people didn't recognize. Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez, Diane Lane, Matt Dillion, Ralph Macchio, Patrick Swayze and Rob Lowe are all in the film, and all deliver great performances.

The film is very, very faithful to the book, even copying some of the dialogue straight off the page. The events of the movie mirror those of the book almost exactly, but for purists there does exist a second version of the film that's even more faithful. Coppola re-released the flick in September 2005 that includes 22 minutes of additional footage that wasn't included in the theatrical release. He adds a beginning scene that shows Ponyboy's fight in front of the movies and scenes near the end. The score is also changed in this second version, featuring more music that was popular during the 1960s (when the story takes place).

What Got Adapted? 

There are, of course, some differences between the book and the film. No matter how faithful, no two-hour movie can successfully capture every detail revealed in a book -- even a relatively short YA novel. The film watcher doesn't ever know much about the history of the three boys (Ponyboy, Sodapop and Darry). The movie has also has taken some flak over the years for (of all things) casting. Dally is written as a blonde, which Matt Dillon clearly is not. Nor is Rob Lowe, though he plays Sodapop who is supposed o have lighter hair. Two-Bit, played by Estevez, is taller with sideburns, and some fans felt that Two-Bit's character wasn't jocular enough on film.

But in the main, The Outsiders is an amazingly accurate film reproduction of a book that's controversial and very evocative of a society where the rich and the poor are constantly at odds. Is there any question why that story still resonates so strongly today?

A Week of Lies...

Justice is being featured next week  on one of my favorite book blogs. Take a look at this introductory post to find out what sorts of fun things you can expect and to participate in a discussion about assigned school reading.

Writing 101: Staying Organized

Creativity is chaotic by nature. Inspiration may strike at any time, even when it's inconvenient, and you may think of the ending for a book long before you come up with a viable beginning. Sometimes, a setting might strike you first and you end up building a story around it. No matter what your process might be, staying organized is the only way you're going to write a book without making yourself completely crazy (or turning your book into a big mess). 

How to Do It

Ideas don't arrive in a neat, orderly fashion, and all the pieces of a book probably aren't going to come together in order. That means you have to make notes as they come to you, and figure out how all of them come to together while you're writing. If you're unorganized, you're going to lose your great ideas. You're going to have trouble finding all your notes and remembering all your information, and wind up wasting a bunch of time looking back through your book to figure it all out. The more time you spend looking for some bit of information or note, the less time you spend writing. Organize your book materials neatly, and you'll end up with a much more cohesive story.

• People, places and things. Before you ever start writing, it's a good idea to create separate files for your outline and character sheet. I'm a firm believer in the pre-plotted outline, but lots of authors like to fly by the seat of their pants. Whichever way you want to do it, create an outline anyway. Once you're done with a chapter, start filling in the outline with the main events. Why do this? If you need to know what happens when, it's a lot quicker to look at the outline than to scroll through your manuscript in an attempt to find it. The character sheet will help you keep track of everyone's names, likenesses and pertinent information -- and it's invaluable.
• Filing. Where on your hard drive are you storing your book files? If they're spread out across different directories, you're just making more work for yourself. Put all your files together, both text- and image-based, in a single folder. The folder's title? The name of the book! It sounds simple, but lots of people store their text and image files separately. When it comes to your book, just keep everything together and save yourself a lot of stress and clicking around. 
• The manuscript. Don't store your manuscript in a bunch of different files. I used to open a new file for each and every chapter, and it was a horrifically bad idea. The first few books I wrote had titled chapters, so guess what I ended up with? That's right: a folder full of document files with delightfully random names. Searching for specific scenes was a nightmare. Use just one file for the whole manuscript; this will make ebook formatting and writing much, much easier.
• Physical materials. Just in case you're not confined to your laptop like I am and you actually put together some physical items for your book, you're going to want to put your hands on them easily. You might have handwritten notes, printed images -- I don't know what you've got. But if it's attached to your book, you've got to keep it organized wisely where you can get to it. Where? In a folder, of course! They don't just exist electronically. Put all that stuff together in a folder or a binder, and keep it close to your writing space so you can access it any time. Don't keep anything else in the folder or binder but the stuff for your book. When you start a new book, get a new folder! Write the name of the book on the outside with marker (or use a label if you're fancy) and you're ready to write. 
• Time to write. Staying organized means making time to actually write the book, too. Lots of indie authors have families, full-time jobs, responsibilities and social lives. Squeezing time in to write can be difficult (and I struggle with it all the time). Set aside a couple of hours every day, or a full day each week, that's just for writing time. Organize your schedule to make it work, and try to pay attention to when you're feeling most creative and when you get your best writing done. Make writing one of your scheduled responsibilities. 
• Stay neat. Keep your writing area neat and organized overall, and make sure the files and folders on your computer are sensibly organized as well. Your space has to have order to it as well. A chaotic environment isn't the best space for being creative, because it's distracting. If you're going to write, you need to be able to access all your materials quickly and you can't do that in a messy space. I'm not telling you to dust and disinfect every day, but at least try to keep everything in manageable piles to maintain some semblance of order. It will be much easier to get work done, you'll see! 

Control the chaos, and it's much easier to create. Your mind and your ideas are probably going to be chaotic. When you stay organized about it, you're in a much better position to do something wonderful with them.

Another Reviewer Falls in Love with Justice

"I LOVED every minute of it!!"

"The plot itself was utterly gripping. There’s a lot of mystery at every turn."

Justice has just been reviewed at BookAThonFreak! Visit the blog to read the whole thing, and don't forget that the book is available free from Smashwords for just a few more days. If you haven't already got your copy, get it before the July release celebration for Death is over! 

Writing 101: That That

If you spend any significant amount of time writing, the question is going to come up: when is it okay to consecutively repeat words? Most often, this question will arise in sentences where the word that appears. It might sounds silly at first blush -- who would write a sentence with that that in it? -- but I've seen it...a lot. And under any and all circumstances, no matter which big-selling author does it in their bestselling book, it is wrong. At times it may feel unavoidable, but it never is.

Repetition

I've blogged about over-use of the word that in the past, but it bears repeating. What doesn't need to be repeated is words. Always remember this: twice in a row is too many. 

Scoff if you will, but that that actually crops up more often than you might think. In fact, when I went looking for examples of the dreaded that that, I found too many: 

"I tell you, I gotta plead ignorance on this thing, because if anyone had said anything to me at all when I first started here that that sort of thing is frowned upon... you know, 'cause I've worked in a lot of offices, and I tell you, people do that all the time."

-George Costanza (played by Jason Alexander), Seinfeld

"If I said yes, that would then suggest that that might be the only place where it might be done which would not be accurate, necessarily accurate. It might also not be inaccurate, but I'm disinclined to mislead anyone."
-Donald Rumsfeld

"It is perfectly true that that government is best which governs least. It is equally true that that government is best which provides most."
-Walter Lippmann

The quotes above could easily give a reader pause; when you hear the words spoken in the cadence of dialogue, they do make perfect sense. But chances are pretty good that I'm not reading your book out loud -- and as an author, you've got to use a bit better grammar than this. So if a team of authors (or just one) cleaned up the quotes above to eliminate the dreaded that that, what might they look like? 

I'm so glad you asked: 

• I tell you, I gotta plead ignorance on this thing, because if anyone had said anything to me at all when I first started here that sort of thing is frowned upon... you know, 'cause I've worked in a lot of offices, and I tell you, people do that all the time.

Sometimes, you can simply eliminate one of the thats and find that the sentence still makes perfect sense. It's also cleaner and, most importantly, grammatically correct.

• If I said yes, that would then suggest that it might be the only place where it might be done which would not be accurate, necessarily accurate. It might also not be inaccurate, but I'm disinclined to mislead anyone.
• It is perfectly true that a government is best which governs least. It is equally true that a government is best which provides most.

In some cases, that simply needs to be replaced with another word; which, who and it are often your best options.

But it's not always so easy. When the repeated words end and start two separate sentences, or contractions get involved, the grammar rules start to get a bit blurred:

"I guess I still feel that I'm a comedian; if I had to pick one thing that I feel like I could do, it would be that. That doesn't mean that I like it, but I feel that's what I am."
-Larry David

"We can make sure that we resolve the issues. And I think that that's what the Tea Party was all about."
-Allen West

Iffy, right? When the same word ends one sentence and begins the very next sentence, you aren't technically breaking any grammar rules -- but you should see if you can tweak your sentences so the two don't end up running up against each other. And in the case of using that that's, usually the first that can be eliminated and you won't lose any of the sentence's meaning. When the writing gets tricky, read it several times and play with your words. See if you can make sensible substitutions and eliminations to clean it up; if you think it sounds better with repeated words, leave it in.

And the Exception...

Of course, there are exceptions to just about every rule of grammar, and that's that. In this case, literally. The phrase that's that is extremely common, and technically it doesn't break any rules. The contraction that's is really just a shorter way of writing that is, so when someone says that's that they're actually saying that is that -- so no words are being repeated.

Writing 101: Learn How to Summarize

It's important to write rich and descriptive text, a fact I've expounded upon more than once, but you also have to learn how to edit out all the uninteresting details, too. In any book, there are several plot points you need to hit to make your story work. All of those scenes should be vivid and embellished, so the readers can see all the events unfolding in their mind's eye. But there are always additional moments that happen in-between the action...and I really don't want to know a whole lot about them. If you're going to write books, you'd better learn how to summarize the boring moments and skip ahead in the narrative. 

Details, Details, Details

Lots of readers love long books, and I used to. Half of the enjoyment of the later Harry Potter books lies in the fact that they're massive. But no one wants to read a whole bunch of nothing. Some details aren't important. 

Your characters live a life on the page...but let's face it, every moment of that life can't possibly be interesting. Maybe your character spends a Sunday just hanging around the house in sweatpants eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. What I really don't need is a long, descriptive post about the making of the aforementioned sandwiches. I know what it's like to sit around and do nothing, and most people are sure to be fairly familiar with the mechanics of a good old PB and J. Every hour isn't enticing, and every day isn't exciting. So you're going to have to learn how to skip them -- and still let me know that they happened, because you don't want a bunch of lost time in your book. 

It's not easy to summarize non-events, to skip ahead in a character's life to get to the more interesting parts. But if you don't, and you end up writing hugely detailed passages in which almost nothing whatsoever happens, people are going to skip your books.

Summarizing the Gaps

You can't have a bunch of time gaps in your book (Tuesday we went to the mall and... The next Friday we were at the movies when...), but you also can't have a bunch of useless scenes of daily life where nothing much goes on. Every scene should be relevant to the plot of the story, or offer up some needed information. If it doesn't, it's useless. Sometimes, you've got to skip over the spaces in-between.

The secret to doing so lies in summarizing. It's easy to skip past a night of sleep. You put the character to bed, and the next scene begins with something like "When I woke up..." Skipping quickly through entire days, weeks or months when there's not a lot going on is a bit trickier -- but it can be done with a single sentence. I saw it done once with an entire year. To paraphrase, it went something like Another year passed, in the same manner as the first. This is always an option. Monday and Tuesday dragged by uneventfully. There are a million ways to write it.

But it's not always so easy. You might still need to provide the reader with some information. Something might happen that's not all that interesting, but you've still got to let people know about it. I saw Sheila again on Friday, but once again she walked past me without saying a word. By the time Monday came back around... Again, the secret is in the summary. 

Writers tend to be long-winded. That's because five minutes might take 10 pages to pass in a book. So for many, summarizing doesn't come easy. Here's how to make it happen: think about the main points you need to convey; think about how much time needs to pass; write just that information. These bridges between gaps don't have to be flowery, they just need to be simple and succinct. Every sentence doesn't need to be fancy, just like every detail doesn't need to be shared.