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One of my favorite writing guides is, The Elements of Style, by Strunk & White. My first brush with the guide was as a senior in high school. My favorite instruction is, “Vigorous writing is concise.” I haven’t always followed that advice, but the more I’ve written, the more I appreciate it.

When describing a scene, character, or event, our natural tendency is to include every detail we see in our mind’s eye. Be it colors, textures, emotions, or movement, we want the reader to get the full picture. The problem is, we sometimes obscure what is most important with details the reader doesn’t need. I’ve done it more than once or thirty times myself.

I’m a detail oriented observer. It’s only natural for me to include those details when I write. Fortunately, I’ve had critique partners who helped me see beyond the crush of description. In my writing today (I hope to) show enough to build the scene, imply enough for the readers’ imagination to fill in the gaps, and avoid extra words, sentences and paragraphs. (Thank you William Strunk Jr. & E.B. White)

You’ve built this incredible, expansive world for your characters. Naturally you want to show it off. You send your characters on a tour of the majesty you’ve created. They may have no reason, or a thinly veiled mission to find the butter for their toast. In the process the search every nook and cranny of whatever you want to show off.

Another peril of too much detail comes from what some writers call journaling. This is not much more than a record of what your character does, where she goes, or conversations she has. Its often filler material for the author to move a character from one scene to another, but they can’t bring themselves to say, “The next evening…”

Details can bring a scene to life, they can make a character memorable, and they can help with any aspect of your story. Too many details, or including them for no real reason, can leave your writing dense and confusing. If readers are assaulted by too many details, they won’t have any idea what they should focus on or remember for later in the story. Give your reader everything they need, you won’t be there to explain the story, but avoid unnecessary details.

I travelled a lot when I was younger. I joined the navy right after high school and saw more of the world than I thought I ever would. Some of the places I visited were amazing, some were awful, and a few felt like variations on a theme. I’m thankful for each place I got to visit from Varna, Bulgaria to San Juan, Puerto Rico.

This post is all about my favorite places. These are cities and sites that I’d love to revisit over and over again. Each has a special memory attached, or a funny story. In some cases I’m just glad to be alive and in one piece. Some of these destinations even made their way into my books!

Number 1: Stonehenge, England. The standing stones of Salisbury plain have fascinated me since I was a kid. The idea that our ancestors brought some of the stones from over one hundred miles away is mind boggling. We can only guess at why they did all that work, but it had a big impact on me. I felt more spiritual there than in any church or synagogue I’ve ever been in.

Number 2: Athens, Greece. The Acropolis in particular was my goal as soon as I could get off the ship. Two of my shipmates and I hurried to Athens from Piraeus. We found a museum at the foot of the hill, and thought we were on a path to the Parthenon. We were not. Instead the stone stairs ended half way up the hillside, and we climbed the last little hint of a path to a rocky outcrop. We were behind the ‘off limits for your safety’ ropes on what turned out to be St Paul’s Rock. At least we saved a few Drachmas on admission…

Number 3: Rome, Italy. I joined the navy in part, because of a picture in the brochure of a sailor exploring the colosseum. I got to recreate that picture, explore Caracalla’s Baths, and St Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City with a day trip bus tour group. Before the Vatican, we had a fabulous lunch and ordered too much wine. I was a bit tipsy on our way to the Vatican, but sobered up enough to answer the tour guide’s trivia questions.

Number 4: Stockholm, Sweden. The ship pulled into port at Gamla Stan (old town) Stockholm after following the archipelago from the sea. The transit to the city was breathtaking, so many islands, the water and islands holds a rugged beauty for mile after mile. When the city came into sight, it was one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever seen in real life.

Number 5: Jerusalem, Israel. I took another bus tour from Haifa, Israel to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. We also visited a spa on the Dead Sea, toured Masada, and stayed over night at a hostel in Tel Aviv. It was all amazing. There is so much tension, hope, and violence focused in such a small area. I visited the Church of the Sepulcher, the stations of the cross in the old city, and I even stuffed a paper prayer into a crack in the Wailing Wall.

Number 6: Barcelona, Spain. For me, Barcelona is the kind of city that might spring up if New York City and Miami had a baby. There is so much excitement, the city never sleeps, but it’s also laid back like a beach town should be. I was able to visit Studio 54 in Barcelona before it closed. I still remember the at least ten foot tall (fifteen feet with her pedestal) Statue of Liberty in the middle of their dancefloor. Lady liberty had her skirt up as if to dance with the crowd to the pounding beat of the music that filled the cavernous dance hall. I knew I was in the right place!

Those are my favorites. I’ve been to other places, but wouldn’t rush back again. There are plenty of places I wish I’d never visited to begin with. I’ll make a post of my least favorite places to visit someday. I don’t travel much anymore, but the right destination might still be worth the effort.

Authors write what they know. So the own voices movement within publishing makes sense to me. An author of color should be free to write stories unique to their perspective. Likewise, stories about religious affiliation, sexual orientation, and other ethnicities should be told by members of their communities. This is the way, as is right, and good.

So what does that leave on the table? I’m a middle aged, white man with an overactive imagination. Unlike many other authors, I don’t write what I know, I write what I imagine. The main characters of my debut novel, Fantastic America, are a woman, a black man, and a serial killer. I have little or nothing in common with these characters, except that we are all human, live on versions of the same planet, and they sprang to life from my imagination.

I don’t feel like I’ve appropriated their stories. I’m not writing about Ashley’s religion, but I do write about her faith. I don’t write about Daniel’s struggle as a black man in America, but I do write about his effort to safeguard a country that has persecuted black people for generations. I don’t see ghosts or kill people, but I write about Jerry’s psychotic urge to kill.

My argument for writing these stories is simple enough. I write fiction, specifically fantasy. No one expects authors to stop writing about aliens, dwarves, or superheroes, those own voices don’t exist. They are make believe people, performing heroic make believe acts, in wildly different make believe worlds.

The characters I write about are all make believe. Fantastic America is an invention of how I imagine real people would react to fantastic situations. Not grounding those stories in an attempt at real people would undermine the premise of these stories. I’m still the only person who can write what I see in my mind’s eye.

So I’m going to lean into writing characters to be inclusive in my worldbuilding. I’m going to keep focusing on how they react, not the community they come from. I have no pretense about belonging to these communities. From my perspective, as simple-minded as it may be, we’re all part of the human community anyway. I refuse to white wash my characters to fit some preconceived, if well intentioned, notion of how I should write.

Emotions, especially when writing fiction, are critical to successfully connecting to your audience. That’s a no-brainer of course, but executing those emotions on the page is not always so easy. Showing emotions, rather than telling your readers how someone feels, is one of the most written about topics for writers, with good reason.

Human emotion is complex, there are limitless nuances, and when written, subtext to consider. That poses a challenge for any writer, but new writers (those without a lot of writing experience) struggle to show all of that. It’s one of the first roadblocks fiction writers encounter leading to, “show don’t tell”.

Emotion is also a broad category. The picture above is a good slice of potential emotions, but there is always more to capture for your readers. The complexity and breadth of emotions can lead to a terrible writing sin, flat characters. Emotionless, wooden people who are more like posable action figures than living humans (or aliens, elves, unicorns, etc.). The alternative is just as bad, melodramatic, over the top characters who react in bizarre ways to plot developments or routine activities.

Once you get it right, emotions are the bedrock for your stories. How you use emotions can mesmerize your readers with your thoughtful portrayal of a character. This is another place you can lose that reader entirely. More than internal thoughts or dialogue, how your audience responds to how your characters feel grounds them in your world. Even if that world is inherently strange or difficult to understand, feelings are universal and timeless.

For every one of those stories that take our breath away, there are dozens that don’t quite capture our imagination. In my writing, specific scenes I’ve written come to mind that I’ve grappled with showing feelings. There is only one way to fix that. You have to write your way through it. Once you have words on the page (even words you don’t like), you can revise them forever.

So take your time, write what comes to mind. Examine it afterwards and ask yourself, would I feel this way in this situation? The answer may surprise you. It may be that you have no frame of reference for an emotion. Fortunately, we live in an age where you can find plenty of help framing an idea or feeling. So, write. Revise. Repeat.

Not because of the pandemic, either. Yes, I masked up. I used to just browse for what looks fun to read, and I still do that. The difference surprised me once I got in the store.

On my last visit to a book store I realized how much I’ve drifted away from the simpler joy of browsing. When I got inside, I zeroed in on the Fantasy section, which is normal enough for me. No stops at the Science Fiction section, or casual browsing till I got there, which is different.

Once I reached the Fantasy area my author instincts took over. I was on a mission for comparative titles to Fantastic America. Fun took a back seat. Eye catching titles got my attention not for how they looked, but for the design elements that might fit my books. The writer’s life, amirite?

The joy wasn’t drained from my visit, but I did have to start over once I’d looked through the whole section. Only after the business part of my brain was satisfied could I relax and just enjoy being in the aisles. I live in a smaller town, so a drive to find books is still something I look forward to. Even if my brain hijacks the opportunity for a while.

What did I buy during my visit? I picked up a comparative title, Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. I couldn’t really get into the Syfy series, but there are enough similarities to what I write, that I had to give it another chance. Books are always better, right? I also bought a few new boxes of Cards Against Humanity. It’s a terrible game that I absolutely love to play!

You see, there is still plenty of joy to be found in bookstores.

In the world of Fantastic America, Haruko Sato has been a prominent figure in corporate and personal security since the 1970’s. From humble beginnings he built a financial empire around the International Ess Group of companies. Headquartered in New York City’s famous 9 West building, The Ess Group has divisions around the world. They are leaders in finance, tele-communications, physical security, cyber security, real estate, fine art, and higher education.

Sato-san’s origins are murky, but public records indicate he is a natural born American citizen. His parents immigrated to Los Angeles before World War Two. Beyond graduating high school in 1968, his education and early life are largely undocumented. His first rise to prominence was joining the former brokerage firm of Silverman and Baggs in 1971. Sato-san eventually bought out the partners and parlayed his wealth from that venture to found The Ess Group in 1974.

Beyond his vast financial holdings, Sato-san was active in politics for over a decade from 1974 to 1988. He remains a significant donor to a number of American politicians, including current President Michelle Grander. Privately, he also backs a number of foreign heads of state through the byzantine structure of The Ess Group.

Publicly, The Ess Group’s main focus is multi-national security for elite corporations, wealthy business owners, royal families, and major celebrities. They maintain a number of regional offices, safe houses, and secure compounds around the world. Sato-san has trained subordinates to run the day to day operations of The Ess Group. Never the less, he still maintains a firm grasp of the company.

He demands absolute loyalty. From his penthouse apartment over looking Central Park, Sato has re-cast his role as a modern day American Shogun. He calls an ornate observation room his Aerie, his lieutenants are Daimyos, and calls his financial holdings an Empire. He has become a self-styled Dragon Lord, and his closest confidants and employees accept this whole-heartedly.

Although he is officially retired, Sato-san is still the president of the company’s board of directors. He still issues company policies, directs strategic decisions, and makes long term plans for the growth of The Ess Group. Behind closed doors, Sato-san also directs the less savory, unofficial dealings of his Empire.

Beyond the personal body guards and visible security measures The Ess Group employs, Sato-san trains Federally sanctioned para-military forces. He deploys these units around the world. Like other private military contractors, much of the work of these security forces remains out of the public eye. This has led to a shadowy network of Ess agents who operate outside of traditional legal boundaries.

His New York Daimyo is Gavin Dalton, the de facto Chief Operations Officer for the entire Ess Group. Sato-san recruited Gavin directly from the Air Force’s 24th Special Tactics Squadron, where he operated as a combat controller. Chael Gerges, Sato-san’s former NY Daimyo and current Major Domo further trained Gavin.

Sato-san operates largely behind the scenes. He has eschewed publicity and operated, especially in recent years, through intermediaries. His influence extends to boardrooms, governments, and organized crime syndicates on six continents. He is one of the only people not surprised by the return of magic.

Or show depending on who you ask. At any rate, I have a lot of stories inside that need to get out on the page. This topic comes up as you get closer to querying agents. “What else are you working on?” is one of the questions I’ve been preparing for. I have a very long answer. Besides the books in this series I have plotted out and partially written, I have a whole file of story ideas.

Most are fantasy and a few are science-fiction. There may be a few that deny genre in their rough state, but I have learned enough to fix that since writing out the idea. Ideas are not a problem for me, world building and character generation are kind of my jam. Keeping my butt in the chair to write out the adventures for those characters is a problem. I’m not nearly as bad as I used to be. I like to write.

Agents want to know, so I’m told, if you intend to make a career out of writing, that you have the material to make it work. Man do I have material! From my experience with other writers, I feel like I’m not the only one with too many stories and too little time to share them all. What a sad situation to be in.

When choosing the stories I write, I ask myself which ones I’m most passionate about. What scenes bubble up to the surface of my imagination unbidden? Is there enough story meat there to develop a whole novel or is this just a short story for a single character? If I can string a few more pearls together, it may be the next story I tackle.

Even if I don’t find a fully fleshed out idea for a new story, I don’t discard it entirely. I have a folder with half-formed plots, characters without a home, and scenes that might find a world to bring to life someday. My imagination isn’t linear, it comes in cycles that layer over each other to make an organic whole. That’s a lot like life in general.

For so long I’ve worked to finish Fantastic America, about three years now. Finally, after drafts and revisions I have a story that is close to what I saw in my mind when I started the process. Now that I have that story I can see a destination coming into view. Not the end of the line, but an important stop.

The light I see ahead is still distant, but at least I can see it. I’ve gone from writing the story to explaining it to agents. One of those agents will help me take the story to the next destination. Having a travel companion will change the whole dynamic of how I write. I am really excited about that.

Finding the right agent, someone who shares the vision I have for this book (and the series) is my laser focused goal. I’d also like them to help me get paid well, get enough marketing support from the publisher to sell well, and maybe get a little nudge to finish the next book. Just being called up to the show will be enough for now.

So I’m still rewriting my query, studying agents and agencies, and researching everything I can think of to make an agent fall in love with my book. The right agent is out there, probably several of them. All I have to do is find one. Hope springs eternal.

In the world of Fantastic America, magic users recognize the connection to magic in others. There are categories of magic use, but the characters in the story have to figure that out as they go. Miracle workers are fueled entirely by faith, they are calling on their faith to manifest physically. Arcanists use magic to enhance the world around them. While wizards tap into powers of creation and destruction alike.

Miracle workers intuitively invoke their faith to protect or heal themselves and love ones. That is a potent but simple form of magic use. They do not inherently detect magic use in others, but can sense magic use while performing miraculous acts.

Arcanists draw on the ambient magic around them to cast simple spells, concoct potions, build magical artifacts, and set magical wards. While this use of magic is more direct than miracle work, it is less powerful than full wizardry. Still, Arcanists can, with some effort, detect miracle workers and wizards.

Wizards tap into the power of one of six facets of creation. Each kind or school of magic is distinct from the others. The spells, rituals, and inherent abilities of each kind reflect the facet of reality they are empowered by. Wizards can detect wizardry, arcanistry and miracle work on sight. With practice, they can even discern the kind of magic at use.

In practical (or arcane) terms, this means miracle workers can detect magic users sometimes, arcanists can detect magic users with effort, and wizards can read magic use like the label on a can of soup. They may not know what MSG is, but they can learn not to like it when they see it. Arcanists may have just enough warning to get out of the way when something magical is nearby. Miracle workers require a state of faith in action to recognize magic at all.

I’m a plotter rather than a pantser, I’ve tried both, and planning ahead works best for me. I still find plenty of new material as I write, so I’m not against discovery writing at all. Writing with a plot in mind leaves less room for my story to go off on a tangent. With a firm backstory in place, even one readers don’t see, I avoid plot holes and stay focused on where I want the characters to end up.

There is still a lot of room for characters to wiggle out of the scenes I have in mind. They’re slippery lil buggers, I’ll give them that. With my outline as a guide and the backstory in mind, I have all the tools I need to corral their unruly tendencies.

Readers never have to know how close I came to going off the rails either. They don’t have to immediately know why X instead of Z happened. Even if the question nags at them as to why the story went left instead of right, they’ll understand eventually. That is the important thing, the backstory is for the author.

The reader may crave the backstory. If I’ve written the scenes well. Rest asured, I will dole it out to them over time. But giving them the whole picture at once not only overwhelms the reader. It slows the story and creates big chunks of information that doesn’t serve the story at the moment. In Fantastic America, magic waxes and wanes over long period of time. There is a great reason why, but readers don’t need to know it… Yet.

The best method I’ve found for giving the reader backstory is to let the characters uncover it, so the reader learns it at the same time. This enables the story to progress, the character and reader to learn, and highlights the emotions of the characters in a way the audience inherently identifies with. Win, win, win.

 Hope. I’ve said before that Hope is my muse. She also leads me to victory. Life and the good things in our lives are worth defending. Evil for me is destroying the good, stealing joy, suppressing freewill, or murder which ends lives prematurely. Larger than life champions aren’t the only means to hold evil at bay. Some evil is so overwhelming or insidious that only by working together can ordinary people shine a bright enough light to stop it.

Hope springs eternal. Even if all is lost, hope can guide us back to the light.

  Do not despair, hope will help you hold on. Better yet, fight back against the danger. Our power is not measured in strength alone, but in our willingness to confront our fears. There is plenty to be afraid of, the news showers us constantly with stories and videos that reinforce our dread. Be a reason for others to take heart. Help those who cannot help themselves, be a source of strength by showing you are unwilling to yield to fear.

 The world seems to move faster than it ever has, situations change every day. I don’t think the world is faster, only our perception with information at our fingertips. The 24 hour news cycle, social media, and in some small part, a media induced paranoia give us a false sense that many of us can’t keep up with, let alone impact these crises. I reject that idea. I hope we can still make a difference, I’ll hold on until I can’t make a difference at all. Then I hope my legacy, whatever it may be will inspire others to hope the same.

  My stories reflect this. The characters I try to bring to life face their fears, do their best to hide from them, or run screaming, but ultimately whatever they have to face will find them. I try to show human frailty and inner strength, two sides of the same condition, the human condition. I hope you will read the stories I write and feel uplifted by the same emotions I instill in those characters.

Fantastic America is a gentle guide that brings a modern Earth much
like the one we are familiar with into focus. The weird creeps in page after
page. It’s still Earth, but the world you recognize is changing. By the end of
the book, you can see cracks are forming in solid ideas we’ve taken for
granted.

The books that follow expand the weird at an exponential rate, until the
midpoint of the series. From that point on, it will be a matter of holding on
to what we’ve known, or letting go completely. That’s a personal choice for
each character to make, whether they embrace magic, despise it, or just want to
be left alone.

That last option won’t be an option anymore. In a world polarized and
distorted by raw magic, there is no middle ground. Magic, or more specifically,
magical creatures and forces won’t leave any bystanders. The characters adapt
and survive, or they don’t and they die. That doesn’t mean they have to give up
who they are, just that they can’t hide and hope it will all go away. Magic is
here to stay.

Buckle up buttercup, it’s gonna be a wild ride!

I’m at the point in my journey that I need a literary agent to represent me to publishers. The self publishing route is great if you want more control. No bashing indies here. I wasn’t all that great at it, so I’ve been set on a traditional publishing path for Fantastic America. So I’ve spent a lot of time lately writing and rewriting my query letter.

If you don’t know what a query letter is, think of it as a cover letter for your resume. In this case your resume is a finished, polished manuscript. The query letter is your attempt to get an agent to read the manuscript. Writing a novel is hard, condensing the idea of your novel is harder.

I spent a couple of years building the world in which this story takes place. The settings, characters, events, and undercurrents of this world live in my mind. Paring all of that down into a brief, one page letter that captures the story is daunting. The query is important, but it is only part of the equation.

The hard part for me is choosing the right agent to send my query to. They have to represent the genre I write. Easy enough to look up online (MSWL, Query Tracker, Publishers Marketplace, etc.), but there is more to it than that. What kind of agency are they with, how many other clients do they have, are they an editorial agent, and have they ever represented authors with a book remotely like mine?

This is all to build a list of potential agents, someone who might advocate on behalf of me and the book I’ve written. For the agent and I to be a good fit, they have to believe in the story as much as I do (or close to it). If we mesh well, they will also be my advocate for books to come. Since I’m writing this book as the first in a series, that’s important to me too.

So here I am, with a slowly growing list of about thirty agents (my goal is fifty). I have a query letter that I rewrite at least once a week. And I pour over agent and agency profiles night after night, looking for people who might be (based on the information I have) a good fit for me and the stories I want to tell. I’ll keep you posted on how it turns out!

There is plenty to write about, and I may write another post in the morning. Right now, I need to sleep. Check out some of my other posts in the mean time. Here are three of my favorites:

I almost gave up…

What if…?

I’d like to introduce you to L.o.R.E.

In the world of Fantastic America some souls linger after death. These are the pale green remnant of people not ready to move on. Ghosts remain close to the site of their death or a location important to them in life. The longer they are disembodied, the more tenuous their sense of self becomes. Only very strong personalities can linger beyond the lifetime of their loved ones.

Two very different ghosts appear in Fantastic America. You’ve met Pearl Barrymore in an earlier post. She passes on a relic from the last magical age to Ashley Monahan. The second ghost is the spirit of a Civil War soldier. He tragically encounters Jerry Farmer near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

After the return of magic, most ghosts perform a specific function among the living. They can act as guides to those who seek them out. Whether those seekers are direct descendants, spiritualists, or arcanists experiencing their spiritual awakening, ghosts can help them find their way. Many spiritual traditions around the world have recognized this process throughout human history.

Their other function is to protect the living from wraiths. These are the ladies in white, banshees, or lantern holders of legend. Their two weapons against wraiths are wailing cries and piercing light. The shadow people have no defense against these attacks. Only distance or shielding in enclosed containers can preserve their corruptive essence.

An incidental function of ghosts is to relay information. Ghosts don’t experience the flow of time in the same way as the living. This means they can sometimes predict future events. Their predictions are usually cryptic and their accuracy leaves much to be desired.

Ghosts can pass on anything they have known in life or witnessed since death. Strong spirits retain a residual self-image. The strongest spirits are free roaming, able to move small objects, and communicate with the living. Since the return of magic, weaker spirits and residual hauntings have disappeared. Those left behind bemoan the loss as a spiritual purge of uncertain origin.

Am I a good enough writer? Is my manuscript trash? Will my work ever be good enough? Questions like these can hobble the most creative mind. The fears attached to solitary writing can hold us hostage worse than any proof to the contrary.

Impostor syndrome isn’t limited to writing of course, and people can attach the same kinds of anxiety to any success. That’s the underlying problem after all, feeling uneasy with accomplishment. Yes, I finished my book, but it was too easy. There must be something wrong with it, or the process I used.

The worst part of these feelings of doubt, is how they stop us from pushing to prove them wrong. Our isolation as writers leaves us open to an endless loop of self doubt and criticism. Often, without any outside feedback, impostor syndrome leads to procrastination. Procrastination can lead to abandoning our dreams entirely.

This is another reason to reach out to other authors, to find critique groups, and support each other. External feedback from others who share our passion for writing is a lifeline for those fighting feelings of inadequacy. Too many people find a way to talk themselves out of finishing their book, or giving up during the revision process.

There is nothing wrong with questioning how well you do something. Impostor syndrome goes beyond that, and questions if your effort is worthwhile. Writing, even if it has mistakes, or could be better, is worthwhile. Your story can’t be told by anyone else, and the world needs that perspective.

There are a million reasons not to do something, but self-doubt is a weed you can do without. Keep writing. Find your tribe. I swear they are out there, listening for your voice in the wilderness. Take another step, then another, until you find them, or they find you. Do it for yourself, and all of us who don’t even realize we’re listening for you.

If you intend to publish your work (traditionally or self-publish). Sooner or later you have to say enough is enough. There will always be one more thing you could change, one last pass to clean up some issue (real or imagined). “We live in an imperfect world… words fall out”, to paraphrase an old high school vice principal.

You can only edit, revise, or strive for perfection for so long. A day must come when you set aside the work that has consumed your every waking moment, or moments of clarity, or odd moments that you found to write. That doesn’t mean you’ll never edit it again. Only that you’ll wait for an editor’s mark up, or the swift passage of time to take another swing at it.

In the mean time, you have a whole other set of tasks ahead of you. For traditional publishing, that means querying. Finding an agent who can champion your work through the traditional publishing route. For self publishing, you have a dozen hats to try on as you thread your way to a finished copy of your book (E-book, POD, and audio-books too). Both paths take work above and beyond writing the book you just finished.

I’ve taken both paths, they both require commitment and learning new skills. You have to decide which one fits your situation better. There is no one size fits all answer, and that ignores the hybrid publishing path entirely. You can get help with what you need (professional editing, marketing, distribution, etc.), but retain more control like many self published authors crave.

For all these scenarios, you still have to have a completed and polished manuscript. Preferably it’s also had other eyes on it (not just aunt sally who taught 8th grade English before she retired). Beta readers who offered honest opinions, and maybe fellow writer critiques with constructive feedback would help. The more heavy lifting you do to begin with, should mean less once you’re ready to publish.

While that isn’t a major milestone for many, I’m looking for wins where ever I can find them. I feel like its important enough to point out, and just a big enough deal to merit a post. A year ago, I wouldn’t have thought I’d make a post like this.

I hardly posted regularly, for the first year or two I had a site, let alone every day. I’ve said before, I’m not sure how long I can keep up this pace, but so far, so good. It’s hard to decide what works and what doesn’t. My main indicators are Visits, page views, and likes. It isn’t much to go on, but I try.

On the plus side, I have a completed, edited manuscript, a working query letter, and a growing list of agents open to the kind of story Fantastic America represents. This blog has helped me continue daily writing, even on days I would rather not get out of bed. That is a big plus in my mind. Even if some of those posts were a bit more rambling than I’d like.

I write better now than I did a year ago, and hopefully that trend continues indefinitely. My confidence has never been higher, and my satisfaction with my work is higher, too. I feel like I’m right on the verge of breakthroughs in storytelling and finding the right agent for my career.

Thank you for reading along. My journey is far from over. 2021 may be my best year yet. Besides my debut novel and Midwestern Magicians, I have several short story projects underway that I hope will add to the world of the novels. Stay tuned for more!

Conversations between characters can elevate a good story into a great one. While poorly written dialog can easily ruin a great story. Good dialog has to fit the story, sound authentic to the characters, and leave the reader room to fill in the blanks. These are difficult ideas to grasp, sometimes even for experienced writers.

Dialog doesn’t have to be grammatically correct. Most people don’t communicate in complete sentences, especially not with close friends and family. Even in situations where proper grammar might be appropriate, people often speak in their personal shorthand.

Accents can be used to great effect, if they are internally consistent. Editors may hate you for using an accent, but if it fits the story, go for it. My only caution is that you should be intimately familiar with the accent your characters use. I’m very comfortable with Southern and Midwestern accents (A lot of people might think Midwesterners have NO accent). But I’d shy away from New England pronunciations.

Poor dialog can stem from the author trying to cram too much into what their characters are saying. Some examples (especially in Sci-Fi/Fantasy) include, “As you know Bob…”. If Bob already knew, you’re only saying it aloud for the reader, who might resent being spoon fed. Find other ways to share information.

Sometimes you may be tempted to include oversimplified logical deductions. Or you might be tempted to info-dump. Speech can allow you to share information, but that might be better spread through other means. Or leave it out all together and imply it through better methods.

The best dialog comes naturally, sounds like readers expect characters to speak, and leaves unspoken the volumes an author might be tempted to cram into a few short exchanges. Some of this comes down to how well you know your characters, but even with supporting characters, less is more. Don’t shy away from letting them speak, just be aware of how they sound (reading dialog aloud helps!).

One last suggestion about dialog. In addition to using the simplest dialog tags possible, don’t ignore the opportunity to fix your characters in space and show them in motion. Most of us don’t stand motionless as we speak. We sit up, lay down, walk around, and DO things while we speak. Your characters can do all of this, building on the descriptions of setting and action already part of your scenes. Like nutmeg, this is often an under-utilized spice among newer writers.

This is one of those topics that can make up a whole on-line class by itself. There are certainly enough e-books and how-to manuals on amazon and elsewhere. As long as the voices of your characters are authentic, you’ve started on the right path. You can embellish or cut out content later. Fix how characters should sound in your mind, and the rest will follow.