Well, ConQuest 44, our local con, and the first SFF con I ever attended in 2010, is back this coming weekend and here is my tentative schedule:
Friday 1600-1700: Building a Fantasy World [MOD] (Monarch) Bryan Thomas Schmidt [MOD], Patrick Rothfuss, Patricia C. Wrede, M.C. (Mary) Chambers, K.D. McEntire
Saturday 1300-1325: Reading/Q&A/Autographs [MOD] (Regency) Bryan Thomas Schmidt/ Mark L Groves
Saturday 1400-1500: How to Introduce SciFi to Kids (Embassy) Tyrell Gephardt, Patrick Stutzman, Bryan Thomas Schmidt
Saturday 1600-1700: Relationship between Writers and Editors (Embassy) Jean Stuntz [MOD],Teresa Neilsen Hayden, Selina Rosen, Bryan Thomas Schmidt
Sunday 1100-1200: Collaborating with Cover Artists [MOD] (Monarch) Bryan Thomas Schmidt [MOD], John Picacio, Mitch Bentley, Claire Ashgrove
Sunday 1500-1600: Editing 101 for Writers [MOD] (Embassy) Bryan Thomas Schmidt [MOD], Claire Ashgrove
Glen Cook in the dealer room will have copies of all of my books, including my children’s books which will finally be out in paperbacks.
Sadly, due to my current financial crisis, I may not make all of this programming. I will certainly try to be there as much as I can but, at this point, Saturday is iffy because I have a long drive due to no money for hotel and I am going to have to just really be careful about going a long way when I have no credit cards or anything else to bail me out if my car broke down, etc. Let alone to buy meals. In any case, some great guests this year and a great Con. Patrick Rothfuss, John Picacio, Teresa Neilsen Hayden, Patricia C. Wrede and more will be there, see the link above. We’ll just have to see what happens.
“Bryan is an absolute genius at using his network to obtain blurbs and anthology participation from pro authors. I’m super impressed at the connections he’s built and how he makes things happen.” — Camille Gooderham Campbell, Editor/Publisher, Every Day Fiction
Publishing like every sector of the entertainment business is highly dependent on who you know and how you present yourself. This class will cover the basics of building a network, how to network, and how to leverage those relationships and manage them well. It will also cover the author platform. Tools you’ll need. How to get started, what it is and why it matters.
Since starting to pursue an SFF writing career in 2009, I have used my networking and platform building skills to land contracts with publishers like Baen Books and create opportunities to work with the likes of Robert Silverberg, Glen Cook, Mike Resnick, Elizabeth Moon, Larry Correia, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Nancy Kress, Dean Wesley Smith, Seanan McGuire, David Farland and more. Let me show you how to do the same.
Cost: $60 (discounted from $75 as a special launch deal)
Time: 2 two hour sessions a week apart
Date: 10 a.m. ET two Saturdays in a row. Dates specified when class full.
Students per classses: 9
Location: Google Hangout or Skype (based on students’ preferences)
To sign up, email me at bryan at bryanthomasschmidt dot net
As an editor, I am surprised how many writers seem to struggle with manuscript formatting–either not doing it per guidelines, not making effort, etc. There are many reasons editors ask for specific formatting. For example, when I turn manuscripts into publishers who use Adobe InDesign (a manuscript formatting software), there are sometimes issues with importing so they need things simple and formatted to make that easier and save time. Some editors find manuscripts easier to read double spaced, etc. and since they read a lot, they need you to make it easy so you can get a fair shot. These reasons may not sound compelling to some writers but the burden is on you to make the reading experience fun not just from writing a good story but also in presentation, so you should care.
To make things easier, though, particularly in Microsoft Word or Open Office, there are things you can do to shortcut formatting. Maybe you don’t want to worry about it as you write. That’s why I use Scrivener and let it do the work for me. But if you’re doing it all in a Word Processor, here’s three handy tips.
1) Converting Italics To Underlining or vice versa — Did you know that you can use the REPLACE function to change formatting? Well, you can. If you wanted to convert all italicized words to underlining, for example, a not uncommon editorial guidelines request, you simply have to pull up replace as follows:
1. Pull up the replace dialogue from your menu.
2. Put the cursor in the first blank and type Control-I (Italics)
3. In the second blank, type Control-U (underlining) then Control-I and Control-I again. This will tell it to remove Italics.
4. Then hit Replace All.
Yep, it’s that simple. And you can do it with converting underlining to italics, bold, etc.
Here’s another tip.
2) Select All + Set Tabs — Suppose you need to fix the tabs on your manuscript. One way ti globally fix them is to use Select All.
1. Find Select All On Your Menu or use Control-A to select all, highlighting all the text in your document.
2) Then on the ruler, click where you want the tabs.
Most of your text will slide into position. Places where spacing or margin markers were moved instead of tabs will have to be corrected by hand but this is a big timesaver in regards to an entire document as it will keep you from having to fix each tab one at a time.
3) DocX Line Space Removal — One of the more annoying features in Word is the additional space added between paragraphs automatically. To eliminate this, you need to do the following:
1.Find Select All On Your Menu or use Control-A to select all, highlighting all the text in your document.
2. Pull Up the Character Dialogue Box by clicking the arrow in that section of your menus.
3. Click the box next to “Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style” and then hit OK.
This will remove those pesky spaces throughout your document.
4) Quick Styles & Templates–If there is a particular manuscript format you use a lot, you can set up a template by formatting a document with the necessary formatting, including tabs, no spaces between paragraphs, double spacing, headers, etc. To do this, use a document and go through as follows:
1. Highlight The Text you want to apply the style to.
Note: You have to do this for every relevant style when setting up a template. It’s time consuming but that’s the only way to define the styles.
2. Click the appropriate style button.
If the default style is not what you want, then make adjustments to the text to add italics, underlining, etc. Do this without clicking a style button again for that text. We are going to reprogramming the definition of that button.
3. You can even include graphics.
This is handy if you are making a template for stationary, say, or something similar.
4. Click Save as, select “Word Template” in the document type and then name your template and Save.
The next time you want to apply this format to your document, you can then take the following steps:
1. Open the document you want to apply a template to. On the File Tab, press the Options button.
2. Select Add-Ins option from the menu on the left side of the Options dialog.
3. Click on Manage and choose Templates from the dropdown list. Press Go to open the Templates and Add-Ins Window.
4. Press Attach to open the Template Attachment Dialog. Select the template you want to attach to your document and then press Open.
5. When prompted, select Automatically Update Styles to change the styles of your document to match the styles of your template. Then click OK.
Yes, I know. It sounds time consuming. But only for set up. Once you have the template created, it’s a huge time saver. You can apply any template to any document so set up templates for the markets you submit to most and you won’t have to worry about spending long amounts of time reformatting submissions before you send them out.
Those are just 4 big time saving shortcuts for manuscript formatting. I’d love to hear others in comments, if you have them. Meanwhile, I hope this is helpful in freeing you up to write! For what it’s worth…
Bryan Thomas Schmidt is the editor of Blue Shift Magazine and an author and editor of adult and children’s speculative fiction. His debut novel, The Worker Prince (2011) received Honorable Mention on Barnes & Noble Book Club’s Year’s Best Science Fiction Releases for 2011. A sequel The Returning followed in 2012 and The Exoduswill appear in 2013, completing the space opera Saga Of Davi Rhii. His first children’s books, 102 More Hilarious Dinosaur Jokes For Kids (ebook only) and Abraham Lincoln: Dinosaur Hunter- Land Of Legends from Delabarre Publishing. His short stories have appeared in magazines, anthologies and online. He edited the anthology Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6 (2012) and is working on Beyond The Sun for Fairwood Press (July 2013), headlined by Robert Silverberg, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Mike Resnick and Nancy Kress, and Raygun Chronicles: Space Opera For a New Age for Every Day Publishing (November 2013). He hosts #sffwrtcht (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writer’s Chat) Wednesdays at 9 pm ET on Twitter and is an affiliate member of the SFWA.
Well, I’m a bad blogger. I have not been taking my own advice and keeping my regular blog days lately. I have a good excuse. I’ve been sick on and off for the past 10 days and I’m so busy with creative projects, it’s hard to think of blog topics that are fresh and worthy of your time. But some of you do follow this blog. I get enough traffic even without posting, that my numbers hardly drop, so that’s encouraging, and I’m grateful.
But here, at least is some news.
We released the cover for Beyond The Sun in its final incarnation. I am finishing manuscript prep on that now and will turn it in tomorrow to Fairwood for July release. I’ll have Advanced Reader Copies in April. Hard to believe. What a ride it’s been since I dreamed this up in August, and here it comes! There are some truly great stories in this, though, so I can’t wait to get it out in the world. In case anyone missed it, the cover is included here. A full Table Of Contents can be found at http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2013/01/toc-beyond-the-sun-edited-by-bryan-thomas-schmidt/.
Also, Abraham Lincoln Dinosaur Hunter: Land Of Legends, the first chapter book in my fun new scifi alt history series for young readers released after a delay on my birthday, February 13, 2013. The day after Lincoln’s birthday, by the way. So far sales are steady and I know they’ll only increase when reviews pour in. That cover and more info can be found here: https://bryanthomasschmidt.net/writings/childrens-books/.
I have started the first novel in a new scifi series. Garret Hawke, Lunar P.I. is a detective noir set in colonies on the moon. The first story has Hawke’s young neighbors’ baby murdered and the parents accused, when he sets out to clear them. This is a world of A.I.’s called Synthetics, where humans live underground because of radiation and Synthetics cover the above ground work. Colonies have only existed on the moon for 15 years, in this 22nd Century setting. Each book will stand alone but there will be some through arcs to the storylines that continue in each consecutive book. Again, illness has slowed me down, but I’m hoping to get this done by April 1st.
After that, I have to write the next Abraham Lincoln Dinosaur Hunter, and then, depending on response, perhaps start book 2 in The Dawning Age. (see next paragraph). Plus, I have the May issue of Blue Shift to turn in this week. And I have 3 other partial novels I can resume work on.
I have agents looking at Duneman, Book 1 in my epic fantasy/steampunk mix, The Dawning Age. Excited to see what comes of that.
Raygun Chronicles is 1/4th funded in Kickstarter, but hopefully the next 15 days will turn that around so I can release that. There’s some awesome writers attached. I’d hate to see it fail. But Kickstarter is a giant waiting game. The t-shirts though are awesome and to die for. I think people will really want those!
And I also have a YA reprint anthology in the works and so far have Cory Doctorow, Robert Silverberg, Mike Resnick, Jay Lake, EC Myers, and several others committed to that.
So, as you can see, I have a good excuse for being too busy to blog but I will be doing another Write Tip later this week, and I hope to get more active again soon.
There’s nothing quite as enlightening for a writer as editing other’s works. I’ve learned a great deal about what to do and what not to do from my freelance editing which has helped me grow as a writer. So here are 10 key tips I’ve learned for Editing Your Novel:
1) Preserve The Fresh Eye — This can’t be overemphasized. I am not possessed of a great deal of patience. Never have been. But I’ve been editing for five years now, and I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned that has helped me improve my work. But none of that can be applied without having proper perspective. Putting aside your work until the rush of adrenaline and accomplishment at having finished such a monumental project fades (at least 4-6 weeks) is vital. Move on with other projects after a day or two of celebration. Get your mind on other things. You’ll come back much fresher and with better distance to be objective in reviewing your own work. After all, editing requires killing babies and nitpicking your favorite words and phrases, and you can’t be emotionally attached and do that well. This is an excellent time to send the work out for beta reading or notes. While you wait for that feedback, you can’t really begin editing in earnest, right? Or at least shouldn’t.
2) Watch Out For Intruder Words — This one is so vital I did a separate post on it here, but the basics are look for words like “saw, thought, wondered, felt, knew, heard,” etc. are all ‘intruder’ words. They intrude on the action, by stating extemporaneously what can be written more actively. They pull us out of the intimate POV of the character and throw things into telling or passiveness. There are times when one might deliberately choose to use intruder words. But these should be done with careful thought and sparingly. Otherwise “She felt the wind blow across her face” is stronger as “The wind blew across her face”. Or “She heard a bang” is better written as ”A bang thundered behind her.”
3) Don’t Abuse The Tags — Speech tags are so common that people use them without much thought, but the industry has come to lean more and more toward minimal usage. When you have two characters going back and forth, you don’t always need to identify the speaker. If one of them makes a gesture or action, you can describe that action instead, and we’ll know the dialogue in the same paragraph is from that character. Also, be careful not to use words that are not descriptors of speech patterns. “I’m coming,” Bob waved, “as fast as I can.” Uh, no. Try: Bob waved in acknowledgement. “I’m coming as fast as I can.” Which makes more sense? I’ll do a post on this later on but it’s something that can and should be looked at in revision. Eliminate as many as you can.
4) Read Aloud — This is one I struggle with. It can feel odd to read things aloud to yourself, but it also has great value. Especially in finding run-on sentences, awkwardly paced phrasing and even repetitive words. I often read aloud when I am comparing one wording with another to find which is more natural. Just because our internal voice reads as we write doesn’t mean our words will translate the same way for others. Remember that writing is a rhythm of stops and starts. You may pause to choose words and then continue without realizing you’ve just created an awkwardly paced or long sentence, or even missed punctuation that would make it clear. Reading it aloud, or even listening to someone else do so (if you can bear it), can teach you a lot about where you need to make changes.
5) Set Daily Goals — Don’t try and edit your entire novel in one sitting. You will start skimming and skipping without even realizing it. Editing requires a very focused reading and most of the time 2-5 chapters will be more than enough to accomplish in one sitting. Finish them and take a few hours away to refresh before starting on more. It’s okay to set goals for what you want to accomplish each day, but allow flexibility that enables you to step away when you get that glossy-eyed feeling so you can preserve the quality over quantity of your editing time. Even when editing other people’s work, I set daily goals, because I know that at a certain point I become less effective and my work suffers for it. This happens all the more so when I am editing work I’m so overly familiar with, like my own.
6) Work From A Checklist — Either based on beta reader or editor notes or you own writing experience, having a checklist can be an excellent tool. Cat Rambo provides examples here. What are the areas of weakness and strength you’ve discovered in yourself as a writer? What are things you need to focus on? Is there a particular arc or character speech pattern to examine and refine? Are there themes which you discovered as you wrote you want to work in and layer throughout? What about repetitive words? Do you need to add or trim description? Maybe you need to cut excess words? Having a checklist to refer to with each chapter can keep you from getting sidetracked by one aspect and ignoring others. It can keep you on track and remind you to address all of the issues which were on your mind when you sat down to commence the edit.
7) Evaluate Necessity — One of the most important things to do is to evaluate the purpose of every scene and character. What does this scene or character do to further the plot? How do they relate to the key conflicts? Do they advance the story? World-building is a legitimate way to advance the story but don’t overdo it. 3 pages of double spaced manuscript can be 10 pages in the finished book. Will readers really sit through that much description and detail about every day items, clothing, food, etc.? Did you really need a new character for that moment or could an existing one have been recycled allowing you to develop them further? Does that little vignette about the character’s past or emotional life really contribute to what’s going on now? If the answer to any of these questions is no, then you need to be willing to start cutting nonvital characters, scenes, words, etc.
8 ) Be Willing To Work In Stages — Sometimes, especially when an area is a particular weakness, focusing on just one issue while editing is appropriate. You can do separate passes for pacing, removing extra words, character arcs, etc. if necessary. Don’t be so rushed to get it done that you don’t allow yourself the time to get it right. It’s a natural part of the writing journey that we internalize various skills as we go along and develop, but we don’t start out with mastery of them all or an ability to use them all simultaneously. Even as a professional editor, I can’t do a serious copyedit and developmental edit at the same time. I have to do them separately. The two tasks require different types of focus and thinking and one can easily distract from the other. So be willing to break your edit into separate passes or stages when required. Your book will be much better for it.
I’m sure I could think of more tips but that’s enough for today. Those are tips I find are not often remembered because editing discussions so often focus on craft and storytelling details, but how you approach the process can be just as vital to the success of it as those technical details. So I hope these are helpful in stimulating your planning and approach. I’d love to hear your thoughts in comments. By the way, these same tips can be applied on a smaller scale to editing short stories as well. And they work for both fiction and nonfiction. I edit all three. For what it’s worth…
Bryan Thomas Schmidt is the editor of Blue Shift Magazine and an author and editor of adult and children’s speculative fiction. His debut novel, The Worker Prince (2011) received Honorable Mention on Barnes & Noble Book Club’s Year’s Best Science Fiction Releases for 2011. A sequel The Returning followed in 2012 and The Exoduswill appear in 2013, completing the space opera Saga Of Davi Rhii. His first children’s books, 102 More Hilarious Dinosaur Jokes For Kids (ebook only) and Abraham Lincoln: Dinosaur Hunter- Land Of Legends from Delabarre Publishing. His short stories have appeared in magazines, anthologies and online. He edited the anthology Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6 (2012) and is working on Beyond The Sun for Fairwood Press (July 2013), headlined by Robert Silverberg, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Mike Resnick and Nancy Kress, and Raygun Chronicles: Space Opera For a New Age for Every Day Publishing (November 2013). He hosts #sffwrtcht (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writer’s Chat) Wednesdays at 9 pm ET on Twitter and is an affiliate member of the SFWA.
We wound up with typical attrition of 20-40% of writers not coming through with stories. Luckily I had some name writers who asked to contribute but weren’t on my original list so we wound up with a stellar TOC.
You can click the link to see the full thing but in addition to our headliners: Silverberg, Kress, Resnick and Rusch, we also had names like Sanford, Fulda, Broaddus, Rambo, Torgersen, Brozek, Rubin and Johnson. Very exciting!
With apologies, I’m a day late getting my weekly Write Tip post up.
At some point or another, all writers have to consider whether or not their manuscript could use an editor. For most pros, that’s not even a question. I’ve used editors on all novels since the beginning and all of them have brought great benefit and growth to me as a writer in improving my work. As I grew, I started editing myself and have been editing freelance since 2009. Only in the last few months has it become viable as a part time job, combined with writing to make full time. But the more I do it, the more passionate I become. I love the variety I get to experience from fiction to nonfiction, one genre to another. I love the diversity of voices and writers I encounter. But freelance life can be tough, in large part because many clients don’t really understand what we do, why we do it, and the circumstances under which we work.
So here are ? Things Every Writer Should Know About Working With Independent Editors:
1) Independent Editors are your friends. Our job and living come from helping writers make their work better, the best it can be. It’s the passion that brought us to freelance work and the risks inherent in that, and it’s what keeps us coming back for more. We are not acquisitions editors looking for a reason to say no. We are not motivated by favoritism and we are not out to crush your dreams. We want your work to sparkle, and we’re thankful you’ve given us the opportunity to help.
2) Independent Editors are freelancers. Most of us work freelance, so what that means is, we get paid by the job, when the client gets around to it. For those, like me, who depend on editing as their sole income, that means we have to set our schedules, find our own clients and set our own guidelines. While we want to help you, we have to treat all clients the same. Your job is not more important than everyone else’s. If I am on a job, the next job I accept begins when the first job is complete. But if I complete your job and you come back to me a month later with changes, you also have to wait in the queue. I cannot drop everything and go back to work for you. I also can’t wait and not take jobs just because you expect to have a manuscript for me to edit on x-date. Turning down paid work is suicide. I can’t afford it, and I can’t afford to turn clients away. So please keep this in mind when you set your expectations.
3) Independent Editors make suggestions. We suggest changes we believe will make your work better, based on a lot of criteria and experience. For those of us who are writers, it’s often things we’ve been told by editors on our own work. There are industry standards, house standards at publishers, etc. as well. Our job is to help you be aware of potential issues. It’s your choice whether or not to take our advice. So, there’s no need to be contentious about changes. It’s just an opinion, the final decision is yours.
4) Independent Editing Takes Focus and Time. Editing is detail oriented. You want someone to read carefully and consider the big picture of the manuscript, not just each page individually, but as a whole. You want the editor’s notes to reflect that. Because it’s difficult to do line and copy edits and developmental edits simultaneously, that means we may need to read your work more than once. That takes time. Because it takes focus, we often can’t edit multiple projects simultaneously. We need to keep our head in the game of your manuscript. So when you’re our current project, all of our focus is on yours. That means, until we’re done editing your work, we aren’t free to work for anyone else. You pay us to make time and do it right. Editing is not where you want to be cheap, folks. Professional editors at publishers get paid very well per hour. Most freelancers make much less. Keep this in mind next time you complain about how expensive independent editing is.
5) Independent Editors live paycheck to paycheck. Unless you meet an independent editor with a second job, we’re counting on you to help pay our bills. We can take limited numbers of jobs per month, based on what we can reasonably accomplish, and our editing income is a primary source for rent, utilities, food and more. That means if you pay us late, we are late on bills. This is why so many of us ask for deposits up front. I have clients who pay me a month late. Sometimes longer. When I set aside time for January income and don’t get paid until March, that really puts me in a bad position. It creates stress. Stress hurts my focus for other work. It also requires time to keep reminding you of the payment due. Billing is a necessary evil. It’s not why I got into editing. It’s not my favorite part. I don’t enjoy it. I wish everyone paid fof work they commissioned promptly with consideration for my needs. That’s not the way the world works. But keep this in mind when hiring editors. Most of us will give you an estimate and let you know beforehand if we’re going to exceed that estimate and by how much we expect that to be. Have the money in hand to pay us and please, pay promptly. You’ll make us that much more likely to go the extra mile when working for you in the future or even recommending your work.
So, when you find yourself considering hiring an independent editor, please remember these things and keep them in mind. I strive very hard, as do most independent editors I know, to exceed client expectations. I want you to have a great experience. Most of all, I want you to succeed. I feel like when a client succeeds as a writer, it’s also my success. It feels good. All I ask in return is that we have a good, professional business relationship. That way it mutually benefits both of us. And remember, I learn as much as a writer from editing you as you do from being edited.
For what it’s worth…
My latest project:
Bryan Thomas Schmidt is the editor of Blue Shift Magazine and an author and editor of adult and children’s speculative fiction. His debut novel, The Worker Prince (2011) received Honorable Mention on Barnes & Noble Book Club’s Year’s Best Science Fiction Releases for 2011. A sequel The Returning followed in 2012 and The Exoduswill appear in 2013, completing the space opera Saga Of Davi Rhii. His first children’s books, 102 More Hilarious Dinosaur Jokes For Kids (ebook only) and Abraham Lincoln: Dinosaur Hunter- Land Of Legends from Delabarre Publishing. His short stories have appeared in magazines, anthologies and online. He edited the anthology Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6 (2012) and is working on Beyond The Sun for Fairwood Press (July 2013), headlined by Robert Silverberg, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Mike Resnick and Nancy Kress, and Raygun Chronicles: Space Opera For a New Age for Every Day Publishing (November 2013). He hosts #sffwrtcht (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writer’s Chat) Wednesdays at 9 pm ET on Twitter and is an affiliate member of the SFWA.
It’s a big week for me. Amidst making final choices of stories for my first Kickstarter Anthology: Beyond The Sun, and awaiting my first book contract from a major, I am launching, with Every Day Publishing, a Kickstarter for Raygun Chronicles: Space Opera For a New Age. This anthology, headlined by Mike Resnick, A.C. Crispin, Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Seanan McGuire, Allen Steele, Robin Wayne Bailey, Sarah A. Hoyt and Brenda Cooper, features contemporary space opera with a classic feel. 13 reprints, 10 new stories, great artwork from Paul Pedersen, an Artists Of The Future Winner, this will also be my first hardback release when it’s published in November–launched at OryCon–provided we fund.
As you can see from the artwork, and the very cool video, this story is about the dreams we all have of rayguns, heroes and heroines, space ships and more. And these stories will take you into that warm, fuzzy dreamscape again and again. All of the stories are fun and provide a nice variety. And I haven’t even seen what our awesome headliners have come up with yet. But with three Star Trek writers, a Star Wars writer, award winners, and fans of space opera, I sure can’t wait to read it. You can sponsor us and preorder everything from signed copies, ebooks, hardbacks, and tradepaperbacks, to t-shirts and a trip to OryCon for the launch. So be sure and check out the Kickstarter! Thanks for helping make dreams possible. All writers will be paid pro-rates. And I receive pro compensation as editor of my third anthology project, one of three for 2013.
Meanwhile check out the Kickstarter and the awesome video here, and thanks for your support!
Bryan Thomas Schmidt is the editor of Blue Shift Magazine and an author and editor of adult and children’s speculative fiction. His debut novel, The Worker Prince (2011) received Honorable Mention on Barnes & Noble Book Club’s Year’s Best Science Fiction Releases for 2011. A sequel The Returning followed in 2012 and The Exoduswill appear in 2013, completing the space opera Saga Of Davi Rhii. His first children’s books, 102 More Hilarious Dinosaur Jokes For Kids (ebook only) and Abraham Lincoln: Dinosaur Hunter- Land Of Legends from Delabarre Publishing. His short stories have appeared in magazines, anthologies and online. He edited the anthology Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6 (2012) and is working on Beyond The Sun for Fairwood Press (July 2013), headlined by Robert Silverberg, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Mike Resnick and Nancy Kress, and Raygun Chronicles: Space Opera For a New Age for Every Day Publishing (November 2013). He hosts #sffwrtcht (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writer’s Chat) Wednesdays at 9 pm ET on Twitter and is an affiliate member of the SFWA.
One of the things you learn on the writing journey is the importance of word choice. Certain types of words have certain types of impacts on your story, not just in evoking emotions or images, but in setting the tone, creating the voice, world building, and more. Some words create intimacy and a feeling of closeness in point of view, carrying readers inside the mind of your characters, inside the world of the story. Others create barriers, distancing them. Among these are Intruder Words.
‘Wondered, felt, thought, saw, knew, heard,’ etc. are all ‘intruder’ words. They intrude on the action, by stating extemporaneously what can be written more actively. They pull us out of the intimate POV of the character and throw things into telling or passiveness. There are times when one might deliberately choose to use intruder words. But these should be done with careful thought and sparingly. Otherwise “She felt the wind blow across her face” is stronger as “The wind blew across her face”. Or “She heard a bang” is better written as “A bang thundered behind her.”
Can you see the difference?
One form describes something flatly, the other creates an experience of it.
One form is rather drab and ordinary, the other visceral and alive. And thus, avoiding such words can help you create prose that pops off the page, bringing your story to life for readers.
Like anything in writing, retraining yourself to avoid using Intruder Words takes practice. At first, you’ll have to go back through and weed them out, like the common passives “began to, seemed to, going to, starting to,” etc. These words are used so naturally in speech and daily living that they’ll pour out of you like maple syrup from a tree. And it will take building your conscious awareness to start relearning when and when not to use them.
Once you’re aware of the problem, however, the process of identifying and eliminating these words can actually be good practice. If like me, you struggle with descriptive phrasing and writing viscerally, they provide an opportunity to learn craft through lots of practice, because you’ll undoubtedly find these words invading your prose on every page. But over time, with practice, you’ll find your mind filters them as you write. “Stop, need a new word,” that inner voice will say. And then, after a while more, you won’t even think of them. At least, not automatically. And using them intentionally is the only way you want to do it when it comes to your prose.
Don’t worry. We’re not talking about something that will make you talk funny. There’s a difference between how people talk and how we must write, after all. As my English teacher Barbara Sackrider once said: “If you say y’all in my classroom, you get an F, but if you talk to me on the street and say ‘you all,’ I’ll look at you like a freak.” Okay, she was joking. But her point was well taken by my 15-year-old mind. After all, English dialects are complicated and the rules of grammar are tailor-made to be broken by them.
Let’s compare two passages: one with Intruder Words and one without.
With
He gained consciousness sweaty and hot, lying on his back. It took a moment for the black spots to fade, replaced by the blinding sunlight and white sand stretching as far as the eye could see. Where am I? The sandy landscape reflected sunlight and heat back at him as he sat up, shaking off the sleep. Scattered belongings—clothes, canteens, a shattered barrel and trunk, torn saddlebags—stretched off into the distance toward the remains of a wagon. He saw footsteps leading toward him, smeared and uneven as if perhaps he’d stumbled to where he lay. Sunlight glinted off flesh atop a nearby dune. Was someone else alive? Then he saw limbs scattered along the path away from the torso—an arm severed at the elbow, the hand still attached, fingers stiffened like claws, a leg severed mid-thigh, another cut off above the ankle—and he knew the answer.
Without
He gained consciousness sweaty and hot, lying on his back. It took a moment for the black spots to fade, replaced by the blinding sunlight and white sand stretching as far as the eye could see. Where am I? The sandy landscape reflected sunlight and heat back at him as he sat up, shaking off the sleep. Scattered belongings—clothes, canteens, a shattered barrel and trunk, torn saddlebags—stretched off into the distance toward the remains of a wagon. Footsteps led toward him, smeared and uneven as if perhaps he’d stumbled to where he lay. Sunlight glinted off flesh atop a nearby dune. Was someone else alive? Scattered severed limbs—an arm severed at the elbow, the hand still attached, fingers stiffened like claws, a leg severed mid-thigh, another cut off mid-calf—provided the answer.
Which works better for you? Which is more powerful and draws you? Can you see the difference?
Don’t let Intruder Words intrude in your stories and on your readers. Instead, replace them with words that help bring your stories to life and draw readers in. It’s a sure sign of a writer who’s professional rather than amateur. It’ll help take your prose to the next level.
For what it’s worth…
Bryan Thomas Schmidt is the editor of Blue Shift Magazine and an author and editor of adult and children’s speculative fiction. His debut novel, The Worker Prince (2011) received Honorable Mention on Barnes & Noble Book Club’s Year’s Best Science Fiction Releases for 2011. A sequel The Returning followed in 2012 and The Exoduswill appear in 2013, completing the space opera Saga Of Davi Rhii. His first children’s books, 102 More Hilarious Dinosaur Jokes For Kids (ebook only) and Abraham Lincoln: Dinosaur Hunter- Land Of Legends from Delabarre Publishing. His short stories have appeared in magazines, anthologies and online. He edited the anthology Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6 (2012) and is working on Beyond The Sun for Fairwood Press (July 2013), headlined by Robert Silverberg, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Mike Resnick and Nancy Kress, and Raygun Chronicles: Space Opera For a New Age for Every Day Publishing (November 2013). He hosts #sffwrtcht (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writer’s Chat) Wednesdays at 9 pm ET on Twitter and is an affiliate member of the SFWA.
Well, I’m getting a slow start on blogging in 2013. In fact, I was so busy the last half of the year, it was hard to stick to even my steady schedule of two posts per week (Mondays and Thursdays). But 2012 ended with the sale of another children’s book and 3 anthologies to publishers, including 2 which involve Kickstarters, and the marketing of several more anthologies and a fantasy trilogy. I’m still working on prepping the fantasy trilogy for agent queries, in fact. Just a few more polishes. Add to that steady editing and blogging work for a number of clients, and I was pretty exhausted.
But at this point, some of that is moving to the next stage, which is a good thing. Abraham Lincoln Dinosaur Hunter: Land of Legends, the first early reader chapter book in a new adventure series is due out this month (delayed due to cover art issues), and stories for Beyond The Sun, the colonist SF anthology I funded on Kickstarter, are rolling in (with the January 15th deadline fast upon us). So far I have great stories from headliners Robert Silverberg, Mike Resnick and Nancy Kress, along with stories from Jamie Todd Rubin, Jennifer Brozek, Autumn Rachel Dryden, Jason Sanford and Maurice Broaddus. In the queue awaiting decisions are stories by Cat Rambo, 2012 Philip K. Dick Award nominee Jean Johnson, Dana Bell and Anthony Cardno. It looks like I’ll have a harder time choosing whose stories to reject than finding good ones to fill the remaining 9-10 slots here. It’s a nice problem to have, as they say, but I hate rejecting writers, especially friends. Comes with the territory though.
The Kickstarter for Raygun Chronicles: Space Opera For a New Age is supposed to launch next week, and we are working on the Kickstarter page now. That will run for 6 weeks with hopes we can start finalizing story contracts and get the headliners working on some great new tales. Plans include an OryCon 35 launch this November, and it will be my first hardback release. Some great writers involved (see the link under the title).
Additionally, Jennifer Brozek and I are awaiting a contract on a military fantasy anthology which sold to one of the big pro publishers. We can’t announce until the contract is final, but for me, it’s my first pro-qualifying book sale, and we have some amazing authors involved. Can’t wait to get that going. It will be turned in by December and released in 2014.
I also am getting gamma comments in on Duneman, my epic fantasy, book 1 of The Dawning Age trilogy, and I am going to do some clean up and polishing and query agents later this month. One of my writing heroes, AC Crispin is kindly helping me polish my query, so that’s also a thrill and quite good fortune. I’m hoping to enter the next phase of my writing career quite soon.
I have a story out tomorrow (1/08/13) in Triumph Over Tragedy, which is raising funds for Red Cross efforts to aid victims of Hurricane Sandy. An ebook only release, it will be available for only a limited time but has stories by Robert Silverberg, Timothy Zahn, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Elizabeth Bear, Michael J. Sullivan, yours truly and 20+ others. Some great stuff in there. I was one of four editors helping put the project together. My story is titled “Duncan Derring & The Call Of The Lady Luck” and is a tongue-in-cheek science fiction story about a demolitions expert who must help a starliner escape space tumbleweeds. Originally written for Wandering Weeds, which came out in November, it’s an updated, more polished version. My first resold story.
The Exodus, Book 3 in The Saga Of Davi Rhii, is 3/4ths done first draft but I’ll have to get back on that as soon as Duneman is finished. I may not send it out to a publisher if I can get a mass market deal explored via agents. That all has to wait on that process. I had already decided, for various reasons, not to go with Diminished Media Group for this one. I have interested from another small press, but since The Returning is not selling very quickly, it may just have to wait a while so I can focus on that.
Speaking of The Returning, I will be doing a review blog tour for that soon. I really need more reviews on Amazon to boost sales. Book 1, The Worker Prince, is getting regular sales via Amazon now because of it’s 24 reviews, and so I need to catch up The Returning and get that moving as well. The more people who discover and like The Worker Prince, the more likely it will be to sell, of course, so I’ll be continuing to promote that as well.
Last, but not least, I am marking a future Olympics themed anthology called Galactic Games, which the publishers I approach all seem to like but which no one has bought yet. It’s headlined by Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Mike Resnick, Esther Friesner and Robert Reed. I’m hoping to push it out for release during or just after the 2014 Winter Olympics, but for that to happen, I suppose I’ll need to find it a home first.
In any case, lots going on here. I’ll do my best to get the first Write Tipgoing for 2013 on Thursday. And be sure and check Finish The Story, my editing site, where we have new 2013 rates and some specials going on, including a nice coupon or two on our Facebook page for $100 off. Three published authors and editors at your service with a good track record and developing client list. It’s what we do to support ourselves while writing, so we’d love to help you if we can.
Well, ConQuest 44, our local con, and the first SFF con I ever attended in 2010, is back this coming weekend and here is my tentative schedule:
