From Dumbing Down to Dumbinger Down

Hi Folks,

I posted a version of this several months ago to Eliot, the literary blog of St. Louis Writers’ Guild, where I’m a member. What an energetic, living writers’ organization that is! I invite all of you to visit them at http://www.stlwritersguild.org. SLWG is pretty much the pinnacle of what a living, vibrant writers’ organization can be. Anyway, here’s the post, slightly updated: 

A few months ago I watched a movie, a comedy starring Luke Wilson, called Idiocracy. Have you seen it? Excellent social commentary thinly veiled as a comedy. It was even more over-the-top and humorous than the title would lead you to believe, but it was also terribly sad from a writer/editor’s perspective, demoralizing and a bit frightening. In the film, Wilson played a soldier who had been put into a deep sleep by the Army as an experiment. He was to be awakened in a year. Something went awry, and he slept for 500 years instead. When he awoke, it was to a world in which Corporate America controlled everything—for example, one lawyer in the film received his law degree at CostCo—and the citizenry had slipped to the bottom of the slippery slope of illiteracy and linguistic laziness. None could even form a sentence, and the populace—including professors, lawyers, doctors, politicians and judges—viewed anyone who spoke in complete sentences as a “fag.” Of course they knew the term was derogatory, but they didn’t know why or even realize it had once been used to insult a certain group of human beings.

As another example from the film, in the year 2505, the film that won eight Oscars, including Best Screenplay, ran for ninety minutes and featured only the naked posterior of a human male who occasionally passed gas, to the seemingly endless delight of the audience. One of the most popular television shows of the time was entitled Ow! My Balls! It featured what you might expect, a young gentleman being injured in various ways to a particular part of his anatomy.

So the protagonist, who back in 2005 had been tagged “the most average man in the US Army,” was suddenly the smartest man in America. To avoid going to prison for being too intelligent by contemporary standards, he taught the citizens, for example, that to grow crops and reverse the nationwide dust-bowl situation, they would have to start using water for more than simply flushing their toilets. Prior to his arrival, they’d used a sports drink not only in water fountains, but  on their lawns and fields. The salt content, naturally, had killed everything. In the end, the protagonist prevailed and set the United States on the road to recovery. Yay us.

That was the end of the film, and this blog post might never have been written, but I decided to watch the local news immediately afterward. Bad, bad Harvey. The news anchor began a heart-warming story about a group of one year old sextuplets. The headline at the bottom of the screen, mimicked aloud by the anchor, was “Sextuplets Earn University Scholarship.” I thought, Huh? What do you suppose they did to “earn” a scholarship? Perhaps they were awarded a scholarship or had been granted a scholarship or had even been gifted (ugh) with a scholarship, but earned? And of course, that thought led to others. (Yes, yes, I know the guy who now calls the White House his residence recently “earned” a Nobel Prize, but I’m not gonna talk about that. Too easy.) About 4 ½ years ago, news anchors both in the field in Iraq and behind their comfy desks in American cities routinely reported almost every night that US troops had uncovered another weapons’ cachet. That’s right. Not cache, but cachet (pronounced cash-ay), meaning aroma. While searching for weapons of mass destruction, our soldiers and Marines had apparently stopped to smell the roses… well, according to the news guys. And these are folks who make their living, as do many of us, with words. Edward R. Murrow, Ernie Pyle et al must be spinning in their graves.

In the meantime, the media also seem to have decided collectively that likely and probably are synonymous, although likely is an adjective (despite the “ly” ending) that is synonymous with probable, not probably. Likewise with imply and infer. Also, impact has suddenly become a verb, as has the previously mentioned gift. And more and more writers are having their characters “try and” do something rather than “try to” do something. It might sound cool, but it’s impossible to “try and.” Oddly, they never use “and” when they use the past tense of try.

Sigh…. All of this, I suspect, began somewhere in the recesses of Corporate America, where some fifty year old whom I imagine still lives with his mother and hates his English teacher for giving him a B+ one time is doing his level best to bring our language to its knees. He’s the same guy who decided it’s perfectly all right to “grow” a business instead of developing or expanding it. He’s the same guy who does things “moving forward” instead of doing them “from now on” or “in the future.” He’s the same guy who decided several years ago that talking with people in your profession isn’t nearly as good as “networking” with them, and he’s the same word economist who decided “writing in a journal” wasn’t nearly as cool as “journaling.” But it gets worse. I’ve heard many television news personalities speak of the benefit of giving children “a orange” or “a apple” as part of their lunch. I mentioned to one of them that was “an fruity idea.” He didn’t get it.

Of course, lexicographers, those folks who get to decide what goes into the dictionaries, are trotting right along behind the rest of the lemmings, albeit at a somewhat slower pace. The word “till” (two Ls), which used to mean a cash drawer or what a farmer does to his land in preparation for planting, is now the accepted shortened version of “until.” The former shortened version (’til) is archaic, they say. Ugh.

 The dumbing down of America is real, folks. In your own writing, at least, please pay close attention to what you’re saying and how you’re saying it. If each of us does his or her part to safeguard the language, perhaps we can at least slow the descent.

‘Til next time, happy writing!

Harvey

Order your copy of Punctuation for Writers now at http://www.booklocker.com/books/4056.html. A mere 104 pages, it will change forever the way you look at punctuation! You can also purchase a copy directly from me at my Writing the World seminars. For the upcoming schedule, see http://StoneThread.com/events.html.

Creating “Flow” in Your Writing

Hi Folks,

In response to my recent call for topics, one respondent wrote, “I always hear how my writing should flow well, but never much help on how to accomplish that. How do you create good flow?”

I told him I suspect that would be a great topic, but that I wouldn’t be able to address the “overall flow” of a memoir, novel or other long work in a blog post. There simply isn’t enough room. But I was wrong. I mean, I can (and will) give you a few examples of how to improve “flow” in a sentence or paragraph, and what is a novel or memoir but a series of interconnected sentences and paragraphs? Yeah, I know it sounds like I’m cheating, but bear with me here.

Several years ago when I was still in college, my favorite professor (who looked like the product of Albert Einstein and Mark Twain) asked our class in passing “What makes good writing?” Although some of us pondered it through a few semesters, we never came up with a satisfactory answer. Today, I know the answer. It is flow.

Okay, but what is “flow?” By my definition, it’s the characteristic of a written communication that captures and holds the reader’s uninterrupted interest from beginning to end. Does that sound about right? Flow has many sub-elements, of course, like plot and how the plot is delivered: realistic characters speaking realistic dialogue, a narrator who uses action verbs to set and describe the scenes and then steps aside so as not to be intrusive, a conscientious writer who makes sure he doesn’t use “waste” when he means the part of a woman that occurs just above the hips, etc. Anyway, if we accept the definition of “flow” as “the characteristic of a written communication that captures and holds the reader’s uninterrupted interest from beginning to end,” and if we accept that “the reader’s uninterrupted interest” is the key phrase, I suspect the whole secret to good “flow” is writing in such a way that doesn’t interrupt the reader unnecessarily. 

Again, bear with me. How can we tell the difference between a “necessary” interruption and an unnecessary interruption? Here’s an example. In school, we’re taught that when we combine two independent clauses (subject and verb, can stand alone) with a coordinating conjunction (and, or, nor, for, but, so, yet), we have to accompany the coordinating conjunction with a comma, thus: 

• Frightened, Jake swung his legs from the desk, and his boots hit the floor with a solid thump.

Of course, you’ll remember we can also join two closely related clauses with a semicolon, like this:

• Frightened, Jake swung his legs from the desk; his boots hit the floor with a solid thump.

Or we might choose to write the passage in two separate independent clauses, like this:

• Frightened, Jake swung his legs from the desk. His boots hit the floor with a solid thump.

That’s how we’re supposed to do it, per the rules of grammar and syntax. But is it really necessary to interrupt the flow of the sentence (and more importantly, the flow of the action in the sentence) with the short pause created by that comma, the longer pause created by the semicolon, or the much longer pause created by the period? Nope. So the reader can experience the mini-scene as one continuing action, you can omit the punctuation and write it like this:

• Frightened, Jake swung his legs from the desk and his boots hit the floor with a solid thump.

There is a similar example and a few others in previous posts on this blog. I hope you’ll scroll back to the archives and find a few of them. The only way to learn this stuff is to practice it, then practice it some more. Here are a few specific pointers that will immediately improve the flow of your writing:

Rather than letting your narrator tell the reader what the characters are saying, Let the characters speak for themselves so the reader can “overhear” the characters. When he’s telling the reader what the characters are saying, the narrator is a middleman who comes between the reader and the characters.  

Don’t allow your narrator to use the “sense” verbs: saw, smelled, felt, tasted, heard, etc. I addressed this in much more depth in an earlier post on this blog. 

Perhaps most difficult, Delete any narrative that doesn’t advance the story line. Again, even when the narrative is necessary, the narrator comes between the reader and the story line. That’s a necessary evil. But unnecessary narrative is an unforgiveable act of treason against you, the narrator’s boss. If your narrator refuses to simply describe the scene and get out of the way, I recommend you drive him out into the desert and shoot him.

And absolutely the most important, best advice I can give any writer—Read Your Work Aloud. No other technique will enable you to more quickly catch glitches in the flow of your writing.

Oh, one other thing—many of you know I’m a strong advocate of using dialogue to advance the story line. In a correspondence with another writer a few days ago, I mentioned almost in passing that Dialogue equals action in the written work, because it forces the reader to be a “character” in the story: The Eavesdropper. It forces the reader to lean into the story, just like a strong action scene written in narrative will do. And of course, if you can keep your reader directly engaged in your story line, you will enjoy a growing and appreciative readership.

That’s it for this time, my friends. Remember, if you have any ideas for future blog posts on topics of interest to writers, there’s a prize in it for you. If I accept your idea, you get your choice of free admission to one of my seminars (or a free seminar on DVD once they’re ready), a free copy of either of my books—Punctuation for Writers (2nd edition) or Writing Realistic Dialogue & Flash Fiction—or some free editing. Write me for details at h_stanbrough@yahoo.com. 

Until next time, happy writing!

Harvey

The Importance of Writing Naked

Hi Folks,

Yep, you read it right: this post will be all about “writing naked,” another one of those phrases occasionally tossed around by writing instructors. I originally wrote this as a humor column for a poetry magazine, The Candlelight Poetry Journal, which is now defunct. It was a beautiful journal. The cover of each issue bore a reproduction of a famous piece of artwork, always depicting a candle. I was pleased to have my own poetry featured in it occasionally, and more than thrilled when the publisher asked me to write a humor column. Of course, I said yes immediately. Later, given time to think about it, I almost panicked. How does one write a humor column for a respectable, staid, serious poetry journal? But I guess it all worked out until the magazine’s expensive production values eventually drove the publisher to fold. Anyway, here’s the column, slightly altered from its original form: 

Despite what many folks think, I was actually writing both prose and poetry long before I started writing this blog, and like most writers and poets, I gleaned a wealth of valuable information from other, more advanced, writers over the years. Golden rules like “Write what you know” and “Write in different positions” and “Pace while you’re writing” and “Clean the candy smear off your manuscript before you send it in” and “Never write in first person” and later “Always write in first person” and “Never turn your back in the shower when your buddy has a damp towel twisted up in his hands.” Okay, maybe that last one doesn’t fit, but it’s good advice and I’m sure you get the gist.

The overall idea is that heeding the advice of more experienced writers will usually save you some time and keep you out of trouble. But one of the most often repeated tidbits of wisdom I have heard is that writers who wish to be even vaguely successful should strive to write naked. Write naked? Yeah, that one threw me, too. Apparently, though, it didn’t throw me far enough to avoid the problems it would cause.

Most writers take advice pretty well, but we seldom take it immediately. Instead, we mull it over awhile. It sits on a back burner in our mind until it ripens. Sometimes it sits back there until it starts to rot, but real writers prefer ferment. How many times have you heard writers and poets talk about letting an idea “ferment?” Then, one day when the writer’s mood, the piece he’s working on, and the fermenting advice gel, BAM! the advice kicks in. And what can you do? The timing is right, the moon’s lined up with the third planet of the fourth star system on the right in the Ford Galaxy, your muse has turned her impish back, and your editor’s yelling about deadlines. So like any good writer, you Go For It. All well and good, provided that you first ascertain advisory intent; that is, make sure the advice meant specifically what you took it to mean. There’s no substitute for measuring twice before you cut once. (I’m not sure what that means, but it sounds good.)

So anyway, I was stuck, and I thought there must be a way to unclog my mind. I began running down all the advice I’d heard. I’d already tried writing my short story in first person, then not in first person. I’d tried pacing while writing, and writing while lying on my back with my feet on my chair and my journal propped up on my knees. I’d already tried writing what I knew, and even what I suspected. Nothing worked. Blocked I was, and blocked I would remain. Then, like a banshee screaming out from the cobwebs of my mind, came the one piece of advice I hadn’t tried: write naked. After all, it’s rumored that Papa Hemingway wrote while standing in his underwear at a drawing table, right? And according to Robert Hendrickson in The Literary Life and Other Curiosities (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994), William Blake, Samuel Boyse, D.H. Lawrence, Victor Hugo, Ben Franklin, James Whitcomb Riley, Robin Moore, and John Cheever also wrote in the nude or semi-nude for various reasons at one time or another. So I’m thinking What’s the big deal? Not only will I write naked, but I’ll be in excellent company!

And I disrobed, right there in front of my computer, gaily flinging my shirt hither and my jeans yon (when writers fling stuff, they fling it hither and yon) and kicking my boots and socks to a temporary resting place against the far wall. So far, so good. That’s when The Woman came in. For those of you who aren’t familiar with her, she’s the light of my life, my bride of several years, my pride and joy, blah, blah, blah. She’s also my immediate tie to the wide world of sanity, a world from which my departure seems continually imminent.

Anyway, she comes waltzing into the room with a smile on her face and a thought to share. “Honey,” she said. “You should come see this guy on television. You’ll never believe what he’s—Harvey! What are you doing?”

I absolutely beamed. “I’m getting ready to write naked.”

She took in the discarded clothing in a glance. “Naked?”

“Naked.”

Her hands moved to her hips. “And is there some particular reason?”

“Well, I was stuck. I was writing this short story and I got stuck… you know, blocked. Then I remembered somebody once told me if I got stuck, I should—”

“You should write naked?”

I grinned. “Yep!”

She handed me my jeans. “Here, put these on.”

“But if I put those on, I won’t be able to—”

“Put them on!”

“But I—”

“Now!“

I’m thinking, Pick your battles, Harv. She’ll go back into the living room in a few minutes. Then you can get naked and write your heart out.

Amazing how little it takes to calm the raging beast… er, so to speak. The simple act of pulling my trousers up over my hips and fastening the button had a soothing effect on her. “Harvey,” she said quietly, stroking my forehead. “You misunderstood. To write naked means to bare your soul.”

“I know, but you just said—”

“No no… you’re still not quite getting it.” Apparently patience is her virtue. “To write naked, you bare your soul, not your body.”

“Not my body?”

“No.”

“So I don’t have to get undressed?”

“No.”

New information. “Hmmm. Guess I looked pretty silly, huh?”

“Not half as silly as the time you tried to walk from here to the park on your hands so you’d know how Atlas felt.”

“That was pretty dumb, wasn’t it?”

“Good thing that car missed you. Or the time you pretended to sleepwalk so you’d know what it was like before you wrote an essay about it.”

“Yeah, that was a little off too.”

“Or that time you—”

“Okay, okay! I get the point already!”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure of what?”

“Sure you got the point?”

“Yeah.” I all but purred.

“Okay. I’m going back to the living room now. Let’s not have a replay of this, okay?”

“Okay. So what’s the guy on TV doing anyway?”

“What guy?”

“The one you came in to tell me about.”

“I forget. Besides, that was fiction. You’re real and you’ve got him beat by a long shot. I guess it’s true what they say about fact being stranger than fiction, isn’t it?”

“I guess.”

She bent to kiss me on the forehead. “Remember, Sir: Bare the soul—leave the body in disguise.”

So my advice to you, my faithful readers who come tripping along here roughly once a week mining for a gem in this coal hill, is… Write Naked! Just be sure you’re alone in the house first.

Until next time, happy writing!

Harvey

To Capitalize or Not to Capitalize

Hi Folks,

Nah, I can’t go on with the parody I started in the title, because when it comes to capitalization, there really is no question.

A correspondent from OCS (over choppy seas) invited and inspired this blog post. She’s noticed recently the apparently intentional decision on the part of many writers to omit all capitalization from their writing. This one is easy, a real no brainer. Hey, when it comes to capitalization, if you wouldn’t omit it in a term paper for a college professor when the paper counts for fifty percent of your semester grade, don’t omit it in your fiction, essays, memoir or poetry either.  As I said, it’s a no brainer.

Anything—and I mean anything—that distracts the reader from your storyline or the topic of your poem is an automatic no-no. After all, why would you want your reader to stop reading what you’ve written? Sometimes, of course, we use punctuation or word juxtaposition in unique ways to enhance the story or poem, but even then we have to weigh the value of the intended enhancement against how much it will distract the reader. After that it’s simple math: if there’s a good chance it will distract the reader more than it will enhance the story or poem, don’t do it. Period.

With that in mind, let’s look at capitalization. Everybody knows proper nouns, nouns that designate a particular person or a particular place, should be capitalized: George, Mary, John, Sue, the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Canyon, Arizona, the United States of America, Fred, Bill, Alex, et al ad nauseam.

What not everybody knows, apparently, is that titles also are capitalized, but only when they’re used in place of a name or as part of a name. All of these examples are capitalized correctly:

• I saw George Bush, former president of the United States, on television yesterday.
• I saw President George Bush (or Former President George Bush, if you prefer) on television yesterday.
• Later I stopped by to see my mom (or mother).
• Later I stopped by to see Mom (or Mother).
• My doctor is Joe Wilson.
• When I need medical opinions, I talk with Doctor Joe Wilson.
• I dreamed of the king and queen.
• I dreamed of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

This same practice is carried through any title when it’s used as a name or as part of a name.

In manuscripts, I occasionally see the use of ALL CAPS to indicate stress. That is also a no-no. The italic font attribute is adequate to indicate stress, and even that should be used sparingly. The only good use I’ve seen of all caps lately was in a manuscript in which the author had indicated a headline:

• The next morning Nick, sitting at his kitchen table, looked at the article and photos splashed on the front page of the Sentinel’s Saturday morning edition below the headline: DON’T  STOP  BELIEVING.

Of course this is an appropriate use of all capital letters because it lets the reader “see” the actual headline. (It’s also set in italics because it’s the character’s thought. Anything that the character is reading silently is an unspoken thought.) For those of you who are nitpicky, you might have noticed an extra space between each word in the headline above. That is a common practice among layout artists. If you choose to use all caps for a particular reason, hit the spacebar twice between each all-cap word. If you don’t, the words seem to run together. Here’s the same example with only one space between the words of the headline:

• The next morning Nick, sitting at his kitchen table, looked at the article and photos splashed on the front page of the Sentinel’s Saturday morning edition below the headline: DON’T STOP BELIEVING.

In the example to which my correspondent referred, a lengthy passage of prose, the author chose to use none of the normal capitalization: the personal pronoun I appeared in lower case, the first letter of the first word of each sentence was in lower case, and for all I know, even proper names were in lower case. I agreed with her when she called the style “pretentious.” Still, I’ve never understood why even the most haughty, pretentious writer could be so full of himself that he would want to call more attention to himself or his “writing style” than to the topic he’s writing about or to the storyline. Ugh.

As far as omitting all capital letters goes, it’s been done. e.e.cummings did it in his poetry, and before that, Don Marquis did it in a series of newspaper articles written as fictional social commentary that came to be called Archie and Mehitabel. At least Don Marquis gave the reader an up-front reason, though. The personna who wrote the commentaries was a cockroach. It couldn’t physically depress the Shift key on the typewriter, so it couldn’t form a capital letter. Marquis’ approach, at least, made a modicum of sense. It worked because it made sense, not because it was “cutting edge” or “intellectual” or otherwise pretentious.

If you have questions about a particular capitalization problem or comments on this post, please feel free to comment directly using the small link below. That way we can share your question or comment with other readers. Of course, you can also write to me directly at h_stanbrough@yahoo.com.

Happy writing!

Harvey

And now, a very special announcement for a friend:

You are cordially invited to attend an “open house” beginning Wednesday, October 14, in honor of the newly renovated Rose &Thorn Journal: http://www.roseandthornjournal.com. Drop by, sign up for the newsletter, check out the new digs (and blog!), follow us on Twitter and Facebook, leave us your comments/thoughts, and wish us well!

Rose &Thorn is a quarterly literary journal featuring the voices of emerging and established authors, poets and artists. Now…go enjoy the open bar and appetizer spread! (Note from Harvey: Don’t forget to visit Angie’s unique blog at GumboWriter: http://angie-ledbetter.blogspot.com/)

Angie Ledbetter &Kathryn Magendie, Co-Editor/Publishers, Rose & Thorn Journal

Beware of Literary Scams in Poetic Clothing

Hi Folks,

This week we return again to a matter primarily for poets… well, for poets and others who submit their written work to contests.

Let’s talk about literary scams. As Ann Gasser said in “About State Poetry Societies, Their Local and National Affiliation” in the premier issue of (now defunct) The Candlelight Poetry Journal, “No legitimate state society I know of uses the words ‘library’ or ‘international’ in its name.” I agree with her, and I can’t help but recall an experience with the National Library of Poetry. Remember that name; staple it to the inside of your eyelids if you have to, but remember it—then avoid it at all costs.

The National Library of Poetry is just one of many organizations that, every year, send out brochures requesting poems for their national contests. The initial ads (flyers, brochures, et cetera) usually mention huge monetary awards and possible publication in a nationally distributed poetry anthology. A few months later they send out notification to those who are deemed semi-finalists in the contest (and everyone who submits work, I suspect, is deemed a semi-finalist) along with an offer that allows the aforementioned semi-finalists to purchase the upcoming anthology at a special, pre-publication discount price of only $49.95 or whatever. Got the picture so far?

A few years ago, a friend and I decided to test these particularly murky literary waters. Each of us submitted a poem to the contest, and neither piece was very good. But a few months later, each of us was notified that our works were wonderful and had been accepted for publication; we were semi-finalists and in competition for the huge grand prize! Not only that, but as semi-finalists we were guaranteed publication in the much-anticipated anthology. No purchase was required for publication, of course, but in the same notice we were also afforded the opportunity to purchase the anthology at the “special, pre-publication price of only . . . .” The hook was set.

As beginning poets, of course, we were both ecstatic, but the whole thing seemed just a bit too good to be true. So we pooled our resources and sent for one copy of the anthology, at the “special, pre-publication price” in my name.

A few months later I received my copy of the anthology, A Break in the Clouds, a several-hundred page collection of some of the worst attempts at poetry that I’d ever seen. Although we’d both been assured of publication in the anthology as semi-finalists, my poem (you’ll remember that we had ordered the anthology in my name) was included, but my friend’s poem was not. Surprise, surprise.

Of course, I will be the first to admit that maybe, just maybe, the contest was legitimate; maybe the contest judges really did think they were selecting good poetic works; maybe the omission of my friend’s poem really was nothing more than an oversight; and maybe pigs really do fly after the sun goes down.

The moral that I hope you will glean from this particular experience is as follows: submit your work to anyone who asks, but never—and I mean never—send money unless you’re certain it’s for a legitimate purpose (i.e., relatively small reading fees for contests). Consider that even the reading fees for chapbook or book contests rarely exceed $10 to $15. You’re much better off to submit your hard work to magazines and contests that you know are legitimate. 

Happy Writing!

Harvey

Be sure to check out my upcoming seminars in Tucson and Huachuca City at http://stonethread.com/events.html. And don’t forget to check back here each week for another installment of the Writing the World Blog.

A Dozen Ways to Make That Critique Group Work

Hi Folks,

With the increasing popularity of critique groups (one correspondent prefers the term writing group), finding one is no longer the problem it was in years past. Finding a good one, though, might be a different matter. I’m a strong advocate of critique groups, but only those that are composed of writers who are serious about improving their writing. So what makes a good critique group? Take a look at the list below:

1. Pick a group that has a conscientious facilitator who will steer the participants to honesty in their critiques. A critique group without a facilitator usually will degrade quickly into a mutual-admiration society in which flattery is trump. A “be nice to me and I’ll be nice to you” atmosphere soon develops, one that causes the participants to feel good about themselves but leaves them wondering about the quality of their writing.

2. Limit the size of the group according to the length of time you are able to meet. For example, there were ten participants in my critique group, but we met for two hours every other week. Each participant had time to read his or her work and receive the criticism of the other participants.

3. Only one person at a time is the writer in the group. If you aren’t reading your work to the others, you’re serving only as a reader/listener. Don’t endeavor to change the person’s writing to fit your style. Rather, point out places where the story stumbles or stalls, where you feel you don’t know enough (or where you know too much) about a character or a scene, where confusion creeps in, and so on.

4. Don’t require everyone to read every time. Everyone can be an active, valuable participant without reading at every meeting. Some people will want to read every time, and others won’t. However, the members all should be serious about writing. To maintain membership in the group, I suggest that everyone should have to submit something for critique—even if it’s only one poem or one stanza or one scene from a novel or memoir—at least every other meeting if you meet monthly or every third meeting if you meet weekly.

5. Be honest in your critiques. This is the most important feature of a good critique group. After the first session or two, any hurt feelings will subside. The participants will begin to trust each other and appreciate the honest feedback. And when acceptance letters and checks begin replacing those rejection letters, they’ll appreciate it even more. Besides, “honest” is not synonymous with “hurtful.”

6. Always provide positive critiques. But didn’t I just say you should be honest? That’s right, so when you point out a flaw in someone’s writing, make it a positive critique by offering a recommendation for improvement. Remember, though, that you’re trying to help the writer improve his or her work, not make it your own. Besides, you should point out the bright spots as well as the flaws.

7. Don’t bring a first draft to your group. Instead, follow what is probably the oldest and most sage advice ever given to writers: put that first draft away for a few days, then revise, rewrite, and polish it. Bring what you believe is the finished version to the group. The other participants are not crash-test dummies.

8. Perform “blind” readings. If honest critique is the most important feature of a good critique group (and it is), performing blind readings is surely a close second. Although this advice goes against the common practice of most critique groups, I’ve found that the author should not provide copies of her work for the other participants. Instead of trying to read along with the reader, during a blind reading the other participants are able to listen attentively, noting on a pad any passages that confuse them, stop them cold, or impress them. They might also note passages that either bog the story down or move it along too quickly. Once the author is finished, each participant offers his or her critique. Blind reading lessens the chance of participants “parroting” each other and leads to a more honest, constructive critique.

9. The facilitator should avoid influencing the other participants’ opinions. To do so, the facilitator should offer his or her critique last.

10. Don’t “preview” the work you’re about to read to the group. Let the work stand on its own. If you feel the story needs a setup or an explanation, chances are it should be in your desk drawer awaiting rewrite.

11. Don’t argue with critiques as they’re offered. This is a non-productive waste of valuable time. Besides, you should respect the opinions of the participants as listeners; that is, don’t expect more from them than they can give. If they were experts, they probably wouldn’t be in the group.

12. Consider every participant’s critique. You should neither automatically accept nor reject any critique. What one listener likes, another will dislike; what one finds believable, another will find ridiculous. Carry the critiques home with you, then use or discard them at your leisure. As a rule of thumb, though, if you hear the same critique from more than one participant, you probably should consider it more seriously.

Overall, critique groups are a paradox. Few group interactions can be as rewarding as a good critique group or as destructive as a bad one. Fortunately, which group you belong to is your choice. You need answer only one question: How important is your career as a writer? That’s what I thought. So if you’re already a member of a group and if the group isn’t working well for you, consider bringing these ideas to the attention of the facilitator; if you aren’t a member of a group yet, choose wisely. After all, it’s your career.

‘Til next time, Happy Writing!

Harvey

Hyphens, Em Dashes, Ellipses—Oh My!

Hi Folks,

A regular WTW blog reader wrote me a short while ago to request that I write a bit about the use of hyphens, em dashes, and ellipses, so here you go. As long as we’re all here, I’ll toss in a couple others too.

The Hyphen—Okay, let’s get right to it. The hyphen is that tiny little line on a key near the upper-right corner of your keyboard. (The underline is just above it on the same key.) If your keyboard has a pad of number keys, there’s a hyphen there too, acting as a subtraction (minus) symbol. The hyphen falls into what I call “spelling punctuation” because it doesn’t create a pause. In fact, it actually causes the reader to speed up. Use the hyphen to join words when you want the reader to read them as a single word. In school, for example, we’re taught to hyphenate two adjectives when they occur before a noun and when they combine to modify the noun, as in “He lived in a bone-white house on Chiller Street” or “That was an action-packed football game.” If the adjectives follow the noun, though, they wouldn’t be hyphenated, as in “His house is bone white” and “The football game was action packed.”

Folks most often get confused when the first adjective is “well.” Again, hyphenate the two words (“well” and whatever follows it) only when they occur before the noun: “That was a well-rehearsed play” or “He’s a really well-built guy.” And again, don’t hyphenate them if they occur after the noun: “The play was well rehearsed” and “That guy is really well built.” The main thing to remember is to hyphenate words when you consciously want the reader to read them as if they’re one word.

Most style manuals agree that you should always hyphenate words that begin with the prefixes ex, self, half, mid, multi, ultra and a few others. You should always also hyphenate spelled-out numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine and spelled-out fractions. But for goodness sake, please stop hyphenating children’s ages, as in “the three-year-old girl.” No need for all that. It’s much easier and less labor intensive to just write “the three year old girl.” Ugh.

Oh, one other use for the hyphen is to indicate stuttering. I suggest you use it sparingly: “Mrs. R-Robinson, I d-don’t know that my b-being here alone with you is all right.” See? That’s the whole thing on hyphens.

Okay, before I continue, for comparison here’s a hyphen, an en dash, and an em dash (also called a long dash) in that order. I’ve put a few spaces between each so you can see them more clearly:     -     –     —   Note that the hyphen is very short, the en dash is a little longer, and the em dash (long dash) is the longest. These lengths will vary with different typefaces.

The En Dash—Yeah, I know “En Dash” isn’t in the title, but I couldn’t include it because it would have messed up the rhythm that lends itself to the not-so-witty title of this post. The en dash (so named because back in typesetting days it was the width of the capital letter N) is used only to replace the preposition “to” in spans of numbers. For example, “I’ll be in the office from 7 – 9 (7 to 9)” or on a tombstone: “Joe Schmoe, 1952 – 2009.” That’s its only purpose. I find it much easier to simply write the word “to.” If you want to use an en dash though, in Microsoft Word you can usually form one by pressing the Ctrl and hyphen keys at the same time. (By the way, I insert a space on either side of the en dash because it looks cleaner to me that way, but the space is not required and is verboten by some style manuals.)

The Em Dash—Okay, this is the biggie. The em dash (yep, so named because back in typesetting days it was the width of the capital letter M) actually forces a medium-length pause. You know how if you write a complete thought and then follow it with a list, you’re supposed to introduce the list with a colon ( : )? Well, if you reverse that and put the list first, follow the list with an em dash. The colon creates a long pause (hence the requirement that it follows a complete thought) and puts emphasis on the list (because it creates a long pause). But when the structure is reversed and the reader has already seen the list, you want him to find out what the list is all about. Therefore you use the em dash (medium-length pause) to speed him on his way. Both of these examples are correct:

• These are my favorite things: whiskey, horses, and women.
• Whiskey, horses, and women—these are my favorite things.

 See how that works? You’ll also note that I follow each section title above with an em dash. That’s because I’m a bit of a purist and I want to use a colon only after a complete thought. You’ll also notice that there is not a space on either side of the em dash. This is how most style manuals say to use it. When I’m editing a manuscript, I don’t care whether there’s a space on either side or not. I only care about consistency. If you put a space on one side of an em dash, put a space on the other side too, and if you do it that way once, do it that way throughout the essay or short story or poem or novel or memoir or whatever else you’re writing. Consistency counts for a great deal. To form an em dash in Microsoft Word, in most cases (you either can or you can’t) press Ctrl and Alt with one hand and the hyphen key with the other hand, all at the same time.

You might also note that the em dash, as I mentioned earlier, creates a medium-length pause, just like the semicolon. The difference is, the semicolon should have a complete sentence (subject/verb) on both sides of the it when you’re finished. In school we learned we could use the semicolon “to join two closely related independent clauses,” remember? It “joins” them, creating a cause-and-effect sense in the reader, because it creates only a medium-length pause.

But I digress. The most important use of the em dash for the creative writer is to indicate the abruptness of an interruption. When two or more characters are talking and one interrupts another, cut off the first character’s line of dialogue with a word that would not normally end a sentence and then insert an em dash and close quotes. The character who interrupted then immediately begins to speak:

“Damn, Honey! Why d’you think I’m doin’ all this? I’m tryin’ to—”

“Don’t you dare curse at me! You have that little respect, that you have to curse at me?”

“I’m sorry. I mean… well… I didn’t mean to swear. Guess I was just—”

“Oh I know what you were ‘just!’ I’m not taking your crap anymore, Hotshot! Got it?”

 Do you sense the power the second character has assumed over the first? And she did so with nothing but that little interruption, although she used it twice for good measure. As you can see, the em dash indicates the abruptness of an interruption, and it’s an excellent way to pump up the tension in your dialogue.

You probably noticed that later in the example, I also used an ellipsis to indicate halting speech. Let’s talk about that now.

The Ellipsis—The ellipsis creates a pause as well, but it’s a pause of indeterminate length, perhaps longer than the medium-length pause created by the em dash or the semicolon, but definitely shorter than the long pause created by terminal (after-sentence) punctuation, which consists of the period, the exclamation point, the question mark, and the aforementioned colon.

Most of us know we can use the ellipsis to replace non-essential words that we’ve omitted from a direct quote when quoting a source in a scholarly essay or research paper. In creative writing, the ellipsis’ primary use is to indicate halting, unsure speech, as in the third line of dialogue in the example above.

The ellipsis is formed of three unspaced dots (periods), and I recommend anchoring it to the word that precedes it, then following it with a space (see the example above). If you form the ellipsis with spaced dots, one or more dots might well “word wrap” to the next line of text, and that would just look stupid. If you anchor it to the word that precedes it, either the whole word and ellipsis will stay on the line or the whole word and ellipsis will wrap to the next line. 

This has gone on long enough, so I’m gonna shut my pie hole now. Hope this helps. If you wanna see me really get fired up and preaching about this stuff, drop in on one of my seminars some time.

Happy Writing!

Harvey

By the way, all of this stuff and a great deal more is covered in the second edition of Punctuation for Writers, which you can now obtain exclusively from BookLocker at http://www.booklocker.com/books/4056.html for only $8.95. You can purchase the companion book, Writing Realistic Dialogue & Flash Fiction, directly from me. I make them available at my Writing the World seminars in either Huachuca City or Tucson for only $10. For a complete schedule of upcoming seminar dates and topics see http://StoneThread.com/events.html.

The Improbability of Literary Theft (with Notes on Copyright)

Hi Folks,

Many novice writers hesitate to submit their work for publication because they fear the editor will issue a rejection, then purloin the work for himself. Fortunately, that notion is pure, unadulterated bull cookies. To further quote the vernacular, “It just ain’t gonna happen.” Why? Several reasons.

First, most editors are far too busy reading manuscripts to even consider lifting anyone’s work. They’re searching through a coal pile for a diamond. For example, when I served as the editor of a small literary magazine (the circulation never exceeded 500), I received, read, and accepted or rejected dozens of essays and short stories each week, and that was on top of a hundred or so poems each week. I published only every three months, and sometimes filling the journal was a stretch.

Second, writers in general are a close-knit, protective family, and word travels fast. Any editor who does stoop to literary theft will be ostracized and out of the business almost immediately. Even those of us who don’t know each other are more than happy to share horror stories about  our experiences with editors and publishers. The thing to remember is this: If there were no editors or publishers, writers still would write. If there were no writers, what would editors and publishers do? You want fries with that? Editors won’t steal from the hand that feeds them.

Third—and think about this for a moment—if a manuscript isn’t good enough to be accepted for publication, why on Earth would the editor want to steal it? (If you really believe the editor might reject your work for the specific purpose of stealing it, go back to “First” and “Second.”)

Fourth—and be honest with yourself—when you exchange stories or poems or essays or articles with other writers in a critique group, are you really as interested in reading their work as you are in having them read yours? Of course not. Imagine having a job wherein you have to read other writers’ works all day. I guarantee you won’t find any you want to steal.

Face it, most editors are stringently overworked and direly underpaid. Few even have a friend who’s willing to turn them over occasionally to avoid excess wear. And editors know better than anyone that writing probably is the most difficult way to make a buck this side of mucking stables for Clydesdales. 

All that having been said, should you happen to run across an unscrupulous sort in your dealings with editors and publishers, you do have certain protections. The most widely known, and probably the least understood, is the copyright.

Many writers believe written work must be registered with the copyright office in order to be copyrighted. That is not true. The fact is, your work is copyrighted (that is, you own it) from the moment it’s in fixed form, whether on paper, disk, cassette tape or CD. You certainly have the right to go to the trouble of registering your copyright with the Copyright Office in Washington DC, but that’s a costly and unnecessary step. The last time I registered a copyright personally, over thirty years ago, it cost $20. Today, it costs $35 for electronic filing or $50 for paper filing. Here are a few copyright and copyright-registration tips:

1. Just so you know, you can’t copyright a title or an idea or a concept. Yes, you can apply for trademark registration of a title, but trust me, the cost is more than prohibitive.

2. Although it’s a good idea to copyright book-length collections of poetry or short fiction, novels, or other long works, the publisher usually takes care of it. If you’re self-publishing a chapbook (a folded, saddle-stitched or stapled booklet of fewer than 60 pages or so), a copyright notice in the front matter will suffice. The copyright notice consists of either the word “Copyright” or a small “c” enclosed in a circle (©) followed by the year and the name of the owner. Formally registering the copyright still is not required.  

3. If you’re determined to register your copyright, I suggest you do so in batches. Instead of registering 10 individual songs or poems or short stories, which would cost $350 (electronic filing) or $500 (paper filing), register them under a batch or group title, such as “John Doe’s Poems (or Stories or Essays), 2009” for a total cost of $35 or $50. 

4. Yes, you can also do the old post office trick. Prepare a copy of your work, then mail it to yourself, using the postmark to prove date of possession. Mark the title of the work on the outside of the envelope or box. As long as the package remains unopened, no lawyer on earth can prove you didn’t write the work on or before the date of the postmark.

A note on manuscript preparation—Specifically because editors and publishers automatically assume the writer owns the work he or she is submitting for publication, a copyright notice on the manuscript is a sure sign of a novice writer. If you submit a multi-page manuscript and feel you simply must display a copyright notice, please put it only on the first page. I’ve actually received manuscripts with a copyright notice on every page. Being reminded each time I turned a page that the writer doesn’t trust me is more than a little disconcerting.

I hope I’ve alleviated your fears regarding thieves masquerading as editors. If nothing else, remember that the typical editor is intelligent; if she snaps, she’ll rob a bank, not a writer. 

‘Til next time, Happy Writing!

Harvey

A Matter of Some Importance to Poets

Hi Folks,

This week I thought I’d drift back to the poetry genre. Remember, though, it’s all written in the same language, so this might well contain some gems for you novelists, memoirists, short story writers and essayists too.

This is to counteract, especially in novice poets, the notion that a group of words structured as a paragraph may somehow be considered a poem. Despite the current fad spreading like a plague through college classrooms and writers’ workshops, a paragraph, whether it occurs in an essay, a vignette, a short story, a novel, or a so-called “prose poem,” is still just a paragraph.

Lewis Turco, in his New Book of Forms, delineates the difference simply and succinctly. To paraphrase him, Prose is a mode of language; the other mode is Verse. Prose is written communication in which the meter inherent in our accentual-syllabic language has not been intentionally manipulated. Verse is written communication in which the meter has been intentionally manipulated.

Poetry, like fiction, is a genre, and all genres can be written in either mode. Most often, for example, novels are written in prose, but I’ve seen the occasional novel presented in verse (witness La Farge’s Each to the Other). Poetry, too, can be written in either mode. If the meter is not intentionally manipulated (as is the case in what is commonly called free verse), it is a prose poem; if the meter is intentionally manipulated, it is a verse poem. The true prose poem is what most people refer to as free verse, and what most people refer to as a prose poem is, in actuality, just another paragraph, albeit most often a lovely paragraph. The best examples are slice-of-life fictions, or vignettes. If anyone asks you the difference between prose and poetry, you can tell them accurately that prose is a mode of language and poetry is a genre.

But perhaps the real question is not the difference between prose and poetry at all, but the difference between the stanza or poem and the paragraph. That difference was and should be obvious to anyone who has studied any craft of our language for any length of time. In a paragraph, the line ends where it ends, and the sentence is the basic building block. But in a poem, whether a prose poem (free verse) or a verse poem (meter is intentionally manipulated), the line breaks make a distinct difference. In a poem or stanza, the poetic line ends on a particular word for a particular reason, and the poetic line is the basic building block. The truth is, if you can remove the line breaks from a stanza or a poem and turn it into a paragraph without making a noticeable difference in meaning, it wasn’t a poem to begin with.

Of course, it’s true that we enjoy freedom in this country, and among writers and poets, we might even agree that we can label things in any way we want without regard for whether that label makes sense to anyone else. For example, a few years ago, a gentleman sent me a series of poems he’d dubbed “16-line sonnets.” The fact is, to be called a sonnet, whether Petrarchan, Shakespearean, Spenserian, or any other kind, the poem must conform to certain rules, and chief among them is that the poem must consist of 14 lines. I explained this to the poet and he huffily withdrew his poems because I refused to introduce them to others as “16-line sonnets.” C’est la vie.

The point here is that any worthwhile endeavor requires the study and the application of craft. Arbitrarily calling a 16-line poem a “sonnet” makes no more sense than calling a paragraph a poem; the former does not create an actual sonnet, nor does the latter create a poem. Write, please, to your heart’s content, but don’t let those who believe craft is anathema to pull you down to their depth of misery. And for pete’s sake, if you choose to call a pig a flounder, don’t be uspet that everyone else still sees a pig.

Happy Writing!

Harvey

Be sure to check http://stonethread.com/events.html for upcoming seminars. And be sure to check back here every Wednesday for writing tips and other matters of some substance.

What to Look for in a Freelance Editor

Hi Folks,

Just a bit of seemingly self-serving verbiage. Well, not really self-serving… I am a freelance editor, and I’ve been told I’m a good one, but what follows are tips you should consider when searching for any freelance editor. Enjoy.

You’ve done it. Your novel or short story collection is finished. You’ve written, revised, polished, and are ready to begin looking for an agent or a publisher. Or are you?

As the computer age advances, fewer and fewer publishers are willing to invest time and money in editing your work to make it compliant with their publishing guidelines. Even fewer are willing to polish it for you: to make sure you use punctuation correctly, that you don’t write “waste” when you mean to write “waist,” and to clean up all those little places where you wrote “he gave her a smile” instead of “he smiled.” And of course, your manuscript won’t make it even that far if it contains too many content errors: things like spelling the character’s name three different ways over the course of the manuscript or over-developing a character who has little or nothing to do with the story line or creating a main character (protagonist or antagonist) who is flat, linear, or one-dimensional.

The agent or publisher won’t explain a whole host of issues that keep novels and memoir and short stories and essays from being published every single day. They won’t address issues like the over-use of dialect or tag lines or unnecessary narrative. They won’t explain why a narrator should always be in the background rather than the foreground, why dialogue is so important to advancing the story line, why some characters should actually be stereotypes while others are well rounded, or how awkward sentence constructions deflate a narrative. You’re the writer and it’s your story, so they expect you to have addressed all those things and send them a viable, publishable manuscript. That’s where a good freelance editor comes in.

But how do you pick a good freelance editor? After all, it isn’t like you can check out their “I love me” wall for a sheepskin that verifies their graduation from Freelance Editor School. So how do you choose from among the thousands of freelance editors advertising their services? Here are a few things to consider:

Get a sample edit — preferably at no cost to you. A freelance editor who is competent and confident in her abilities should have no problem editing a few pages at no cost to show you what she can do for you. Get samples from several editors and then pick the one that seems right for you.

When you review the sample edits, ask questions of yourself: Did the editor avoid changing your voice, your style of writing? (No writer experiences any urge stronger than the urge to change another writer’s copy.) Did she imbed comments in the manuscript or otherwise explain why she made particular edits? (The edit also should be a learning experience.) Does she seem truly invested in helping you polish the manuscript? Does her editing style seem a fit for your writing style?

When you’ve narrowed the field to a few editors in whom you’re interested, ask questions directly of the editor: How much will the edit cost? What sort of payment arrangements will she accept? Will she charge extra to edit any necessary rewrites? How quickly can she turn around your manuscript? Is she willing to entertain any questions that might occur to you after the edit is finished? Can she provide references and-or direct you to others who have used her services?

You can come up with other questions on your own. Most often you create in a vacuum, but once the basic work is finished, you should reach out to others for an honest appraisal and assistance. Attempting to edit your own work negates a learning opportunity and is risky at best. After all, your manuscript most often will have only one chance to make a good impression on a particular agent or publisher. Take the time to pad the odds in your favor. 

‘Til next time, Happy Writing!

Harvey

For a free sample edit from this freelance editor, send your manuscript via Microsoft Word (version 2003 or earlier please) to h_stanbrough@yahoo.com.

 Be sure to check out my upcoming seminars at http://stonethread.com/events.html, and please check back every Wednesday for more Writing the World Blog posts.