The HEA Cafe

I’m hip deep in galley edits and far too brain-weary to be pithy today. So I rummaged around some old files in my computer’s hard drive and found a poem I wrote eons ago. Which is a bit of fun. It was written when I still lived in NJ (yeah, that long ago) and our house was heated by oil, which was delivered by truck at the beginning of the winter. I put this in as explanation because those of you in the southern climes (as I am now) will have no clue as to the reference to an ‘oil  man’–which is not some wealthy Texan, no. He’s the guy who delivers the heating oil. 

THE SWEET SMELL OF 

The oilman smells of oil. 
Do I smell of words? 
Idle notions, vague ideas occur 
to mingle with events. 
Plots of stories hammer down my fence 
at night, to scatter 
at the light of day. 
All that lingers, my heroine’s sweet scent. 
Adventure-tinged, unpretentious. 

By noon, 
paragraphs unfurl their punguent plumes. 
A touch of sandalwood and spearmint. 
Practicality flees the room, 
the stench too powerful. 
A fantasy bouquet, 
Essence of Over-Active Imagination 
pervades. 

Then, when all good people lie abed, 
content to seek their rest, 
I’m besotted by my pen’s perfume, 
“Eau de Chapters”. A strong incense 
intoxicates my mind 
as my hero’s masculine scent assails me, 
and I breathe my stories
into life.  

~Linnea

Linnea Sinclair
www.linneasinclair.com 
RITA(c) Award Winning SF Romance from Bantam Spectra
2007-08: GAMES OF COMMAND,  THE DOWN HOME ZOMBIE BLUES, SHADES OF DARK
Coming 2009: HOPE’S FOLLY

Not Trump, the entrepreneur. Maass, the agent.

My local RWA chapter–Southwest Florida Romance Writers–hosted Donald Maass for a one-day workshop a few weekends back. I’d read his Writing the Breakout Novel over a year ago and found it interesting and workable. But like many of you, I’ve read a lot of how-to write books. Maass’ was interesting and workable but nothing significantly new.

Still, a chance to see the man in action enticed me. I heard he does a good dog-and-pony. He does. He’s pithy, personable and dynamic. (He also has a New York sense of humor that worked fine with me but I think may have been a tad off-putting for some non-NY/NJ-ers in the audience.) I’ve also heard that if  you get one workable idea from any book or workshop you attend, it’s worth the money.

I did. He was.

His workable idea–for me–was this: after you finish writing your first draft manuscript, print it out, go to the middle of the largest area of open space in your house, and toss the pages in the air. All of them. Let them fall where they may. Then sit on the floor and read pages at random, adding tension to each and every page.

Sound nuts? I thought so too at first. But he’s dead-on. Reason being, we read our manuscripts in page by page order. Again and again, as we write the story. Our minds get attuned to upcoming conflict (because we put it there) and we may be assuming or reading in more tension than is actually written.

Reading the pages out of order confuzzles the writerly mind. It makes you look at each page as a stand-alone entity. It makes you examine each page to see if you have tension.

What’s tension? To The Donald, it’s emotion. It’s immersing the reader into what the character is fearing, wanting, lusting for.  “What is the most powerful emotion felt in this scene?” The Donald asked in his wry New York accent. “Build details around that emotion.”

Still thinks it’s crazy? The Donald purloined pages from trembling victims in the audience and read scenes out loud. Then he changed one or two things adding emotion. And gosh-golly-dang, if they didn’t come out that much stronger.

And here I thought I’d heard–and read–it all. I hadn’t. Give The Donald’s idea a toss. It works.

~Linnea

SHADES OF DARK, the sequel to Gabriel’s Ghost, coming July 2008 from RITA award-winning author, Linnea Sinclair, and Bantam Books: www.linneasinclair.com
 
Something cascaded lightly through me—a gentling, a suffused glow. If love could be morphed into a physical element, this would be it. It was strength and yet it was vulnerability. It was all-encompassing and yet it was freedom. It was a wall of protection. It was wings of trust and faith.
 
It was Gabriel Ross Sullivan, answering the questions I couldn’t ask. Not that everything would be okay, but that everything in his power would be done, and we’d face whatever outcomes there were together.

You’ve likely heard the expression about “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” which cautions people not to quickly discard something that might be valuable (baby) with something of little value (used bathwater). It’s a tired old cliche. It came to mind, however, as I breezed through the brouhaha surrounding allegations of author Cassie Edwards’ plagiarism. If you’ve been living under a rock this week and I have no idea what I’m talking about, go here and here.

Okay, back with me?

I’m not going to talk about whether or not Ms. Edwards copied research text verbatim into her books. That’s already being talked about everywhere and my input on that would be superfluous.

I’m going to talk about something that I saw in a lot of comments and postings on the issue. It set me back a tad. It’s not something I’d not heard before, but I was surprised to see it crop up so quickly. And that something was this: “I’m never buying another book by Signet (Edwards’ publisher).”

Yes, I saw I’m never buying another Cassie Edwards’ book, which is a feeling I understand. An author has betrayed your trust or no longer subscribes to the same belief you do.

I don’t understand penalizing hundreds of other authors who had absolutely nothing to do with what Ms. Edwards did or did not do, simply because they write for the same house.

Note: I do not write for Signet/Penguin. I write for Bantam/Random House. Unrelated.

But this scares me. The last time I saw this reaction crop up was with book covers. A few–blessedly few–readers log from time to time at various blogged cover art discussions, and state that they 1) hold the author responsible for the cover art, even though they realize the author has little say and 2) if they don’t like a cover, they’ll never buy that author again. Ever.

Those are the kinds of things that make me want to pound my head on my desk.

The “I’ll never buy another Signet book” seems to be in that same camp. I understand readers are trying to send a message to Signet, or punish Signet for the stand Signet took in defending Ms. Edwards. But in my humble opinion, and as an author whose day and night job is writing books, penalizing authors who have had nothing to do with the brouhaha is tragic at best, stupid at worst.

Trust me, I have no idea what my sister and fellow authors at Bantam Spectra are doing right now. I have no idea if their prose is perfect or their research is annotated. I don’t have time. If one of them does something heinous and provably so, and you ask me, I’ll decry their horrible action with all my heart. But I’m not responsible for whatever they do, and to hold me in thrall in such a way is… nuts.

If an author from my publisher wins a huge award for his books, would you conversely buy all my books as well?

I’ve long had a problem with broad-brush tactics: all blondes are dumb, all Polish-Americans like to bowl, all teenagers are lazy, whatever. All Signet authors plagiarize and must be shunned. That would mean shunning Nora Roberts. A victim of plagiarism herself. And a Signet author.

I think it’s good to get impassioned over injustices. I’m all for taking a stand. Those of you who know me personally know I don’t suffer fools quietly and, after ten years of carrying a gun and a badge as a licensed PI, I’m a great believer that wrongs need to be righted, that the guilty should pay.

But as you raise that heavy tin bathtub of oily, soapy wrongs, please take a look at what else you’re tossing out into the gutter. There may be more than a few innocent author babies in there.

Respectfully yours, poolside, at the Home for the Perpetually Confused…

Namaste (I salute the Divine in you), ~Linnea

The Down Home Zombie Blues, an RT 4-1/2 star TOP PICK! Nov. 2007 from RITA award winning author Linnea Sinclair:
http://www.linneasinclair.com/DHZBCOVER.htm

“Linnea Sinclair’s recipe for success—undeniable passion, clever conversations and perilous situations, combine to produce another sensory delight with The Down Home Zombie Blues.” –SingleTitles.com

Apologies for the short posting. I intended to have better internet access. However, being I’m in the middle of the Caribbean Ocean… no, not channeling Captain Jack Sparrow but am on Holland America’s cruise ship, Westerdam. At 75-cents a minute, this is not the best way to blog and due to a storm our stop at Grand Turk Island was cancelled. So here I am, in the internet cafe on Deck 10 (top of the ship) trying to finish writing SHADES OF DARK, the sequel to GABRIEL’S GHOST. And trying to blog with all of you. Fact of an author’s life: working on vacation.

So greetings from the upper deck on the high seas! And now I have to get back to work, savvy? Oh, look, there’s Captain Jack… ~Linnea

While the title of this blog may appear to reflect my sentiments at having three writing contests to judge in one month, it is (deliberately) misleading, with a tad of double-duty. Okay, three contests while in a howling deadline is tough. But that’s not the more I want to talk about.

I want to talk about word choice and word use, because in judging three writing contests back to back, I saw a lot of the same problems, over and over. So if you’re yet-to-be-published and using contests as a means to get feedback and a possible entry to an editor (a method I heartily endorse!), this is a blog you might want to take note of.

You can read my first blog on those issues on the Alien Romances Blog here.  It’s called “On a Score of 1 to 10″, referencing the score sheets that accompany each entry. I wish I could give every writer a perfect ten. I wish I could have all their entries sent to the final judges, the editors and agents. I wish I could jumpstart all those careers. I can’t. Three of those reasons: Flying Body Parts, Head-hopping and Dialogue Tag Usage, are detailed in that blog. You might want to start there, then come back here.

Ready? Okay. More is not better. More words, more description, more adjectives do not a better story make. Good writing is all about choosing the word that most succinctly and memorably imparts that image or sensation. It’s not about dumping words on a page like a bucket of confetti.

I read far too many first-three-chapter entries in a variety of romance novel categories that suffered from this problem. At first I thought it might be because my poison of choice is science fiction and fantasy, and I’d lost my ear for contemporary or chick-lit. Not so, I realized, when I ran into a few entries—one was a lovely historical romance, another a contemporary with a distinct Texas-twang—that just flowed. They were tight, imagery was on-point, pacing was perfect. And they were in genres I normally wouldn’t chose for myself. So if I can be beguiled by what I don’t like, imagine how much easier it would  be for me to be seduced by my preferred genres? And yes, I did judge a paranormal that erupted with so many adjectives I felt as if I needed to hose myself off afterward.

So it wasn’t genre. It was word choice and word usage.

Noted science fiction author C.J. Cherryh calls the problem “Florid Verbs” and “Scaffolding and Spaghetti.” The woman’s books have won Hugos and Nebulas and she’s been on bestseller lists for decades. When she gives writing advice in her Writerisms and Other Sins, I listen:

FLORID VERBS:

‘The car grumbled its way to the curb’ is on the verge of being so colorful it’s distracting. {Florid fr. Lat. floreo, to flower.}

If a manuscript looks as if it’s sprouted leaves and branches, if every verb is ‘unusual’, if the vocabulary is more interesting than the story…fix it by going to more ordinary verbs. There are vocabulary-addicts who will praise your prose for this but not many who can simultaneously admire your verbs as verbs and follow your story, especially if it has content. The car is not a main actor and not one you necessarily need to make into a character. If its action should be more ordinary and transparent, don’t use an odd expression. This is prose.

This statement also goes for unusual descriptions and odd adjectives, nouns, and adverbs. 

I’d highlight the “odd adjectives, nouns and adverbs” here. And not just odd, but simply overdone. You can tell me (though I’d prefer you show me) that the hero has muscles. But the third time in two pages that I read something about his “hard, sculpted, sinewy, muscular” chest or forearms, I’m ready to scream, “I get it, already!” The heroine runs her fingers down his sculpted, muscular chest then over his sculpted, sinewy arms—which are rock-hard, by the way—and then notices as he puts the coffee pot on the shelf how his hard, sculpted, muscular, sinewy muscles ripple.

The heroine also has time to notice—in detail—her own appearance and attire, flipping her soft, silvery-blonde, lustrous and wavy hair off her slender, cashmere-clad shoulders with her slender, delicate, French-manicured fingers while her perfect alabaster complexion glows in the candlelight. Yes, all in one sentence like that. Not only do I hate her as a character, I’m in imagery overload.

Which brings me to another suggestion from Cherryh:

SCAFFOLDING AND SPAGHETTI:

Words the sole function of which is to hold up other words. For application only if you are floundering in too many ‘which’ clauses. Do not carry this or any other advice to extremes.

‘What it was upon close examination was a mass the center of which was suffused with a glow which appeared rubescent to the observers who were amazed and confounded by this untoward manifestation.’ Flowery and overstructured. ‘What they found was a mass, the center of which glowed faintly red. They’d never seen anything like it.’ The second isn’t great lit, but it gets the job done: the first drowns in ‘which’ and ‘who’ clauses.

In other words—be suspicious any time you have to support one needed word (rubescent) with a creaking framework of ‘which’ and ‘what’ and ‘who’. Dump the ‘which-what-who’ and take the single descriptive word. Plant it as an adjective in the main sentence.

Flowery and overstructured. More is simply not better. Plus it lends itself to inaccuracies.

As a writer, your job is to be a wordsmith. Okay, I call myself a wordslut but it’s essentially the same thing. You have to love words but you also have to know how to use them. You have to know what their use is, what their flavors and nuances are. Pretty does not have the same meaning and mind-image as gorgeous. Plump isn’t the same as obese. Red, crimson, burgundy and rose are not the same shade. House, cottage, mansion and chateau all create distinctly different images.

Descriptives in your prose—be they adverbs, adjectives or phrases—are like spices. Too much and the dish is overwhelming and unpalatable. Not enough and it’s bland. Spend more time finding the right adjective to attach to your character, rather than burying him or her in an avalanche of description that becomes, essentially, meaningless. Or worse, comical and cliched.

Better yet, show me your characters are beautiful and strong but putting them in action. Telling me your character is gorgeous is your opinion. How do I know your definition of gorgeous segues with mine? But if you have your gal walk down the street and every man she passes stops and stares, jaws-dropping…I experience her beauty through them. You don’t have to tell me. You’ve shown me.

So go over those first three chapters you’re working on for that contest with rake in hand. Scrape out the detritus, the word-weeds, the literary-litter. Then send it in. And I’ll give you a perfect ten.

~Linnea
www.linneasinclair.com
RITA-Award Winning Science Fiction Romance
The Down Home Zombie Blues, coming Nov. 27th from Bantam Books

4-1/2 Stars—Top Pick! From Romantic Times BOOKreviews: “Quirky, offbeat and packed with gritty action, this blistering novel explodes out of the gate and never looks back. Counting on Sinclair to provide top-notch science fiction elaborately spiced with romance and adventure is a given, but she really aces this one! A must-read, by an author who never disappoints.”— Jill M. Smith

“[Sinclair’s] exceptional attention to detail…and quirky slant on the genre highlights her solid world building and allows even passing fans of science fiction to enjoy the ride.” — Nina C. Davis for Booklist