Okay so it looks like I fell off the planet. Promise - I'm still here. The last four years have been ... hard. There's no other word for it. Everything is fine. I'm fine, but I've been the caregiver of my mom who has Dementia. Between her needs, work, etc I seem to have lost control of my time. I am still writing and am trying hard to get back to my blog.

In case you weren't aware Phaze and HSWF which where under the Mundania Umbrella have closed. I was smart enough to get my titles back before all this happened. I'm happy to say the three books I sold to HSWF have been picked up by Melange Books and are available through their Satin Books imprint. I have even sold a new title to them called Magical Quest due out in 2022

I have also been lucky enough to find a publisher for my Vespian Way series. I'm now with Blushing Books under the name of Bethany Drake. I have five titles out with them right now and am close to submitting two more. There's Desire's Destiny, Desire's Duty and Desire's Promise. Then there is two in my werewolf series, Tears of the Queen and Legend of the Tears. I have just finished the rough draft of the third book in the series and have plans for a fourth one the moment I submit it.

I'll probably still be sporadic here on the blog. Unless I win the lottery and can hire someone to help me I can't avoid it, but know I'm still here still working hard in the background and am hoping to do better at keeping my blog alive.

Barb:)



Thursday, April 3, 2014

Writing Down the Bones: What your Publisher doesn't want to see

I found another wonderful handout - this one from 1988 by Susan Wiggs - now a lot of it is a bit outdated now. Some of the rules have changed but a lot if still very true. As an editor I constantly see things like this and have to mark them.

Starting the chapter - Susan said to start each chapter with the word chapter - which is capped followed by the number - Chapter 1 - this is still true although with electronic publishers I have also seen the number spelled out.

Scene breaks and chapter breaks - Susan used the pound sign, which might still be true with traditional publishers but I have found the electronic publisher wants you to use the astrid now. There is no mark at the end of a chapter.

Use a personal pronoun instead of the characters name - this is still true - when I first started writing and belonged to a critique group someone made a comment they didn't know who was speaking so I started using my character's name like every 6 times. Several years later and a different critique group I was told I used them too much. Rule of thumb I use is if I think my readers could get confused about who is talking I put their names. I also use their names if I think the sentence reads better.

Always define the word thing - this is always a smart move. Mary had things to do - what sort of things? Does she need to buy large garbage bags, and rope? Why? Mary had to pick up the rope and garbage bags. A body wasn't going to bury itself. which one would you rather read?

Susan also spoke about redundant phrases like sitting down, retreated back, straightened up. I had that one pointed out to me - no need for the second word in each of those phrases - if you're retreating it's normally back.

She spends a lot of time on modifiers. One big one was try not to use more than one modifier for a word, another is placement. She used thick honey colored waves of hair and reworded it to waves of thick, honey colored hair.

Susan also recommends that you put the important information at the end of the sentence for more impact. You need to simplify trick sentence structure and be economical with your words. I've seen authors use "big" words to convey what the want the reader to know, I've also read my share of convoluted sentences. Mary stuck her tongue out at the man who cut her off as she brushed her hair back from her face. Brushing her hair back, Mary stuck her tongue out at the jerk who cut her off.

Some of this I have spoken about before, but I have learned that sometimes we need a 'refresher' course. It's fun seeing how other authors viewpoints on editing too.



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