As I mentioned in part one (posted earlier today), two major factors turned me off finding an e-book to download: overuse of was and were and passive narration. So, let’s address passive narration, more specifically, the lack of clarity. After all, clarity is paramount if the reader is to stay immersed in a story world.

I’m sure you’ve been told countless times that a reader must never be taken out of the story world. Yet, most writers are not aware of how they sabotage their stories because they can’t recognize the passivity which dulls clarity.

Well, I know a simple way to check for one of the most prevailing aspects of passive “telling” narration. Want to try it yourself and see how you fare? If you do, go back and complete the “was” challenge mentioned in part one of today’s blog and also do the same exercise for “were.” Then take those hard copy, highlighted pages–corrected to include the additional wases and weres your computer found–and use a different color of highlighter. Look for ING ending words that IMMEDIATELY FOLLOW a was or were. Highlight those ING verb-phrases. Example: was going, was thinking, was feeling, were taking, were deciding.

Each coupling is a red flag waving in earnest that what’s written is likely a passive “telling” sentence that dulls clarity.

But first, count how many couplings you have and figure out the ratio. Again, such numbers give you a starting place so you can self-edit and reduce the number of occurrences. Your reader will appreciate that, and you’ll grow as a writer and, more importantly, as a storyteller.

Okay, you already knew from the peppering of your pages with was and were that you overused those two words, but now you can SEE, actually see, another aspect of their use–”telling.” Yep, telling instead of showing.

Active voice and active verbs “show” by causing an instant image to appear in the reader’s mind. One of my favorite passively narrated sentences is: Jack and Jill were going up the hill. Obviously this is omniscient “telling” by an invisible someone (the author) who is watching Jack and Jill go up that hill and “reporting” what’s happening.

Most writers will opt for the simplest switch-out and substitute the active verb “went” for “were going” but does “went” conjure a clear, instant image? No. So, what’s needed is a verb that paints a picture in the reader’s mind of how Jack and Jill went up that hill. How about: walked, trudged, or jogged? Each clarifies the image, however, a good storyteller will pick an image-provoking word that is the exact fit. Only as you can also see, those fixes are still omniscient “telling” that “reports” what’s happening (but at least there is clarity and more vivid imagery).

So, what happened when you checked your pages for WAS-INGs? Did you also find “was” or “were” coupled with another helping verb like was bitten, were captured, was delighted, were aghast, etc.? Such couplings are also indicators of passive narration because they provoke no vivid imagery. The phrases even border on verbosity. (Remember the adage: never use two words when one precise one will do.)

Are you up for another challenge? If so, with a different colored highlighter then what you used on the pages you already have, mark every verb and verb phrase that IS NOT ALREADY MARKED. How many of those verbs fail to create an instant and clear image for the reader?

Habits are hard to break and overuse of was, were, and those ING passive constructions will require effort. One way you can help yourself stop the abuse is to create your own “Red Flag Word” Cheat Sheet–a master list of what you need to check for when you self-edit. Once you have a master list, you copy it when you do a rewrite or revision. You systematically check for each item (one at a time because no one can catch everything all at once), then cross it off the list. Eventually, you’ll write fewer and fewer instances of “was,” “were,” and “was-ings.”

Please share your challenge findings and, if you have any questions, or want more clarification, let me know.

Catherine McLean
Craft enhances talent.

***Early Bird Special Rates will end soon–check www.pennwriters.org for information on my online workshop “Cause & Effect Sequences” running Feb.1 through March 9, 2012.
***MY WEBSITE: www.WritersCheatSheets.com
***Check out “The Sampler” (topic this month is “Pronoun Reference Culprit “It”) which is at my blog: http://writerscheatsheets.blogspot.com
***Join me at Linked-In: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/catherine-e-mclean/7/70b/372 or befriend me at Facebook http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002397950738
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The week after Christmas, I spent fifteen frustrating hours online searching for an e-book to download and test my CRUZ Tablet’s e-book reader function. Yes, I found plenty of e-books in four different genres that I like to read in. However, what I ended up downloading was Aesop’s Fables.

For the record, I never looked at any of the e-books’ prices, so that was not a factor. I just wanted a good read. So, as usual, I read the back-page blurbs or summaries. If that intrigued me, I read the first page. There might have been a good story to be read but, in virtually every instance, the author sabotaged their story with poor fiction and storytelling skills from the get-go.

This puzzled me, so I went back and looked at the book blurbs. I was astounded to find most were free downloads or less than $4.99 downloads. Then I discovered the books were e-published by the author, Smashwords, or the free e-publishing arm of Amazon or Barnes and Nobles. In other words, no one with real book-editing skills edited those e-books.

Okay, I did find one e-book that grabbed my attention, a PDF copy of the original 1968 book published by ROC. I also found other e-books by reputable print-publishers offering them in e-format. But guess what–all were copyrighted 2005 or earlier. I knew editors no longer edited but processed books for publication, however, I didn’t realize the scope of that effect on the quality of those e-books.

Now, I’ve heard agents, editors, and publishers say that 95% to 98% of the manuscripts they receive these days are unpublishable. Why is that? Because writing fiction is not as easy as it seems, especially in the computer age where just about everyone with a computer thinks they can write The Great American Novel.

The real issue I see is most peoples’ schooling involved learning the English language, grammar, and punctuation in order to communicate. That education did not emphasize fiction or how to become a storyteller.

So, what was the number one turn-off for me on those poor quality e-books I reviewed but didn’t buy? Actually, there were two: overuse of was/were and dull, passive narration.

Have you been thinking about being published or e-publishing? Want to prove to yourself that your story is better written then what I found in my search for an e-book? Well, I challenge you to take half an hour and do a simple test. All you have to do is print two (2) double-spaced pages of something you have written (that’s about 500 to 600 words depending on your font at 12 points). Next, take a highlighter and highlight every “was” you find. Count them. Keep that number handy. Now, turn the hard copy over so you don’t look at it.

Go to your computer and select those same pages (the same number of words you printed out as hard copy). Copy the text onto another document. Now, use your computer’s find feature and highlight feature to highlight all incidents of “was” on your screen. Count the instances. Now compare the total of the hard copy count to the computer count. How many did your eyes and mind miss? Correct the hard copy to agree with the computer count. In other words, find the ones you missed.

Next, set the hard copy pages side by side. This gives you a visual–you can actually SEE the overuse, the repetitions, the clusters.

If your pages were peppered with highlights, think about the sound of “was” (wuz). At some point, hearing “wuz” becomes a droning bee buzzing in the subconscious and conscious mind of the reader, eventually overpowering the story enjoyment until the reader quits reading.

Next, take the total number of wases and divide that number into the total number of words. Example: 528 words divided by 35 instances = 1 “was” every 15 words, which is equivalent to one in every sentence. (FYI: the 1 in 15 is an actual figure.) If you extrapolate 1 in 15 words to a 100,000 word novel, that’s 6,667 times was buzzes.

If you did this exercise, this challenge, please share your findings and conclusions. If you have any questions, or want more clarification, let me know.

Lastly, check back this afternoon for part two: passive narration.

Catherine McLean
Craft enhances talent.

***Early Bird Special Rates will end soon–check www.pennwriters.org for information on my online workshop “Cause & Effect Sequences” running Feb.1 through March 9, 2012.
***MY WEBSITE is www.WritersCheatSheets.com and do check “The Sampler” (topic this month is “Pronoun Reference Culprit “It”) which is at my blog: http://writerscheatsheets.blogspot.com
***I invite you to join me at Linked-In: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/catherine-e-mclean/7/70b/372 or befriend me at Facebook http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002397950738
# # #

Writing is a solitary effort, right? But networking is a team sport all the way. When you emerge from your writing cave, shiny manuscript in hand, you should already have a plan on what you’re going to do with it. Hopefully, it’s not meant to sit in a drawer or in a computer file. You want that book out there, in the hands of hungry readers. That book was meant for the world.

And the world is not a solitary kind of place.

Odds are you aren’t a famous authority on a huge platform of wisdom and fame. You may be more like me—a working mom who is trying to turn a hobby into a second job. Everyone starts small and so should we. First-time queriers agonize over the lack of an impressive bio in their query letter but few realize that often a solid online presence is enough to let an agent know you mean business.

Ever Google yourself? You should. If an agent is thinking about reading more of your work, she’s definitely going to do it. You should, too. Your online presence may be one of your first impressions.

Of course, one way to build your online presence is to get published, but that starts the whole chicken or egg type of quandary. There’s a simpler way to start…and you are probably doing it already without realizing it.

It’s called social networking.

Networking is key to the success and survival of your book. But it’s a scary prospect for an emerging writer. You’ve written your first book, have no other publishing credits, don’t have an agent or an inside track with a best-selling author, and have absolutely no courage to attend a conference…you’re as good as anonymous. Who’s going to listen to another faceless writer?

Thanks to the internet, you don’t have to remain faceless. You don’t have to remain friendless, either.

Twitter:
Can’t deny that I have been pulled into the Twitterverse, kicking and screaming. Unlike regular space, Twitterspace is not a vacuum. It’s a human soup of news and interaction and connection. I also contribute to the Query Tracker blog and, thanks to dedicated readers like @PorterAnderson, the blog gets tweeted with links and quotes to readers who may not be aware of our site.

Once I tweeted (from @ashkrafton) a shoutout with the question: What’s your #networking magic bullet? I sent it out using Lazy Shout Out, a tool that helps me get a message out to all tweeps in a certain list. (Sounds like cheating but it’s just good social media management.)

Here are some of the answers:

@eslarke Just being active on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Goodreads. I interact with others and take part in discussions.

@Bri_Clark I know my platform and it’s natural for me to utilize it. I’m the belle of boise.

@nancynaigle Friends like you are my #networking magic bullet I love meeting new people and gaining new perspectives!

@jim_devitt there is no magic bullet, you’ve got to be hitting on all cylinders, that and have a good book!

@wickedcoolflght …one of my best networking tools is @Paperbackdolls.

@heidirubymiller reciprocation and interaction

Guess what? They are all right. Read that last tweet again: reciprocation and interaction. You can’t network without putting some effort into it.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to follow each of the tweeps mentioned above. Once you do that, you can congratulate yourself for networking.

Shoutouts aren’t the only cool aspect of Twitter. You can retweet interesting tweets, too. I often pass on links to articles or inspirational quotes, anything I think my followers might find interesting. Sharing information is networking.

Facebook is another great way to network. Visit your friends’ pages and add friends from their lists. Worst thing they can do is not accept your request, right? Visit the sites of writers who write like you do and add from their friend list as well. Also, when responding to friend requests, click the link that allows you to see “all requests.” Often it opens up the friend requests to reveal a few of *their* friends. Add them, too. You’re building bridges to other people—and bridges form the structure of a network.

If you have an account, you already know it can be used to interact with friends, acquaintances, and peers, but don’t forget the other kinds of pages.

You can start an author page (mine is http://facebook.com/AshKraftonAuthor) and invite friends to “like” your page. (The invite link is on the right side.) There’s an opportunity to buy an ad but I feel the potential bill would be too costly for an emerging writer like myself.

You can also participate in groups and perhaps start one for your own writing. Make the group reader friendly and participate regularly. You’ll be networking in no time at all.

Blogging is a quick and easy way for us to express ourselves outside our formal writing. Originally designed to be journals, blogs (short for web log) quickly evolved into an effective means of sharing information to a variety of audiences.

Blogging platforms have evolved, as well, enabling us to connect with readers using friending and following functions. Blogger.com, WordPress, and Livejournal are three of the biggest blogging platforms and can get you up and blogging in no time. I love how the blogs, in turn, offer RSS feed capabilities as well as Facebook’s “Like” and Twitter’s “Tweet This” buttons for easy sharing.

You shouldn’t stop at writing a blog; you need to read them—and comment, too. When you comment, you have the opportunity to provide a direct link to your website or blog that other readers can follow. More readers, more friends, more connections.

Blog hops are a fun way to find new blogs that focus on your interests. I participated in the Coffin Hop Horror Web Tour (October 24-31, 2011) along with a bunch of great horror writers. Readers could view a huge clickable list of different blogs and hopped (okay, it’s a Halloween hop, so I guess readers lurched or staggered) from blog to blog. The bloggers offered prizes for commenters as well as showed off their writing chops.

What do writers get out of all of this? Exposure, of course. And exposure brings new readers and new connections to the other bloggers and all of it is (say it with me) networking.

According to an article from Author Marketing Experts , blog commenting doesn’t need to turn into a time suck. Set a goal to leave a certain number a week. You may be surprised to hear that certain number doesn’t need to astronomical, either—you can gain significant exposure by commenting on as few as three to five blogs per week. And set a time limit, too. I use a kitchen timer to limit how long I fool around network via blog comments.

Goodreads, anyone? You can link your blog to your Goodreads page and Tweet your reviews. My favorite part of Goodreads is the giveaway program. I held my first giveaway this summer; I offered an anthology from my publisher, Pink Narcissus Press, in August and every day I logged in just to see how many people entered. My giveaway ended up having several hundred entrants, which really had me chuffed. Even if only a small percent of them went back to check out the book, that’s still more traffic than the book had before the giveaway. Several of the entrants made friend connections to my profile, as well. And that, friends, is networking.

Of course, these websites are the basic, most popular ones, but there is no reason you can’t use them to your advantage. The “basics” are used by millions of people around the world—and that’s a pretty big potential audience.

You don’t have to be a Wizard of SEO or a nationally-known keynote speaker. Successful networking begins at your fingertips with a click of the mouse or a Tweet of an idea. Give your book the biggest chance to succeed by reaching out to new readers, one step at a time.

Networking really is that easy.

Bio: Ash Krafton is a speculative fiction writer whose work has appeared in journals such as Absent Willow Review, Expanded Horizons, and Silver Blade. Ms. Krafton resides in the heart of the Pennsylvania coal region, where she keeps the book jacket for “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” in a frame over her desk. Visit the Spec Fic Chick website at www.ashkrafton.com for updates on the release of her debut novel, Bleeding Hearts, forthcoming in 2012 through Pink Narcissus Press.

This article first appeared on The Query Tracker Blog.

Trouble with being an intern was, well, being an intern. We were students who didn’t know everything because memorizing entire textbooks was a very difficult feat. I mean, a brain can only hold so much. So, we spent fortunes on pocket-sized manuals and stuffed our white coats with them and prayed that the question that got fired at us during hospital rounds would be one that had an answer in one of those books.

We also carried little notebooks inside which had clips and notes and other sorts of valuable information. Every time we heard or read something useful, we’d tuck it away in the notebook. Those little books became known as our portable brains.

A few decades later, I barely think about those stacks of textbooks and pocket references. I’m comfortable in my practice and, thanks to innumerable digital resources, I can easily look up anything I don’t know. One thing I never gave up, however, was my portable brain.

It just has different wrinkles in it, these days.

My portable brain no longer contains pharmaceutical nuggets or body surface area calculation shortcuts. It’s become somewhat more eclectic…and a lot more fun.

The Writer’s Portable Brain

One thing is still true today: my brain can only hold so much. I’ve got kids’ band practices, dentist appointments, and work issues clogging up my grey matter. (And I thought I had it bad in college. Oh, to be a kid again.)

While I am inextricably connected to my smartphone, I’m rarely seen without a notebook–much to my tech genius-husband’s chagrin. I’m the Analog Kid to his Digital Man. I like paper: the touch of it, the feel of it, the smell of it.

My notebook holds more than just words, those hastily scribbled lines that come to me when I’m on the way to work. It’s got song lyrics and photographs. Web links and museum tickets. I think it may even contain a playlist for every story I ever started. Every time I come across something inspirational or relevant, it goes into the portable brain.

After all, I never know when my muse will need a boost.

Random Access Memory

We write what we know–but we can’t know everything. That’s discouraging, to pharmacy students and writers alike. A portable brain can give us the confidence we need. There are answers in there, ones we might need in a pinch.

As the months went by in my internships, I refined the contents of my portable brain. I learned to organize it for fast reference. I removed bits that I’d memorized and ditched things that weren’t as critical as I’d originally thought. It became a lean, mean, knowledge machine.

My current PB is so much different. It’s a right brain-left brain thing, I guess.

The notebook isn’t divided into neat sections, photos in one spot and poetry lines in another. It’s a lot more linear. One thought leads to another, and that stream of thoughts is reflected in the way my pages look. It makes sense to no one but me.

And that’s okay. Every brain is different—and our portable brains are as individual as our organic ones. There is no single right way to keep a portable brain. We have the freedom to create it in our own style. After all, our muses want to have comfortable digs, don’t they?

For me, inspiration may be born in an architectural pattern or a grassy patch or a scattering of beads in a bowl. A photograph, easily captured with my ever-present phone, catches the muse and traps her—mine for future tapping. Analog Kid that I am, I like to print those photos and tuck them away inside the PB.

Sometimes, a song sets me off on a tangent. A line or two, tucked away in the brain, accompanies the thought I’d stumbled across. I can go back to the muse when I have time.

Most often, though, the notebook is there for moments I can’t write. It’s true that writers do most of our work without writing down a single word. Stories brew in our minds while we are busy doing other things—washing laundry, driving the kids to school, getting our day jobs done. We never really stop writing. There’s always a plot we’re following. A flash of dialog that works itself out. And sometimes, our computers are nowhere to be seen. Can you bear to lose those words forever?

I can’t. Portable brain to the rescue.

Paper or Plastic?

Of course, not everyone is as attached to hard copy as I am. Smartphones make it easier than ever to serve as our portable brains. You may already have the start of a splendid portable brain in your hand right now. Use it. Develop it. Fill it with muse food, everything you come across that may stimulate your writing later on.
A digital portable brain can easily bookmark websites and hold photo galleries. You can connect with Google Docs or Skydrive and tap your forebrain into them.

I use those things, too. But my sentimental attachment to papery things means my notebook still holds a place in my tech case.

Maybe one day I’ll open a Portable Brain Tea House, where writers can meet for Darjeeling and cookies and a chance to swap notebooks, just for a chance to share and show off our muses. Kind of like scrapbooking for brains.

They are scrapbooks of a sort; they are tiny chronicles of a writer’s journey, the paths our minds wander when left to their leisure. Like any scrapbook, they should be filled with the places our muses would most like to visit again.

We can all use an extra brain once in a while. A portable brain may be the solution—and, at least this one, you don’t have to keep in a jar. Bonus right there.

Speculative fiction writer Ash Krafton resides in the heart of the Pennsylvania coal region, where she keeps the book jacket for “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” in a frame over her desk (because of its sheer awesomeness.) Visit the Spec Fic Website at www.ashkrafton.com for updates on the release of her debut novel, Bleeding Hearts: Book One of the Demimonde, forthcoming in 2012 through Pink Narcissus Press.

This article first appeared on The Query Tracker Blog.

The Coffin Hop is an excellent way to promote your work, to gain traffic to your website or blog, and also to meet more horror/spooky fiction authors to network a bit.

The Coffin Hop site will be the “base site” and from there visitors can “hop” from website or blog to visit the various authors’ sites who are participating during the week of October 24-31, 2011.

During that week the participating authors should have either a blog post or something on their blog or website that’s in the Halloween/Horror spirit and that somehow promotes their work in the genre, along with a contest for visitors (you could give out halloween treats, digital copies of your books, name a character after your winner, email previews of an upcoming project, send out an autographed copy of one of your books, perhaps? All up to you, Hoppers!).

The only set requirements for your blog entry are that you include the GORY DETAILS listed below, as well as a link back to the “base site” (http://www.coffinhop.blogspot.com/). You will also need to comply with the prize disbursement guidelines listed.

Your Coffin Hop-specific blog or website does not need to be live on your site until 10/24/2011, when the hop starts, but you’re encouraged to register now. Registration for the Coffin Hop will close at the end of the day 10/23/2011.

Starting the 15th of October we would also encourage all involved authors to begin to heavily promote the Coffin Hop in whatever ways possible – Facebook it, tweet the bejeezus out of it, put it on your front page and dare everyone you know to hit all of the sites on the list. Remember – the more traffic any one of us gets, the more traffic we’re all likely to get. That is why it is so very important to prominently display the link to this site, where we host the link list.

Now go forth and hop those coffins!

(Post this – in full – in your Coffin Hop blog post)

THE GORY DETAILS:
1) HAVE A SPOOKY FUN TIME!
2) INVITE YOUR FRIENDS AND SPREAD THE WORD!
3) THIS TOUR STARTS: Monday, October 24, 2011 at Midnight (PST)
THIS TOUR ENDS: Monday, October 31, 2011 at Midnight (PST)
Winners will be drawn and posted November 1, 2011
4) MEET AND MINGLE WITH THE AUTHORS! EXPERIENCE A NEW DESTINATION AT EVERY STOP! PARTICIPATE IN EVERY SITE’S CONTEST AND BE ENTERED FOR CHANCES TO WIN MULTIPLE PRIZES! EVERY BLOG VISITED IS ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY TO WIN!
5) PARTICIPATION AT ALL SITES IS RECOMMENDED, BUT NOT REQUIRED. THE MORE SITES YOU HOP, THE BETTER YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING PRIZES.
6) DID I MENTION TO HAVE A SPOOKY FUN TIME?

***Authors have full discretion to choose an alternate winner in the event any winner fails to claim their prize(s) within 72 hours of their name being posted or after notification of win, whichever comes first. Anyone who participates in this tour is subject to these rules***

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