Story Sensei

My friend Tina Russo sent me this devotional she received. I love it--it's so appropriate for writers, whether published or unpublished. And if you're not Christian, well, you don't have to read this post. Camy Waiting on God TGIF Today God Is First Volume 1 by Os Hillman Sunday, August 10 2008 "Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; He rises to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for Him!" Isaiah 30:18 Have you ever noticed that God is not in a hurry? It took 40 years for Moses to receive his commission to lead the people out of Egypt. It took 17 years of preparation before Joseph was delivered from slavery and imprisonment. It took 20 years before Jacob was released from Laban's control. Abraham and Sarah were in their old age when they finally received the son of promise, Isaac. So why isn't God in a hurry? God called each of these servants to accomplish a certain task in His Kingdom, yet He was in no hurr

Sally Stuart posted a great answer to poets who want their work published. Q - Market for Poetry

Today, literary agent Rachel Zurakowski is blogging at Seekerville . She's with the prestigious Books and Such literary agency . She will also be answering questions, so leave a comment and she'll answer you sometime later in the comments.

Originally this article appeared on Gina Conroy's blog , but a few people were deterred because for some reason the page takes a while to load. So here's the article in full. I run a critique service called the Story Sensei, and I’ve also judged a fair number of writing contests through RWA, in addition to coordinating the ACFW Genesis contest. I’ve noticed a few commonalities in the manuscripts I’ve critiqued and judged, and Gina asked me to share. So here is: The top ten mistakes I see in manuscripts: 10) Inadequate use of point of view. I’m not talking about head-hopping. I’m talking about a very distant use of point of view that doesn’t get the reader into the character’s head or feeling the character’s emotions. For a first chapter, especially, this is crucial. If the reader isn’t immediately sucked into the character’s mind and body, if the reader doesn’t care about the character, they’re going to put the book down. This leads to the next mistake: 9) Inadequat

Andy Meisenheimer , editor at Zondervan, posted a great email to the ACFW loop about following or not following "rules" in writing. I asked for permission and he let me repost it here for you guys. He has a lot of good things to say. Craft and Art, or, Are There Rules and Why? Writing is, as all creative media, a mixture of art and craft. Craft is what art is when it becomes codified--that is, when it can be deconstructed and taught. Art is where innovation happens. Craft is where convention resides. There are few artists who aren't first skilled craftsmen. The great artists are those who know how to take craft and transcend convention to create something new. So the task of the budding artist is first and foremost to learn the craft. If you want to build a chair, just winging it, based on feelings and "voice", it will rarely result in a chair that will support a person, last through everyday use and stand up to abuse. Craft is the result of all the artists that

Don't have a synopsis written? You can purchase and download my Synopsis writing worksheet, which will guide you through writing your synopsis. The worksheet exercises will ensure that your synopsis has all the vital elements, including character external goal, internal/spiritual arc, obstacles/conflict, climax, resolution. This is the same information that I teach in my Synopsis writing class. 10/2014: Update: I am in the process of updating and formatting these worksheets to have them available on Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and iBooks! If you bought them before and would like the updated versions, please email me at storysensei@gmail.com with the email address you used when you bought the worksheet (so I can find your order) and I will be happy to email you an .epub or .mobi file of the updated worksheet(s) you bought when they're available. If you would like to be notified when my worksheets will be available as ebook versions, just subscribe to my Story Sensei blog using the F

I’m listening to a workshop given by Christopher Vogler and Michael Hague, and an interesting thing Christopher Vogler mentioned is that often, a writer’s own psychological and social limitations will come out in their writing. If a writer personally doesn’t like women, he can’t write believable women characters in his fiction. If a writer doesn’t have good conversation skills, their dialogue ends up being stilted and unnatural. If a writer tends to be a people-pleaser and only wants everyone to get along, their characters will have very little interpersonal conflict. This is a difficult thing for writers to work on, because there’s often deep-seated psychological or social roots that form the basis of their own limitations, and let’s face it, no one wants to dredge up their own personal pain. However, if you’ve begun to see trends of what your critique partners or contest judges or editors say about your writing, take a long look at yourself. Is there perhaps something within yourself

Shirley Jump guest blogged on Seekerville Wednesday with some terrific examples of showing versus telling. Go check it out! Shirley Jump at Seekerville

(Don't forget to comment on my online class idea.) From contest entries and critiques that I’ve done, I’ve noticed that often people don’t quite understand what exactly is “showing” and what exactly is “telling.” So, I’m doing this series to give numerous examples so that you can see for yourself the various kinds of “telling” that can occur in your own manuscript, and suggestions for fixing it. Adelaide found the housekeeper, Mrs. Long, in the kitchen. Adelaide was able to relax around her because Mrs. Long knew she was the mistress’s niece, and she had assured Adelaide she wouldn’t tell a soul. The boldface is all telling. There are two types of telling here: (1) When you write the deep point of view of a character, she wouldn’t think to herself, “I’ll go find the housekeeper, Mrs. Long.” She’d either look for “the housekeeper” or look for “Mrs. Long.” The additional modifiers are purely for the reader’s info, which is telling. This is an easy fix. Use “the housekeeper” and “Mr

Remember that you can say a line of dialogue, but you can’t chuckle, walk, laugh, look, or caress a line of dialogue. You can only speak it. For example: “You look wonderful,” he caressed her shoulder. (wrong) “You look wonderful . ” H e caressed her shoulder. (right) Note the period instead of the comma after “wonderful” and the capitalized H in He in the correct version. “You look wonderful,” he chuckled. (wrong) “You look wonderful . ” H e chuckled. (right) You cannot chuckle and speak at the same time. However, you can: “You look wonderful,” he said. (right) “You look wonderful,” he moaned. (right) “You look wonderful,” he wheezed. (right) “You look wonderful,” he spat. (right) “You look wonderful,” he walked across the room to her. (wrong) “You look wonderful,” he said as he walked across the room to her. (right) “You look wonderful . ” H e walked across the room to her. (right) You cannot “walk” a line of dialogue. “You look wonderful,” he looked in her eyes. (wrong) “You look

(Don't forget to comment on my online class idea.) I just found this great resource called AutoCrit . It analyzes your writing to catch words and phrases repeated and overused in your manuscript. From the contest judging and freelance editing jobs I have done, I know that other writers as well as myself have a tendency to repeat words and/or phrases, not just our “hot words.” For example, “pop” is not a word I use often, but I might write something like: I went to the local mom and pop grocery to grab a soda pop, and then I popped out of town. The free version is very limited and will only catch overused words, repeated phrases, and sentence variation. You can also only submit 800 words 5 times in one day. The paid versions offer more, included repeated words (which would catch the “pop” above), dialogue tags, first words, and names and pronouns. The free version itself is amazing. The cost for the lowest level of membership isn’t bad, just $20 for one year, and it analyzes the th

Brandilyn Collins posted about the opening of a new fiction line at Abingdon Press. I've met the Senior Acquisitions Editor, Barbara Scott, and she's both talented and personable. She has a terrific reputation and I would jump at a chance to work with her. New Fiction Line

I read Susan Meier's 10-Minute Solution several years ago and was struck with how logical and effective it was. Susan was at Seekerville on Monday talking about her 10-minute solution . This is a MUST for any busy writer to check out!

(Don't forget to comment on my online class idea.) I really liked this blog post by ProBlogger about how he uses a techy “batch processing” concept to organize his day and be more efficient. I think this can really apply to writers because we deal with similar things—writing our manuscripts, checking emails, keeping up with email loops, blogging (some of us), reading writing books and/or articles (something each writer should be doing on a regular basis), listening to writing MP3 workshops (if you can afford it). Check out the article and let me know what you think: How Batch Processing Made Me 10 Times More Productive

I posted on Seekerville a few weeks ago on backstory (spotting it and how to fix it), but didn't post it at the time because I didn't want to interrupt my Show/Tell example series. So here it is: Backstory

One reason that people give for “telling” is one that I don’t like, although some of you might not agree with me. Some people use “telling” because they say they don’t have the word count for “showing.” For example, many category books are shorter, and some authors say they have to tell in order to make the book hit their lower word count. I don’t agree (but some of you might not feel the same way). While it’s true that showing often has a larger word count, there are more creative ways to show that will match the word count of a section of telling. Also, a lot of times, the story doesn’t need that section of telling at all. I’ve seen many manuscripts with telling where the information isn’t necessary for the reader to understand and enjoy the story. Or maybe the information can be snuck with in a phrase or sentence later in the manuscript where it's more pertinent to the current action. My suggestion is that before you decide to “tell” something, ask yourself or your crit partn

Sometimes you want to deliberately distance the reader from the character or action. It might be a decision you make based on pacing or emotional flow or simply word and sentence cadence. In that case, go ahead and tell. But make sure you have a good reason in your own mind for telling. Why hadn’t he asked her for her phone number? (showing) versus She wondered why he hadn’t asked her for her phone number. (telling) No, she didn’t want to think about it. Too painful. In the first example, the question is very blunt and emotional. In the second example, I chose to keep the reader distanced from the emotion because the character herself is trying to distance herself from the emotion. The telling achieves the same sort of emotional distance or denial that the character is going through. So, if you have a reason for telling, go for it. Sometimes it’s more effective.

Another reason is if the action isn’t emotionally important . The reader doesn’t need to read detail if it’s not important for the story. For example, the reader doesn’t need to read every step as Joe walks into his bathroom, brushes his teeth, combs his hair, shaves, etc. “Joe got ready for work” is sufficient. Another example is when a character is telling another character what happened to him. Since we as the reader already know all the events he’s relating, we don’t need to read his dialogue telling his friend. Jason Bourne related everything to other agent as he tied him up and set the house to blow up. In the example above, we also didn’t need to follow all of Bourne’s actions as he rigged the house, because it’s not emotionally important. However, what if the agent has information to impart while Bourne is telling the agent what happened to him? What if the agent can explain why so-and-so shot at Bourne, why such-and-such agency never existed, etc.? In that case, show the compl

Janet Kobobel Grant runs Books 'n Such literary agency (where my agent works) and she's blogging at Fiction Matters about Razzle-Dazzle Titlest .

Telling isn’t always bad. In fact, sometimes it’s preferable. However, you ought to have a darn good reason to tell. One reason could be to telescope time . If you’re skipping from one place to another, or one time to another, that’s where telling is good. Say Joe has been arrested and then in the next scene, he’s talking to his jailmate. It’s okay to tell in a sentence or two what happened in between. The reader doesn’t need to know all that detail, and it’s useful for letting the reader know that time has elapsed. The police slapped the handcuffs on him. Exactly forty-two minutes later, after being slightly roughed around by the cops who processed him, Joe turned to his bunk mate with a casual, “Got a smoke?” Or Joe got on the plane, flew to San Jose, and rented a car. Two hours and one accident during rush hour later, he arrived at Amelia’s house, ready to break some heads. Here, we didn’t need to see everything Joe did on the plane, in renting the car, in sitting in traffic. We jus