Easy reading is damn hard writing.

That is the quote.  It sounds like Hemingway or Fitzgerald on a bad day, or maybe Vonnegut on a good day.  It sounds like someone current who has made a name for himself or herself and is now giving back – like words from some writer’s conference.  But setting that aside for a minute, let’s look at what was said.

Selecting the right word for the right place is a monstrous task, but we need to be careful.  I know a preacher who had a doctorate in theology and never spoke a word less than three syllables.  The church loved him because he never challenged them or made them feel uncomfortable in their faith whatsoever.  The truth was they did not understand him.  He felt he was being precise in his terminology, but the result was no communication at all and a sad commentary that the people in the pews liked it that way.

I’ve read several books lately which I can only describe as being written by thesaurus.  True, selecting the right word for the right place is monstrously important, but pointless if you sacrifice readability.  We have all picked up books that we have raced through, cover to cover.  To that, much has been written about how to build and maintain tension, how to write a page turner, and so on.  What is generally missing from these wise treatments is the subject of readability.  If you go back and look at that last book you raced through you will find it filled mostly with simple words in simple sentences.  It may not be what some literary critics or college professors would call great writing.  It may be rather pedestrian writing, but boy, does it grab and it doesn’t let go.

Tight writing helps.  Small paragraphs, too.  Keep to the point, especially in dialogue.  Make everything move the story forward.  All this helps, but readability is imperative.  Unfortunately, to keep it easy reading, that is damn hard to do, especially if you are a reader, or an educator, or have a doctorate in theology.

So, who said the above?  Here is another thing he said: 

The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one’s family and friends; and lastly, the solid cash.
Nathaniel Hawthorne

Forums can be helpful to a writer – full of sage advice about the craft and how to handle some of the common problems that crop up in every writer’s life.  That is, of course, if you can find one that is not dominated by “the few” and keeps some people’s caustic attitudes in check. 

At the same time, the internet does not discriminate.  Not every peson on line is a well honed writer.  People with no particular experience or basis for their words can be equally quick to give advice.  Sometimes, that advice is sensible stuff, but sometimes it is way off base or perpetuates the kind of thinking about writing that must honestly be called “bad advice.”

So how can we know, especially if we are newbies?  Clearly if the internet does not discriminate, we must. 

There is a forum where I pop in from time to time.  A question was asked about the most common mistakes new writers make.  I feared, so before the line could fill up with tons of advice, I offered this top ten:

1.         Not writing (for whatever reason).

2.         Waiting for the muse or inspiration (or whatever) to strike.

3.         Dreaming about selling a million copies and winning the Nobel.

4.         Too much emphasis on characters at the expense of plot

5.         Too much emphasis on plot at the expense of voice and style

6.         Too much emphasis on voice and style at the expense of characters.

7.         Trying too hard to make a point (preachy)

8.         Wandering down every rabbit trail thinking it is a reflection of genius (pointless/boring)

9.         Giving up.

10.       Paying too much attention to what other people say, including this top ten list. 

You may or may not agree with the above, but I particularly want to point out number 10.  You see, any information gleaned on a forum or advice received from an on-line group or any writing blog, including this one, must be taken with a proverbial pound of salt.  Ultimately, you are the one who is writing your vision and you must decide how best to do that.  This is not to say the advice of other will never resonate with your soul.  But you must ultimately be your own writer and discover on your own terms if it works…or not.

The Apostle Paul was once taken up to the third heaven wherein was the Throne of God.  The first heaven, of course includes our sun and moon, the solar system and the innumerable stars beyond.  Somewhere in between, there must be something.  There must be a dividing line and it must be made up of what?

The second heavens is stated in the plural because various traditions have divided it into numerous levels or sections.  Sometimes, for example, the Throne of God is said to be in the seventh heaven, which would leave the second heavens divided into  five areas.  Sometimes Hell is said to be in the second heavens, like a prison area separated from the rest by a limitless, bottomless gulf.  (Sometimes Hell is itself divided into levels and said to be in a sub-heaven of its own beneath the earth).  In any case, that the second heavens inhabit the dividing line between Heaven and Earth is sufficient for now.

I imagine the second heavens to be naturally in a state of chaos, where time and space fold in and back on themselves and where the so-called “laws” of physics mean nothing.  Where God’s Heaven is infinite and eternal, our Earth is finite and bound by laws both in time and dimension.  The second heavens must be neither clearly one nor the other, but that does not mean it is uninhabitable.

In my universe, order can be imposed (to some extent) on the chaos by will and word.  I imagine this realm as the place where the homes of the various gods were located, like Mount Olympus and Aesgard and the top of the rainbow bridge.   I imagine this realm also contained the lands where the spirits of the dead were kept before they were taken up.  Thus you would find Hades, the Elysian Fields as well as the pit of Tartarus here. 

Some say the New Jerusalem is already waiting to descend out of the second heavens.  Others suggest that the endless sea found in the second heavens is the place from which came the water that once flooded the Earth.  Some claim that when we sleep, our spirits travel in the night and carve out little places in the second heavens to give temporary life to our dreams.  And of course, purgatory would fit there very well.  In some traditions, this would be the place of the astral universes.

In my universe, I have placed Avalon and the innumerable isles in the second heavens.  Avalon, the island by that name, the one found in Arthurian lore, the Isle of the apples is there.  Indeed, Gulliver never explored so many a variety of islands.  Imagine dragon isle or centaur or mermaid isle or the isle of the beautiful women as found in Celtic lore.  Some of the islands are mentioned in myths and legends from all over the earth.  Some have been altered in print to protect the innocent.  Imagine the isle of the lost luggage which collects everything we lose – like one sock or one earring, and the luggage, to be sure.

Avalon itself (and the castle) was designed as a safe haven and a place where the little spirits of the earth could rest from their labors.  Those spirits would include the sprites of fire, air, and water as well as the more familiar sprites of the earth such as light elves (including fairies), dark elves (including goblins and trolls) and the dwarfs in between. 

At the sub-place where this dividing line between Heaven and Earth touches the earth, there is hyperspace or sub-space where people can enter a place just outside of the limits of this bound universe and travel faster than the speed of light.  Of course, if one could travel from up there, further up and further in as C. S. Lewis once described it, there is no telling what might be found amidst the natural chaos.  Thus the stories…

That depends on the kind of series you are writing. 

1.  For over a hundred years, mystery writers in particular have written series based on what some call the continuing character.  Sherlock Holmes remained the same as he went from separate adventure to separate adventure.  Doctor Moriarty showed up in several adventures along the way, so there was a continuing antagonist in the series as well.

Television picked up on this kind of continuing character idea.  Other genres like SF & F have also, particularly recently in the vampire/demon slayer type stories.

2.  Although there are earlier examples (E E “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen series for example), it was really Tolkien’s publisher who coined the phrase “Trilogy.”  That is a different kind of series, where each story/book has some independence and resolution, but where the larger “trouble” remains unresolved until the last book.  Think Star Wars…but now with the likes of Harry Potter, we have gone beyond the mere “Trilogy” concept. 

The bottom line is you need to end your story/book in whatever way you are most comfortable and satisfied, and don’t let anyone tell you it must be this way or that (except maybe your publisher).  Still, I would urge you to consider your readers.  Will they be satisfied with the story while at the same time wanting to read the next one? 

It is a fine line we all have to guess at.  If you see a massive sales drop between book one and book two, my guess is the reader did not get a good read for their money but found book one only a set-up to force them to buy book two, and that can tick people off…  Not a good idea. 

My recommendation, for what it is worth is to foreshadow all you want and leave unresolved whatever grand story might need to continue, but let each book be a book – a story with a beginning, middle and end all unto itself.

Now, how much of book one needs to go into book two – what my grandfather used to call (re: television) “exciting scenes from last week?”  This is also a fine line each writer needs to walk.  It is an art form.  Too much intro., and people wonder why they bothered to read the first book.  Too little, and you will lose any new readers you might otherwise interest. 

At some point, Conan-Doyle had to assume people knew the Holmes character well enough for him to jump right into the story.  Imagine if Spiderman had to review his origin every episode.  On the other hand, imagine reading The Two Towers (Lord of the Rings) with all mention of Sauron, the essence of the ring, Mordor and the impending doom of Middle Earth removed.  There is a lesson there, I think.  It doesn’t have to be all bunched up at the beginning of book two like some 50-100 page prologue…  You can save it for a need to know basis – and then backtrack to find the best place to insert the information…  Just some thoughts.

In fact, next time I may blog on prologues…

1667-1745, a true Irishman who once said, “better belly burst than good liquor be lost.”

Swift wrote Gulliver’s Travels not as an epic fantasy – though it is that in many minds – but as social and political commentary.  With that understood, it is clear that  he was a serious man.  He espoused ideas like  “For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.”

Given the Irish struggle back then against the English I have no doubt Swift knew fear.  That he went forward and published his work is to his credit.  He published, heedless of who he insulted in the process.  By comparison, I know many writers who are holding on to works and books written and stuck in drawers out of fear of what, hanging?  No, rejection.

Swift’s take on books was instructive.  He called “books, the children of the brain.”  But I am quite sure he did not mean “children” the way we understand the word these days.  So many look at their work and stories like they are their children.  They have a hard time letting them out of the nest.  They have a hard time letting go.  They fear the world will be cruel to them – but hey, at least you are not risking prison time…

Look, you and I both know there is a lot of mediocre work in print.  I have been known to send young writers to the book store to compare their work with what is on the shelf.  Hopefully, they will come away with a better sense of sentence, paragraph and chapter construction; but at the same time I hope they find works in print which are frankly no better than their own work.

You may think your own work makes the sun rise.  That is probably not a good attitude.  Swift again would have an answer.  “Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”

Then again, you may think your work would best be put at the bottom of a landfill.  Remember Swift again.  “Every dog must have his day.” 

So, whether you see yourself as a giant or a Lilliputian, put it out there.  So what if they say, “no thank you.”  Send it to someone else.  Write the next one.  Unless your name is Rushdie, you at least don’t have to worry about threats to your life…

It was in 1650 BC when the last human being died.  One of the surviving ancient deities, Poseidon,  hovered over the waters and wept.  The madness was over, but he feared the Earth would be empty forever.  Fortunately, it was not our earth, but it was close.  The only difference between that other earth and our earth was the Traveler was never born over there.  The only difference between the two universes was the creative and variable energies were very strong there and very weak in our universe.

At first, Poseidon thought there might be a chance to save his earth.  He thought to merge the two worlds and thus restore life to his desolate planet.  He drew the other Earth as close as he could, but he found the task of merging the two universes beyond what even the gods could do.  What is more, he discovered that his earth was a mirror image of our own, with Europe pointing to the east rather than the west.  It was not going to work.

It was the goddess Amphitrite, wife of Poseidon on our earth that stumbled into this other earth when they were very close – around 1600 BC.  She offered two suggestions which took hold. 

The first was to allow some people the opportunity to cross over from our earth to the other earth and thus repopulate that world.  In particular, she encouraged those people who appeared to have the ability to use the creative and variable energies in that other universe.  Since the two worlds were at present close, those energies were leaking into our universe and interfering with the normal advance of civilization in our universe.

The second was to set the world into a pattern like the moon where they would slowly come toward conjunction and then fade to a distance.  In this way, there might always be new people able to cross over until the other earth became as populous as our own.  It was hoped that eventually there could be good commerce between the worlds.  Also, it would prevent that creative and variable energy from completely corrupting our world.  That turned out to be wise.

What is creative and variable energy?  It is what you or I might call magic.

The cycle takes 600 years.  For three hundred of those years, you might imagine a half-moon to a full moon and back to a half-moon.  During those years, magic becomes more possible on our earth and for the center 100 to 200 or so years, travel between the worlds is possible.  For the other three hundred years, as the pendulum cycles toward the new moon, magic is not possible on our earth.

You can trace the chart yourself, beginning in 1650 BC.  

You will notice the half-moon occurred in 1875 AD.  Magic in our world once again started to occur.  Travel between the worlds became possible by 1950, and the full moon will arrive in 2025.  In 2175 the two earths will move out of phase sufficiently to where magic will again be virtually impossible on our earth.  But, who knows what will happen by then? 

Oh yes, the worlds have also established a pattern in their conjunction.  Backwards (mirror image and distorted) Europe on the other earth connected to China at first, then Europe, North America, Europe, China, Europe… It is presently over North America.  On a planet where the Sahara was driven into the sea and Europe got shoved to the south, the current “northeast” section of Spain (southeast France) sits along the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Kiev sits in the mountains near Boulder, Colorado. You can draw the map.  Maybe someday I will draw it for you…

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For a Tale of the Other Earth please look under the tab above.  Thanks.

My father spent his life editing magazines in New York.  Of course, his was strictly non-fiction, but over the course of growing up I caught several occasionally repeated phrases which are still worth repeating.  Follow:

“It’s okay to speak off the cuff as long as you write it down first.” 

I am thinking of this blog and so many other blogs written by writers and would-be writers.  They say if you want to be a writer these days you need to establish a presence, and a blog is a good way to do that.  I think, though, some bloggers could spend a little more time considering their words.  Put that way is a kindness.  A blog may or may not say something about the person writing it, but it will certainly be taken as saying something about the writer.

My dad was a Civil War buff.  He went to nearly all of the battlefields in his lifetime, and one thing he always liked to do was check for typos.  He would see, for example, how many misspellings of Connecticut he could find cast in bronze forever.  Okay, that was a little weird, but it proves the point.  I don’t have his editor’s eye, but I try to be careful in my posts, both in the writing and in the content.  I would think any would-be writer should.

 “Good writers know what to put into a story.  The best writers know what to leave out.” 

What can I add to that?  My last writerly post was about revising and editing, not rewriting.  In that post I mentioned tightening the prose, but only in passing.  Still, I believe it is imperative for any writer to learn how to be concise.  Yes, at times the prose can be too spare, but the human tendency is to pad things. 

A young man told me recently he finished a good story but it was 35,000 words, a very hard sell in this market.  He asked me if he should expand it to novel length.  So I asked where the other 35,000 (to 50,000) words were going to come from and why will that not be the worst case of padding since Weird Al Yankovic sang about being fat?

Seriously, you need to know how to tell a story if you want to write well, but if you want excellence, you need to know what to leave out.

Then there is this, and I will leave you with this thought.

“Never let the facts stand in the way of a good story.”  

Too much back story?  Too much information?  Too many explanations?  Too many graphs and charts and maps so you look like a Glenn Beck wannabe?  You fill in the blank.  Remember, stories are always about people.  They may be alien or fairy people (science fiction and fantasy) or animal people (Narnia or Homeward Bound) but they are people all the same.  Don’t let the facts get in the way.

I can only speak for myself.  And for those of you whose first draft is like a skeleton or like an outline except with complete sentences so rewriting consists of fleshing things out, I can offer little, if any advice.  But for those who finish a story, listen.  Please don’t cut and slash.  I simply don’t believe or buy into the thinking that all first drafts are automatically trash. 

You have worked hard.  Your muse and subconscious as well as your characters have guided and directed you all along the way.  You have every right to feel good about your accomplishment and no reason to feel it is trash.  Think of it as the first grapes of the season.  Sometimes that makes the best wine.  Your only job at this point is to turn those grapes into wine, and while the form may change a bit, everything is already there in the juice.  That much does not have to be substantially changed.

The first thing I do is set the work aside for a “time.”  Usually, that is about two or more weeks.  Then I change the font from my writing font (Times New Roman) to my final font (Courier New) to get a fresh perspective.  Some people like to print it out, but I find that unnecessarily expensive.  The reason editors like courier so much is because it is equally spaced and therefore easy to edit.  For me, the change in font makes the whole work appear fresh.

The second thing I do is go scene by scene which is not necessarily the same thing as chapter by chapter.  A scene, like a movie scene, covers one location and the events that take place there.  It may develop over several chapters.  There may be several scenes in the same chapter.  But I go scene by scene and ask a few simple questions:

What is the purpose of this scene, and did I succeed?

In what way does this move the story forward?

Are the characters true to form in action and dialogue?

Is there foreshadowing?

Are the sub-plot (s) properly accounted for?

Yes, sometimes a whole scene might be deleted as unnecessary.  Also, at times, a paragraph or more may need to be added or things within the scene shuffled a bit…but then I move on.

Third, chapter by chapter I ask less questions.

Does the chapter begin with a hook that keeps the reader interested?

Does it end with a hook that keeps the reader reading?

Is the tension building?

Fourth, I edit.  Now is when I go through and look at HOW I say things and ask if it could be said better – if the prose could be tighter.  With my eye on the scenes and chapters, a lot of the editing has already happened.  Some even edit during the first draft, and I confess that is hard to avoid, though I am careful not to let it impede my progress. 

Editing is precisely what an editor would do – more than mere proofreading.  Sometimes you want just the right word, but I do not recommend writing by thesaurus.  Keep it simple and accessible to your reader.  Watch out for repeated phrases and words.  Watch out for was-ing constructions.  Watch your adverbs and adjectives.  Etc. etc.  All that writerly stuff you have heard.

The editing process can take time.  That’s okay.  Take your time because once you are done, YOU ARE DONE.  Please, O please stop.  Write your synopsis, your query, your cover letter if you will, but then put it on the market and go write your next one.  Please don’t fall into the trap of tweaking – rewriting the work every time you get a no thank you.  It may be that this one will never sell, but I have a rule.  I don’t look at a work deemed “finished” for a minimum of five years, no matter how many no thank yous I get.  I keep too busy working on the next one and the one after that! 

Besides, after five years (or 10), hopefully I will have learned a bit.  Then I may be able to see the flaws and get it in shape, or if not, I may be able to understand why it never sold.  I never understood such things when I was determined to tweak it every couple of months.  Tweaking just kept me frustrated and discouraged.  Now, I follow Yul Brenner’s line in the Ten Commandments.  “So let it be written.  So let it be done.”