Category Archives: Writing

Writing Perspective – Day 24 of 31

By Valerie Routhieaux

Day 24 – Show vs. Tell

Showing versus telling has been one of those areas that always confused me. However, when I did the research on it, I can say with certainty that yes, yesterday’s example from New Horizon’s – Predators and Blue Fire was a perfect example of Showing.

Not only was I giving you an example of how not to give too much information at once, but also showing you the action instead of telling you what was going on.

When you watch a movie, you don’t need anyone to show you what’s going on in the scene, it’s evident. However, how do you make that same scene come alive in a book so the reader can see the scene in their head as they read? You do it through showing.

Show the reader a person is cold with stamping feet, shivering, blowing on mitten-less, glove-less hands, fog in the air as the character breathes. Those are clear images of showing. Don’t just say your character is cold. You’ve done nothing to show your reader.

Dress your reader in layers – a heavy knit sweater, wool knit hat, large overcoat. What time of year is it? Sweat dripped from his brow and clung in cloying stickiness to his skin. Snow crunched underfoot. He had to crack the ice in order to get water from the well. Humidity hung in the air and took the breath away as she stepped outside. Her nostrils felt like they would freeze together as she stepped into the windless starry night. Color flooded the landscape and crunched underfoot as she walked in the countryside. The air was soft and gentle, the trees budded with new life. Green tongues poked their way through the earth after a fiercely cold winter.

Can you see it? Can you feel it? That’s showing and that’s what you want your reader to see and feel when you write your stories. There are times when you need to tell. Keep the telling to a minimum.

Tomorrow’s Perspective: Avoid Shortcuts

Writing Perspective – Day 23 of 31

By Valerie Routhieaux

Day 23 – Reader Engagement

Today’s writing tip concerns the info dump. When you start writing, people tend to start with the backstory and tell everything about the situation and in doing so, lose their audience before the end of the first paragraph.

You want your reader to know your characters, their personality, and the time period they live in or the planet they’re on, depending on what genre you’re working with.

However, there’s a right way and wrong way to do that. I once picked up the book Ben Hur from the library. I couldn’t get past the first couple of pages because it was all information about the time period. How do you overcome that and get your reader interested in your book? Sprinkle it in where appropriate. Not all at once.

You might start with a paragraph showing location for your character but get to the dialogue as soon as possible. Interaction between characters can show as much information about the time period, genre, location as several pages of info dump does. And it does a better job of keeping your reader engaged in the story.

As your story moves along, your reader will get a good idea of where your characters are and what they are doing from the dialogue. Yes, the description is necessary to the book, but don’t over describe. Don’t under describe either. You don’t want to leave the person wondering what just happened and cut him out of the story.

Remember, your reader is on the same journey as your characters. Let them look around the location and see where they are. Build tension with dialogue. You won’t get tension in an info dump.

Below is an excerpt from my book New Horizons – Predators and Blue Fire. I hope it shows you what I’m talking about. Information, but not too much. It’s the end of the first chapter.

———-

They finished a late-night snack when the plane went through an electrical storm. Lightning flashed around the plane, but there weren’t any clouds in sight, at least none Shanara could see as she gazed out the window. It reminded her of movies about a spacecraft forced through space at an excessive speed.

She expected to see dark billowy clouds below them, indicating rain, but there was nothing. She also found it strange that flying above the clouds, they would get caught in an electrical storm, something she would expect below the clouds. However, she couldn’t see the sky or clouds.

The seatbelt sign came on, and everyone put their seats in an upright position, preparing for the worst. Only the worst didn’t happen, at least not from what Shanara could see, or not see.

“That was a strange storm. What can you see out the window?” asked Michael.

“Nothing. I mean, literally, nothing. Before the storm there was an ocean beneath us, now there isn’t even water.”

Suddenly, the plane took a sharp turn upward, and Shanara could see the mountain peak in front of them.

“Where did that come from?” asked Michael.

“I have a feeling we’re not on earth anymore,” said one of the passengers, her eyes glued to the window.

“I bet you’re right. Nothing looks familiar,” said a male passenger.

As soon as the plane righted itself, the captain came on the intercom. “I know many of you are wondering where we are. So are we! Our navigational charts are useless. We passed into what is known as the Bermuda Triangle, and though I’ve flown this route many times, nothing like what we experienced has ever happened before. Some of you saw an electrical storm out your window. That wasn’t an electrical storm. It was a wormhole. I know what you might be thinking. You’re not in the Twilight Zone. However, wormholes are a theory which just became fact. We are looking for a place to land and hope we can find a civilization who will not shoot first and ask questions later. For now, please remain calm. You will know what is happening at the same time we do. Captain Fredericks out.”

“Okay. Now I’m glad I packed as much as you did,” said Michael.

“That’s not our moon,” said a male passenger behind them.

“No, it’s not,” said Shanara, seeing a larger moon than she was used to seeing.

“Look over there. Is that another planet?” pointed a woman, a few rows ahead of them.

Shanara focused on the terrain below them and the moons or planets she saw out the window amid a vast array of stars. It was clear they were no longer on Earth, but where they were, she hoped they would soon find out.

—————-

I hope this helps show you how to give your information to the reader and keep your reader engaged in your story.

Tomorrow’s Perspective: Show vs. Tell

Writing Perspective – Day 28 of 31

By Valerie Routhieaux

Day 28 – Conflict

Looking through Story Structure Architect, I found an obvious one I forgot – Conflict.

Conflict is important to any story. You need conflict or you don’t have a story.

It doesn’t matter what genre you’re working in. Your conflict takes up the middle of your book. It’s what needs resolving. You can have a simple conflict with a simple solution. Those are usually your less than 300-page books. Or you can have your complicated conflicts with more than one issue. You can also have one compounded issue. When you think you’re getting close to the answer, something else happens and throws you off track and in another direction.

Personally, I like complicated and compounded. It makes for a better read.

Tomorrow’s Perspective: Time Management

Writing Perspective – Day 22 of 31

By Valerie Routhieaux

Day 22 – Self-Publishing

Today, I’m going to deviate from writing to publishing, specifically self-publishing.

If you Google self-publishing, you will find many publishing options. Most, if not all, are expensive. When I started self-publishing back in 2012, that’s how I found the house I published with. It was an expensive package, at least for me as I didn’t have a huge income at the time, and my son was angry at me for going that route. I have since found a free, easy to use publisher—CreateSpace, now KDP Direct as they merged this past year. CreateSpace and KDP Direct are an Amazon company.

When self-publishing you need to be aware that no one will help you with revision, editing, or anything else unless you pay someone to do that. It’s all on you.

What I did when I found myself faced with editing my work, I bought several editing tools. I might have mentioned them before, but here are the books I bought to help me. English Grammar for Dummies by Geraldine Woods, The Artful Edit by Susan Bell, Revision & Self-Editing by James Scott Bell.  Someone also sent me Harbrace College Handbook 9th Edition by John C Hodges and Mary E. Whitten.

These have been valuable tools in learning how to edit. Last year I also downloaded Grammarly the free edition, and prowritingaid.com, which I bought. These have been and continue to be helpful in my writing.

CreateSpace, now KDP Direct, gives you guidelines to follow along with templates to help with formatting your manuscript. If you submit your work outside those guidelines, they won’t accept it.

During the publishing process, you choose a generic cover or if you have one, download the cover. It must be 300 DPI. I have since found a great site for converting your pictures to 300 DPI. It’s easy, and most importantly, it’s free. https://convert.town/image-dpi.   CreateSpace/KDP Direct will review your manuscript to make certain it’s within their guidelines and send it back to you to review and edit. They do not give any suggestions.

It’s a good idea to edit your manuscript at this point, even though you have done so many times before you submitted it for publishing. You always miss something.

BEFORE you hit submit when you are fully satisfied with the manuscript, be certain to get your copyright. This will be your only charge as it’s your Library of Congress copyright. It’s generally $25. Unless it’s gone up.  I’ve missed this step on every manuscript I submitted. I thought I could get the copyright after I submitted it. You can’t. It must be done before you submit. Do not be confused with the ISBN you received as soon as you submitted your manuscript at the start of the publishing process.

Once you submit your manuscript for publication in the final step, it goes live immediately and people will be able to buy your book. It will also tell you how long before it becomes available in foreign countries. It could take up to a week for that.

After you submit for publication, you’re not finished yet. You have the opportunity to get your manuscript into an eBook or Kindle. It’s an easy process and it too will be live as soon as you okay everything.

As for royalties, Amazon pays out monthly. Because CreateSpace/KDP Direct is an Amazon company, your royalties come from Amazon to your checking account. Your royalties are delayed for two months. For instance, if someone buys your book today, you will receive the royalty for the book in two months. They pay out on the 29th of the month. You also don’t need to earn a certain amount to be paid. My smallest royalty was .07.

As for how much your book costs, you set the price. They give you guidelines on what to charge, based on the number of pages in your book. Once you determine the cost, they give you the royalty amount in the various currencies around the globe. You set this price for the paperback as well as eBook.

Are you ready to submit your book for self-publishing? I hope I helped with the process.

Thanks for reading.

Tomorrow’s Perspective: Reader Engagement

Finding Inspiration

By Terry C. Misfeldt

Writing requires finding inspiration. Whatever inspires you delivers words to enliven your manuscript. Giggles from your two-year-old grandson as you transport him across the swimming pool. Warm cuddles from your four-year-old granddaughter who seldom sees her grandpa. Rivulets of rain rolling down the gutter and flooding the street. Dark clouds swirling downward counterclockwise in a severe thunderstorm as you watch a tornado touch down.

Whatever captures your senses serves as inspiration to write. When it happens, try to capture it and bring it to life in the pages of your document. Add details or fabricate them. The grandson wearing floaties and fascinated by the water flowing into the pool filter. Your granddaughter wrapped in her favorite blanket and, of course, in her favorite color. Cars ripping through the pouring rain despite a blinding downfall. Your neighbor’s trees whipping in the tumult of strong winds ripping away limbs.

If it’s hard to remember people, events, or other activities that inspire you, carry a notepad and pen with you to jot down what you’ve experienced. I have found that our mental capacity is far greater than that of any computing device on the market.

I am inspired by memories from my childhood and find that some of those incidents remain vivid decades later. One that will never perish is of the first home I remember where one closet separated my parent’s bedroom from that of my brother and me. We could walk from our bedroom through the closet into my parent’s bedroom. Hey, I was less than five years old so it was more fun than dangerous.

Seek inspiration from your family, friends, work, leisure, vacations, travel, hobbies, home life, or doing whatever you’re doing wherever you are.

Keep a journal and use it to be inspired.

Writing Perspective – Day 21 of 31

By Valerie Routhieaux

Day 21 – Culture

When you start with your idea, you put your characters in a setting and give him or her a personality, good or bad, along with all the problems that culture brings with it. You decide.

Today I conclude the science fiction world-building series with culture. Culture ties in everything discussed in world-building – environment, history, inhabitants, religion, and magic. Who you are is your culture. It is found in every genre, not only science fiction. Culture encompasses the food you eat, where you live, customs, religion, language, technology or lack thereof, government, money, occupations and the list expands. Everything revolves around culture.

As the author you have complete say over your characters, what they believe, where they live, this planet or another, how they live – rich or poor, who has authority over them – government, friends, parents. You make the rules and you must follow the rules you make. Your reader will accept your story if you stick to your rules.

Think about every book you’ve read, every movie you’ve seen. What did you like about it or not like? Did it stick to the rules the author laid out? Was the culture clearly seen in the way everyone related to each other?

Think about the earth. Where do you live, what is your culture? Could you easily move to another place on the planet and adapt to that culture or would there be culture shock as you got used to another society’s ways?

As the writer, how do the characters adapt if you relocate them to another city or country on your planet? Is the currency the same? There are a lot of variables to think about.

I recommend choosing a few basics so the reader doesn’t need to think about how everything works together because it does. Do you have anything to add to culture or any other aspect of world-building?

Thanks for reading.

Tomorrow’s Perspective: Self-Publishing

Writing Perspective – Day 20 of 31

By Valerie Routhieaux

Day 20 – Magic

I hope some of you look forward to these tips and I’m glad I can help. I’m not an expert. This is what I’ve gleaned in my time as a writer and now author.

I’m still going through the world-building points. There are six of them. This one is the fifth—magic.

Magic is a broad field. It can come from any direction. Through science, through the supernatural, through technology.

Consider what you know today and where you are technologically. Now place this same knowledge in a different by-gone era and people would accuse you of witchcraft. We know the supernatural exists. All religions have some basis in the supernatural. It isn’t a far stretch of the imagination to tap into the supernatural.

You also don’t need to use the supernatural or magic in science fiction alone. Consider the best-selling book of all time, the Bible. God presents His people with signs and wonders throughout the Old Testament with the plagues of Egypt, and Elijah calling down fire from heaven and going to heaven in the whirlwind. In the New Testament, you have Jesus’ resurrection, and signs and wonders done by the apostles. These are factual representations of a mighty God.

As a Christian author, I showed God’s mighty power with the supernatural in two of my published books, Manifest Destiny and Freedom’s Cry. Magic can be presented in different ways. Consider JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Not everyone had magic and not all magic was good, some were bad.

How you present magic will bring your reader into your world or leave him or her standing at the door. It must be done in such a way that it’s natural to the story.

Is magic something your characters dabble in and learn, fearful that anything will happen and what happens when something does? Is magic a way of life for the people of your world and everyone has magic, some more than others? Is magic a magicians’ conjuring trick? Admit it, you enjoy a good magician’s trick. You’ve even tried it yourself.

When considering magic as the main topic of your story, you need to present it at the beginning. Even if your main character is unaware of his or her ability with magic, it must be shown at the onset of your story. Then your audience will be waiting for it to manifest in your character or will wonder how he or she will use their magic.

You can also use magic as a surprise element for your character. Again, it must be a natural outcome for the character, even if it is a surprising one. Once presented, your audience will wonder what’s going to happen next. Don’t disappoint them.

There’s also magic in the world around you. Watch nature and see how it fits together. It’s an amazing world we live in. Use it in your writing to help develop your characters. You never know where you’ll find a bit of magic.

Have you tried using magic in your writing?

Tomorrow’s Perspective: Culture

Writing Perspective – Day 19 of 31

By Valerie Routhieaux

Day 19 – Religions

Thank you for your interest in writing tips for novels, short stories, and blogs. It doesn’t matter what you write, it helps to know how to write. I hope I have helped you.

I am still discussing science fiction and world-building. Today I will focus on religion. Every culture has a religion of some type.

When creating your world, you need to know what fuels the hearts and minds of the people in your story. What do they believe? Do they believe in one god or many? Do they believe in the true God or no god? How do people interact with their gods? Do they have religious leaders to tell them what their gods want from them? What kinds of gods are they? Are they benevolent, malevolent, or manipulative? Do they make demands of the people or do they take care of the people?

Religion plays as much a part of your story as any other part. Your reader will want to know, even if they don’t realize it, what the people believe in the story you create. They want to know how it all fits together. It’s your story. Tell it in such a way that your reader will want to be part of the world you create.

Tomorrow’s Perspective: Magic

Writing Perspective – Day 18 of 31

By Valerie Routhieaux

Day 18: World History

Welcome to today’s writing tips. I’m still on world-building as there is so much to it that can also apply to other genres, not only science fiction.

One of the things you need to concern yourself with in your world is the history of the world your characters live in. What took place to put them in the position they’re in? Is it the result of peace, or is there a war going on?

History is important to every genre. To learn the history of what you’re writing you need to do research. In science fiction, you’re making up the history of your planet or world. What will your characters face? Will they be accepted or not? Was there war? How was peace achieved? Is it an uneasy peace in which war could break out again with little provocation?

Aside from wars, how did the planet come to exist? Was it part of creative design? Was a god responsible for the planet or the solar system? What kind of technology does the world have or not have? What about different societies or classes of people?

No matter what genre you write, you need to consider all the factors that make up your story. In science fiction, you can set your creative imagination free to roam. What obstacles do you face in your writing? Thanks for reading.

Tomorrow’s Perspective: Religions

Writing Perspective – Day 17 of 31

By Valerie Routhieaux

Day 17 – Inhabitants

Today in world-building, I will discuss the inhabitants of your world. Are your inhabitants a completely different alien race? Are they human or non-human? Are they mythological or magical? Are they monsters? Are they on earth or another planet?

There is a lot you can do with your story. You can base your mythological, magical, and monster stories on earth or create another planet for your story or don’t name the planet or place of origin as was done with Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. All you have is a map of Middle Earth, you don’t know where it’s located.

In the Star Wars universe, George Lucas introduced you to a myriad of creatures, supposedly human in nature, some looking half animal and half human. In the wizarding world of Harry Potter, you know you’re on earth, particularly the UK in an unseen magical world only seen by wizards. Any human, muggle, who came in contact with wizards either have their memories wiped of all knowledge or are sworn to secrecy about wizards, as Harry Potter’s muggle family was.

Where do you start with your story? First, determine where it is. Are you on earth or in another galaxy? Next, determine your inhabitants. Are they humanoid, or extraterrestrial? Then you need to determine how they are the same as or different from humans. Do you have a combination of humans and extraterrestrial species? What are their life spans?

Once you determine your characters, you need to consider where they live and how they live? What are the main biomes of the planet? Are the plants and animals friendly or dangerous? Will they kill you or can you live side by side with them? Even on earth, we have deadly plants and animals. We have deserts and rain forests, and every ecological system living together to make the earth a living breathing planet. You need to determine the amount of land to water. Do your inhabitants dwell on land or in the water? What makes your inhabitants unique to what we’ve already seen from other authors? What makes your inhabitants stand out? Remember, if you thought of it, someone else has too, so how different can you make them to what we’ve already seen in books and movies?

Tomorrow’s Perspective: World History