Clarity in Writing

As I go back through my edits on my various novels, I think to myself WWJD (I know what you're thinking and no, it's not that. I've already asked those questions during my first draft.) It means, "What would Janette Do." One of my favorite writers is Janette Rallison. She has brutally slashed and hacked apart more than one of my stories, and yet I keep going back for more. Why? Because she is brilliant! She really knows writing. Along with voice, style, and point of view, she excels at Clarity.

Clarity is something I've been working for in my writing. I picked up this great little book, called A Pocket Style Manual by Diana Hacker. In her section on Clarity she outlines 9 ways to make your writing clear:


1. Tighten wordy sentences: Get rid of redundancies, inflated phrases and needless complex structures.

2. Choose active verbs over passive. "As a rule active verbs express meaning more vigorously than their duller counterpart- forms of the verb be."

3. Balance Parallel ideas, such as paired ideas, and series or words or phrases.

4. Add needed words: "Do not omit words necessary for grammatical or logical completeness."

5. Eliminate confusing shifts: This has to do with point of view. Don't head hop. Also Shifts have to do with verb tense. Stay in the same tense.

6. Untangle mixed constructions: The subject and verb should make sense together. For instance: "Social Workers decided that Tiffany's welfare would not be safe living with her mother." Tiffany or her welfare?

7. Repair misplaced and dangling modifiers:
     Misplaced words: these include adverbs if placed in the wrong spot portray the wrong meaning. Her example: Wrong: "There are many pictures of comedians who have performed at Gavins on the wall at." Wow, that must have been hard. Gravity has a way of keeping comedians on the floor. Corrected: "On the walls are many pictures of comedians who have performed at Gavins."
     Dangling modifiers: A modifier that fails to refer to the thing it is modifying.
     Split infinitives: Putting adverbs in between the "to" and "verb" part of a sentence. Such as: Mr. Harris instructed his students to brightly sing at the concert." No, no, no...that just sound silly. Try it this way. "Mr. Harris told his students to sing brightly at the concert." Yes, that sounds so much better.

8. Provide some variety: Okay, this one is just a plain no brainer. Vary your sentence lengths and structures, combine choppy ones, shorten excessively long ones. (I'm guilty of this!). Also vary your sentence openings. I once heard that if you had to pay your editor for the number of time he/she had to take he/she out of our opening sentences, most authors wouldn't get paid. (Maybe that a bit of an exaggeration.)

9. Find an appropriate Voice: This would be one that fits your subject and your audience. You want to be sure and engage your reader.

And there you have it. Diana Hacker in a nutshell. If you'd like more information click here for more information.

Short Story Characters

by Betsy Love

Round or flat, static or dynamic. What does that mean in terms of characters?

Round ones, not fat ones, are the characters that we know something about, okay we know more about them than we do other ones. Round characters are never stereotyped. They have personalities, struggles, values. How they react to any given situation is a result of their roundedness. On the other hand a flat character is almost never the main character. A flat character might make a brief appearance in the story--the cab driver, the waitress, the nosy neighbor next door.

A dynamic character is one who changes as a result of the situations in the story. He is the one who realizes something important about himself. Or she finds herself doing something she might not have done. We grow with this character and feel what he/she feels. Whereas a static character is one that does not change through out the story. Villains are often portrayed as static characters.

The most interesting characters are the ones we care about. Give me a reason to buy into why your character (good or evil) does what he/she does, and you'll have a great story.

I hope you'll take some time and write a short story and then submit it to my contest. You can read about the submission guidelines at:

Short Story Contest-Deadline May 31

Oh, and by the way, everything I just told you about short story characters applies to characters in all genres of fiction.

Happy Writing!

How to Get More Followers to Your Blog

I was blog hopping the other day. I do that a lot. I found this incredible blog on how to get more people to not only visit your site, but to follow and check back frequently. Trina Boice does a great job in listing the "do's" in blogging. 

Here is her #1 Tip 

"Post often and on the right days: People are more likely to read blogs on Tuesdays and Wednesdays."

After reading her great advice, I laid out a plan for my blogging today.

Roughly like this:

Tuesday's Tip-I'll give some writing tips.

Thursday's Interviews-This will be author interviews, contests, blog hopping, reposts. 

If you have any ideas what you'd like to see on any of these days, or would like me to interview you. Let me know. (It's all subject to change.)

So, if you haven't had a chance to look at Trina's post, jump over to her blog and check out the other 26 Traffic Ideas:

Trina's 27 Traffic Tips

Short Story Contest

Dear Friends, Followers and Family,
In celebration of National Short Story month, I'm sponsoring a contest! I'm rather excited. The best short story will win a copy of my soon to be released novel, Identity. If you're interested, click on the link below to learn the details:

http://betsyloveldsauthor.blogspot.com/2011/05/short-story-month.html

Whatcha doing since LDStorymakers?

LDStorymakers was amazing. I had no idea what to expect since this was my first time. It was like a smorgasbord of all you can eat writing ideas, helps, tips, networking, and spending. The spending part was optional. And those of you show greater restraint than I--shame on you! Those starving authors (okay maybe not, but I love a great hyperbole) depend on your pocket book, cash, visa, or checkbook to support their delicious habit.

With an average of 5 classes per session and 10 sessions, that's 50 classes to choose from. It was tough, let me tell you. I studied them, stacked them against each other, and had to agonize over which class. In some cases the choice was just plain too hard to decide. In that case I opted for the marketing one. I know my writing skills need to be improved--don't we all need that? I digress. I have to say that my favorite class was by Marion Jensen. He taught one huge no-no...one that I am embarrassed to say I do, a lot. That's sound like a running commercial for my book. 

Now that I've had a nice slap on the wrist, I'm going to do better at simply connecting with fellow writers. My mantra..."Don't alienate my market!"

For the next several blogs I'm going to focus on what I learned from each of my presenters. 

But before I do, I want to give a huge shout out of congrats for all of the hard work that went into the conference. I can hardly wait to go next year. And yes, I will have a book to sell in the bookstore. 

So what have I been doing since Storymakers? Daydreaming-well that's what it looks like to my family and friends, but in fact, I am plotting--my next book.