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Sam Thorne

Do I have to PAY people to read this??

by | April 11, 2019 | | 6 Comments

When you’re a writer looking for an editor, and you really don’t have much cash to throw around, it can be hard to know where to invest your money. As vital as editing is to the publication process, it is a big outlay for authors, whether they’re self-publishing or hoping to be taken under the wing of a traditional publishing house.

Let’s imagine that you’ve been saving like mad, not smoking, not drinking, giving the takeaways a hard pass, and now you have round about $500-$800 to invest in the business of launching your novel into the wild. How do you get the best out of your money?

If you’re laughing at the idea of having as much as $300 saved, let alone the range casually referred to above, then scroll down to ‘Join the Borg’ and read from there. I’m covering a range of options.

 

“Pay Peanuts, Get Monkeys” (PPGM)

 

Yep, this section is about the cost of professional editing.

I think most of us have heard the phrase before in one context or another. The gist is that a very low service cost is a warning sign of an inept operator with low-quality goods and limited expertise. In many areas of life, it’s a sage warning: if something is being offered suspiciously cheap, you’d be wise to ask some searching questions about how this retail price is even possible.

However, PPGM is also a phrase often used by relatively pricey operators to dismiss the quality or expertise of an operator who happens to have a more competitive pricing schedule. It’s all too often a tool applied by the experienced to disparage those who are new to the editing game, so take this phrase with a pinch of salt. There are a number of reasons why an editor isn’t charging as much as you’d expect:

  • They might be very good but also very new. It’s common for people with a specialist skill set to charge a lower price until they have sufficient clients to benefit from word-of-mouth advertising. Essentially, the low price is to thank you for your leap of faith. It’s not necessarily a sign that they have no idea what they’re doing.
  • They have no idea how much their time is worth. Their pricing is a sign of ludicrous modesty, not ineptitude.
  • they offer a model with a much longer turnaround than is typical for a lower price (so that they can overlap jobs without compromising attention and quality to individual projects)
  • they’re using their life-long writing and reading experience to supplement their income, and therefore might not have spent the many, many hours required to research what their competition is charging and position themselves accordingly.

Where might you begin your search for an editor? Here are some options:

  • Reedsy.com for premium services; all these editors have experience in a traditional publishing house, or they are former best-selling authors. They have proven experience as successful editors, and if you have any problems with working with one of the subscribed editors, you can contact Reedsy for arbitration support. The downside is that their pricing (about $1,000+ for 60k words or more) may make your wallet weep.
  • Recommendations from friends/acquaintances through Facebook groups or other social media platforms; this is a good bet as you can ask your friends what they got for their money, what the editor was like to work with, and so on. You might never have seen that editor’s name anywhere, ever, but that can be a sign that the editor has enough word-of-mouth business to make spending on advertising unnecessary.
  • Check out the group resources and files if you belong to online writing clubs. ERWA has a list of artists, editors and format experts, for example: https://erotica-readers.com/author-services/
  • Writers and Artists’ Yearbook: lots of editors pay to advertise their services
  • Fiverr
  • Google ‘editing services’

Don’t dismiss anyone on a casual PPGM basis; for example, there are some very good editors on Fiverr who are finding their way into the market, who don’t happen to have publishing house experience under their belt, or who are doing this part-time having given a lot of voluntary time to editing to successful effect.

Image result for keep an open mind

Found some likely candidates? Right. I’m going to go through this process like it’s a fishing expedition.

Stage 1: throwing out the hook

  • Some editors feature a fixed pricing schedule on their websites, but most simply invite you to contact them for details. Because this can slow down the go-compare process quite considerably, it’s useful to have a template email for enquiries, telling them:
  • The novel length, and length of first chapter
  • What kind of edit you’re hoping for (overview critique—developmental edit—or copy-editing, or both)
  • The written language of the novel (UK/Aus/Canadian/US), and whether it’s your first language. This is more important than it sounds; you don’t want someone Anglicising your American punctuation, and vice versa. I feel particular sympathy for Canadian writers, who must get mangled from every direction other than from fellow Canadian editors.
  • What time scale you’re hoping to work on. If you’re not in a hurry, then it’s worth mentioning that you’d be interested in hearing about any arrangements that can be met where you’re happy to wait longer than the average for the return of your MS in return for a lower cost. Just as a heads-up, it wouldn’t be reasonable to expect a full edit back in less than seven weeks on a long turnaround basis. Brace yourself for a nine- or twelve-week offer if you want your costs to come down considerably.

 

Stage Two: landing

Create a spreadsheet of what each editor says they will charge for editing the manuscript. Also look at non-financial elements such as how they came across on email or messenger. There may be a couple of people you just click with. Once you’ve selected a likely fore-runner, it is reasonable to ask for a sample of their editing, using your first chapter (and this is why the length information is important; don’t expect them to edit a first chapter over 3k for free. That could be up to ten hours of their time, free, while they’re working on incumbent contracts).

 

Stage Three: Serving or Gutting

It could well be that you’re a good financial fit and you hire the editor. But…

What if you really like how the editor works, but their prices for a full edit, however reasonable, still makes you sob? If you like what they’ve done for you in the sample, then here are some other options to negotiate:

  • ask them to quote for content-editing on your first three chapters, and apply those lessons to the rest of your manuscript
  • ask them to quote for a developmental overview of the novel, commenting on characterisation, pacing and flow, structure, clarity, psychological consistency and any recurring errors. That should come in at a price in the lower hundreds, rather than mid-to-upper, and you could learn enough from the overview to tighten your novel, and then have it beta-read and proofed.

 

Join the Borg

Yep, this section is about hive minds and crowd-sourcing your feedback. Writing groups, both live and online, can be worth their weight in gold. You can use Reddit, Facebook, Literotica, Dirty Discourse and a number of social platforms to get a readership going, and to get feedback on your work as it proceeds. ERWA has its own critiquing workshop, Storytime, for this exact purpose.

You’ll get a range of opinions, and it’s useful to know where a lot of feedback overlaps. For example, your dialogue might impress several people, but your opening scene doesn’t appear to have the strong hook that you hoped for. It’s all grist to the mill, as they say, and acquiring a sort of consensus on your strong and weak points can help you see your writing with fresh eyes.

ERWA’s Storytime is one of the friendliest and most constructive places to share your work. However, to get the best out of a hive-mind scenario, here are some gentle caveats:

  1. Hive minds tend to be a great source of feedback for short stories and novellas, but don’t be disheartened if people don’t want to follow an entire novel this way. It is difficult to keep track of one chapter a week purely because of the longevity and the distraction of life between instalments. However, you can get feedback on particular scenes that have been bugging you. Getting group opinions on first chapters can also be wonderful for assessing the power of your opening hook.
  2. You would need to invest the time to provide the level and manner of critiquing you’d like to receive yourself. Virtuous circles help everyone (and you might acquire some out-of-group alpha and beta readers along the way)
  3. Think about what kind of feedback you want, and spend those extra few minutes in a foreword explaining any useful background to the material you’re offering to share, and what sort of critiquing you would appreciate. It is fine to say that you’re not looking for grammar or spelling guidance at this stage, for example.
  4. Despite claiming to be writers in full command of language, some people still have very little in the way of bedside manner, and seem to enjoy injecting all their life stresses into being abrupt on the internet. Do not let this derail you.
  5. You do not have to take all the advice given to you. You’re seeking some positive reinforcement and getting a majority vote on tricky sections; you’re not trying to write a story by committee. Thank people for their time and the point they’ve raised that will help you, and then use what’s useful for you.

 

Close-up and personal

You can use alpha and beta readers to get feedback on the delivery and shape of your novel. Alpha readers are involved throughout composition, giving feedback on a section-/chapter-by-chapter basis. It’s rather like having a free editor who only operates on a developmental-editing basis, but who will apply that level of oversight as your story unfolds.

A beta reader will give you an overview of the whole once completed. There are some paid betas out there (and they will cost considerably less than an editor), but seek them out based on the recommendation of people you trust, and find out in advance how quickly they’ve responded to others. To get the best out of a beta-reader, prepare a list of questions which will answer all and any concerns that you have. Don’t be shy about asking them to tell you about the good bits, too. It’s important to know what to do more of, as well as what needs repairing or adjusting.

 

All by myself…

Okay, there’s just you. You’ve been burned by toxic feedback in the past, and you have very, very little money indeed. In which case, your priority should be to focus on your story skills, not on your technical writing skills.

With the very little money you do have, borrow books on writing techniques, shaping your novel (within your genre) and which address the structure of your story as a whole. Use this resource for countless borrowings on books about dialogue, characterisation and plot movement.

There are hundreds of websites devoted to grammar rules, and you can get that advice for free, or through your local library or bargain basement books.

Work on your other skills (formatting, covers, blurb-writing, synopsis-writing) in the background to your creative work, and you might be able to arrange a peer swap to have the final product of your work proof-read in fair exchange for some assistance of your own.

So, that’s a fairly full range of options for getting an extra set of eyes on your work from the capacity to shell out cash (and what to look for), to how to make the best of your very, very tiny pennies. I hope you find it helpful.

Setting, environment, topography… and other slippery customers

by | October 11, 2018 | , | 12 Comments

First paragraphs demand a lot. Personality and clear perspective management. Unique visuals. A sense of setting and mood. A strong hook. Little wonder so many people either:

  • Base their entire novel off a golden first paragraph that popped into their heads at 02:03am
  • Bullet-point the first para and come back to it at the end of the chapter, or even when they’ve completed the first draft of the book.

Back in 2016, I wrote a short story called “The Way, the Truth and the Lifer”, which opens in a care home from which our intrepid hero, encumbered by early-onset Alzheimer’s, is trying to escape for the day. I posted it on our Storytime emailing list for feedback and I’m so glad I did, because my opening three paragraphs caused untold levels of bafflement. I thought I’d seeded multiple clues that Carlsbad House was a care home, but it was only my fellow Brit readers and writers who could visualise the opening scene without trouble. The feedback on the opening to my story gave me a golden opportunity to recast the order in which I presented the information about my hero’s environment, and to choose images which worked better for a transatlantic audience.

I think, up to a point, we all describe what we’re subconsciously familiar with when we’re deep in the flow of the story, or the perspective character’s mindset. As a professional editor, I have several US clients who base their stories in England, and find myself having to amend scenes where the perspective character performs all road manoeuvres as if in charge of a left-hand drive (but without all the conspicuous stress that this entails). I’ve made the same mistake, writing struggles with roundabouts (and other blatant Britishisms) into States-based stories. It’s extremely hard to avoid.

I must confess that until that valuable feedback on my “Lifer” story, setting had always been fairly low on my list of things to worry about when writing. Dialogue, POV management, choreography and emotional journeys seemed to fill my intellectual working space. I’d have to go back and fill in the details of where they were, and how that affected the atmosphere. Because I can’t hear, I often need help writing in the sound effects. I forget those, too.

These days, before sharing a story for critique, I add two more things to my self-editing list:

  1. How quickly have I shown where we are?
  2. Have I done this without presenting the reader with an info-dump?

With a little help from0 my peer editors, a collection of fine books, and a little personal experience, I thought I’d provide a wee list of techniques for setting up your environment while keeping the action moving. Towards the end (for a little light relief), I’ve provided a few examples of what to avoid.

 

If you’re not American, use your mother tongue conspicuously.

The little ‘s’ that I stuck on the end of ‘Towards’ in that last sentence would probably have made some of you flinch. This is how Brits say it, in the same way we say ‘sideways’. It’s not incorrect—just a case of using UK English.

If US English is not your mother tongue, then word choice can be a weapon in your setting arsenal, along with your Anglican spellings (organise, favour, dialogue, manoeuvre, and travelling). This provides thousands of opportunities to establish the use of UK English (and indeed dialect, where appropriate) into the perspective character’s or narrator’s opening lines. Establishing nationality can help to set location expectations. Here is a really handy link to summarise key US vs UK differences:

http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/british-versus-american-style.html

You won’t have this option with all publishers, of course, many of whom insist on US English being used, regardless of the characters’ nationalities. And this doesn’t help our Antipodean pals, whose spelling and punctuation rules have more in common with UK English than US English.

So, other means of establishing place (right down to country and continent), wherever you’re from, are:

  • closeness to (or distance from) well-known cities/landmarks
  • mentioning animal species
  • using place-focused driving language
  • slang
  • architecture
  • socio-demographic terminology
  • or any of the following options…

 

Cross-cultural comparison:

Often a nifty way of declaring a character’s location and his origins in one fell swoop:

They called Grab a ‘good-sized’ village, but you could’ve fitted four Grabs into the ‘one-horse town’ he called home.

 

Temporal comparison:

Harking back to the past when describing an unmoving/unchanging environment can be a succinct way of giving away location:

The ruin loomed in all its Northumbrian glory, the stark landscape giving the impression that the surrounding lands hadn’t been tended any more vigilantly back in the dark ages than they were now.

 

Hyperbole, exaggeration and other satire

Deliberately creating the most extreme version of the environment, and allowing the reader to recognise sarcasm (and subconsciously turn things down a notch), can be an effective way of getting your setting across succinctly. This is done a great deal in fantasy comedy, but if you remove the surreal element of the humour, you can apply the strategy across genres:

Cosy corners and gorgeous beams aside, Regan doubted that any part of the castle had ever been welcoming. He could imagine an unenthused Scottish Monarch trailing from room to room after a latter-day estate agent, reassuring him that the hills and ramparts kept the smellier of the Picts away, and that the tiny, north-facing dungeons kept prisoners nicely cold over winter.

 

Use the gift of environmental interaction

Make the topographical detail relevant to what the character’s doing in the action of the scene:

The cold almost cut through the car. Regan’s left thigh and calf were beginning to punish him for making his getaway in Missy’s stick-shift instead of heading for a garage to hire an automatic with cruise control. He tried not to think about the many miles of I94 between him and the next bathroom stop, the endless fields that would provide no windbreak when he finally had to pull over and rest, or the expression on David’s face when Dave caught him balls-deep in Missy. It was official: Bismarck could now be added to the list of places he couldn’t go without being shot at.

From here, the reader can add a little more history, linking it with the weather, the relentlessness of the journey, and the destination. But there’s a hell of a lot of information already in the paragraph above.

 

Bind the environmental details into the character’s state of mind

You can get an awful lot of information across when your perspective character is in a temper. This is used to great effect in Peter Mayle’s ‘A Year in Provence’, and pretty much most of Bill Bryson’s travel diaries from ‘Down Under’ onwards. The following snippet has been bastardised (with kind permission) from a friend’s fairly long messenger rant about the joys of finding his way to London from ‘London Luton airport’:

I didn’t want to spend my first night bitching, but a little more travel information would’ve been good. Like, ‘London Luton’ is nowhere near f**king London. The airport’s barely in Luton. It’s like saying ‘San Diego, Hollywood’. Not accurate! So I dive on this train which goes to London via Tanzania, because a direct service at short notice apparently requires a second mortgage to be arranged, and then I get the Spanish Inquisition from the guards at the ticket gate about undershooting my stop. How is it a crime to not stay on the train as long as I’m entitled to remain on the f**king train?

Using character mood to colour the experience of the surroundings is the inverse of the Thomas Hardy Principle/Malaise, where the landscape is relentlessly used as a mirror for character mood. Given that Thomas Hardy wasn’t famed for his light-hearted scenarios or uplifted characters, just a little of that technique went a very long way.

 

And on that note, some setting-relating phenomena to avoid

Countryfile Syndrome: wherein the author over-relies on lengthy strolls through the landscape while their hero mulls upon life’s little problems. There is a limit to which the perspective character’s life choices can be influenced by the pattern of bleak, chilly sheep gathering in the far field, whether or not that pattern is analogous to the cliquey behaviour of the perspective character’s family and friends.

Crap conversationalist syndrome: related to the issue above, except that the writer has forgotten that her perspective character was having a chat with a fellow character at the point where they lapsed into a moody silence in contemplation of the scenery whipping past the car window.

More IKEA, dear: scenes which take place in a relative vacuum, to the point that the reader has no idea if there’s even furniture in the room. This can make sexual choreography rather difficult to visualise.

 

The key point with setting is to keep the details as relevant to what’s going on within the action of the scene as possible. You can layer the details in those quiet, reactive moments where options are being reviewed and decisions made. So long as you don’t take your reader for too many detailed, brooding walks in the process.

 

Hmm… I think I’ve seen this somewhere before…

by | May 11, 2018 | | 10 Comments

One of the indoor activities I do with my son is to print off the ‘disaster movie bingo’ card I have on my hard drive, and then watch one of the many daft movies floating around on Amazon or Netflix. Widely-ignored scientist? Check! Scientist separated from wife? Check! Heroine survives hurricane with hairdo intact? Check!

There are twenty-five items on our card, and I think that the highest marks are tied between 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, and San Andreas.

We play this game as a chance to be creative. It’s fun to chat about what we’d change with the plot or characters to make the film more unpredictable. It helps us to think laterally. However, just as viewers expect certain elements of a disaster movie to be in place, readers have expectations of romance and erotic romance.

World and character creation is tough in any genre. But in romance or erotic romance, with so many story expectations, it can be really tricky to take a common partnership dynamic, a frequent sexual dynamic and a familiar setting, and make something completely new out of it.

I don’t believe for a second that anyone who’s writing for the joy of it writes a story where their main characters sound just like all the other characters they’ve read about and loved. There are inspirations, yes. But people write to bring their own characters to life.

Nevertheless, there are a group of recognised personalities who crop up all over the world of romance and erotic romance who will seem instantly familiar. I’ve summarised four such prototypes in the colossally exaggerated summaries below.

# # # #

The nearly  hard-hearted hero

His heart has been hermetically sealed and locked in a vault. He’s too tough for affection or conversation. You have to go at his immaculately-mortared walls with a JCB before he so much as cracks a smile.

  • But there’s always one way in, right? There’s always a tiny door through which the heroine/reader sees his very well-hidden soft side:
  • He may only speak to the rest of the world twice a year, but he makes a 100mph round trip three times a week to water his grandmother’s spider plants.
  • He’s in the ‘Big Brother’ programme and spends every other weekend giving his tiny pal lessons in how to ignore women and field-strip rifles.
  • He only roars at the heroine and knocks her to the ground to save her from accidentally stuffing her head into a woodchipper.
  • He has a pet bunny/ancient dog to whom he is unwholesomely devoted. He can also be trusted to leap over the fence and give his neighbour’s baby goat mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, or rear baby squirrels by hand.

 

The Helen of Troy tomboy

 Benjamin put down the chainsaw and whisked the little towel from her handy belt to wipe the sweat from her face. She shouldn’t have worn her size-six leggings, though they protected her legs from the flying splinters as she single-handedly took down the copse of dead trees at the far end of the football field. Sweat glued her blue tank to her body, drawing unwanted attention from every jock in the school, and that of a few nerds, all of whom silently admired her lack of self-consciousness. Lumberjacking brought her peace. Benjamin got back to work, ignoring the random taunts from the entire cheerleading squad, who’d gathered at the treeline in full make-up just to emphasise how unlike them she was. They didn’t intimidate her in the slightest; having grown up with sixteen brothers, all in the military, she knew how to handle herself.

Nuff said, I think.

 

Poor wee self-sacrificial sausage

This is the guy with such a tortured past that he thinks he’s good for nobody, despite the entire cast of the book trying to tell him otherwise on a page-by-page basis. Really, he just won’t be told. He’s on his way to hell, and he won’t take anyone with him. He spends hours alone in his garage, using mufflers to block out any attempts of other characters to so much as compliment him on the nifty paint job on his vintage Mustang.

When the heroine finally engages him in conversation, he gets out of telling her how he really feels by diving between a toddler and an oncoming SUV. Alternatively, he’ll protect her from his scumbag personality by taking her to a ball game, leaving her in her seat while he ‘gets snacks’, and then voices her personal flaws over the PA system. That’ll put her off him for life, thus preventing any hurt feelings in the long term. Because there is no short term for the sacrificial sausage.

 

The reclusive artiste, Mr Clam

He’s the most amazing thing that the public have never heard of. He’s a reclusive painter who came out of art college with plaudits coming out of his backside, but who gave it all up to care for his brother. Having abandoned his dreams he’s abandoned life, and has long since sent his muse packing with aggressive warnings not to show her face around him ever again, in case he’s tempted to follow his ill-fated dream. Being such a sensitive soul, he’s also got a fantastic palate, and could, if he put his mind to it, get some help to look after his brother while he entered and won the next series of Masterchef.

He’d love someone to love, but they have to genuinely understand his inexplicable paintings, and understand his need to cut himself off from the universe on account of the meltdown he’d encounter if anyone tried to coax him back to the limelight.

He probably wears a smoking jacket and/or a beret.

# # # #

Okay, I warned you about the colossal exaggeration! But I’m sure you’ve come across more than a handful of characters who fit these moulds.

In light-hearted discussion with other editors about these main character (MC) prototypes, a theory emerged about a general tendency towards layering traits. What am I on about, you may well ask.

Okay, let’s take the reclusive Mr Clam as our working example. A writer has decided they want their character to have heavy responsibilities, to be on the shy side, and to have almost savant levels of creativity.

It’s a tripartite starting block for the character, and that’s fine. But what can then happen is that the writer come up with a number of ways in which each of those character features are displayed in practice, and puts nearly all of them into use. For example:

Heavy responsibilities

  • Never has any time off and can’t get respite care
  • Doesn’t have hobbies outside his areas of genius
  • Has been battling depression for a number of years.
  • Works exclusively from home
  • Brother is very hard work and they struggle to get on

Shy side

  • Finds it difficult to start or sustain conversations
  • Avoids social media
  • Gets all shopping home-delivered
  • Turns down seminars and courses
  • Timid about critiquing other artists’ work because he’s suffering imposter syndrome after so many years ‘off the scene’

Highly creative

  • Is excellent chef
  • Brilliant artist
  • Harassed by mother into arranging flowers for church as a child
  • Used to enjoy doing the costumes for drama groups as a teen
  • Writes wonderful poetry.

It’s only when you get significant layering of traits under each element that makes up the MC that a painfully familiar character emerges. It’s not about lack of imagination (the contrary, in fact), but about raising the probability that the writer’s using traits which are often seen before because so many of them are being used.

So, how can this tendency towards trait-layering be taken down a notch once it’s been recognised?

 

Seek out the double-edged swords

In its simplest terms, this means focusing on one particular trait that a character has, and seeing how it works for and against him. Using Mr Clam again:

His work as an artist makes good use of his ability to focus intensely, but he’s terrible at multi-tasking, which means he invariably fails to preheat the oven. He may love home cooking, and have a fantastic palate, but his successes are somewhat hit and miss.

If he struggles with his relationship with his brother, then he’ll need an outlet. He will drive out to get his own shopping but only at one particular store, where the owner is so grumpy that there’s no danger of small talk. He also wants some contact with like-minded souls, so he does do social media, but only Twitter and Reddit. He also still helps the drama group with their sets, but takes items home to work on, rather than doing the painting in situ.

 

Evolve quirks and contradictions

Perhaps his hand-eye coordination is exemplary, but he has no sense of direction. So, he’s an excellent driver with good reflexes, but cannot for the life of him read a map (a source of endless embarrassment).

He’s shy until someone gets him on a topic which is a bugbear, at which point he has to be silenced with duct tape.

He’s intolerant over issues where he’d be expected to have compassion. Perhaps his brother’s condition and demanding behaviour have caused Mr Clam to emotionally associate immobility with impatience, because that’s what he puts up with all the time.

His dark and angsty painting is phenomenal, but his dark and angsty poetry puts people to sleep.

 

So, there are a couple of techniques to steer a character off the road oft-taken. I hope they’re helpful tips. To sign off, here are some extremely useful resources for digging into all peculiar corners of the character’s life and psyche:

https://www.amazon.com/Plot-Thickens-Ways-Bring-Fiction-ebook/dp/B007AXPL7M/

https://www.amazon.com/Positive-Trait-Thesaurus-Character-Attributes-ebook/dp/B00FVZDVS2/

Twelve Days… an epistolary epic for modern times

by | December 11, 2017 | | 16 Comments

I think I was about six when I first learnt the whole ‘twelve days of Christmas’ song. Even at that age, the gifts on offer struck me as rather unmanageable in terms of frequency, quantity and accommodation. What sort of man, after all, sends their partner ten leaping lords?

And how does one convey one’s varying levels of gratitude for the continuous influx of peculiar gifts? By email, of course! The finely crafted email is the handwritten letter of yesteryear, and the means through which I intend to convey poor Donna’s yuletide saga…

Is there a learning point in this exercise?  Hmmm… yes, and no.

Yes, in that telling a story in the epistolary form is a good way of making the reader imagine all the chaos happening ‘off-screen’, so to speak.

No, in that it’s December, there’s shopping to do and nativity plays to attend, and I just wanted to write something fun rather than ‘educational’.

Have a great winter break folks, however you choose to celebrate.

 

^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*

On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me… a wanker with a spare key.

 

Dear Darling

I hope you landed safely in Riyadh and that you got a decent night’s sleep after the rough journey.

I found the sweet little note you left on the kitchen table—you have twenty-four gifts organised for me? Wow! One day at a time, eh? It’s a good thing I work from home; I can catch all those delivery men. 

However, as grateful as I am for the imminent arrival of lovely pressies, I would’ve really appreciated it if you could’ve warned me about ‘Spud’ (what’s his real name?)

I realise that you’ve served together and that he needs a place to stay for a couple of weeks, but he gave me a bloody great shock by arriving while I was in the shower. Literally! He apologised for needing the loo in an emergency, but he didn’t show much sense of urgency while washing his hands and face. That man cleans himself at the speed of a sloth giving himself a pedicure. Thank goodness for frosted shower glass! Let’s hope this has just been a case of first-day teething problems. I’m sure he’ll settle in.

Right – I’ve got dinner to make, so I’ll email tomorrow.

Donna

 

* * *

On the second day of Christmas, my true love sent to me… two dirty gloves

Hi love, quick text to say thanks for the first pressie. I love the pre-loved gauntlets. They’re very robust. I’m sure that if I ever need to handle a batch of thermite cacti then I’ll stay very safe, lol. Are we getting a stove? I’d love a stove. Some of our neighbours have applied to have one installed and they keep going on about not having to pay for heating anymore. Warm nights by the fire sound ideal to me—especially with that dodgy door leading out to the roof terrace.

Spud made an effort to apologise for springing in on me yesterday by bringing home burger and chips from Tony’s Takeaway. It was a nice thought but—alas, like the gloves—the chips had clearly been ‘pre-loved’ between Tony’s place and my front door.

Hope you’re getting through your first day okay. I know it’s always rough when you go back on tour. xxxx

 

* * *

On the third day of Christmas, my true love sent to me… three French hens!

Evening Dan

I hope you had a good day setting up and that you won’t get sent out to some grim fox hole straight away.

I now understand the gloves! The three French hens arrived in the early afternoon, and I needed the gloves to round them up and get them out of the kitchen. Damn their claws are sharp! They also move surprisingly fast once released from a cage. For the time being, they’re hanging out on the roof terrace. I had to nip out this afternoon to buy them a hutch (no idea what you call an enclosure for hens), and spent a good couple of hours trying to build it.

Spud isn’t hugely fond of the hens, I’ve noticed. He complains (without a hint of irony) that they’re ‘messy.’ Hmm. Sorry. I WILL try to stop complaining about my sudden house guest. If he could replace some of the red wine he’s been working his way through, then that would be grand.

Are the hens safe with pizza, by the way? I’ve noticed that pizza certainly isn’t safe around THEM.

Much love. I’ll try to call tomorrow.

Donna xxxx

* * *

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me… four calling birds

Hi love

Just a quick note to say thanks for the calling birds. I’m afraid they turned out to be quite temporary presents. Spud left the door of the roof terrace open when he went for a smoke and the birds made a swift exit, stage left. The hens didn’t follow them, you’ll be glad to hear. Mind you, it’s probably a good thing that we don’t have seven birds roaming around the apartment. My neighbours slipped a passive-aggressive little note under my door this evening, asking me if the ban on pets had been relaxed.

You have the greatest imagination for gifts but I’m not sure our flat is really designed to accommodate quite so much wildlife 😉 (gentle hint).

Right, I’m behind on my work so I’d better spend a few hours catching up. Love you lots

D xxxx

 

* * *

On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me… five gold rings!

On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me… Six geese a-laying

Dan

I know things got heated on the phone, and I’m sorry we argued. But I did try hinting that I couldn’t take on any more animals. Goose eggs might be great for Christmas, but the bloody geese aren’t. They’re like miniature forces of destruction. I’ve already had to sell two of the five gold rings to cover the cost of repairing my furniture and getting the carpet professionally cleaned.

It’s all very well telling me to put the geese on the roof with the hens, but these geese:

  1. a) are unexpectedly murderous – we only have two French hens now
  2. b) aren’t having any of this sit-in-the-cold rubbish. They like being warm, it seems.

We managed to get all six of them outside, but after their streetfight-showdown with the hens, they lined up by the doors, giving us death stares through the glass. Even Spud was freaked out in the end. Sorry love, but tomorrow morning, those geese (and the hens) are going straight to the park on Millbank, where they can squawk, cluck and screech to their hearts’ content.

 

* * *

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me… seven swans-a-swimming

======================================================

OUTGOING TELEGRAM OFFICE: RAF_LN

DESTINATION OFFICE: SdA_Rh

Attn: Captain Daniel Forrester

======================================================

Stop it with the bloody birds STOP 

Swans are fucking evil STOP

Send me one more bird (or creature) and we’re finished STOP

======================================================

* * *

On the eighth day of Christmas, my weirdo sent to me… eight maids a milking

Dan

I’m tempted to email your CO and ask him to send you for a psych-eval.

What in the name of the fat noodly fuck am I supposed to do with these maids? WE DON’T HAVE ANY COWS! We don’t even have any room for them to sit anywhere, let alone stay here. They’re just wandering around the flat, clenching and unclenching their fists, looking lost, libidinous and weird.

Spud’s cheered up for the first time in a couple of days. He’s convinced he can get at least four of them to ‘milk’ him. He’s an annoying git, but I’ve seen the ‘goods’ and can understand why he thinks he’s a two-maid job.

I’ve spent the money from gold ring #3 on minibus hire so Spud can drop the maids off at various railway stations tomorrow.

I missed my publishing deadline, by the way. Thanks a bunch for keeping me so busy.

Donna

Ps: please, please tell me that there aren’t any cows coming? That should be a stupid question, but I wouldn’t put anything past you anymore.

 

* * *

On the ninth day of Christmas, my dickhead sent to me… nine ladies dancing

Dan, allow me to summarise. Nine ‘ladies’ dancing in the corridor = eight morally offended neighbours = 7 formal complaints to building management = six rude messages left on my voicemail = five equally irate messages left on their voicemail (I’ve blamed you, by the way) = four dancing ladies being arrested = three arrested ladies demanding I pay their bail = 2 hours sleep last night, and one furious EX-FIANCÉE.

 

* * *

On the tenth day of Christmas, my ex-dick sent to me…  ten lords a-leaping

You immature tosspot! The last thing I need while I’m packing is a bunch of drunken peers flinging themselves around the flat. I don’t know WHY I even answered the door.

I’ll be as glad to leave Westminster as I am to leave you. Spud was my hero today. Using a cattle prod, he persuaded all ten lords to make themselves useful by carrying all my boxes down to the moving van. It seems that Spud doesn’t like being leapt upon any more than I do.

 

* * *

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love sent to me… eleven pipers piping

Joke’s on you, buster. When you get home, you’re homeless. We’ve been evicted. Spud has found a two-bed apartment in Lambeth. I’m moving in with him.

Have fun sweet-talking the bailiffs and reclaiming your worldly goods from SCARY_BLOKES_STORAGE.com.

 

* * * 

On the twelfth day of Christmas, your ex-girlf sent to thee… twelve drummers coming

Hi Dan!

Thanks for your call. I couldn’t make out much of what you were saying—you really ought to shout more slowly when calling overseas—but I gather that you objected to the early-morning bukkake shower.  Spud and I both felt that, after so many angry messages, we ought to try showering you with love and affection. I’m only sorry we weren’t there to see you receive your unexpected bounty. And in answer to your question, yes, the drummers will follow you around, alternately drumming and coming for the rest of the day.

I trust there will be no more Xmas gifts from you.

Be well

Your ex, Donna xxxx

Slipping in the humour…

by | February 11, 2017 | | 16 Comments

By Sam Thorne, ERWA Editor

As an
editor, the strangest request I’ve ever had from a prospective author was ‘can
you make this funny, please?’

That’s all
they wanted (other than a proof of the existing story). This chap had sent his
85k words of beautifully-composed gloom to a publisher who loved the story and
the premise, but wanted him to lighten things up in parts so that the true
gloom glowed. Yes, I know that sounds like a total contradiction.

I have to
admit—it was the most intimidating job I’ve ever taken on. Black humour takes
many forms so there were plenty of tools to apply to the job, but returning
this supposedly FUNNY manuscript to the writer gave me separation anxiety. Pressing
‘send’ from my gmail account was akin to wobbling my way onto a stage on
stand-up night and hoping I didn’t squeak into the microphone. Happily, the
author loved the little touches added to his MS, but as it transpired, he was
given a publication offer from an editor who was a fan of his original grim and
loveless offering. That’s not meant as an insult, incidentally—it’s how he
described his own writing (with pride!)

That was
many years ago. Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time reading books about how to
write comedy (none of which were particularly helpful), and looking
forensically at the forms of humour across a range of novels, coffee-table
collections, and TV programmes. This is not a hilarious business, I can tell
you. To paraphrase Jimmy Carr (co-author of the fantastic book ‘The Naked Jape’),
examining a joke or script is like dissecting a frog; by the time you’ve got to
the bottom of what made it tick—note the past tense—nobody’s laughing and the
frog has died.

So, before I
get into the meat of this article, I’d like to post a disclaimer. You are
unlikely to titter, guffaw, or snigger at any point. I’m just talking about tools you can use.

The most
intimidating aspect of creating humour is that humour is totally subjective. Of course it is. Whether or not your witticisms will elicit a grin in your reader depends on a few
factors:

  • Their life
    experience and prejudices
  • Their mood
  • Their
    natural tendency towards schadenfreude (the laughter reaction at someone else’s
    expense) vs their preference for kindness
  • Their sense
    of enjoying the ridiculous.

Different
people are tickled by different things, so it may help, as a starting point, to
associate different types of humour with different beasts:

The elephant

The elephant
is king of the farce. It’s situational humour brought about by characters with
entirely conflicting goals. Most sitcoms largely fit into this category. But
wait! Some sitcoms are considered to be lacking in substance, while others give
the impression of being up-beat and edgy. Why? Because the situations depicted
are those that the audience strongly relate to, which brings us to…

The owl

The owl is
the wise one, who’s seen everything and has the worldly knowledge. People
grinning at an episode of ‘Modern Family’ quite often do so because of the distinct
feeling of connection. The owl has been there, done that, and worn the tee shirt.
The owl is all about observational humour. The owl is the representative for a
huge branch of stand-up comedy. Yet, even if the situations discussed in a
monologue have the potential to make you laugh, whether you do so or not
depends on the delivery. Not everyone enjoys an observation which is harsh or
close to the knuckle. Which brings me to…

The snake

The snake is
the overlord of deliberately cutting humour. Schadenfreude belongs here, as
does the razor-sharp quip, clever word-play and black humour. The snake represents
one-liners, the put-down you wish you’d used while engaged in an argument. Stand-up
comedians with an abrasive edge belong here.

Primary
enjoyment of snake humour doesn’t mean you have a dark soul—perhaps you simply effective
sarcasm, or a twist on a cliché: I don’t
have much shame; I have to ration it.

The bat

The bat is
the creature of the zany. Think groan-humour. Think total surreality or
incongruity. Monty Python’s sketches (and The Holy Grail) largely belong in
this category, as does Airplane, the Naked Gun series, and so on. Stand-up
comedians who fire off a hundred puns in ten minutes fall into this category. If
the majority of your chuckles are generated from bat humour, then you have a
very strong sense of the ridiculous.

Classifying
humour sources in this way goes a long way to showing whyhumour is so subjective, and why some comedy series or films do
better than others—because they combine the beasts so well. Breaking Bad has a
situational concept (elephant), with a strong snake edge. Blackadder (which
remains one of the most successful British series of all time) combines all
four. I’m sure you can think of a few stand-up comedians who blend owl and
snake to perfect effect.

Hopefully
all this provides a framework for understanding what tickles you, and why. You
might want to keep this guide at hand for a few weeks while you’re reading or
watching films or TV. Get to know your
sense of humour. Make friends with it. Hell, give it a name, even.

So, in terms
of conveying your sense of fun on the page, what tools do you have? Within
dialogue, you have quite a selection:

* understatement (most prevalent in Brit,
Aussie or NZ humour)

* sarcasm and exaggeration (good for
snake or bat humour, depending on tone).

* indignation (arises naturally from
elephant humour, empathy deriving from owl humour).

Humour within
dialogue works best when your characters have very conflicting goals. This in
itself will guide the intonation in your characters’ speech, doing half the job
for you. If you’ve heard a good one-liner you want to use, build your scene around it. Create the context in which this is said. In constructing
a scene where you want your characters’ banter to work well:

  • keep dialogue tags to a minimum. The faster the conversational flow, the better.
  • let the punctuation
    create intonation and tone of voice as far as possible.
  • Play it
    straight. Have your MC laugh at other characters’ lines by all means, but limit
    the number of times that another character falls about laughing at your MC’s
    wit. If that’s going to happen, let the
    reader do it    . However, if your MC gets into a pickle, there’s no problem
    with other characters having a laugh at their expense.
  • If you’re
    writing omnisciently, or writing memoir-style in the first person, you can get
    away with a far more visible narrator. In which case, you can apply the principle
    of contrast to your speech tags:

“He’d look wonderful in a harness.”

“Or a headlock,” I offered, marching
away before Stella could give me the be-nice-to-Dan speech. 

Some of the most
memorable and effective comic moments come from the laugh generated by
surprise. Without actively trying to be funny or consciously writing
lively banter, you’ll find that you’ll get a lot of mileage out of the concept
of incongruity. It’s hands-down the
easiest tool to use to create that note of levity in your work, whether you’re simply
to lighten the mood after a tense scene, or creating a bit-part personality to
bring the best (or worst) out of your main character.

The trick is
to present a very strange situation or personality with a totally straight face. The incongruity principle covers diversions from the expected such as:

  • an unexpected
    foe: like the hard man who’s reduced to impotent, furious, tooth-grinding
    compliance by his formidable four-foot-tall grandmother. The foe could be
    internal, too. Imagine being a real estate agent with claustrophobia. It’s not
    good if you have to ask your clients to walk themselves around the property…
  • a
    stereotype smashed to pieces: like the nonagenarian who’s hysterical at the thought
    of going into a nursing home because they might not let him take his X-box. Or perhaps
    the bloke who’s really shy at work but who gets arrested for public indecency…
  • an incongruous
    partnership: this is where the best bromances are born. The reader should be
    intrigued to find what two such totally different people could possibly have in
    common. Perhaps the brutish, widowed, aloof personal trainer develops a soft
    spot for the teacher at his son’s school, who’s about half his size and a
    nervous wreck. However, they bond in mutual indignation when someone parks in the
    disabled space…

So – how to
use all this information?

  1.  Write down things that annoy you. Groups
    of people who annoy you. Can you get any mileage out of making them opponents
    to your characters? Even if only as part of a scene to bring out your main
    character’s timidity / wit / annoyance / eloquence / indignant speechlessness?
  2.  Conversely, if a friend makes you crack up
    laughing, think what you were talking about. A situation? A mutual acquaintance
    struggling with a situation? Did they crack an awesome one-liner? If so, borrow
    semi-shamelessly (in other words, ask first).

Yes, humour
is subjective. It’s dependent upon delivery, context, timing and audience. But once
you’re on speaking terms with your own funny bone, your inspiration for
creating grin-worthy prose will increase tenfold.

ERWA Editing Corner

by | December 11, 2016 | | 10 Comments




In praise of reading out loud

By Sam Kruit (ERWA Editor in Chief)

It’s the end of the year, so I’m going to keep this short and
light and highlight just some of the issues that programmed spell and grammar
checks can never save you from.

If editors aren’t in your budget, and beta readers do things
in their own sweet time, read your work out loud. Seriously. It’s the best
investment of time you can make towards the end of the polishing process.

You’ll catch over-long sentences. You’ll catch awkward
punctuation. You may catch words spelt correctly, but used wrongly. You’re more
likely to pick up on formatting issues. And by focussing on each word
individually, hopefully you’ll rescue yourself from the kind of goofs that
continue to crop up in journalistic writing all the time—ones that even bypass
the section editor or editor in chief.

Read, learn, and giggle if so inclined! Have a great festive
season.

Lesson 1:  one letter
out of place changes everything…

Before Miss
Colverson concluded her concert with a rendition of ‘At the end of a perfect
day’ she was prevented with a large bouquet of carnations by the Mayoress.

Today’s
weather: A depression will mope across Southern England.

Unless the
teachers receive a higher salary they may decide to leave their pests.

The Red
Cross found a bed for him in an institution specialising in the treatment of
artcritics.

Mrs Norris,
who won a brace of pheasants, kindly gave her prize bark and this raised £5.50
for the funds [this one’s 30 years old… so about £35, really!]

The bride
was very upset when one of the bridesmaids stepped on her brain and tore it.

Lesson 2: keep an eye on the relationship between subject and
description!

After
consuming about a hundred portions of chips, 28 pounds of sausages, rolls ice
cream and cake, the Mayoress presented the trophies to the boys.

A carpet
was stolen from Walsingham Hall over the weekend. Measuring six by six feet,
the thief has baffled the police.

Parents and
teachers are definitely to blame here. You find them playing on both main and
by-pass roads, throwing each other’s caps and dashing out after them, and many similar
games.

Today’s tip
tells you how to keep your hair in good condition. Cut it out and paste it to a
piece of cardboard and hang it in your bathroom.

‘We saw
over thirty deer come to the forest to feed in the early morning,’ said Mrs
Boston, and added that they had thick sweaters and several flasks of hot tea
with them.

A quantity
of drugs were discovered by a sniffer dog hidden in a cigarette packet.


Lesson 3: Watch the juxtaposition of information…

COUNCIL
‘DIGGING OWN GRAVE’

Smaller
body urged.

The
celebrated soprano was involved in a serious road accident last month. We are
happy to report that she was able to appear this evening in four pieces.

The boy was
described as lazy and insolent, and when asked by his mother to go to school he
threatened to ‘smash her brains out’. The case has been adjourned for three
weeks to give the boy another chance.

Lesson 4: there is such a thing as trying to say too much in
too few words…

PASSENGERS HIT BY CANCELLED TRAINS

BOLTING HORSE SAVED AFTER FALL FROM PONY

GRAPEFRUIT LATE TELLING POLICE OF INJURED MAN

PUPILS MARCH OVER NEW TEACHERS

POLICE MOVE IN BOOK CASE

MAN CRITICAL AFTER BUS BACKS INTO HIM


Firemen in
Yorkshire received over 20 letters of thanks today thanking them for their
efforts which destroyed five houses yesterday.

Oh my Word!

by | October 11, 2016 | | 11 Comments

By Sam Kruit (ERWA Editor)


The deed is done, the manuscript (MS) complete. But in the
course of submitting or getting feedback, it’s likely it’ll have to go through
the formatting wrangler a few times before it’s ready to post in Storytime, or fit to be submitted to an editor’s inbox. 

One of the most annoying things about writing is having to
rearrange the appearance of your MS to fit the layout requirements of those who
are going to read it. So, this editor’s corner article is devoted to the
practical art of making MS Word work for you. 

  • Pull up an old document,
  • make a copy,
  • switch on the paragraph marker (the fat, back-to-front P
    with the double stalk), which you’ll find on the home menu under ‘paragraph’
  • and prepare to experiment with tips and tricks.

Before beginning any
mass change in a document, it’s worth standardising things like your scene
breaks first. For example:

  1. Open find and replace
  2. In Find, Type a space
    and then your scene marker
  3. Find next (you might
    not have any leading spaces. If so, good.)
  4. If you find one, type
    your scene marker into Replace with no spaces.
  5. Repeat for spaces
    after your scene marker
  6. Repeat to find any
    incidents where you’re an asterisk short (* * * ), and any other combination of
    mess-up you can think of.


Once all your scene
markers look as you want them to, you can do your global reformats and fewer
things will slip the net.


Aghhh moment #1 –
scrunched post syndrome

You’ve posted your story to ERWA Storytime in good faith,
but when the email is returned to you through the list, you find that all your
line breaks have disappeared. The whole thing appears in one lump, with or
without indents, and you struggle to pick out the starting point of each new
paragraph.

Solution:

  1. Open Find/Replace
  2. In Find, type ^p
  3. in Replace, type ^p^p
  4. replace all.

This will double up your paragraph spacers so that it
appears normal on the email. If you find your story has indeed been scrunched,
simply re-post in the expanded version with a quick note to say that the
documents are the same, but that the format has been tamed. It’s worth just
emailing it from one personal account to another to experiment before you post.


Aghhh moment #2 –
‘more white space, please!’

The editor wants scene break markers separated from the text
with an extra blank line either side. Currently, yours look like these:

Waffle waffle waffle rhubarb waffle rhubarb Waffle waffle
waffle rhubarb waffle.

* * * *

“Rhubarb!” Waffle waffle. “Waffle rhubarb waffle?”

Solution:

  1. Open find/replace
  2. In Find, type ^p* * * *^p (this shows the single carriage
    return between the end of the last line, the scene marker line, and the break
    to the start of the next scene).
  3. In replace, type ^p^p* * * *^p^p (this will add in an extra
    line break for you)
  4. Find next, make sure it works, then replace all.

Aghhh moment #3 – ‘My
scene breaks have all shifted to the left!’

Whether you’ve just tried the trick above, or simply
discovered that your entire manuscript has to be left/fully justified
(whichever format your MS isn’t in at
the moment), it is rather exasperating to find that all your scene breaks have
moved from their tidy central spots. Don’t foam at the mouth just yet.


Solution:


  1. Open find/replace
  2. Click the ‘more’ button
  3. Copy your scene marker into Find (with no spaces either
    side)
  4. Go to the bottom of the screen, where it says ‘format’
  5. Select paragraph, and in the paragraph dialogue box (PDB for
    short!) go to the alignment selection and choose left/fully justified,
    depending on what your entire text has been converted to. Click ‘ok’.
  6. Now, in Replace, paste your scene marker again (still with
    no excess spaces)
  7. Go back to format, paragraph, PDB, and select ‘centred’ from
    the alignment section.
  8. Click Find next, and watch your asterisks ping back into the
    middle of the page.


Aghh moment #4 – the manuscript
conversion

Currently your manuscript is in the ‘online’ format. In
other words, all paragraphs are flush to the left margin with no indents, and
there is a blank line between each paragraph. In MS Word, this is also called
the ‘normal’ style.

BUT your editor/publisher/agent wants the full manuscript
set-up:

Double-spaced; Times New Roman 12; normal margins; indent of
a half inch at the start of each paragraph. No gaps between any paragraphs
except for scene breaks or special effects.

Oh, and their rules say ‘no tabs’. In other words, don’t
press the Tab key to create the indent.



Solution (select a sample of a few paragraphs to practice
this on):


  1. open the PDB
  2. under ‘indentation’ select ‘first line’ from the ‘special’
    drop-down box
  3. Under ‘by’, type 1.27 if that isn’t automatically set for
    you as soon as you choose ‘first line’. This is the standard half-inch indent.
  4. Under ‘spacing’, click the box that says ‘no extra lines
    between paragraphs of the same style’.
  5. Click ok.

You should now have several indented paragraphs with no gaps
between them. You can now change spacing and font as you require. To reverse this process (from US MS format to ‘online’):

  1. Select the paragraphs you want to change
  2. Open the PDB
  3. Under indentation and ‘special’, select ‘none’.
  4. Under ‘spacing’, make sure the tickbox for no spacing
    between paragraphs of the same kind is EMPTY.
  5. Click ok.
  6. You should be back to online format.

There are countless things you can do with Find/replace. You
can standardise the type-setting, removing extra spaces between punctuation and
following words. You can also use it to find an over-used word by typing into
both Find and Replace, but assigning a highlight colour to the replaced version
(go to format at the bottom, select ‘highlight’ and pick your shade.

By the time the next Editing Corner comes around, I’ll have
type-setting standardisation document I can share. And perhaps, in the next
editing corner, I’ll be able to dip into Find/Replace’s little magical world of
‘wild cards’. Until then, have more fun and less stress making MS Word behave
for you.

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