WATERSPELL

From my friend Ruth Cauble, I inherited a book called COMMON SENSE ABOUT WRITING, by Thomas H. Cain. Its copyright date is 1967, making it a brand-new book when Ruth won it as a prize in a writing competition. She inscribed the flyleaf: “Rec’d for first place award in the Grace Gaylord Creative Writing Contest  — June 9, 1967 — R. Sammons Cauble.”

I’m endlessly interested in matters of style, so I turned first to chapter 7, titled “Expression: Style and Sentences.” Dr. Cain, who wrote the book when he was an associate professor of English at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, defined style as “the total effect of writing.”

“It is the effect achieved,” he wrote, “by the ideas, the order, the paragraphs, the sentences, and the words all working together harmoniously.”

Cain recognized that a writer’s style is a very personal thing. No two people will write exactly alike, or even agree completely on what constitutes good style:


“The reason may be that when you try to express your ideas in the best words, sentences, and sequences of sentences, a whole army of subjective human variables comes into action: personal factors, individual gifts, range of experience, reading background, discretion, sense of decorum, feeling for rhythm, and plain taste … style springs from just such individual sources.”

“You can’t write seriously without reading the greats in that peculiar way that writers read, attentive to the particularities of the language, to the technical turns and twists of scene-making and plot, soaking up numerous narrative strategies and studying various approaches to that cave in the deep woods where the human heart hibernates.”

1. From a book you especially admire, choose a passage of about 12 or 15 sentences. Read the passage silently.
2. Note the structure of each paragraph.
3. Read the passage aloud, listening to the stages in the paragraph structure and especially to the rhythm of the sentences and how they vary in length and emphasis.
4. Now copy the passage slowly by hand (don’t type), sentence by sentence, first reading each sentence aloud and noting its pattern of emphasis and rhythm.
5. Copy the entire passage again (typing it if you wish), listening for the way the sentences work together in groups of two or three.

From time to time I’m asked how much I’d charge to edit someone’s book.

At present, I am not editing for individuals. As a freelancer for a national nonprofit organization, I stay as busy as I want to be just editing the assignments they send me.

Perhaps it will help some writers, however, if I quote the rate chart of the Editorial Freelancers Association:

Editorial Rates

Updated: June 2012

Common editorial rates —regardless of whether a project is flat rate or hourly— tend to fall within the ranges indicated below. These should be used only as a rough guideline; rates vary considerably depending on the nature of the work, the time frame of the assignment, the degree of special expertise required, and other factors. The industry standard for a manuscript page, however, is a firm 250 words.

© 2014 Editorial Freelancers Association | All rights reserved |

A reader and reviewer (she’s also an editor of long experience and impeccable taste) recently paid me an enormous compliment when she advised her Facebook friends to read my books because “the Waterspell trilogy is solidly in the class of great epic fantasy (e.g., Tolkien, George R. R. Martin); definitely not namby, trite fantasy, of which there is far too much.”

Humbled to the earth by such praise, I was moved to recall a similar discussion with an early interviewer during the long years I spent researching and writing the Waterspell trilogy. Below are excerpts (the full interview is here, on my oldest website).

Q: Does WATERSPELL take its inspiration from Celtic mythology?

A: Broadly and indirectly, yes. When I started reading the early Irish legends and Celtic myths, I was looking mainly for “the telling detail”—authentic figures of speech, colorful descriptive terms, gritty background textures. But as I read, I noticed that aspects of the mythology had their counterparts in this fantasy I was writing. Or vice versa. For instance, water often has mystical qualities in the legends—Irish rivers like the Boyne were held sacred. It’s pretty obvious from the series title—WATERSPELL—that water has magical properties in my story, too. The traditions tell of quests, leading into the Otherworld and back. “Other worlds” figure prominently in WATERSPELL—the premise is that what’s harmless in one world or reality may prove deadly if it arrives, whether innocently or by skullduggery, where it doesn’t belong. Also central to my work is the heroic quest, undertaken to gain information or wisdom, to bring healing, or to find or restore lost objects.

I am by no means an expert on Irish legends. Given the huge number of books that have been produced on the subject and the very few of them that I’ve read (see “Books”), I can barely claim a nodding acquaintance. My sole aim, in working into my writings details from the legends, is to make WATERSPELL “fit” into the world of Celtic mythology the way Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings fits with traditional Scandinavian mythology. Katharine Briggs said of Tolkien’s work: “The whole was not decorated but deepened by the use of traditional folklore which gave it that sense of being rooted in the earth which is the gift of folklore to literature.” That’s what I’m after: to create a fantasy world that’s rooted deeply in an ancient tradition.

Obviously I’m thrilled to have a reader/reviewer make the connection independently. That tells me I succeeded, at least on some level, in my attempt to pay homage to those great old Irish and Scottish storytellers who are a link to the Celtic mythology that underpins much of the fantasy genre.

Thank you, Shelley! ♥

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs,” says Stephen King in his excellent book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.

When I first tried my hand at fiction, it took me a while to understand that adverbs and adjectives are methods of telling, not showing. Oh, I’d been warned away from adverbs since high school or before. In my writing I’ve always favored strong verbs over weak-verb-plus-adverb combinations: “race” or “sprint” is stronger than “run quickly.”

But as I made the transition from nonfiction and began writing novels, I somehow got it into my head that unusual or quirky adjectives would add layers of meaning and color to my nouns. I wasted time digging through thesauri and even crossword puzzle dictionaries looking for nifty adjectives that writers before me had seldom dared to use:

rubicund, benignant, recondite, brumous …

Well, maybe not these exactly, but you get the idea. For a while I was pleased with myself for taking the time to find exactly the right adjective to describe to the nth degree precisely what I wanted the reader to know about any given noun.

Then it came time to read my fiction aloud. Thank heavens I read my drafts out loud to myself before taking them to my critique group. Scritch, scritch, scritch — my red pen stayed busy striking through all those distracting, unnecessary adjectives.

The experience taught me that nouns and verbs show, but adjectives and adverbs tell. In any sentence, it’s preferable to use a solid, precise noun and a vigorous, precise verb. Tack on the modifiers only if they’re really, truly needed.

Don’t write: “The cat, predominantly white with red and black patches, snuck up on the green and gray bird.”

Write: “The calico stalked the parakeet.”

Noah Lukeman devotes chapter 2 of The First Five Pages (Fireside, 2000) to adjectives and adverbs. Lukeman says: “Most people who come to writing for the first time think they bring their nouns and verbs to life by piling on adjectives and adverbs, that by describing a day as being ‘hot, dry, bright and dusty’ they make it more vivid. Almost always the opposite is true … Adjectives and adverbs often, ironically, weaken their subjects. It is as if the writer were saying to the reader, ‘This noun (or verb) is not strong enough to stand on its own, so I will modify it (or build it up) with a few adjectives (or adverbs).”

Overusing adjectives was a passing phase in my fiction-writing career. Now with every read-through of a manuscript, I’m ruthless about cutting the modifiers. Keeping in mind that “Less is more,” I search for any word, phrase, sentence, or paragraph that I can cut.

“In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style.” —Sydney Smith, Lady Holland’s Memoir (1855)

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I’m reblogging “Opening Lines” from On The Plum Tree with my thanks to Niamh Clune for featuring the first lines of Waterspell Book 1. It’s an honor to be excerpted on her outstanding book blog.

Today I’m hosting Laurie Boris, author of Sliding Past Vertical and other books. You can discover more about this award-winning author at laurieboris.

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Guest Post by Laurie Boris:

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Today I’m hosting Pavarti K. Tyler, author of White Chalk, Literary Fiction that came out earlier this year.  Pick up a copy of White Chalk and receive a free ebook! Details below.

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Guest Post by Pavarti K. Tyler:

Chelle isn’t a typical 13-year-old girl—she doesn’t laugh with friends, play sports, or hang out at the mall after school. Instead, she navigates a world well beyond her years.

Life in Dawson, ND, spins on as she grasps at people, pleading for someone to save her—to return her to the simple childhood of unicorns on her bedroom wall and stories on her father’s knee.

When Troy Christiansen walks into her life, Chelle is desperate to believe his arrival will be her salvation. So much so, she forgets to save herself. After experiencing a tragedy at school, her world begins to crack, causing a deeper scar in her already fragile psyche.

Follow Chelle’s twisted tale of modern adolescence, as she travels down the rabbit hole into a reality none of us wants to admit actually exists.

White Chalk is a very personal story for me.  While it’s not autobiographical and I am not Chelle, I could have been.  So could you.  So could the kid sitting on the bus next to you on your way to work tomorrow morning.  The thing is, we never know what someone’s life is like behind the walls of their mind.  It takes very little to change the trajectory of a life.  A teacher who takes a special interest in a troubled child can save them, point them in a new direction, or take advantage and shatter their understanding of love.

Rachel Thompson, Award-Winning Author of Broken Pieces:

“Tyler combines shades of ‘Lolita’ and ‘Catcher in the Rye’ in a completely new way, drawing you in with poignant characterizations. ‘White Chalk’ goes deep into teenage angst with understanding and clarity. Savor, share, and use this poignant book as a primer on the brutal effects of abuse, neglect, and self-esteem.”

Buy it now:

Amazon ~ Barnes & Noble ~ Kobo ~

And as a thank you, if you pick up a copy of White Chalk, I’ll send you a free ebook of Two Moons of Sera, my Fantasy Romance. Just email me confirmation of your purchase (PavartiDevi @ gmail)

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Today I’m hosting Kate Policani, author of Don’t Judge a Book By Its Magic (Book 1 of The Convergence series). Be sure to comment on Kate’s post to win a free audiobook at audible.com!

Guest Post by Kate Policani:

Don’t Judge a Book By Its Magic

(Book 1 of The Convergence series)

By Kate Policani

Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Paranormal

The fabulous Awesome Indies have granted this book the Seal of Approval. Since its last appearance on Discover Authors, my first Convergence series book has donned a new cover for ebooks and is Now available on Audiobook! 

Giveaway:

One comment on this post will win a code for a free audiobook at audible.com! Let me know what you think of the new cover and the audiobook reading.

The talented Heidi Baker has narrated the first book in The Convergence series. This tale features a lot of humor and loads of fun. As an added bonus, you can HEAR what all those crazy words sound like.

Hear a sample

Buy on Audible

Buy on Amazon

Buy on Itunes