The Devil is in the Details

I just proofread a novel that involved numerous badasses, all of whom carried various types of guns and engaged in just as many gunfights. Bullets were flying all over the place, but for me, the scenes weren’t believable because the author got a lot of the details wrong. I truly believe that the secret to getting the reader to “buy into” the fantastic elements of a story—be they fantasy, science-fiction, or paranormal—is the attention to detail given to the realistic parts of the story. This means that if you’re dealing with a real city in your story, or a real type of weapon, or an actual historical era, then you better do your research and get it right.

When it comes to guns, if you’re going to use semi-automatics in your story, or revolvers or shotguns, find out at least the very basics of how these weapons work, and don’t depend on what you see on TV for your facts. Know the correct terminology. For instance, the terms bullet, casing, cartridge, and shell all have specific meanings and are not interchangeable. Know how many rounds a particular kind of gun holds. If your character is firing a revolver, don’t have him firing off a dozen shots in a gun battle without reloading. Know how a gun loads and unloads. And don’t assume that all guns have an external safety. I don’t know how many times I’ve read a character clicking the safety off a Glock. Glocks don’t have external safeties.

Now maybe there aren’t a lot of readers who will know whether or not your facts are correct, but some will. And readers can be merciless when they’re displeased. The author may never hear about it, but believe me, the publisher will get an email. And perhaps the author will get a lesser rating when the reader gives his or her review. What review? Book reviews don’t just come from review sites. More and more, readers are expressing their opinions on sites like Amazon and Goodreads.

Many details about guns can be learned by a few simple Internet searches. When it comes to learning how a police department works, some authors really do their research and attend citizen academies or participate in police ridealongs.

So what else can a writer do to learn the inner workings of weaponry and police departments? Coming…a solution. 


~~Jaye

Are You Unapologetically Purple?

Something that tends to go hand in hand with self description is purple prose.  When a writer uses both together, it can make for peculiar, preposterous, and piquant prose.  Or, without the purpleness, a funny—unintentionally funny--scene.  However, the laughs are probably NOT the kind of laughs a serious romance writer is intending to elicit through her description.

Yet it happens, and I see it again and again.  What is purple prose?  It’s flowery, ornate, over-the-top overly descriptive language.  Thirty or forty years ago, purple prose was widely used, especially in romances.  It was, in fact, enough to give the romance genre a bad reputation. 

Here are a couple of examples of self description coupled with purple prose.

“Her unbelievably long, ebony lashes fanned out over her sparkling emerald orbs.”

“His smoky eyes blazed at her even as his tanned, muscled arms held her off.”

Even today, whether on TV or in the movies, when a screenwriter has a romance writer or romance novel in the story and wants to elicit a laugh from the audience, you can be sure a line of purple prose will be used.  Think of the school guidance counselor in the movie 10 Things I Hate About You with Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles.  Ms. Perky, the counselor, writes romance novels in her spare time (and while she’s at school, presumably while she’s paid to be a counselor) and has one of the funniest scenes in the movie when she reads aloud as she types her manuscript, “…at the sight of Reginald’s stiff…swollen…turgid…”  Ms. Perky is at a loss for just the right word.

In walks student Kat (Julia Stiles) at the opportune time and offers up, “Tumescent?”

“Perfect,” replies Ms. Perky.

At the end of the scene, Kat leaves and says, “I’ll let you get back to Reginald and his quivering member.”

To which Ms. Perky repeats to herself, “Quivering member…I like that.”

Admittedly, it’s a funny scene, and there are those who believe that actress Allison Janney, as Ms. Perky, steals the film.  And yet purple prose of the type enjoyed by Ms. Perky is one reason that romance novels, as a genre, are often preceded by the word “trashy.”

I admit that when I was a beginner writer, I had a tendency to want to describe my hero and heroine with overdone description.  I wince now when I read some of my early writings.  It seems to be a natural tendency for beginner writers, especially of romance, to want to use purple prose.  Maybe they’re trying to be creative in describing their hero and heroine in terms not used before.  Maybe they’re just trying to portray their protagonists in glowing terms.  Whatever the reason or temptation, avoid purple prose.

In upcoming posts I’ll give you some tips on using description.

~~Jaye

Know How to Format Your Manuscript - Part 2

Here are a few basic guidelines to follow for formatting your manuscript:

1.    Use a common font like Times New Roman in size 11 or 12.

2.    Double space your manuscript using your word processor’s line spacing feature.

3.    Insert only one space after the end of a sentence, not two.

4.    Don’t insert spaces before or after an emdash.

5.    Use a hard return only after the end of a paragraph.

6.    Italicize foreign words.

7.    Italicize internal thoughts.

8.    Don’t indent by hitting the space bar.

Big hint: if you use Word, keep the “show paragraph symbol” feature turned on. You’ll be able to see all your returns and breaks. Some people don’t like the distraction of seeing the paragraph symbols on their page, but for me it’s much more of a help than a hindrance.

If your word processing skills are weak, do something about it. There are tons of resources online. If you’re part of a writers’ organization like RWA, find another writer to help you. If you’ve been offered a contract and are unsure how your manuscript should be formatted, ask your editor for guidelines.

But don’t just ignore the problem. Don’t just assume that someone else will “fix” all your mistakes.

Having good word processing skills will let publishers, editors and agents know you’re a professional writer. You may get a book contract without such skills, but having these skills will increase your chances and will also make your relationship with your editor run much more smoothly. In this day and age, being a successful writer entails knowing much more than just being able to tell a story. You need to know how to format, how to use punctuation and grammar, and once you become published, you’ll need to know how to do promotion. This entails having a website, knowing how to do social media, blogging, and all sorts of other skills.

Having good computer skills can also help you in other ways. I got my last job (as an office assistant) because the people who interviewed me were impressed with the computer skills I had taught myself as a writer.

~~Jaye

Know How to Format Your Manuscript – Part 1

I started proofreading a manuscript a few days ago for my boss. When I opened the Word file, the first thing I noticed was the font, which was not Times New Roman. No problem, I thought. Easy-peasy. I figured I’d just change the font before printing out the manuscript since I prefer to read in Times New Roman. Changing font on a document is an easy “select all” change.

Lord have mercy! As soon as I changed the font to Times New Roman, other problems in the manuscript immediately jumped out at me, and I realized I was looking at the poorest formatting I’d ever seen on a manuscript. Word has a “show/hide paragraph symbol” feature which allows you to see hard returns and breaks. I always keep this on so I can see what’s happening in a document. Well, dozens of paragraph symbols marched across the page like soldiers advancing on the enemy line.

The author had put a hard return at the end of every line, obviously believing that this was the way to “get to the next line.” What’s a hard return? It’s when you hit the “Enter” key. A hard return is meant to be a paragraph break, not a line break. You don’t need to insert a line break. Word will automatically move your text to the next line when you type, so there’s no reason to hit “Enter” until you get to the end of your paragraph.

The next thing I noticed was that there wasn’t just one hard return at the end of every line, but two!  The author apparently knew her manuscript should be doubled spaced, and she was inserting the second hard return so that the text would jump not just one line, but two, thereby making the manuscript “look” double-spaced. Word has a provision for line spacing a document.

Then I noticed the other errors. The author had put spaces before and after her emdashes. In her dialogue, she’d also put a space between the sentence-ending punctuation and the quotation marks. She’d put two spaces at the end of every sentence instead of just one. For some new paragraph indents, she’d hit the space bar five times. And on and on and on.

Thank goodness for Word’s “find and replace” feature, which allowed me to correct most of the formatting errors easily. The hard returns, however, were a problem. I had to delete those one at a time. For a lengthy manuscript, it was a time-consuming chore that took quite a few hours.

Perhaps there are writers who believe that formatting and editing are the job of the publisher, not the author. Some publishers might be more forgiving than others, but don’t think that these things aren’t part of your job. They are! This author was lucky in that I corrected her mistakes for her, but she could have just as easily had the manuscript file returned to her with instructions to clean it up herself.

Ironically, the story in this case was quite good. It was a historical which demonstrated rich detail and obvious research. Clearly the author knew what she was doing in creating the setting, plot and characters, which made me wonder all the more how she could be so unlearned in the other phases of her writing.

In Part 2 I’ll give you a list of basic formatting guidelines.

~~Jaye

Workshop: Mistakes Authors Make When Submitting to Publishers

This is the second of my online workshops geared toward writers who have completed or are near to completing their manuscript.  This is a one-week workshop presented by Savvy Authors and will run March 19^th thru March 26^th, 2012.

Registration Link

For this workshop I interviewed two publishing companies, ImaJinn Books and Belle Books/Bell Bridge Books, and asked them about the submissions they receive and what annoys them and impresses them the most.  These are two very reputable and successful publishers that I have a working relationship with and was fortunate enough to be able to sit down with.

The fact is that not every talented writer will be able to obtain an agent.  Many choose instead to submit directly to publishers that don’t require agented submissions – small publishers or epubs.  And there is absolutely nothing wrong with choosing this path.  Writers can make excellent money with small publishers, but good small publishers, like agents, are highly selective in their acceptances.  Hear directly from two editors what they look for in submissions.  Don’t burn good markets by making mistakes that can easily be avoided.  Lessons will be as follows:

Introduction (Day 1)

1.    Introduction to the two publishers interviewed for this workshop

2.    Their advice to writers

Common Mistakes Authors Make (Day 2)

The Top 5 Things that Authors Do To Annoy Publishers (Day 3)

The 5 Things that will Ensure Your Submission Gets Rejected (Day 4)

The Best Thing an Author Can Do To Ensure a Successful Submission (Day 5)

~~Jaye

My Website

Tip of the Week - Follow Submission Guidelines

Since my next two upcoming workshops focus on what you should and shouldn’t do once your manuscript is completed, this week’s tip focuses on the very important step of sending out queries. If you like this tip, many more like it will be included in my upcoming workshop “Mistakes Authors Make When Submitting to Publishers.” Sign up for my newsletter for reminders and details about this workshop.

It may seem like nothing more than common sense, but you would be utterly surprised to find out how many authors ignore this tip, which is this: before you query a publisher or a literary agent, read and follow their submission guidelines.

Submission guidelines can be found on a publisher’s or agent’s website, usually with very little searching. Guidelines can include what genres are accepted, what format the submission should be in, word count, and what information should be included in the submission package. Some guidelines, especially for genre-specific publishers or imprints, can be quite specific as to what editors are looking for as far as characterization and other elements. Guidelines are established for good reason. Even small publishers receive hundreds of queries each week. There is simply no time for an agent or publisher to waste on reading a query that doesn’t fit what they’re looking for.

And yet authors do it, all the time. I’m honestly not sure why. Maybe they didn’t bother to read the submission guidelines. Maybe they feel guidelines are just guidelines, not hard and fast rules. Maybe they think their book is so wonderful that an editor or agent would be willing to ignore the fact that it doesn’t fit. Maybe they think that guidelines are for others, but not for them. (Like when I was a cop – I would constantly see people duck under the yellow “do not cross” tape at a crime scene, apparently thinking it didn’t apply to them.)

One of the queries sent in to the publisher I work for ignored the submission guidelines and actually thanked the publisher for being “open-minded,” obviously hoping that the praise would persuade the publisher to forgive his transgression. NOT.

Please know that nothing, but nothing, irritates a publisher more than an author who ignores the submission guidelines. It doesn’t matter if you think your book is the next Harry Potter – if the guidelines say they don’t accept young adult fantasy, don’t send it in! You may think the worst thing you’re doing is wasting someone’s time, but what you’re really doing is sending the message that you can’t follow instructions. And what editor would want to work with an author who can’t follow simple instructions? Plus, you’ve just burned that market. You’ve lost your one and only shot at submitting to that agent or publisher, and you’ve pissed them off in the process. A year from now you can’t rectify your submission and send in another query. It doesn’t work like that.

~~Jaye Roycraft

Workshop: “How to Find an Agent and NOT Get Scammed”

Most of my workshops are geared toward writers who are still at some stage with an unfinished manuscript. My two workshops in March, however, are for authors who have a completed manuscript and want to take the next step. “How to Find an Agent and NOT Get Scammed” will be presented online through Savvy Authors from March 5^th -19^th. 

Finding an agent can be a time-consuming, agonizing process which can be all the more devastating if you’re scammed out of money by a fraudulent “agent.” As an author who’s been both scammed badly and signed by a legitimate agent, I have firsthand knowledge of both and can relate to authors who are attempting to land an agent. Lessons will focus on both mistakes writers make that can result in being the victim of a scam and on positive steps for finding a legitimate agent.  Included will be details of my own personal journey of heartbreak and elation.

It’s important to do as much research as possible prior to sending in your submissions, something I myself failed to do when I was a fledgling author. First, of course, you don’t want to be scammed out of money and have your dreams destroyed by a scam artist. Secondly, you want to find the best home for your manuscript. You don’t want to settle for a poor choice just so you can say you’re “published.” And you certainly don’t want to “burn” your good markets by making careless or “newbie” mistakes.

Lessons for this workshop will be as follows:

I.          How NOT to Find an Agent (Week 1)

A.   Introduction and Outline

B.   Lesson #1 - The Three Commandments

C.   Lesson #2 - Ten Percent of Nothing is Nothing

D.   Lesson #3 - How I Got Scammed

E.   Lesson #4 - Who NOT to Query

II.         How to Find a Legitimate Agent (Week 2)

A.   Lesson #6 - Know What You Want

B.   Lesson #7 - How to Find an Agent

C.   Lesson #8 - My Personal Journey

D.   Lesson #9 - Query & Submission Tips

E.   Lesson #10 - Resources and a Final Note

To register for this workshop or for more details, click on this link:

Registration Link

Sign up for my newsletter to get reminders about upcoming workshops.

~~Jaye Roycraft

My Website