We were saddened to hear about the passing of Jan Petersen. She was the heart and soul to Barry Petersen, author of JAN’S STORY. I remember editing this powerful book with Barry. It was grueling, and I constantly felt as though I was ripping a fresh scab off of Barry’s heart with ever editing go-around. But the result is an extremely intimate look at Early Onset Alzheimer’s, and how this cruel disease is unlike any other because it leaves the body, but takes the mind. As Barry says, suddenly the idea of “forever” has an expiration date.

Stories need narrative in order to shuffle our characters around, set the scene, the tone, and add in any vital backstory.

Ok, let me rephrase that. Stories need fabulous narrative…

Of late, I’ve been disappointed in the narratives of submissions that have crossed my desk because they’ve been as dry as my attempts at baking. Their character development and dialog may be wonderful things of art, but they fall flat when it comes to the narrative. This makes for lopsided reading.

Just as I’ve bleated on like a goat on crack about how dialog should be utilized to its max, the narrative can’t be ignored because it’s part and parcel of keeping your readers fully engaged. Sure, I get it; lots of writers want to keep the narrative low key so as not to get in the way of the story. But what’s wrong with flavor and spice? This is where you create your unique voice.

Voice

So what do I mean by that? Voice is where you create a distinct writing style. I’ve had people tell me they can recognize my writing from a mile away because it’s distinct. I’m still not sure whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but evidently, I write with a certain style that readers recognize as being uniquely mine.

The one opportunity you must not let pass by is creating your own distinct voice. For instance, your main character may wake up in the morning to the peels of his alarm clock, or you can spice it up a bit. Here’s the beginning paragraph of my novel.

Example 1 -What I could have written:

Erik woke up to the sounds of his alarm clock and got out of bed.

Example 2 – What I wrote:

“WAKE UP AND GET YOUR ASS OUT OF BED.” bellowed the mechanical voice emanating from the alarm clock that resided on Erik’s side of the bed. The clock, a birthday gift from his best friend, Mark, never failed to make him stifle a laugh when turning it off. There were several scratches and dents on the side attesting to Ann’s dismal failure at finding anything humorous at five o’clock in the morning. He swung his long legs out of bed, glancing back at Ann’s still comatose figure. “Sure you don’t want to come with me?” he whispered in her ear, already knowing the answer.

“I’d rather slit my wrists,” came the groggy, muffled reply.

My aim was to grab readers at the get-go in order to give the reader a quick feel for Erik’s general nature…and that’s the lovely gift of narrative voice. If I had used the first sentence, the reader wouldn’t have any feel for the character, so it becomes harder to pull the reader into the story. Obviously, I’m being extreme in these examples, but I’ve seen too many manuscripts that were written in the flavor of the first example. Avoid  vanilla writing. You want to be memorable and distinct…which is what editors are looking for.

Your MC can go outside to pick up the morning newspaper off his driveway, or he can play the guessing game with the carrier, and wonder what clever place the carrier hid the paper. Is it necessary? Nope. But interesting narratives are like Christmas morning, where each gift you open is a surprise. I’ve read books whose narratives were so amazing that I actually slowed down my reading because I didn’t want to finish it too soon.

That’s narrative voice, baby.

Content/Length

So the question is, what do you write to enhance your narrative voice, and how long should it be? First off, there are no rules. Yay! You’re writing by gut and feel, so you have to noodle around with your writing to find your literary comfort zone. For instance, I lean toward goofiness, so my writing tends to include a lot of irreverent thoughts…like the alarm clock or a carrier hiding the newspaper. It’s just how I’m wired.

How are you wired? Figure that out, and write so your narrative supports your literary comfort zone.

My other advice is to keep it short and sweet. Blather on for too long about something, and it veers the story off course and makes the reader’s eyes glaze over. It’s important to keep them caring, and tidbits here and there in the narrative accomplish this goal.

I’ve had writers struggle with this concept, and my suggestion is that they refer to their everyday lives. We aren’t automatons, and we don’t get up, do our morning thing, go to work, come home, and go to sleep. We do a million things and have a gajillion thoughts filter through our cerebral hard drives all the time…so tap into that.

Put yourself in your character’s shoes. What thoughts would run through his head, or what actions would he take when doing some small action, like getting out of bed? Does he jump out of bed with a song busting out of his lungs, or does he slither out from the sheets with all the excitement of a tax audit? Give it some flavor.

In a word, use your imagination, but use your own experiences to tap into when you want to expand on your narrative. Writers are observers, by nature, so exploit all your observations in order to spice up your narrative voice.

Balance

Like everything else, narrative voice is about balance. I’ve seen cases where authors adored their writing so much, they got carried away. For example, I read a book (pubbed by one of the Big 6…er…Big 5) where the author took three pages to describe the moon rising. It got to the point where I was eyeing my kitchen knives, wondering which to choose in order to slice and dice the book. Mind you, the narrative was lovely, but come on…three pages?

So take comfort that it’s not just the new writers who commit narrative voice-ritcide. Now, of course, not every action requires a literary kapow. Sometimes your characters can simply pour a glass of orange juice or walk their dog. It’s your job to look for the appropriate places where it makes sense to add some punch to your narrative.

Take a long look at your writing. Are there places where you’re committing narrative voice-ritcide? Are there places you can create a more interesting, colorful, three-dimensional story while also making your narrative voice a distinct thing of beauty? You can take a lifeless story and make it sing like the angels, and it comes down to narrative voice. Pinky swear.

Now go forth and be brilliant.

Authors always ask this question because research is time consuming, and they’re itching to get writing. I can sympathize. It took me a year to write my novel, and it was because I researched the medical and metaphysical world ’til the cows came home. I went the extra mile because I wanted my writing to be beyond reproach. I was rewarded by lots of people in the medical community asking what kind of medicine I practiced. BoOya! I bless those docs who kept me on the straight and narrow.

Because of that endorsement, readers trusted me. And that’s what you want for your book. If you half-ass something because “Well, it’s a minor thing, and no one will notice,” then think again. Someone will ALWAYS notice. Keeping a reader engaged is about trust. If you blow something, or make something up, then readers will feel bitten. Bite them too much, and you’ll lose them. It could something as minor as how a Catholic ceremony is performed, or as major as an MS patient’s ability to move around.

I remember reading an author’s first pages at a writer’s conference – a romance. She had her couple taking a long romantic walk by the Amazon, where they eventually got down to some serious horizontal calisthenics. Big problem, though. I just happened to spend 17 bug-filled days in the Amazon, and I can assure you that the only thing you’re doing on a hot Amazon night is showering in a Deet bath and zipping your tent. Romance is the furthest thing from your mind.

The idea was lovely, but completely unrealistic, and as a reader, I would have tossed her book across the room. You simply cannot take short cuts with your readers. It’s unfair to them because they invested in your book. You owe it to them and yourself to be unimpeachable…even if it’s a minor scene. To do anything else is admitting that you’re lazy, and when I see blunders like this in submissions, I reject them.

Not researching every element of your book is a noob blunder, and when I see it, I always think, “Well, if they blew this important element of writing, then what else do they not understand?” Editors avoid working with noobs.

So if you’re tempted to short cut your way out of writing a medical procedure, what kind of weapon Army Rangers use, or what your characters are doing in a certain setting, always remember that your readers be watchin’ you, so keep it real!

There are these really cool trees on the grounds where I live, trees my SoCal self isn’t used to seeing. When I first arrived to Pittsburgh, the trees were in the process of doing their seasonal striptease, so I didn’t appreciate them until now. Ah, Spring.

Their naked little trunks sat through winter, creating narrow shelves of snow on their branches. Then the snow disappeared, and those naked little trees just sat there, still trying to wake up. Then a few weeks ago, I noticed they were adorned with little red berries. How cute, methinks, those berries are gonna be a headache to clean up. And then they exploded.

Now the trees are covered in gorgeous white flowers. They’re so full, it looks like a furry skin.

Watching the process of going from dormancy to explosion of expression reminds me of publishing. You have the trunk that’s in the process of querying. Those little leaves sprout like crazy with each query letter that’s sent out. And then the wait begins. It’s depressing, and those leaves wither and drop off because waiting is a cold, lonely feeling. Your thoughts run amok. Is your writing any good? Is the genre impacted? Does your query letter suck the big one?

But then the weather grows warmer, and you begin to feel those little seeds of confidence grow. Hell yes, your query is bang on, and so is your writing. You’ve done your work, you’ve researched the genre, and you know your stuff. And while you may not have an agent or publisher yet, you bloom with the satisfaction that you wrote something special, and you’re not going to give up on it.

It takes a year for new blossoms to sprout. Most things of great beauty do take time, so don’t despair, or try to short-circuit the process. Lean into the warm sun and show off your stuff. And while you’re at it, plant a new tree. Who knows what that will bloom from those branches!

An author told me that she noticed a few agents’ blogs were claiming that book proposals are passé, and authors need not write them. Instead, authors should treat their nonfiction like fiction, and just send the manuscript. I’m sure this works fine for agents, but what happens when an editor asks for one?

Maybe I’m a dinosaur and editors aren’t asking for them as much anymore. As Jurassic as I may be, I still always ask for a book proposal, and I know I’m not alone. Oddly enough, there have been a few agents who wrote back saying they didn’t have one. Period. No offer to cough one up. Take it or leave it. I’m always dismayed because I don’t see this as being advantageous to the author. Book proposals are standard for nonfiction, so is it a good idea not to be prepared? After all, publishers are the ones who are making the financial investment, and they still need that info in order to help make a decision.

It’s Not Just For Editors…

Book proposals play a whole other role in that they force authors to think of their books as a marketable product and to think like a businessperson. And believe me, prospective editors are thinking along those lines. Very often, I have questions that the agent will pass along to the author. If that happens to you, are you ready with a knowledgeable answer?

What’s frustrating is that authors rightly take their lead from their agents, so if they haven’t been told to write a proposal, then where does leave me? More importantly, where does it leave the author?

Book proposals take a long time to write, but I’ve yet to hear an author say that writing it was a complete waste of time. Instead, authors were amazed at how much they learned about their own book because they had to look at it from a different perspective. And even though novelists don’t need a book proposal, I still think it’s a good idea to write one because it forces you to think about your book from the side of an editor.

There are a ton of books about writing the perfect book proposal, I think these books are a waste of money because there’s no magic bullet to writing the perfect book proposal. Save your money. You want a reference? I wrote a post on book proposals that goes into further detail, so here it is for free.

I met Amanda Adams under the craziest of circumstances, but the end result is that I loved her book, HEART WARRIORS, and couldn’t wait to sign her. Amanda is a bright and articulate author who truly is a warrior for congenital heart disease. She had no choice, since her adorable son, Liam, was born with it. She has spent every day of his young life fighting, and Liam couldn’t have a better mom.

But HEART WARRIORS isn’t just another disease of the week – it’s a bible/survival guide for anyone who has a loved one suffering from CHD. In fact, her Survival Guide at the back of the book is a fabulous reference for all things congenital heart disease.

Amanda artfully writes about the battles, the pain, the immense joy, and everything in between. She gives permission to parents to have the thoughts and feelings they try so hard to sweep under the carpet…and that’s vital to mental health. CHD isn’t like a cold, so parents have to be physically, mentally, and financially prepared for the long haul.

I admire Amanda immensely, and I’d like for readers to see what an amazing woman she is, and how her book can help anyone touched by CHD. So for starting today – Wednesday – and ending Thursday at 3 p.m. EST, anyone may email me (lynn_at_behlerpublications.com) for their free e-book version of HEART WARRIORS. Please put HEART WARRIORS e-book in the Subject line.

Here is an article Amanda wrote for Scrubs magazine which I thought was fabulous; “What Nurses Taught This Mother.” Also, here’s a very cool review of HEART WARRIORS.

Amanda, you rock.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE FREE OFFER ENDED THURSDAY 4-25. YOU MAY BUY AMANDA’S BOOK AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE, OR AT ANY ONLINE STORE, SUCH AS AMAZON, B&N.COM, iBook, ETC.

WE HAD AN AMAZING RESPONSE, AND I’M HONORED TO HAVE BEEN A PART OF THIS GIVEAWAY. HEART FAMILIES ARE WONDERFUL.

This kitteh is channeling the lions. I’m sure of it.

Pick up your copy today!

Thank you, Becky Mushko!

Filed under: Lion's Testicles, Melissa Haynes, publishing, writing ]]> http://behlerblog.com/2013/04/20/its-teach-your-kitteh-to-read-day/feed/ 1 lynnpricewrites reading kitteh http://behlerblog.com/2013/04/17/kim-kircher-author-of-the-next-15-minutes-is-a-winner/ http://behlerblog.com/2013/04/17/kim-kircher-author-of-the-next-15-minutes-is-a-winner/#comments Wed, 17 Apr 2013 13:35:32 +0000 lynnpricewrites http://behlerblog.com/?p=7690 ]]>

The rescue beagles and I are having a serious WoOt moment.

The NAJSA (North American Snowsports Journalism Award) honored our beautiful and brilliant author, Kim Kircher (The Next 15 Minutes), with The Harold Hirsch Award for excellence in journalism in the Book category. The Book category is only given every three years. Judges are chosen based on their expertise in the field, and are not members of the organization. The award is named for Harold Hirsch, a long-time ski journalist, and member of the NASJA Board.

Stuff like this makes my spine tingle because I remember first meeting Kim at the PNWA Conference and loving her and her book. I remember going over edits together, and was continually amazed (and grateful) at how great she was at rewrites. We spend countless hours watching a book go from infant to shoving it out of the nest, so when a respected body of professionals deems that book a winner, it brings it all home for me.

I think this deserves a day of free e-books, don’t you? For Wednesday and Thursday, email me (lynn_at_behlerpublications.com) for your free e-book of THE NEXT 15 MINUTES, which is a fabulous and gripping story of finding strength at the top of the mountain in the face of huge personal turmoil. Be sure to put FREE NEXT 15 MINUTES in the Subject line.

WoOt, Kimba. Well done.

One of my beautiful authors emailed me the other day to report on her latest media events. The reporter interviewing her had obviously not read her book, so she wasn’t fully prepared.

/ rant on: Why on earth would anyone interview someone when they are completely unprepared?? I’d rather eat a rusty razor blade that go into anything unprepared. Gah. /rant off

I felt for my author because she’s like most authors, who doesn’t think of herself as a product or brand, but as, well, a writer. So it’s easy to get caught flat-footed. But the truth is that once you sell that book, you need to put on your business hat and shoes (and matching handbag), and think like a promoter, which includes giving interviews.

My author’s interview interruptus brought back memories of when I faced a reporter many moons ago who was equally ill-prepared, so her questions were mind-bogglingly inane. I became a bit nervous when she looked at me with that deer-in-the-headlights expression that screams, “I have no idea what I’m doing,” so I sorta took control and spoon-fed her information that she could use…and make her look like a star.

My novel is medical fiction with a bit of a twist. When she stumbled, I jumped in and asked her if she’d ever thought about whether her doctor’s belief system could/would impact the way he treated her. Boyo, she stopped cold and really pondered the question. So I segued into Donovan’s Paradigm, and how that question plagues my two main characters, and how they wrestle with the potential and consequences of that idea. From there, it became easier for her to come up with her own questions because she became engaged in the topic.

And that’s the trick. If you draw a reporter in and make them look good, they’ll work with you. Revealing your irritation at their lack of preparation won’t get you squat.

My best advice is to channel the Girl Scouts and BE PREPARED:

1. Always have a copy of your book on hand to give to the interviewer. They often have a copy, but if they don’t you can give them yours. It’s just a nice thing to do…even if it ends up on eBay.
2. Go into your interview believing they haven’t read your book: That way, you won’t be surprised and will be able to remain calm and centered. When you’re calm and centered, you tend to think better on your feet.
3. LISTEN:  Too often we’re thinking about what we’re going to say next rather than listening to the reporter’s question and watching their body language. I’ve learned this particular gem from talking to authors during marketing strategy sessions. Even though I have all the promo stuff in front of me, the authors often says something in passing that I pounce on because it encapsulates the essence of their books, and drastically changes the promo strategy. A reporter may say something in all innocence (or ignorance), and it could end up being the igniter for something brilliant that escapes your precious pie hole.
4. Pull out your main theme that invites discussion:  The idea is to give the reporter something to grasp, so they can get a good interview. Help them out by saying something open-ended:

• “Can we really swipe major emotions under the carpet and not expect them to bite us on the ass at some later date?” Hello LEARNING TO PLAY WITH A LION’S TESTICLES
• “What is like to love someone so deeply and fear that your love has an expiration date?” Hello JAN’S STORY, PULSE OF MY HEART, THE NEXT 15 MINUTES

Interviews are stressful enough without having a case of the sphincter puckers while you watch your interview circle the drain. Give them an opener that they can use as a life line.

Reporters usually have the formulaic open-ended question tucked beneath their bra strap: “Why did you write your book?” If you have a good amount of time to blow on an interview, this question can be lots of fun because it explores you, the author, and gives you a personality. But normally, the reporter has a nanosecond, and this question eats up precious time that doesn’t say anything about your book, which is the purpose of an interview because you’re hoping to grab readers’ attention.

Best way to do that is to be prepared for the disaster.

As for my gorgeous author? Phht. She’s a pro and pulled it off…despite being deathly ill…and threw in interesting elements of her book. That said, I doubt she’ll ever go into another interview without having more tricks up her sleeve. And neither should you. Avoid Interview Interruptus, and go out and rock it.

Escape Artist

Anyone who has ever had a beagle knows they live to smell. And they like to take their time doing it. Our rescue beagles have this sniff and process thing down to science, which means they can sniff one spot for five minutes which means they take their time so they can soak it all in…

…which means they’re not in any rush, and this leads me to the other morning’s fun and games. One of the rescue beagles managed to snork out of her harness and made a break for freedom after she managed to wrap herself around a tree. Meanwhile, dragging the second rescue beagle behind her, a horrified Pricey took off in hot pursuit after the escaped rescue beagle – who was having the time of her life. Mind you, hot pursuit is an endeavor I’d hoped to avoid for the rest of my life.

The ultimate insult is that she knew what she was doing. Little rat would wait until I’d almost reached her, then she’d throw back her head and laugh, and take off again. Thoughts of murder were racing through my oxygen-starved brain.

But her glee in striking out for freedom had its drawbacks. Instead of lollygagging over a spot for five minutes to process every nuance, she was forced to speed sniff in order to stay one step aheand of my grips. She’s still on smell overload, and it serves her right.

I see lots of speed sniffing in many submissions. The writing appears is rushed and green, and it’s obvious the author didn’t take the time to stop and analyze each scent. I wish, wish, wish, more authors would s-l-o-w down. Just because you’ve written The End doesn’t mean it’s ready for query. Instead, think about writing Beagle style. Stop and sniff the spots in the forest. Process every scent, every nuance so that you are confident you have the story you intended to write.

I always recommend that writers toss their newly finished books aside for a few weeks. It’s only with fresh eyes that you can spot the rough patches. You only get once chance to make a first impression, so don’t blow it by sending a manuscript that hasn’t had the chance to marinate and age. I can always tell when an author has written Beagle style. The writing glows and warms my evil soul into a puddle of goo. And isn’t that the reaction you want from an editor?

As for the rescue beagle, I finally snatched the little breakout artist when she stopped to bark at another dog and its pissed-off owner. Over all, not a good way to start my morning, but a great way to get my blackened, soulless heart pumping.