Flogging the Quill

Computer tip: use the comment feature for better storytelling

This is a post from two years ago about a handy computer tool that bears repeating, I think.

Microsoft Word's Comment feature is a hugely useful tool. You can insert an invisible note for yourself or someone else, such as an editor. When I was in an e-mail critique group, we used comments in our critiques, along with line editing with Track changes turned on. WordPerfect also offers a Comment tool.

I sometimes create a skeletal version of a scene that's not fully developed in my mind and use Comment to leave a note about thoughts for fleshing it out. Or maybe I've a description or action that I know needs work. In one of my novels I described a character as having a "pretty face." A critiquer noted that this was vague. When I came to that place in rewriting, I just wasn't ready to deal with finding other language, so it was easy to highlight the word "pretty" and add this little note and a thought-starter to myself:

"need better adjective/description -- fine-boned, delicate features…"

When I was good and ready, I took my time to do justice to the description.

The woman's face emerged -- oval shape, delicate features and big eyes like you see in fashion models.

For me, that's one of the best uses for comments -- to annotate possibilities that occur to me when I don't have the time or inclination to write them out. For example, in one intense but brief scene with his idiot-boss, the protagonist quits his job and then does this:

In his office, Gabe slams the few personal things he doesn't want to lose into his briefcase.

Later, when skimming through the chapter, I had a nagging sense that the conflict with his boss had ended too abruptly. I had a thought for expanding the scene, so I highlighted "In his office" and added this comment:

"consider having the boss follow him into the hallway and finishing the confrontation."

I went back later and created a much stronger scene. Here's the addition:

Gabe's not ten feet down the hallway before Lawrence's voice attacks from behind. "You hold on there!"

Gabe stops and turns. Lawrence advances on him, his face flushed, his movements stiff and tense. Gabe waits and watches.

Lawrence comes to a halt close enough for Gabe to smell the cigarette smoke in his breath. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

A weight lifts from his mind, and Gabe feels strong and free. "How about the right thing?"

Lawrence sucks in air as if Gabe had punched him in his flat belly. His face reddens even more. "You're one more word from being out of a job."

Out of a job. But this job, with Lawrence fouling his work and pulling on a leash, will be hell. Gabe's been here before, suffering the daily insult and pain of working for a lesser man. Last time it cost him lots of sleep and the beginnings of an ulcer. He'd vowed to never suffer fools again.

"Lawrence, don't you have some ass-kissing to do? I think the client's going to need a long, deep pucker if you want to keep him happy."

Like a fish, complete with glassy eyes, Lawrence opens and shuts his mouth a couple of times. Then he spins and hurries back to the conference room. Gabe heads for his office, a flush of victory humming through him.

How to add comments

There are different ways to add a comment. In Word 2000 and earlier iterations, you highlight something where you want the comment to be, click Insert in the top menu, then click on Comment. A box will appear, you enter your note, then click Close. The comment becomes invisible until you want to see it, but yellow highlighting remains to show you where it is. NOTE: you can insert a comment without highlighting anything, but I wouldn't -- later there's no way to see where the comment is. A keyboard shortcut for inserting a comment is to type Alt+Ctrl+m.

In Word 2002/XP, you insert comments in the same ways. A comment balloon appears into which you can type your comment. Annoyingly (to me), the balloon stays there. To make it go away, go to View and click on Markup. Unfortunately, to my way of thinking, these versions of Word leave no highlighting to tell you where the comment is -- you have to click on View/Markup.

There's also an add-a-comment icon that you can put in your toolbar that makes it quick and easy to add a comment. Here's how: click Tools in the top menu bar. Click Customize. Click on the Commands tab. Click the Insert icon in the list that appears, then scroll down until the yellow Comment icon appears. Put your cursor over the icon graphic, press the left mouse key down and hold it. You can then "drag" the icon up to your toolbar. A marker will appear where it will be, and you can move the cursor to find the right spot. Then release the mouse key and the icon will appear in your toolbar. It should stay there, though in Word for the Mac, I've never figured out how to make it permanent.

There are two ways in Word 2000 and earlier to view Comment notes. My preference is to place my cursor over the yellow highlight, which causes the comment to appear in a pop-up box. Move the cursor away, it goes away. Right-click your mouse (click the right key if you have a 2-key mouse) and you get a menu that will let you edit or delete the comment.

An alternative way to view a Comment is to click View on the top menu in Word. Then click Comments, and a window will appear with all the comments in them. You can scroll to get to the area you want to see. This is a handy way to review all of the reminders you've left in order to see what needs to be done.

In Word 2002/XP, click View and then Markup to see comments. To make them go away, return to View and click Markup.

In WordPerfect, to insert a comment click on Insert in the top menu bar, move your cursor to Comment, and click on Insert in the pop-up menu. To close the window that opens you have to click the X in the upper right corner. You can also navigate back and forth between your document and comment with Window on the main menu bar.

WordPerfect adds small "word balloons" to the left margin of your document to indicate the presence of a comment. Click on the work balloon to read the comment. Right-click on the comment to edit or delete it.

If you have other ways you put comments to work, please let me know and I'll pass them on.

For what it's worth,

Ray

Free edit. Email a sample for an edit that I can post here.

ARCHIVES .

© 2006 Ray Rhamey

Coming soon, the Flogometer Critique—can you make me turn the page?

Can you COMPEL me (or an agent, or an editor) turn the first page of your manuscript? Can you create 15 lines of narrative so seductive that I'm unable to resist?

While an agent or an editor may read a little further than that, it sure won't hurt to make your first page irresistible.

So herewith I'm planning a version of  Miss Snark's Crapometer exercise. But from a storytelling/editing point of view.

BTW, she did an amazing job. Received about 700 250-word "hooks" and she's critiquing them all. During the first weekend, her rate was one approximately every 4 minutes, which included pasting the thing into her blog and commenting. Whew!

But maybe it's a fair test. Agent Kristin Nelson posted her year's stats on her blog, and she received 20, 800 queries in 2006. If you figure 40-hour work weeks, and take two weeks off to rest your eyes, that comes to about 10 queries per hour. And some of us wonder why agents use form rejection slips. When does she find the time to do the rest of her work? Oh, I'm sure she works more than 40 hours per week, but even at 80 hours per week that would still be 5 queries per hour, hour after hour after hour . . .

So Miss Snark is doing a huge service by donating one agent's view of hundreds of hooks the writers thought were enticing enough to engage interest. I sent my own in, and await a reaction.

I'm saving the entries that she declared to be winning hooks to analyze what makes them work (for her). A pattern seems to be emerging -- a briskly written piece about a single interesting character who has high-stakes conflict. Which makes me wonder, what if there are two protagonists, which is not uncommon? Or an "ensemble" approach? Her pov is subjective, but it's a good real-world test.

Maybe the Flogometer Critique can help you when you reach the stage of submitting pages, whether with your query or in response to a request for a partial or full.

Maybe I can help you focus on the story part of sucking a reader into your narrative.

Introducing the Flogometer Critique

So next month I'll open up Flogging the Quill to looking at a sample of what an agent or editor will see on the first page of the first chapter of your manuscript.

We're talking about the 15 double-spaced lines that appear on your manuscript's first page when the chapter starts about 1/3 of the way down (as it should), with 1-inch margins.

I averaged the first-page count in my first four novels, and the mean for those 15 lines was 220, but the range was wide: from 168 to 249. That's using Times Roman instead of Courier, which puts more words on the page.

So let's settle on a nice, round 200 words for the Flogometer.

Here's the deal: When I open up for submissions next month, you'll be invited to send the FIRST 200 words of your novel in the body of an email. NO more. My Word knows how to count words, and I'll be precise in my pickiness.

The Flogometer is NOT YET OPEN for submissions. I figured you might want to take a little time to really focus on those first 15 lines and do a little editing and polishing. They had better gleam like the steel hooks they should be.

What will happen to your sample is that I'll post it with notes, i.e.

• Read more, with reasons why, plus edits if I see places for improvement.
• Pass, with reasons why.
  

It took Miss Snark, who apparently has an incredible amount of energy, a long weekend to blitz through just 140 submissions. I don't have that kind of time or juice to devote, so the Flogometer review may take longer, but I'll get to them all.

If, that is, anyone sends something in.

The process, but ONLY after I say "go" (after the first of the year):

1. At top of email (email address to be given later, when the session opens):

• You MUST tell me that it is okay to use in the Flogging the Quill blog
• I would appreciate it if you would also tell me that it's okay to use in a how-to craft book based on the blog.

2. Paste the first 200 words of your novel into the email. Please separate the paragraphs in the email with a line space if that doesn't automatically happen.

3. I send you a number by reply email, which lets you know if the sample has been received and will help you gauge when yours will appear.

4. I'm not limiting this -- yet. Because I don't think I could do justice to the kind of volume Miss Snark has gotten, I may stop the critiquing at one point, take a breather, and then return to the next batch. We'll see -- there may be too few rather than too many.

5. Readers: Vote via Comments whether or not a sample COMPELS you to turn the page. DO NOT BE KIND. Do not be generous. Neither kindness or generosity are helpful at this point. However, if you comment on a submission, be considerate and constructive. I'll block nastiness.

Please DON'T SEND anything yet. I'll let you know. It will be after the turn of the year. The process stuff above will be repeated.

---

Report on my Flash Editing workshop at the Write on the Sound conference
The Write on the Sound folks share ratings given presenters by attendees, and I was pleased with what I received from the workshoppers who came to my session.

They were asked to rate the presenter/presentation by giving 1 to 5 points, with 5 being the top rating. Here's what Flash Editing received:

Out of 21 writers who turned in an evaluation:

• 10 gave it 5 points
• 8 gave it 4 points
• 2 gave it the middle, 3 points
• 1 gave it 1 point
  

Okay, for one person I didn't meet expectations. On the other hand, 18 out of 21 people gave me top-2-box scores, with nearly half bestowing the top rating. I'm pleased, and I believe the feedback I got will make the next one even better.

---

Happy Holidays!

I think I'll take the week after Christmas off, but I will put up a computer tip post from the archives about uses for the Word comment feature, so stop in.

For what it's worth,

Ray

Free edit. Email a sample for an edit that I can post here.

ARCHIVES .

© 2006 Ray Rhamey

Flashing back

Flashbacks are tough. When should you use them, if at all? Editors such as me and, I'm certain, most agents, see scores upon scores of manuscripts with openings suffocated by the weight of flashbacks and explanatory exposition.

Some say to never use them, and that's possible. But there are times a flashback can enrich a story, add depth and meaning, that would otherwise not be there. There are other times when, without prior knowledge, a character's actions will seem unmotivated, and thus not credible.

So when and how do you use flashbacks? I've always advocated only when the knowledge revealed in the flashback is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL to understand what's going on in the story's present. Beginning writers need to be tough on themselves here. They'll feel like a reader needs to know things about a character that, truthfully, are not necessary for understanding the NOW. It's the NOW that readers want to be immersed in.

In my most recent wip, though, I discovered another reason for flashbacks. Or perhaps it's merely a variation on the one just cited. My protagonist is, at the novel's opening, planning on killing herself, and her voice is cold. Critique partners and readers let me know that the character wasn't sympathetic enough to engage them emotionally. The second reason for a flashback is necessary characterization.

We pause for notes on the how of creating a flashback.

1. Weave it as seamlessly as possible into the action. Words such as "remembered" and phrases such as "thought of the time when" are bright red flags that signal to many readers that coming soon to a page near them is a part to skip. Transitions are key.
2. Make the flashback a true scene with action, dialogue, tension, and all the storytelling elements that you use to keep a reader engaged. Avoid telling a past event (unless it can be done in one brief, crisp paragraph). Readers want to experience what's happening, not just receive information.

My solution was to break the flashback story into pieces and weave it into the action. In addition, I avoided flashbacks until the second chapter in order to give my story's action a chance to hook the reader.

Here's the first piece of the past and how I wove it in. The protagonist has entered the Chicago Art Institute for a last look at beauty before she ends her life. A key transitional element is that something that happens in the NOW triggers THEN.

A couple studies a directory, holding hands. Like a double exposure of life, I see Graeme and me on our last day together. After a visit to the Met, we had held hands as we strolled in Central Park, past trees bright green with new spring leaves.

I said, "The new sculpture exhibit was excellent."

Graeme shrugged. "Perhaps." He gestured at the people who plodded through the park. "But there's little else of excellence from that sorry race."

My contrary side reared its head. While I was not fond of our unskilled cousins, I rebelled at the unfairness of the bias Graeme inherited from his father. "There is plenty of good in the lessi, and you know it."

"I do not." He surveyed the people around us. Dozens wandered, for it was a sunny day. "See their colors, Ailia. Is there kindness or good will anywhere?"

I looked, and he was right. The lledri auras around their heads writhed with the nasty burgundy of hostility, the yellow-green of lies, the ash-violet of depression, and the bruised red of violence. That, of course, only served to rally my resistance. "Perhaps not here, not now, but there are many good-hearted lessi."

Graeme got the grin that I loved so, the way it painted his face with mischief. Behind it lived a wide-eyed, little-boy-lost wonder at the immensity of life that made me want to wrap my arms around him. Though he was a decade my senior, our hearts were not a minute apart. After a hundred and fifty years together, we knew that we were One, that rarest of blends that has a chance of lasting for the long centuries.

He made an exaggerated moue and said, "A wager?"

I picked up the gauntlet. "Yes." I pointed down a curving walk. "We'll go that way, and we'll find a worthy lessi."

"The stakes?"

I ran my hands over my breasts and down my belly.

Oh, that smile of his. He said, "It's a bet."

If only I had not taunted him. If only . . .

I shake off the vision as I pass exhibits of medieval armor that look like little metal men. They make me think of my former father-in-law, Drago -- short of stature and hard. I wonder if Drago's venom has abated. Though why should it? He has a right to hold me responsible for the loss of his son. I led Graeme to his death, did I not?

With luck, I've let the reader see a likeable version of my protagonist, saucy and lively. With luck, this snippet of the past was entertaining enough to be engaging. It has conflict, and it has a bit of a cliffhanger ending that raises a story question: what happened?

I hope the way I eased into the memory -- Like a double exposure of life, I see --doesn't trigger the part-to-skip alarm, and that my exit slips  my reader back into the action.

Here's the second part of the flashback. In terms of the characterization I felt was needed to create an empathetic character, there are two elements: the tragedy that struck her husband, and her nature as a healer. It also illustrates my take on the use of a natural kind of "magic," a core piece of the novel. Now we're inside a museum exhibit.

I move to a display of medieval Celtic swords, artful because of their wonderfully crafted grips, yet their blades are instruments of death.

Once again it's now and then -- in Central Park, Graeme and I came upon a woman pulling a two-wheeled shopping cart. She radiated a rosy gold, the rich hue of caring. Perhaps sixty years old, she was stout, anchored to the earth like an oak tree. I pointed. "See that, Mr. Skeptic?"

Graeme spread his arms in surrender, lifted his gaze to the heavens and said, as if to a higher power, "Why have you once again given Ailia victory over your poor servant Graeme?"

I poked him in the ribs and said, "I believe you owe me."

He pulled me into his arms and pressed me to him. "I'm ready."

His body let me know that he was indeed ready. My pulse quickened, and I wanted to take him by the hand, find a cluster of bushes, cast a shadow illusion for concealment, and make love.

The woman stopped before a trio of homeless men who sprawled on ragged blankets. She opened a brown paper bag from her cart and I caught the aroma of bologna. The woman took a paper-wrapped sandwich from the sack and handed it to one of the men. He sat up, ripped off the paper, and attacked the food.

I couldn't resist adding another straw to the camel's back. Pushing away from Graeme, I said, "If we're so advanced, we should help."

He laughed, and then put on a thick French accent. "But of course, ma cherie." Stepping to the woman's side, he gestured to the sack of sandwiches and said, "May I?"

She smiled and nodded, and Graeme took a sandwich from the bag and thrust it at a whiskery man whose bristles made him look like a wild boar.

The boar man scrambled to his feet, digging into a pocket. Too late I saw in his aura the acrid tornado of colors that means madness. He pulled out a knife, flicked it open and thrust it into Graeme's chest. Graeme collapsed as if a puppet whose strings had been cut.

I fell to my knees beside him. Widening my sight to see bright motes of lledri coursing around us, I gathered a stream and plunged it into Graeme's chest to heal the wound. But his heart had been sliced almost in two. There was no way I could mend him. I looked into his eyes and saw terrible fear . . . and then an even more terrible absence.

I sprang to my feet and sent lledri into the killer's torso to grip his heart. I could crush it or incinerate it. I had only to decide.

The thin yellow of fear streaked the man's whirling colors, mixing with jagged bursts of red-orange: his pain. I'd been a healer for too many years; reflexively, I probed his brain and found it ravaged by swarms of Borna virus, the cause of his schizophrenia.

My One had been killed by bits of malicious RNA.

I released my hold on the boar man's heart. Graeme would have chided me for being a do-gooder, but I couldn't resist my next impulse. I wielded lledri to break the viruses into harmless molecules. It would take time for the man's symptoms to abate, but he immediately looked down at Graeme's bloodstained chest, and then at the bloody knife in his hand. Horror twisted his features. He cried out, dropped the knife, and ran away.

My foolishness had killed my One.

If only . . .

Movement pulls my mind from the past. The stocky guard appears at the entrance to the Celtic exhibit, her full cheeks flushed, her body tight, clearly on the hunt.

I can't be discovered.

Once again I used a real-time stimulus to trigger the association and transition into the flashback, blades that cause death just as the boar man's knife ended her husband's life. This was the end of my flashbacking for this character. I used a similar approach for the other primary protagonist, breaking a key event in his childhood into two small pieces that are eased into the story in the same way.

That's my take du jour on the use of flashbacks. I hope these examples have proved both entertaining and helpful. Let me know what you think.

For what it's worth,

Ray

Free edit. Email a sample for an edit that I can post here.

ARCHIVES .

© 2006 Ray Rhamey

Taking my latest novel to market

Last week I had the remarkable pleasure of focusing full time on revising and polishing my latest novel, Finding Magic. I had to take a week of vacation from the day job to do it, but it was worth it.

I'd let the manuscript "chill" for 8 months -- since March -- to try to generate some separation, so I had fresh eyes (sorta -- can't really forget). I think it worked. My first day I found myself gulping the story down, not watching out for editing nits but taking in the pace and story (turns out it's a bit of a page-turner). Went through the whole 80,000 words on Monday. Luckily, I still liked it. Made a couple of minor structural changes, but that was about it.

Then I took two more days to go through the full manuscript again, line editing -- attending to word choice, clarity, continuity, etc. I worked with printouts, partly because it's easy to miss things onscreen, and partly because a hard copy is the final form an editor, and maybe an agent, will be dealing with.

This has changed -- once it was exclusively paper. Because reading is a visual experience as well as a mental one, I thought it would be smart to be sure the opening pages broke at compelling points, etc. in the hard copy. But times have changed. I asked litblog agent Miss Snark about what agents and editors read nowadays. Her response:

"Almost everyone I know is reading more on the screen, certainly partials and queries. I read almost everything on the screen now except query letters"

Incidentally, she hates the Courier font. In electronic form, she just changes it to something she likes, no problem. For my money, the final trip through your manuscript should be with a properly formatted, professional printout, no matter what the font. The result should work just fine in an electronic format, too, and can easilty be adjusted in that form.

 

Once the polish was done, I moved to marketing it. I thought I'd share with you what I'm doing to approach literary agents -- I'm between agents, having amicably retired my relationship with my first agent.

On Thursday, I tackled the dreaded query letter with dread -- for me, even though I spent 20 years writing advertising, it's far easier to write a novel than it is to summarize it into a succinct, compelling summary. Arrrgh!!

Still, it had to be done. So here's what I came up with -- I'd appreciate your input.

What if what we think of as "magic" is real? Not the anything-is-possible sorcery of Harry Potter, but the control of a natural energy to cure illness . . . to "fly" . . . or to kill?

What does having that ability do to people? What happens if we discover them living in secret among us?

Ailia, a healer, has that ability. So do the clans made up of her kin that hide from normal society, fearing persecution. And so does Gabriel River, a man who "sees" when people lie and has been isolated by his otherness since childhood.

Ailia is a woman who loves too much. Crushed by grief when her beloved husband is killed, she aims to end her life -- but a pit bull of a Homeland Security agent discovers her "difference" and charges into pursuit.

Fleeing to protect her kin, Ailia draws Gabe into her escape. He learns that he and his five-year-old son share the lineage that gives Ailia her abilities, a gift that's driving Gabe's son into autism. Ailia's heart goes out to the child, and her desire for life returns.

But then a clan leader, seeking revenge for the murder of his son by ordinary people, creates a plague to wipe out non-clan humankind. With Homeland Security closing fast, only Ailia, with Gabe's help, can stop the plague. She's forced to choose between living while others die and sacrificing her newfound life to save humanity from a gruesome death.

This next thing isn't part of my querying process, but there's more to what I do than write novels. I edit them, too, and it seems to me that it's only fair, in the sense of full disclosure, to let prospective clients see samples of my writing. So I post them on my editing website, editorrr.com.

Because I'm a visual thinker, I can't resist creating a cover concept (what do you think?). I don't have any intention of using it in my marketing efforts (yet), but it's fun to do, and helps dress up the page on the editing site that offers a sample. The page with the first chapter is here. There are samples from two other novels on the site as well.

If you visit, feedback is welcome.

Friday of that week I spent putting together query packages. I've decided not to do email queries at this stage, primarily because God only knows what will prick an agent's interest in an emailed letter with no writing sample (and She's not telling). A botched query means no go, but it's the writing that's the crux, and if the first chapter or two of my novel can hook an agent's interest, no matter how I screw up the pitch in the query letter, I've got a shot. Miss Snark agrees with that premise, by the way. So I want to be able to put at least one chapter in front of an agent (or, more likely, his/her assistant). If that fails, well, that's okay. At least I had my full shot.

I researched agents who represent work in my arena (speculative, fantasy, science fiction) and found ten that looked to me to be likely candidates who would read a sample. I hope I'll hit a window where they'll be a little more accessible -- online agent Kristin Nelson recently wrote of the holiday dead zone of publishing: the last three weeks of December when publishing virtually shuts down. After the first week of December, she postpones submissions to editors until January. So maybe there's a little down time out there, and agents may catch up on queries.

Just for fun -- and for a little attention-getting behavior -- I printed this cartoon on the submission envelope. I figure it can't hurt.

So that's one writer's marketing effort. I'll let you know how it comes out. Now, if I can only figure out how not to obsess about it for weeks and weeks and weeks and . . .

For what it's worth,

Ray

Free edit. Email a sample for an edit that I can post here.

ARCHIVES .

© 2006 Ray Rhamey