Flogging the Quill

Front matter sometimes takes the rear

In traditional print books there are usually pages of “front matter.” For Indie authors, here’s a useful article from PW Select, a publisher’s digital magazine, on what front matter consists of and where it goes.

On the other hand, I’ve heard some say that with ebooks they’re putting the front matter at the rear of the ebook in order to give their book the best chance of capturing a reader’s interest with the story, not book information. That makes sense to me—with a print book it’s easy to quickly flip to the first page of chapter one, but with ebooks that takes laborious scrolling.

For what it’s worth.

Ray

Tweet

© 2014 Ray Rhamey

A writing tip gleaned from editor Cheryl Klein’s excellent book

I’m reading Second Sight : An Editor's Talks on Writing, Revising, and Publishing Books for Children and Young Adults by editor Cheryl Klein. I bought it to gain insights into writing for children and young adults, but this book has great value for every writer. I highly recommend it, and I’ll be doing a storyteller’s review after I’ve finished it. But why not share an insight now?

A tip for both plotters and pantsers

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a “pantser” writer, also called “organic” or “intuitive,” who writes by the seat of his pants. I’m working on a book proposal for Writer’s Digest on a book about novel writing for pantsers—there are plenty of advice books for people who work things out in advance, but not much for we pantsers. And Cheryl expanded on something I’ve done as a pantser that can help all novelists.

Aside: I’m excited about how the book proposal is coming because bestselling author Tess Gerritsen and top literary agent Donald Maass have agreed to contribute to the book.

Back to the tip

When I was pantsing my way through my first novel, about a third of the way through I realized that I had lost track of exactly what had happened to whom, and whether or not the appearances of my point-of-view characters was balanced. So I went back and constructed a chapter-by-chapter summary of the events in each chapter—which characters appeared and what happened. After I started the chart (a chart done in Word, though Excel would do, too), I maintained it as chapters were written.

Little did I know it, but I was creating what Cheryl calls a “bookmap.” For her, though, it is a post-draft tool, and a useful one, that she uses when editing her authors for publication. Here’s how she describes a bookmap:

Go through your book chapter by chapter and write out a on-line to one-paragraph summary of each chapter’s events. Try to include the key plot information that appears in each chapter—for instance, if the antagonist reveals an important clue to the protagonist, then both that fact and what the protagonist learns should be listed. What this lets you see is the overall development of your story, separate from the language in which it is told. Then you can ask yourself:

Then she makes the points below, but I wanted to interject that creating a bookmap doesn’t have to wait until the manuscript is finished. If you accrue it as you go along, you might become aware of an unsightly divergence or lack in your story’s development in time to make adjustments sooner rather than later. Cheryl’s list of questions that your bookmap can help answer:

• Do the plot events follow each other in a logical physical and emotional order?
• Is all the information there? Is it where it needs to be?
• Do any thoughts or events repeat themselves?
• Where are the turning points of the action, where everything changes?
• What is your main character doing all this time? Is it significant action or mostly talk?
• Look at each plotline or subplot individually. How does each one develop? Do some plots disappear for a long time?

I’ll expand on this technique in the book for pantsers, and will ask Cheryl if I can include this.

I find I’m acquiring new insights into the storytelling process from Cheryl’s book. It’s a fun read, too—her voice is friendly and personal, and she seems to anticipate the questions that writers have and answer them with both theory and, thank goodness, examples that teach.

As I said, Second Sight : An Editor's Talks on Writing, Revising, and Publishing Books for Children and Young Adults is highly recommended. As is the bookmap technique.

For what it’s worth.

Ray

Submitting to the Flogometer:

Email the following in an attachment (.doc, .docx, or .rtf preferred):

1. your title
2. your 1st chapter or prologue plus 1st chapter
3. Please format with double spacing, 12-point font Times New Roman font, 1-inch margins.
4. Please include in your email permission to post it on FtQ.
5. And, optionally, permission to use it as an example in a book if that's okay.
6. If you’re in a hurry, I’ve done “private floggings,” $50 for a first chapter.
7. If you rewrite while you wait you turn, it’s okay with me to update the submission.

© 2011 Ray Rhamey

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

Computer tip: Make writing time more productive with bookmarks

This is a rerun of a computer tip I posted early in the life of FtQ, slightly updated. Many writers find it enormously helpful. In my archives is also a post on how to use comments for better writing. If you have any computer tips such as these that help you, please share them.

To use bookmarks effectively, first you should keep the entire book manuscript in one electronic file. I know writers who use a separate file for each chapter of their novel on their computer. Each of my novels is in one file -- the whole thing. It would drive me nuts to have to open up, let's say, a file for chapter 9 in order to check on information I needed for chapter 22 -- for example, maybe I need to make sure where I stashed a clue that now needs to be discovered.

A file-per-chapter writer friend didn't see how I could do it. The key is using bookmarks to navigate quickly and easily around a complete novel manuscript.

With the Microsoft Word and WordPerfect Bookmark tool, wherever you are in a manuscript you can insert a bookmark and easily come back to it from any other place in the manuscript. One obvious use is when you're somewhere deep in your book, rewriting, and it's time to hang up your brain for the night, your eyes having become loose in their sockets. Just insert a bookmark (I usually use the word "here"), save the file, and shut down. Next day, you're at the exact spot you left off with a couple of keystrokes.

Another way I use bookmarks regularly: I'll be at a point in either polishing my own work or editing a client's manuscript and need to check something earlier in the manuscript. To return to where I am, I insert a bookmark, usually just the letter "a" (so it appears at the top of the bookmarks list). Then I'm free to search and go back to look up whatever it is I need to know, and then a quick control+g and a selection of the "a" bookmark gets me back to where I left off. You can use the same bookmark over and over, too. Maybe 6 pages later I need to look for something else. I just insert the "a" bookmark at that spot, and away I go.

How to insert bookmarks

Here's how to do it in Word: click Insert in your top toolbar; click Bookmark; type in a letter or word in the Bookmark name box, then click the Add button. For some reason, you can't use words separated by spaces -- which leads me to sometimes insert bookmarks such as "describebarn" or "describe-barn" so I'll know what it's about. In WordPerfect, you click Tools, then Bookmark, then Create, which lets you type in a name and say OK.

If you already have bookmarks inserted, such as the "a" example above, you can select one and reinsert it at another place rather than create a new bookmark name.

When you next open your document, to go to a bookmark you type control+g (PC) or, for MACs, apple+g, select Bookmark in the dialogue box that pops up, select the bookmark you want (there's a little arrow button to show a list of all bookmarks), click okay and you're there.

Revisiting work that needs work

Let's say you're really struggling with a passage or maybe just chugging through the narrative, laying track, and you know it'll need more thought. You can bookmark it and move on, knowing you can return with ease. Using bookmarks, I will revisit material that needs honing a number of times until I'm satisfied with it, and then I delete the bookmark. With a bookmark, it's easy to go back and keep at it; without a bookmark, I suspect work that needed work would get far fewer visits and less thought.

Keep track of new material you insert

Here's another one: deep into the umpteenth rewrite of a novel, it came to me that I needed to add a key visual and emotional element to a character's scenes in several places in the story. When I went through the novel and added the element in several places, I also inserted bookmarks at each scene (Jake1, Jake2, Jake3, etc.). Later, I jumped easily from one spot to another to make sure I had kept things consistent yet varied and had done all I needed to make the new material blend with the old. Because my first drafts tend to be on the lean side, bookmarking those additional bits of narrative enabled me to visit them after they'd cooled a little to see if they needed more work.

Keep track of important information

Because you can give each bookmark a different handle, another handy use is the ability to check back to important passages. This is especially useful for continuity checks. Let's say that early in the novel you created a detailed description of a room, and the things in that room are important to your story, and they come up again. Put a bookmark there ("the-murder" or "crimescene" or some such) and it's easy to refer back and keep later references to that place accurate. This could be darned handy for placing and checking clues in a mystery novel.

Bookmark each chapter opening

I bookmark the first page of each chapter to hop to one instantly. If you know you had Heather shoot the green bunny in chapter 4 but can't quite remember the sequence of events when you're referring to the shooting in chapter 16, it's easy to go back and check.

Return to edit points

Marking a passage for later use or change is another bookmark use. In one of my novels, I planned to move the description I'd written for a character to an earlier chapter during the rewrite. I bookmarked that passage so that, when I got to the new description point in the rewrite, I could jump there, cut the description from its page, then jump back to where I was (because I inserted an "a" bookmark before I left that point) and paste it in. No hunting, no searching for keyword strings, etc.

I'm sure you'll find, or already have, many creative uses for bookmarks. In fact, if you do how about sharing them with me?

For what it's worth,

Ray

Free edit in exchange for posting permission. You send a sample that you have questions about and of which you'd like an edit. I won't post it without your permission.

ARCHIVES .

© 2006 Ray Rhamey

Hearing the words on the page, and the rule of 3

A reader of my story blog, Death Sucks, was kind enough to offer some constructive criticism after he read the first episode.

That kind of input is great because it makes me think about whether or not what I'm doing is the right thing to achieve the effect I want.

Two of his notes were regarding the placement of commas. While this may strike some as picayune, I think where commas go is hugely important to how a reader feels and understands the narrative. Some commas go where they go by rule. Others are more malleable, and go where you want a pause or emphasis.

Here's the first sentence he pointed out.

I'd never been aware of my heart beating but, now that it had quit its constant lub-dubbing, I missed it.

The reader wondered if it shouldn't instead be:

I'd never been aware of my heart beating, but now, that it had quit its constant lub-dubbing, I missed it.

For me, commas created beats, or pauses, within a sentence. They give rhythm to the language, and can impact meaning as well. Here's the original version with pause substituted for the commas. Try reading it aloud.

I'd never been aware of my heart beating but pause now that it had quit its constant lub-dubbing pause I missed it.

Now for the alternative he proposed, out loud if you will.

I'd never been aware of my heart beating pause but now pause that it had quit its constant lub-dubbing pause I missed it.

Read out loud I think you'll agree that the added comma breaks the flow and sense of the sentence.

Here's the second sentence he questioned, original form:

I pushed up with a front paw and, even though I felt as weak as a kitten, it broke through easily.

The reader's alternative was:

I pushed up with a front paw, and even though I felt as weak as a kitten, it broke through easily.

Once more, with pauses, and I hope you'll read them aloud:

I pushed up with a front paw and pause even though I felt as weak as a kitten pause it broke through easily.

I pushed up with a front paw pause and even though I felt as weak as a kitten pause it broke through easily.

I'm sticking with the original version because, to my ear, it more clearly separates the clause relating to his feeling.

But wait, there's more. Here's another way to assess comma placement. Look at what happens if you cut out the clause and its attendant commas. Does the sentence still make sense? If you take out the commas and everything in between in my original sentence, you get:

I pushed up with a front paw and it broke through easily.

Makes perfect sense. Now for the alternative, sans clause and commas:

I pushed up with a front paw it broke through easily.

Oops. Let's see what happens with the first alternative placement he questioned. The original sans commas and clause:

I'd never been aware of my heart beating but I missed it.

The other way, same story:

I'd never been aware of my heart beating I missed it.

As an editor, some manuscripts call for constant insertion, deletion, or shifting of the commas. Others call for virtually none. The latter authors are "hearing" the words on the page.

The rule of 3

In comedy, when something is repeated for comedic effect, it works best with 3 repetitions. Two doesn't work at all and, while a fourth repetition can get a laugh, it's definitely weaker. Watch for it next time you see a stand-up comedian work.

I applied that rule in a sentence that this reader questioned, a sentence that I intended to have a humorous effect. It comes after Patch, the vampire kitty-cat, has been changed into a vampire and his heart has stopped beating. He narrates:

I thought, "Well, that's it." And then I thought, "Wait a minute, I'm still thinking."

My reader wrote this:

I think the initial words 'I thought' are redundant or possibly change one of the words 'thought'

The repetition of "thought" "thought" and "thinking" applies the rule of 3 and, in my view, to make "thinking" work as a punch line. For me, the repetitions of "thought" aren't redundant but absolutely necessary to set up the rhythm that makes the third occurrence have an ironic and comedic effect.

He also said this about those sentences:

I wondered over the use of actual dialogue when showing a 'thought'.

Yeah, I'm well aware of the convention of expressing thoughts with italics. And I'm a believer in not using the word "thought" in this way if an action beat can provide the clue.

But in this instance I wanted you to "hear" Patch saying this, as if he were talking to himself, even though he was thinking it. Drawing upon the convention of using quotes to let the reader know that they should perceive the words as "out loud," I tried to lead you to a sense of the spoken versus the internal. And, while I could have done without the words "thought" by just using italics, I would have lost the joke.

Again, it was good of this reader to offer critical thoughts. The more the better, say I.

For what it's worth.

Ray

Free edit in exchange for posting permission. You send a sample that you have questions about and of which you'd like an edit. I won't post it without your permission.

© 2005 Ray Rhamey

Computer tip: use the comment feature for better storytelling

Word’s Comment feature is a hugely useful tool. You can insert an invisible note for yourself or someone else, such as an editor. I’m in an e-mail critique group, and we use comments in our critiques, along with line editing with Track changes turned on. WordPerfect also provides 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 there’s 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 pretty 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 “pretty” and add this little note to myself: “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 scene  my character leaves an intense but brief scene with his boss in which he had quit and 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 it had ended too abruptly, 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 Phil’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.

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 are two ways in Word 2000 and earlier to later view a Comment note. 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. WordPerfect has a similar Comment feature.

 

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.

Instead of using the Insert menu, I add the Insert Comment icon to my main toolbar so it’s always handy. 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.

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

If I can help you with a question about your writing, email me and I’ll apply a beady eye to it. Tell me if I can share it in a post or if you want a “private consultation.”

All contents © Ray Rhamey 2004.

Ideas for creating distance to achieve better self-editing

To self-edit with any success at all, I need distance from my work, to somehow separate what I read there from intimate knowledge of my vision so that it’s the words that do the work, not my resident imaginings. With distance, it falls on the writing to evoke scenes no longer fresh in my mind. Not so amazingly, distance reveals holes in the pictures. And flat writing becomes visible for the first time, those lazy word choices or adverbs that got me through the task of getting the story down but don’t do diddly-squat to create the reader experience I need to provoke.

Once done with a draft, I try not to go back to a book for at least a month, though six weeks is better. However, unless I have other projects interesting enough to distract me, I find that very difficult to do. A few days go by and then, like a scab that needs picking because it keeps itching, I open the file and pick. Compulsive, I know, but I don’t see how anyone could write an entire novel without a healthy dose of compulsive behavior to keep giving the wheel a turn on tough days.

So I needed to find other ways to get around the fact that I refused to allow my book adequate time to chill. Here are some that might work for you.

You could do as George Carlin one talked of doing in the last stages of polishing his material--smoke a little pot. Failing that, what?

If you’ve been working exclusively onscreen, create a printout and go through a hard copy. That’s a must. But it’s the least you can do to gain a little psychological distance.

Read it aloud to yourself. For me, this ALWAYS reveals clumsy structure, or unwanted repetitions and echoes, or missing information, or too much information, or other flaws. I don’t do this often enough, probably because I simply forget about it.

Another technique that works for me is to reformat the narrative to look more like that in a book. Here’s how to do it using Microsoft Word (this is doable in WordPerfect as well).

1. Change the font. If you’re using Courier, it’ll never look like a book. If you’re using Times New Roman, it’s closer in appearance to a book’s text, but it’s a narrow newspaper font seldom used in a book. And it would be better to eye a different font anyway.

Author M.J. Rose, The Halo Effect, prints her manuscript out in a different font and then takes it somewhere else to read--2 or 3 hours a day at a library, or on a train from Connecticut to Boston and back all in one day.  I like that idea--your words have to overcome unaccustomed distractions. 

To change the font, type Ctrl+a (or Apple+a with a Mac). This should select all the text. Then go to the font window in your toolbar and change it to one of the book-style fonts: Garamond or Palatino or Georgia, if you have them. If you don’t, Times New Roman will do. Font size: 12.

2. While you’ve still got everything selected (or do Ctrl+a again to select all), change the spacing to be more book-like as well. Click Format>Paragraph. In the Line spacing box, use the drop-down menu to select Multiple. Then, in the “At:” box next to it, type 1.1 or 1.2 and click OK. Adjust to taste. This will give you a book-like spacing. But you’re not done yet.

3. Change the margins to create a bookish column of text on the page with about 10-15 words in a line. The margins I’ve found helpful are: top, 1”; bottom 1”; left and right, 1.7”. This will give you a very different look.

4. It’s fun to really go all the way and see how it would look book-style by doing this:

a. Change the page size. Click File>Page setup and go to the Paper size tab. Change the paper size to: Custom size and type in 5.5” for width and 8.5” for height. Or 6” by 9”.

b. Now change the margins to top: .66”, bottom, left and right to .6”.

c. Change the font and spacing as noted above. Might try a smaller font size, 11.5 or 11, depending on the font.

d. Justify the margins. Select all the text (Ctrl+a). Click Format>Paragraph. On the Indents and Spacing tab, go to the Alignment box, click the arrow to show the menu, and choose Justified. Then click OK.

I think you’ll find that the re-formatted narrative reads differently, either onscreen or in a printout. I’ve even printed out a book on 5.5” by 8.5” paper, using both sides of the paper and formatting just like a book (headers, page numbers, justified margins, font, spacing, etc.), and had it tape-bound at Kinko’s, which yielded something very much like a perfect-bound trade paperback. Now, that’s fun to hold in your hands—your book as a real book! It’s educational, too.

If you’ve found other ways to put a little distance between yourself and your words, please let me know and I’ll pass them on.

Let me hear from you. If I can help you with a question about your writing, email me and I’ll apply a beady eye to it. Tell me if I can share it in a post or if you want a “private consultation.”

All contents © Ray Rhamey 2004.

Computer tip: Make writing time more productive with bookmarks

First, keep the entire book manuscript in one electronic file. I know writers who use a separate file for each chapter of their novel on their computer. Each of my novels is in one file—the whole thing. It would drive me nuts to have to open up, let’s say, a file for chapter 9 in order to check on information I needed for chapter 22—for example, maybe I need to make sure where I stashed a clue that now needs to be discovered.

A file-per-chapter writer friend didn’t see how I could do it. The key is using bookmarks to navigate quickly and easily around a complete novel manuscript.

With the Microsoft Word and WordPerfect Bookmark tool, wherever you are in a manuscript you can insert a bookmark and easily come back to it from any other place in the manuscript. One obvious use is when you’re somewhere deep in your book, rewriting, and it’s time to hang up your brain for the night, your eyes having become loose in their sockets. Just insert a bookmark (I usually use the word “here”), save the file, and shut down. Next day, you’re at the exact spot you left off with a couple of keystrokes.

Here’s how to do it in Word: click Insert in your top toolbar; click Bookmark; type in a letter or word in the Bookmark name box, then click the Add button. For some reason, you can’t use words separated by spaces—which leads me to sometimes insert bookmarks such as “describebarn” or “describe-barn” so I’ll know what it’s about. In WordPerfect, you click Tools, then Bookmark, then Create, which lets you type in a name and say OK.

When you next open your document, to go to a bookmark you type control+g (PC) or, for MACs, apple+g, select Bookmark in the dialogue box that pops up, select the bookmark you want (there’s a little arrow button to show a list of all bookmarks), click okay and you’re there.

Other uses: you’re really struggling with a passage or maybe just chugging through the narrative, laying track, and you know it’ll need more thought. You can bookmark it and move on, knowing you can return with ease. Using bookmarks, I will revisit material that needs honing a number of times until I’m satisfied with it. With a bookmark, it’s easy to go back and keep at it; without a bookmark, I suspect it would get far fewer visits and less thought.

Here’s another one: deep into the umpteenth rewrite of a novel, it came to me that I needed to add a key visual and emotional element to a character’s scenes in several places in the story. When I did, I inserted bookmarks at each scene (Jake1, Jake2, Jake3, etc.). Later, I jumped easily from one spot to another to make sure I had kept things consistent yet varied and had done all I needed to make the new material blend with the old. Because my first drafts tend to be on the lean side, bookmarking those additional bits of narrative enabled me to visit them after they’d cooled a little to see if they needed more work.

Because you can give each bookmark a different handle, another handy use is the ability to check back to important passages. This is especially useful for continuity checks. Let’s say that early in the novel you created a detailed description of a room, and the things in that room are important to your story, and they come up again. Put a bookmark there (“the-murder” or “crimescene” or some such) and it’s easy to refer back and keep later references to that place accurate. This could be darned handy for clues in a mystery novel.

How about bookmarking the first page of each chapter to hop to one instantly? If you know you had Heather shoot the green bunny in chapter 4 but can’t quite remember the sequence of events when you’re referring to the shooting in chapter 16, it’s easy to check.

Marking a passage for later use or change is another bookmark use. In one of my novels, I planned to move the description I’d written for a character to an earlier chapter during the rewrite. I bookmarked that passage so that, when I got to the new description point in the rewrite, I could jump there, cut the description from its page, then jump back to where I was (because I inserted a “here” bookmark before I left that point) and paste it in. No hunting, no searching for keyword strings, etc.

I’m sure you’ll find, or already have, many creative uses for bookmarks. In fact, if you have some, how about sharing them—or other computer tips—with me. I’ll pass ‘em on. Later, I plan to do some posts on using Search to upgrade the quality of your narrative.