Writing « Patti O'Shea's Blog

Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

It’s Alive!

Tuesday, February 21st, 2012

I was reading an article about 20 Common Grammar Mistakes That (Almost) Everyone Makes and found myself nodding my head at some of them. Lie/Lay/Lain/Laid/Etc. Yeah. I get so confused with that. I try my best, but I count on editing to catch when I slip.

My other huge, huge issue is Affect and Effect. Gah! No matter how many times I read over the rule and study examples, it doesn’t sink in. I’ve actually rewritten sentences to avoid using either word or I substitute something like impact which I’m sure makes all grammarians everywhere grimace with disgust, but hey, at least I don’t have to chose between affect and effect and that’s always a win.

But there was one entry, that made me go, uh, no. That was the definition of the word moot. The article says:

Contrary to common misuse, "moot" doesn’t imply something is superfluous. It means a subject is disputable or open to discussion.

I hang around with writers online. A lot of them. I went to school with some really smart people, both high school and college. There are lots of smart people that I work with and have worked with over the years. I have never, ever in all this time heard anyone use the word moot in this way.

English is a living language, that means it changes over time. I submit that the definition of the word moot has made the shift and it’s time for the dictionary to be updated. I’m sure I’ve made the hardcore English gurus gasp in horror, but tough. If you want a language that is unchanging, become a Latin guru. It’s a dead language, it will stay the same forever.

As far as English speakers (at least in the US) are concerned, moot means there’s no point in arguing over something because it doesn’t matter.

Words shift all the time. Look at decimate. I had a judge in a writing contest a long time ago correct my use of it. I used it to mean destroy, she insisted that it means take a tenth of or destroy a tenth of. Look it up on Dictionary.com. The meaning the judge told me was the correct one? It’s marked obsolete!

The people have spoken…and as we’ve spoken, we’ve redefined words. Just try and read Shakespeare now without the little footnotes at the bottom of the page explaining what a word meant back in his day. I’m a huge Shakespeare fan and I can mostly understand what he’s saying from the context, but the meaning of words has definitely changed.

They’re still changing. I’d argue some more, but why bother? It’s a moot point.

Tags: english, language
Posted in Writing | 2 Comments »

Getting Back To It

Thursday, February 16th, 2012

One of the reasons why I don’t like taking a break from writing is how excruciatingly difficult it is to get back into the habit. But my move to Atlanta from Minneapolis necessitated a break. Now that I’m sort of settled in Georgia, I’m trying to kick-start myself. So far, it’s not going so well.

I began by reading and rereading one of my projects, hoping that would help get me in the right frame of mind. That didn’t really work. In the past, it has, but in the past it’s usually that 1) I’ve been writing other things and now I need to get back to an earlier project or 2) I’ve had a break of a week or two.

This break in writing? More like five months, maybe more.

I was contemplating tactics for another attempt when I caught a cold. I don’t know about anyone else, but when I’m sick, I get so fuzzy headed that writing (or anything else that requires brain power) is impossible.

Now I’m feeling almost normal again and my second plan of attack is to start a completely new project, something I haven’t done anything with before now. Only I’ve discovered my imagination has atrophied along with my ability to string together sentences. I’m thinking I simply need some quiet, daydreaming time to get back into practice, but that time is hard to come by. I’ll have to figure out something, though.

Tags: kickstart
Posted in Writing | 2 Comments »

The Unknown Issue

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

Characters can be such a kick. Just when I think I have one of them down and that I’m unlikely to have a huge curve ball thrown my way, he/she throws me a knuckle ball. (For those of you unfamiliar with baseball, a knuckle ball is even more unpredictable/harder to hit than a curve ball.) It happened again just recently.

I’ve had Wyatt’s team (Eternal Nights) in my head off and on since I wrote his story. So I’ve had six years to get to know these guys. At first, it was mostly Flare talking, but over the years, I’ve learned more and more about Gravedigger and Z Man.The last piece I needed as Z’s heroine and she showed up a while ago, but I didn’t know her name or what she looked like. Both pieces of information arrived mid January.

And Z threw me a knuckle ball.

You see, Z is part Asian/Hawaiian, which I knew. His heroine as it turns out is a green-eyed blonde. That’s when he tossed the bomb my direction: his plan is to fall for a woman who’s at least part Asian herself. He never, not even once, mentioned this to me. Not in six years!

To say I was stunned understates things. I don’t know why he feels this way, but you know there has to be some sort of issue in there. Z was my normal guy, the one who has his head screwed on straight. Or so I believed. Now I’m going to have to spend some time probing, trying to discover the whys and whats. You’d think just once that I could have a character completely honest with me upfront. Too bad it’s never happened and probably never will.

Tags: characters
Posted in Writing | 2 Comments »

Must Write

Thursday, January 26th, 2012

Every character I write is one I feel drawn to and compelled to write. But there are some characters that go beyond that, some I have to write even if it means bringing them into an alternate universe. No lie.

One set of characters started out life in a contemporary world and I pulled them into a paranormal one. It involved a name change for the hero. He informed me that his first name was different in this alternate dimension and it also involved name changes for all his brothers and sisters. Okay. The heroine kept her name, but her entire life changed and her personality along with it.

Some might argue that this makes them different characters. I know better. These are the same people, but the circumstances of their world changed and that impacted who they are.

It’s actually kind of interesting. I’ve maintained from the beginning that if I rewrote Ravyn’s Flight and put different characters in the lead roles, that the story would be completely different. Oh, it might begin the same, but my characters’ choices drive the plot, my plot never drives my characters. Even if I wanted to write that way, I couldn’t. If I try to force my characters to do something they don’t want to do, they go on strike and I spin my wheels until I fix what they dislike.

I have another set of characters that will not go away. I’ve been turning things around in my mind, trying to find a way to get them into some kind of story since their original idea is going nowhere. I need to write them. I have a burning desire to write them. And I will. Eventually. One way or another.

Tags: characters
Posted in Writing | 2 Comments »

Doppleganger?

Thursday, January 12th, 2012

A couple of weeks ago there was an interesting discussion on one of my writer loops about doing a Google search before finalizing a pen name. The topic came up because a self-published author is using the name of a multi-published with New York author and another small press author was using a name that was nearly identical to another author’s romance pseudonym.

The subject than turned to Googling character names. Sometimes I do this, sometimes I don’t.

I pretty much have zero leeway on the first names, especially of my hero and heroine. It doesn’t matter to them if I don’t like the name or not, they tell me who they are and that’s that. I’ve learned to deal with this, and in all honesty, I like it. The one time I was left to choose a name was torturous. Sometimes I still complain about not being the driver’s seat, but as soon as I remember how miserable I was when I did have control, I shut up and say never mind.

Surnames, though, I do have some say in. Not always and sometimes not much, but the characters are rarely intractable on this score. And when the last names come too easily, I tend to Google. Sometimes it turns out there is a real person with that name. There was one time my hero’s name was identical to someone who was arrested for a high profile crime. I can’t help but think that I’d heard that man’s name on the news at some point, and when my hero gave me his first name, my subconscious dredged out the felon’s name. Needless to say, the hero had his surname changed.

Sometimes the name is completely set and I can’t change it no matter what Google turns up. Like Mika Noguchi from Through a Crimson Veil. In the book, Mika makes a joke when Conor searches her name and discovers that Mika Noguchi is an Asian woman’s wrestling champ. Why does she do this? Because there really is a Mika Noguchi who’s a woman wrestler. This actually led to a running joke through the story.

Checking out a character’s name isn’t a bad thing, but I doubt there’s any name out there that no one in the world has unless it’s something totally made-up and bizarre, and even then, who knows? Where does the line get drawn? No, I wouldn’t let a character named Brad Pitt loose in a book, but Mika Noguchi? I thought that was okay since there can’t be that many of my readers who follow Asian woman’s wrestling. In the end, I think it has to come down to a writer’s best judgment.

Tags: characters, names, searches
Posted in Writing | Comments Off

Missed It

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

Because of my move from Minneapolis to Atlanta, I haven’t been able to write for the last couple of months. There’s just been too much to do and I didn’t get it all done before I had to leave. At first, it was nice to have the time off from writing since I rarely take a break, but now I’m straining at the tether. I want to write. I want to take time to think about my stories and work out details. Want, but can’t.

The week before I left Minnesota, I opened a file and made an attempt to work, but my thoughts were too scattered and I couldn’t focus enough to get words down. This isn’t unexpected because I dealt with it the same thing the other few times I’ve tried to write while I have been deep in relocation mode. It was disappointing, though.

Now the question is how long will it take to get settled enough in Atlanta to have time again? Not just time to write, but time to deal with all the email and other details that I’ve let slide because I had other, more critical issues on the To Do List. Those decks need to be cleared, too.

What’s really making me crazy is that my characters aren’t talking to me. None of them. I’m used to running scenes to fall asleep. I’m used to running scenes when I get bored. This quiet is weird.

I know it’s stress. My mind is whirling with details and even if I try to concentrate, it doesn’t take long before my thoughts return to what I need to do or what I should be doing. I’m looking forward to calmness, to being able to hear the voices again. I want to spend time with my characters, no matter how frustrating they can be. I wonder how long it will take for my mind to settle in? Today will be my second day reporting to my job in my new home city. It can’t be too much longer now. I hope.

Tags: atlanta, move
Posted in Life, Writing | Comments Off

The James Bond Car and Publishing

Thursday, December 22nd, 2011

One final James Bond car post and then I’ll find something else to talk about. I promise.

When I wrote In the Midnight Hour, I gave Ryne (my heroine) keyless entry. In my mind (and in the scene), she opened the doors to her vehicle by pressing the button on her key fob. As I proofread a test print of the book, everything was fine. Then, months later, I got my author copies. My keyless entry had been changed to keys entry.

This bugged me. A lot. It still bugs me.

My guess, and this is only a guess, is that whoever did the proofread of the galleys for the publisher lives in New York City and doesn’t own a car. I can’t see how else that would have been changed. The thing that’s so frustrating is that at the time I didn’t have that feature on my SUV and I had to research to find out that keyless entry was called keyless entry.

Fast forward to my James Bond car. Can you imagine if I wrote a character with a car like this? One that responds to voice commands, automatically hooks my cell phone into the system as soon as I get in the car, and has a remote start? I can’t help but wonder what these features would be changed to.

Let me close by saying I love copy editors and I’ve been lucky to have really good ones on all my books. I’m grateful for all the mistakes they find and fix.

Tags: cars
Posted in Life, Writing | Comments Off

Right-Sizing a Character’s Issues

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011

I was reading a book recently and the author did something that really bothered me. She gave the heroine a huge, enormous issue in her backstory, but then largely neglected it except for lip service now and then. I guess you’d call it a wallpaper character issue.

If, as a writer, you choose to give a character a life-altering event in their past, one that is supposed to have affected them for a long period of time. One you tell me that they still haven’t healed from. Then it requires that the issue be dealt with over the course of the book. Don’t tell me they feel a certain way and then have the character immediately act as if the issue never happened. Not unless your character is also dealing with denial, but that wasn’t the case in this story.

So here’s my take on things. First of all, while a writer needs to know a ton of stuff about her characters, the reader doesn’t necessarily need the information if it has no bearing on the story. Secondly, if you give your heroine (or hero) a big issue, it has to be dealt with during the story and it can’t only be mentioned on rare occasion. Third, the character’s change is called a growth arc because it happens slowly. People do not get over traumatic events as easily as flipping a switch.

When I wrote Through a Crimson Veil, Conor had one of these enormous issues. He was conceived when his mother was raped by a demon. Because of this, he hates demons…and he hates the part of himself that’s demon. His heroine is also half demon and her presence–and how he reacts to her–cause him to have to confront his issue. Believe me, normal people (and our characters are largely normal even if they’re demons or mercenaries or whatever) don’t want to deal with their issues. They have to be forced.

So over the book, Conor learns to deal with being demon. But this issue is more than that. He’s carried this hate his entire life. It is totally going to affect his interaction with the world. It will impact the way he thinks. It will impact what his choice of action will be. In other words, even when the issue is not directly being raised, it is still coloring every scene in the book. That’s what major character issues do.

If, as a writer, you don’t want to deal with that kind of thread, then I’d recommend giving the character a smaller issue. Small issues can cause tension and conflict, but are unlikely to color every scene or a character’s every action.

An example of a small issue is In the Darkest Night where Farran had a scar. The scar was something that she only had for 5 months before Kel healed it and made it disappear. She didn’t think of it all the time or touch her face constantly. But from time to time, she did remember it and it did affect her. The book itself, centered more on Kel’s issue which was another enormous one–Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). That did color every scene he was in during the book, but Farran’s scar didn’t.

For me, it’s all about staying true to character and raising a big issue and then only using it when an author feels like (or remembers it) doesn’t play. Real people, real life just doesn’t work that way.

Tags: characters, issues
Posted in Writing | Comments Off

Ooh, Baby, Baby, Baby, Baby

Thursday, November 17th, 2011

My original thought about a blog topic was something along the lines of how much I hate it when the hero calls the heroine baby, but then I reconsidered that. It would just be my luck to riff on that for an entire post and wake up tomorrow with a hero who uses it. It was bad enough that Deke called Ryne babe during In the Midnight Hour At least that started as a way to rile her, but still I decided I’m in no position to blog about endearments.

As I thought about it some more, I realized that the two books I picked up recently that had baby used as the endearment of choice had a bigger problem. The authors of both stories had the heroes calling their heroines that in every single paragraph of dialogue–or darn close to it.

As a reader, nothing irritates me more than characters who use each other’s names (or nicknames/endearments/etc) every time they open their mouths. Real people do not talk that way. Not ever. I challenge any writer who’s tempted to use the character’s name in dialogue to listen to others. Even in groups of five or six, it’s rare to hear someone’s name and it’s pretty much nonexistent when only two people are talking to each other. Like the hero and heroine for example.

It’s not just novice writers either. I’ve seen authors who’ve been writing for twenty years do it, too. Because I’m so aware of this, not only do I rarely use names in dialogue, I also do a search for both the hero’s and heroine’s names (and endearments) in my manuscript, and if I see it between a couple of quotation marks, I think about whether I really need it. Nine times out of ten, I delete it.

I pretty much never say anyone has to do anything as a writer because I was nearly driven from writing all together by plotters who insisted I had to use 3 x 5 cards and formulate everything out ahead of time. But this isn’t really messing with anyone’s process (I don’t think) to recommend taking out the majority of name use within dialogue.

Seriously, this is not how people talk:

"Baby, I want you; you’re so beautiful."

"But Biff, it’s too soon."

"Don’t tell me that, baby, I need you."

"I don’t know, Biff, we just met ten minutes ago."

"Come on, baby, help me out here."

"Oh, Biff."

You get the drift right? And sadly this example is not an exaggeration. I picked up two books in the last week that did this exact thing.

Have you ever heard anyone in real life talk this way? Now do a search in your Work In Progress. How many times have you used your characters names in dialogue? Delete most of them. Your readers will thank you.

Tags: dialogue, names
Posted in Writing | Comments Off

End of the World

Thursday, November 3rd, 2011

Yesterday while I was at work, my iPod shuffled to REM’s The End of the World As We Know It and suddenly a story I thought was off the To Write list zoomed back on the radar. I’m pretty sure I mentioned the post-apocalypse romance I was researching a while back. Yeah, that one returned.

It was pretty unexpected although I had been picking up interesting bits and pieces that would help with the story over the last week or so, but it was a more distant thing. Certainly nothing like having the heroine show up and start talking. Again.

I have another story I’m supposed to be working on during my lunch at work, but this one is whispering oh, so temptingly in the recesses of my brain.

Among the interesting things about this return is that the heroine is telling the story in first person. I’ve had this happen before and the story has morphed into third person, but I’m getting the sense with this one that it might not make the shift. We’ll see. I’m not a fan of reading first person and the idea of writing it, spending months on end trying to reduce the number of times the word I is used is overwhelming.

The other thing that was interesting was that my heroine looks completely different than I thought she did. Although, in all honesty, I did have a sense I’d picked out the wrong picture the last time around. I just didn’t realize how wrong I was, though.

And just so y’all know, I did work on the story I’m supposed to be writing at lunch on Wednesday and I’ll keep working on it when I can. But wow, I wish I could write more than one thing at a time.

Tags: characters, ideas, stories
Posted in Writing | 2 Comments »