Inventing Reality Editing Service

Mastering the fine art of dialogue punctuation

Many novice writers use punctuation marks haphazardly in their dialogue. The problem is they haven't yet mastered the fine art of punctuating dialogue.

Which punctuation mark you use largely depends on two factors:
• What is the typical, standard mark that should go in that spot in a sentence to improve readability
• What kind of pause the writer wants in the dialogue

For example, the comma might be used to set apart listed items and also suggests a typical pause when speaking. For example: “Aunt Janie brought paper plates, napkins, and plasticware to the picnic.” Most speakers in real life would pause a tic more after the words “plates” and “napkins” than they would between the words “Janie brought.”

A semicolon is perfectly appropriate in dialogue if you’re showing two complete sentences that are connected via closely linked thoughts and if the pause in speaking is a tic shorter than sentences set off by a period and capital letters. For example: “You will become light itself; the holy stream will carry you to the endless kingdom” shows the speaker is saying the words with less of a pause than if it were written as “You will become light itself. The holy stream will carry you to the endless kingdom.”

A dash shows a tic longer of a pause than a semicolon. For example: “So, do you think you have kicked it – the pills?” That extra tic occurs in this case because the speaker doesn't quite want to say certain words (“the pills”) but needs to say them to clarify or to show that she possesses intimate knowledge.

Ellipses, however, show a few tics longer of a pause than a dash. For example: “The key to being powerful is the ability to manipulate yourself…by creating something good for your…situations…for your relationships.” In this case, the extra pauses suggest that the speaker is thinking carefully about how to choose her words in what is a single sentence.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Miami, Florida, or a small town like Normal, Illinois, I can provide that second eye.

Offer your readers a photo gallery page

If you’re serious about receiving media attention – either from newspapers and magazines or from bloggers and online journals – you’ll want to have a photo gallery page on your website. After you’ve been interviewed or if your book is being reviewed, that writer will want pictures of you that can be used with the piece.

Readers also will enjoy taking a peek at these pictures. Putting a face to the author’s name is like knowing a little secret about the book.

You should offer at least three and upward to six photos. They definitely should include:
• Book cover – Just the front cover is fine. This photo typically most accompanies articles about your book.
• Author’s publicity photo – A head shot is fine, but it should look professional. If it’s a snapshot or looks like a photo from a police lineup, get a new one. The photo also should be current; if you’ve changed your hairstyle, post a new photo.
• Author interacting with book’s subject matter – This should be a photo of the author doing something that relates to the book’s subject. For example, if the book is about castles, show the author in front of the Tower of London.

Other photos in the gallery might show the author interacting with fans, speaking to a group, or receiving an award. If nonfiction, the photos might be of important objects in the book, such as a map and compass if a book about orienteering.

The photos appearing on the gallery should be large enough that they can be downloaded and reproduced by the media. Their size should be at least 100,000 bytes (You can determine this by right clicking on the photo, then clicking on “Properties” on the pop-up screen, and looking for the number after “Size”). Photographers will know this is an oversimplistic explanation of how large the photo should be, but we’re trying to keep it all simple here. Lastly, the photos should be .jpegs.

Photos can be presented in a number of ways, such as all appearing on a single page as thumbnails or presented in a slideshow. You’re typically only limited by what the website template you’ve purchased and your own talents.

Each photograph you post also needs a caption (aka a “cutline”). The caption should describe the photo by answering as many of the 5 W’s and 1 H (who, what, when, where, why and how) as possible. For example, a caption showing the author at a book signing might read, “Mary Q. Writer signs copies of her latest book, “How to Make a Square Peg Fit a Round Hole with a Hammer” at Yarns and Fables Bookstore in Los Angeles on Sept. 26, 2014.” And don’t forget to include credit for who took the photo.

Simply use “Photo Gallery” as the page header. An explanation of the page should appear below the header with permissions outlining who may use the photo and under what conditions.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Atlanta, Georgia, or a small town like Atlanta, Idaho, I can provide that second eye.

How to format your manuscript's main text

Once the front and back matter of your book is completed, the next step is to place all of that text into a form that can be uploaded and printing. Essentially, you’re creating on file on the computer that looks exactly like how the book will appear when printed. This is called formatting.

You can hire someone else to do your formatting, whether it be a freelancer or the self-publishing company itself. This will get expensive, however, and may not always yield the results you want, delaying the publication process. You can do it yourself as well, though you may need software programs, such as InDesign, for this effort. Unless purchased used, InDesign will be more expensive than hiring a freelancer or going with the self-publishing company. There’s also the added problem of learning how to use such software, and you want to be a writer, not a designer. Still, if you plan to write a series of books that will involve pictures, tables, charts, illustrations and so forth in them, then purchasing a software program and taking some time to learn the program (There are plenty of books and online tutorials about how to do this.) in the long run is well worth the trouble.

If use just plain text (such as a novel) or a book with only a few photos, or are purely writing an ebook, your formatting can be done in Microsoft Word. Be forewarned, however – and this comes from someone who knows how to use design software – formatting a printed book in Word will be an extremely difficult and frustrating project. In addition, if not done correctly, the tracking (or spacing between letters and words on a single line of type) can look unprofessional.

The first rule of formatting is keep the entire book is one document. So if you’ve got the table of contents, preface, main body text and index all in different files, it’s time to cut and paste them into one file. Create a backup of this file so that you have an original to refer to and just in case the file you’re formatting gets all messed up.

Then establish the answers to a number of important decisions that will be necessary to formatting the book:
• What will the book’s size be (its width and height)?
• How many pages will the book be?
• What will be the style (typeface and point size) for the text, headers, subheads and section heads, sidebars and breakout boxes (hopefully you’ve already established this)?
• What will be the style for the page numbers/book title/author’s name that typically appears on each page?

We’ll discuss each of these topics in upcoming entries.

If you need a professional designer, be sure to address each of these issues with her. You can find designers and have them bid on your project simply be typing “freelance book designer” into a search engine. Specific sites where you can post your project and have designers try to solicit the job include Guru.com, Elance.com and ifreelance.com.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Washington, D.C., or a small town like Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, I can provide that second eye.

Cracking a bad habit: cement vs. concrete

Lately a bad habit has been hardening among writers and announcers: A few keep confusing “cement” and “concrete.”

The two words are not synonymous.

“Cement” is a powder that when mixed with water and other materials, like gravel, can solidify into a hard, stone-like substance called “concrete.”

So, you can’t have a “cement bridge” or a “cement building,” as that would suggest they are made of powder.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Boston, Massachusetts, or a small town like Boston, Georgia, I can provide that second eye.

Use fragments for rhetorical effect

Should you use fragments in your writing? Your high school English teacher almost certainly said “No!” and marked it with a red pen.

Fragments are okay if they serve a rhetorical effect, such as when creating suspense. For example: She realized something was behind her. Something large. Something breathing heavily.

Still, fragments should be used rarely. For a rhetorical effect to be successful, it needs to stand out from the rest of the text.

Fragments need revising if they don’t really serve this effect or if they are confusing to understand because they aren't a complete sentence.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, or a small town like Boring, Oregon, I can provide that second eye.

Make final words of your story count

After the story’s falling action comes another brief section that wraps up the story. This conclusion is known as the denouement (pronounced day-noo-mon).

During the denouement – which usually is only a few paragraphs and sometimes as short as a single sentence long – the loose ends of the story are tied up. Usually there are minor questions, often not directly involving the main character, that need to be solved. In addition, this part of the story can serve as a catharsis for readers, relieving tension created in the story by offering humor or revealing the story’s theme.

A good example of a denouement is the final scene of the “Star Trek: The Original Series” episode “The Trouble with Tribbles”. The episode involved Captain Kirk and crew using tribbles to uncover a Klingon plot to prevent the Federation from colonizing Sherman’s Planet. During the episode, the number of tribbles (which are born pregnant) threaten to overrun Kirk’s ship and the space station containing the wheat the Federation needs to develop the planet. In a humorous concluding scene, two small yet nagging questions are answered: Will the Federation be able to colonize the planet and what happened to all of the tribbles aboard the Enterprise? A dispatch from Starfleet quickly answers the first question and then Scotty reluctantly reveals he beamed the tribbles aboard the Klingon ship just before it warped out of orbit.

Sometimes the denouement is known as the “resolution”. It also is casually referred to as the “conclusion” or the “ending”.

Genre stories often have expected endings, called “ritual endings”. Mysteries, for example, include the main character reciting how he made the connections that that led him to solve the crime. “Star Trek” episodes typically end with the exchange of a joke that relates to the story’s theme. Part of the fun of such stories is seeing how the characters reach this ritual ending.

When writing the conclusion of your story, be sure to follow a few simple guidelines:
• The conclusion must complete the action of the story - At this point in the story, the main character clearly has either overcome the central problem or has so failed that there is no hope of him ever overcoming it. If the conclusion isn’t connected to the story’s action, it will appear tacked on.
• Reaching the ritual ending must always be in doubt - If you do use a ritual ending, generate enough dramatic tension that the reader remains uncertain if the crime will be solved or that order will be restored so that a humorous ending is possible. Simply following a plot structure without dramatic tension is akin to creating a “cookie-cutter” story. The story would be the same as any other and lack an unique shape.
• Your ending must surprise and delight - Often what is most memorable about a story is its conclusion. The conclusion does mark the last words that are read, after all. Make them count.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Oakland, California, or a small town like Goobertown, Arkansas, I can provide that second eye.

How to find lit agents, publishers for your writing

Once you’ve written your novel or short story, the question arises of where to you send it. If following the traditional publishing route, the answer depends on what type of work you’ve written.

If a novel, you need a list of literary agents. There are several reputable guidebooks (Writers Digest’s guides are fairly good) for sale at bookstores or online that list literary agents, whether or not they’re accepting submissions, the type of writing they handle, their unique submission requirements, and contact information. You’ll need to spend some time perusing the guidebook to create your own list of the literary agents that would be most interested in your work. Make sure the guidebook you use is no more than a year old.

With novels, don’t limit yourself to literary agents, however. Also submit your work to publishing houses. A few accept unsolicited submissions. Lists of those companies also appear in published guides, on the same library or bookstore shelves where you’ll find the literary agents guide. Should a publishing house show interest in your work, immediately reach out to a literary agent to represent you; you’ll find that at least a couple will be interested.

If you’ve written a short story, seek out magazines that publish works in your genre. Published guides exist as well for this, but as magazines can rise and fall in a matter of months, your best bet really is to simply type into an online search engine the genre you want to publish in, such as “science fiction magazines” or “murder mystery magazines.” You’ll have to do some sifting but should come up with a list of a dozen or more magazines in a matter of a few minutes. In fact, you’ll probably discover a number of magazines (especially emagazines) that you never knew existed.

Should you decide to self-publish, you’ll want a list of companies that offer such services. Simply type “self-publishing companies” into a search engine. You’ll come across a number of sites that compare these various companies as well as the company’s sites themselves. Spend a little time doing some comparison shopping; all offer various services (such as designing a cover, editing your text, formatting the book, etc.) at varying prices, and all provide different outlets for marketing your book as well as different royalties.

A note of caution: With online guides, always be wary … some of those lists are quite old, and even those created just a couple of years ago can be outdated. In addition, some of those lists are created with the intention of scamming you – for example, a few so-called literary agents recommend specific editors (who happen to work for them or who they get a kickback from) to work with you on your book with the suggestion that they then might take it on. It’s a highly shady practice. Still, some of the lists you’ll find online are updated regularly, giving you the opportunity to submit to new magazine editors before they’re inundated with short stories and novellas once they’re listed in a mainstream guide such as what Writers Digest publishes.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like San Jose, California, or a small town like Boar Tush, Alabama, I can provide that second eye.

Why writers must learn to handle rejection

You’ve just spent months putting your heart and soul into writing a book. You’ve revised it, you’ve paid to have it edited, you’ve revised it again, you’ve missed out on sleep, you’ve skimped on time with family. You can’t imagine the story getting any better. You send it out.

A few weeks (or even worse, a few days) later, the publisher or magazine editor or literary agent sends you a rejection slip.

Probably you got no explanation as to why the piece was rejected. Maybe you were lucky enough to get a form checklist in which a quickly scribbled checkmark was made next to some vague claim like “character not developed enough.”

Do you give up or keep sending out the piece?

If you want to be a writer, you must persist in the face of self-doubt. You need to re-examine your piece, possibly revise it some more, and send it again.

Knowing why your piece was rejected in the first place certainly would be a plus when revising it. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of reasons as to why the editor didn’t place your piece into the take-a-second-look pile.

Perhaps the most common cause for rejection is that the piece didn’t match what the publisher/editor/lit agent was looking for. They might not consider your piece saleable to their respective audiences or markets. Because of this, meticulously researching the kind of works that your favorite publishing house or magazine publish is vital.

Having said that, your piece also needs to be unique in some way. A book publisher or magazine editor doesn’t want to publish cookie cutter versions of what they’ve previously printed. They may want something similar, but they want it to be something different as well. Given this, if you are writing cookie cutter pieces (and shame on you for being a hack!), you may want to find a place that is looking to cash in on the latest book craze by wanting to publish its own line of vampire or shopaholic stories.

Regardless, take heart: Your story probably is good (and I know you’re not a hack!). Recognize, however, that there are a lot of other good writers producing good stories and books. Many of them also received rejection slips.

Also, don’t forget that the number of publishing houses and magazines are shrinking. Thanks to the soft economy and competition from the Internet and self-publishing industries, fewer books are being publishing. Often there’s a demand for very niche writing, however – so while an adventure short story may not have many markets, there may be a demand for articles about backpacking into little known, wild backcountry. In addition, you may want to consider publishing on an Internet magazine.

Considering this, sometimes it’s simply a matter of finding the right editor before another writer does. My own rejected short story "I Hold the World but as the World" was submitted on its second go around to an editor who didn’t want it for his magazine but did believe it fit nicely into an anthology he wanted to publish. If I had stuffed the story into a box relegated to the attic, it never would have been published. Lucky I was, but such luck helped open the way to get other stories and articles published.

So remain strong. As science fiction writer Brian Aldiss once wrote, “Writers must fortify themselves with pride and egotism as best they can. The process is analogous to using sandbags and loose timbers to protect a house against flood.”

Fortify yourself, and soon the flood of rejections will stop coming.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like San Francisco, California, or a small town like Nimrod, Oregon, I can provide that second eye.

Offer readers ‘Interview with the Author Page’

Readers love to learn about the authors of their favorite books. You can help foster that love – and in doing so get them to purchase your next book – by including a page on your website in which you are interviewed.

The media also will appreciate the interview. From it, any intrepid reporter or blogger will be able to draw quotes, anecdotes and details to make their article or entry more complete.

A good way to present the interview is as a straight Q&A. Ideally, you’ll get someone to interview you, and then the interview can be transcribed, edited and posted. If you go this route – rather than simply write your own answers to your own questions – be sure to include the name of the interviewer, her credentials, and the date and place of the interview.

When posting the interview, place the questions or the interviewer’s portion of the dialogue in boldface. This will make identifying the author’s answers easier for readers.

Don’t worry about the text on this page running a couple of thousand of words. Any visitor to your website who opts to come to this page probably wants to read a long interview so that they can come to know the author better.

Possible questions that the interviewer must ask of the author for this page include:
All writers
• Why did you decide to write this book?
• What kind of research did you do for this book? What were you surprised to learn?
• What’s your next book going to be about? (ask this near the end of the interview)
• What question would you like to be asked that I and other interviews have failed to ask? (make this the last question)
Novelists
• How would you describe what the book is about?
• Ask specific questions about the main character or some unique quality of the book, something that a reader of the book would know about.
• Who has influenced you the most as a writer?
• I want to mention a few authors and ask you to share your opinions of them.
• Any advice for aspiring writers?
Nonfiction authors
• How did you become interested in the subject of the book?
• Ask specific questions about the book's thesis, getting the author to defend it.
• Ask the writer to share a secret or insider’s tip about the book’s subject.
• Ask the writer to comment on a recent news story that deals with the book’s subject.

Potential titles for this web page include “Interview with the Author” or “Q&A with the Author.”

Finally, include a picture of yourself (the author) on this page. A video or audio recording of you answering interview questions also is a good idea but not necessary (We are dealing with readers here, fortunately!).

Read a sample Interview with the Author page.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Arlington, Texas, or a small town like Chicken, Alaska, I can provide that second eye.

Editing client releases political crime thriller

A recent editing client of mine, Mark Policinski, has published his first novel, “Castooli County to DC: Monster Hunt.” A political crime thriller, the novel follows the twin efforts of Capitol Hill aide Joe Hickcock and Upper Peninsula Sheriff Arthur Bract as they solve a murder case that may lead to the president himself! You can purchase “Castooli County to DC” online.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Dallas, Texas, or if you come from a small town Why, Arizona, I can provide that second eye.