Inventing Reality Editing Service

Editing client publishes first poetry collection

A recent editing client has published his first collection of poetry. Andrew H Smith’s “Split Ends” takes the reader on an alliterative journey to the depths of the human psyche. From impermanence and ever-pervading self-doubt to the tumultuous waves of love and hate, this collection of gripping poems invites you to join the poet in a reflective and ultimately cathartic experience. The book is available online.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript 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. I can provide that second eye.

When to use colons in a sentence

All too often, colons are misused in writing. This punctuation mark is meant to signal readers that what follows is a proof or explanation of what came before it. For example, the following sentence requires a colon rather than a comma:

Laura wanted to move for Los Angeles for three reasons: the great weather; the laid-back lifestyle; and all of the fun things to do there.

What appears after the colon explains why Laura wanted to move to Los Angeles. Note that semicolons are used to separate each reason after the colon.

The portion of the sentence appearing before the colon, however, must be a complete sentence. Of course, Laura wanted to move for Los Angeles for three reasons, is a complete sentence. If it were not a complete sentence, no colon is needed:

Laura wanted to move for Los Angeles because of the great weather, the laid-back lifestyle, and all of the fun things to do there.

Of course, Laura wanted to move for Los Angeles because of is not a complete sentence. Also note that commas rather than semicolons are used to separate each reason given.

An exception is introducing block quotes and bulleted lists, which often appear in newspapers, magazines and on website articles. To wit:

Laura wanted to move for Los Angeles for:
• The great weather
• The laid-back lifestyle
• All of the fun things to do there

Note that in a bulleted list, semicolons, commas and periods are not needed at the end of each bulleted item. The exception is if each bulleted point is a complete sentence; then a period is needed.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript 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. I can provide that second eye.

Four writing prompts: Trapped

Good stories center on the clashing of characters’ goals and motivations. Sometimes a character’s goals and motivations arise when they feel confined. Here are four writing prompts for stories that center on being trapped.

Man vs. nature
A man alone in the wilds is trapped by a freak accident – e.g. pinned down in an avalanche, cut off by a flashflood or a forest fire, stuck atop a mountain ledge because his climbing rope has broke. How does he survive nature’s elements until help can – if it ever will – arrive?

Man vs. man
Our main character is kidnapped for ransom. How does he survive his captivity? Why was he kidnapped and by whom? Can he ultimately escape by psychologically working over one of his keepers?

Man vs. society
A person trapped by circumstances but who desires more – romance, glamour, fun – finds himself at odds with his family’s values. How can he escape his circumstances, if only temporarily? Must he ultimately sacrifice a relationship with his family to obtain freedom?

Man vs. himself
After a disaster occurs, our protagonist finds himself alone. While he probably can survive for years where he is despite the calamity, he knows there is no way to escape, nil chance of being rescued for at least several months, and that he is entirely by himself. How does he maintain his sanity until rescue arrives?

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript 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. I can provide that second eye.

Avoid committing runaround error in story

Sometimes novice authors write scenes that are fun and action-packed but simply don’t contribute anything to the story. These parts of the tale are called runarounds and are best avoided.

A good example are battle scenes written purely for the gore rather than to develop the character or to move the story forward. Similarly, a writer might have the protagonist look for some object or person that doesn’t advance the plot or resolve the story’s central problem. Or a writer might provide a descriptive paragraph about a character by offering information – such as his weight, height, where he attended elementary school – that is irrelevant to understanding his personality or why other characters treat him the way that they do.

Authors usually write runarounds because they’re failing their dramatic objective – which is how to solve the story’s central problem. Sensing that they need more action in the story, they toss in the sword fight or the humorous chase after a chicken. When giving overdetailed descriptions of characters, they problem arises from giving too much backstory. In that sense, the scene or descriptive paragraph is just running around the objective rather than aiming for it.

Getting rid of the runaround so you can develop a stronger plot and characterization is vital. Usually the problem for the author is that an outline was written with enough detail before jumping into the first draft; because of that, the author hasn’t thought enough about the storyline and how it will unfold. In other cases, the problem merely is overwriting. Authors usually know more their character and the plot than the reader and so include the nonessential facts, like lengthy descriptions of how the intestines spilled out of a henchman who the protagonist thrust a sword through. A strong edit is needed when that occurs.

The term was coined by the Cambridge Science Fiction Workshop’s Steve Popkes, who won a Nebula Award for Best Short Story.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript 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. I can provide that second eye.

Five Great Quotations about Characters

“In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations!” - Anton Chekhov

“...and then to give us the stories of men and women of character who in turn inspire those of us who dare to reach for the truly great within ourselves.” - Holly Lisle

“A writer has no other material to make his people from than the people of his experience ... The only thing the writer can do is to recombine parts, suppress some characteristics and emphasize others, put two or three people into one fictional character, and pray the real-life prototypes won’t sue.” - Wallace Stegner

“...if you don’t understand that story is character and not just idea, you will not be able to breathe life into even the most intriguing flash of inspiration.” - Elizabeth George

“Stories are more than just images. As you continue in the tale, you get to know the characters, motivations and conflicts that make up the core of the story.” - Livia Blackburne

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript 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. I can provide that second eye.

Good writing asks good questions

Good stories often raise questions – questions that reveal the ignorance underneath accepted wisdom…questions that doubt the popular yet inhumane view…questions that rip the veneer off norms to show their underlying contradictions.

These are the questions that need to be asked. Whenever political power shifts, as new technologies propel us into new worlds, as a culture’s values evolve, people find themselves in a gray void. Questions about whether the old beliefs are still valid or if the new way endangers the very principles that hold together our civilization and humanity illuminate then color the road and signposts through the fog-laden journey.

The questions need not be the “big ones” examining why we are here or the meaning of it all. Sometimes just looking at the little ones like “How do I teach my child to share?” or “How do I deal with a pet’s passing?” can cast the most brilliant light on our beliefs and the path we might take.

A story doesn’t necessarily answer the questions raised. It probably shouldn’t. Anything more than inferring that a viewpoint doesn’t stand up to scrutiny amounts to preaching and risks making your story sound contrived. You don’t need to state that the death penalty is wrong, after all. Merely question the position that it is the right view.

Asking questions in literature marks a thought experiment. The story is a sealed environment in which we determine the consequences of our ideas in action, in which we test our solutions and views in a safe environment. If the author has thoroughly worked through the problem and deftly handles the craftsmanship of his art, the result will be an enriched world.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript 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. I can provide that second eye.

When are you a “bestselling author”?

You’ve undoubtedly seen the claim of being a “bestselling author” on book covers, online book blurbs, and promotional material. So what technically makes someone a bestselling author? And are those claims legit?

There’s no hard and fast rule that makes one a bestselling author. However, there is one generality that for better or worse qualifies a book as a bestseller (and by inference the author as “bestselling”): Once you hit the top 100 list in your category for book sales, you have a bestseller.

Traditionally, that has been difficult to achieve as there weren’t many lists. Only a few major newspapers carried them, most notably The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, as well as Publishers Weekly. During the 1980s, USA Today entered the fray. Soon businesses did as well, with Barnes & Noble and Walmart getting the most attention, and during the past decade or so, Amazon.com maintaining multiple lists that usually update hourly.

That means there are many lists you could hit, some more easily than others. The lone sale of a hiking trail guidebook for Iowa easily can push that title to the top of Amazon’s Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Travel > United States > States > Iowa list, technically making it a bestseller. A novel might sell 300 copies but never make the sales list for its Amazon category and hence not be a bestseller. Because of this, some bestseller lists carry more weight than others, which usually is why authors note that they are a “New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author.”

In addition, not all bestsellers lists measure the same thing. Amazon, for example, bases its lists almost entirely on sales. So if you’re No. 20 on the list, that means 19 books outsold you in that category over a certain period of time. In contrast, The New York Times samples brick and mortar bookstores to see how many copies of a book were shipped during a week to them in anticipation of sales (Note: The Times recently began factoring online sales into its formula as well.).

These different metrics mean that which books hit a given bestsellers list varies greatly. One ebook sale on Iowa hiking trails can get you to the top of an Amazon list but nowhere near The New York Times bestsellers. Meanwhile, author Amanda Hocking sold more than a million books through Amazon, topping its list, but never cracked The New York Times, where a shipment of 20,000 books usually can land you on the low end of the top 100. Yet author John Locke, who also sold more than a million books, topped both Amazon and The Times’ lists.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript 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. I can provide that second eye.

What exactly is ‘legacy publishing’?

Q: I keep seeing the term “legacy publishing” when reading various blogs and articles about self-publishing. What is it? Traditional publishing? – sandiegowriter92

A: You are correct, legacy and traditional publishing are one and the same. Which term you use, however, largely depends on your personal opinion about the Big Five publishers.

If you champion self-publishing and abhor the Big Five, then you probably use the term legacy publishing. This term was coined in 2008 just after the first Amazon Kindle came out. At the time, those frustrated with the Big Five and visionaries of the new self-publishing era saw trade or traditional publishers as archaic. The term was used pejoratively.

Traditional publishing is a more recent term, used by some who wished to distinguish between it and self-publishing and by those in trade publishing who wished to rescue the falling reputation of that industry.

Personally, I prefer trade publishing. As modern self-publishing enters its second decade, it’s becoming “traditional” in its own right. In any case, the real difference between self- and trade publishing has little to do with its time or which came first but the distribution model used. Self-publishing largely depends upon online sales while trade publishing is all about selling advance copies to brick-and-mortar bookstores. Of course, both have dabbled into the other’s distribution methods – many self-published authors place their books into local mom-and-pop bookstores while the Big Five sell online at Amazon.com.

One other note: Legacy publishing isn’t vanity publishing. Vanity publishers are companies that charge authors to print their books. Many vanity publishers have smartly set up their websites so they rank high when one searches the keyword “legacy publishing,” apparently hoping to tap into that market of potential clients.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript 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. I can provide that second eye.

Four writing prompts: Control

Good stories center on the clashing of characters’ goals and motivations. Sometimes a character’s goals and motivations arise from attempting to influence or direct a course of events. Here are four writing prompts for stories that center on control.

Man vs. nature
Our protagonist is marooned in an inhospitable environment. To survive, he attempts to control it but is met with disaster at every turn. What if to survive he must not control the environment but instead live in harmony with it? How does he come to this realization? How does this outlook affect his overall perspective on life?

Man vs. man
What if a successful man – one with a profitable business and who is popular – loses control to his emotions (perhaps his heart wins over his rationality or he tries some addictive drug) for a single night and in doing so jeopardizes all he’s built? How does he regain control of himself despite the lure of the person who helped/caused him to give in to his emotions? Or does he decide to give up “control” (and if so, why)?

Man vs. society
To survive, a society must naturally limit some individual freedoms. What happens, though, in situations where a main character believes those limits are oppressive? What would the main character do to regain some control over his life?

Man vs. himself
Our protagonist loses his job, suffers a divorce, and finds himself cut off from his friends and family all within a few months time. How does he cope with this downward spiral in his life and the self-doubt that accompanies it? Can he regain control of his life – or is such control merely a myth?

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript 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. I can provide that second eye.

Editing client publishes first science fiction novel

A recent editing client has published his first science fiction novel. Julien Saindon’s “Electronics of the Dead,” is set in the year 2098, when the world has learned to harness the power of the positron. With this new technology, the population must fight a deadly bacteria that is wiping out the humanity, as electronics engineers try to build a device that will counter the invasion of violent, infected hosts. The book is available online.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript 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. I can provide that second eye.