My Novels

Sunday, April 9, 2017

What I Forgot



       I sometimes wonder, when a book has been completed and published, if the author ever wishes they had included something to the story. Maybe a different outcome to a particular scene comes to mind. Perhaps a marriage proposal could have been written with more or better romance involved. There was an event to be included, but the author completely forgot about it. Of course, at least as part of my process, that’s why I take a lot of notes when I’m writing. I don’t necessarily include everything from those notes, but I still write everything down and go over my notes before I hit that publish button.

I think the same can be true for even nonfiction books, which is what happened to me with The Practical Writer.  I do have notes and notes upon notes for this book. Despite that, and even with having two proof copies, I still managed to forget a few things. They simply didn’t occur to me until after this book was published. I’m going to list them here, but I still added them to my notes on the chance I might create a second edition of The Practical Writer.  

In the chapter on Writing Observations, I discuss continuing education as part of your writing process.  I talk about reading articles and books on writing. It’s not that you have to agree with everything you read, but you can definitely pick up on things you might not have thought about. Something I didn’t consider is finding articles and/or books written by prominent authors, such as Stephen King or Nora Roberts. If you have a particular favorite author or authors, research them beyond their novels to determine if they have written articles, blog posts, interviews, or entire books on writing. Many of them do lectures or classes, some of which can be viewed for free.

Again, it’s not about agreeing with everything you read, but there’s always the opportunity to learn something to add to your skill set. To give you an example, I read that Stephen King feels you shouldn’t necessarily describe every detail about a character, especially with things like what they are wearing.  I came to think there are two sides to this. Say your character has come home after a horrible day at work, puts on her favorite sweats, sits by the fire with a glass of wine. You could go on to describe those sweats in detail—plain gray flannel pants with a gray sweatshirt that has a rose pattern only on the sleeves, a small tear at the right shoulder, two sizes too big so it hangs loosely around the pants. Now you have a very clear picture of that character.  Now if you provide no description of those sweats, simply that they are her favorite sweats, you could picture her in what you would be wearing if that was you in the scene. It’s a matter of what you want the reader to have pictured in her or his mind.  I like having details in that type of situation, but I definitely don’t enjoy it when an author describes what the character is wearing every time she has on something different. But that’s just my preference, both as a reader and a writer. It’s not something I paid a lot of attention to until I read that article, and it’s now something I will work on with future novels.

A small note about Twitter I forgot to mention. When retweeting posts, I try to make sure I’m not retweeting something old, especially if it’s a sale the author was providing but that sale is now over. Yes, it’s still helping to get the writer’s name out there, but it could result in almost negative publicity for that author if you retweet old news. So before you retweet, take a look at the date it was posted, mostly if it’s regarding something that might have expired time-wise.

Lastly, an issue I forgot to include in my grammar/punctuation chapter and that is “who vs that.”  Basically, “who “is used when referring to people, and “that” is used when referring to objects. But, as with all rules, there can be exceptions, so I’m not saying this should be followed 100% of the time.  In most cases, however, I feel it reads more polished if you do follow that rule.

Tom is the guy who sold me the fake pearls.
NOT
Tom is the guy that sold me the fake pearls.

This is the secret recipe that was stolen from her office.
NOT
This is the secret recipe who was stolen from her office.

The error I see most often is with the people or person reference, not so much with objects, as it’s much easier to see “who” with objects reads awkwardly. I don’t feel this issue takes away from the quality of the story, but it’s just about adding that 5-star quality I talk about in The Practical Writer.

If you never stop reading and learning, your quality is never going to be an issue! Thanks for reading. Enjoy your day.

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