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Monthly Archives: February 2012

Active Voice

 

written by Jared Saathoff

When we write we must consciously decide between active voice and passive voice. The difference between active and passive is roughly the difference between quick and to the point and a meandering missive. e.g.

- The dog bites. active

- People have been bitten by the dog. passive

Which one serves as a better warning to people unfamiliar with the naughty biting dog?

A writer with confidence and a clear mind for their craft shudders after falling into the pitfalls of passive voice. Passive voice is a tool to remove authority or responsibility, and it creates a palpable barrier between the writer and the story as well as the story and the reader. In most cases a story in passive voice is two to three times longer than the equivalent active story. It then feels like a story ten times as long for the reader. It’s like a poorly edited movie: only 90 minutes in length but you feel like you wasted your whole evening watching the movie.

As a general rule I advise writers to avoid passive voice as much as possible, but often this causes confusion since very few people are familiar with active voice. Active writing is clear and often concise—not to say it can’t be frilly and make literary types swoon. Active voice is when the subject is performing the action. Basically the subject/noun is doing the action/verb. In some ways active voice is—to borrow a page from dime-store psychology—the type-A personality. Say what really happened. e.g.

- James drew his gun and shot Randy in the face. active

-Randy was shot in the face after James drew his gun to shoot Randy. passive

Passive voice is more like the wish-washy type-B personality. Well, this thing it kinda-sorta happened and you get my meaning but you kinda have to put it back together for yourself because I don’t want to be too direct. Passive voice wears readers out—after awhile it feels like hanging out with that annoying friend who always wants to do something but never has any suggestions. The classic, “Oh, I don’t know whatever you’d like.”

One of the easiest ways to notice if you’re writing in the passive voice is to look for the tell-tale words: has, was, and were before the verb. Think of it as chaff getting between your noun and your verb. Keeping your subject verb agreement (staying in active voice) in order helps to move even the dullest of material forward. A positive attitude helps you through the worst of weeks; writing in active voice helps getting through the dullest of assignments, like a short article about active voice.

Young Adult Fiction Coming Soon: Heron’s Path

Who is Alethea Eason? Read on friends…

Alethea Eason lives with her husband Bill in Cobb, California, a small town in the Mayacamas Mountains in northern California. She has worked as a reading specialist and classroom teacher at two Title 1 schools, does freelance editing of novels and memoirs, and draws and paints as much as she can. She spent a year and a half teaching at St. Margaret’s British School for Girls in Concon, Chile.
Her middle grade humorous science fiction novel Hungry was published by HarperCollins (Eos) in 2007. Her stories and poetry have appeared in places as varied as the children’s publications Shoo-Fly Audio Magazine and New Moon Magazine and the literary journals Frontiers and Sweet Fancy Moses. Three of her stories have been anthologized in collections edited by Bruce Coville, including A Glory of Unicorns. She was the winner of the SRA/McGraw Hill Imagine it! Teachers’ Writing Contest, in which her story “Turtle Soup” was made into a picture book to supplement the reading program’s second grade curriculum, and the Eugene Ruggles Poetry Prize given by Copperfield Books for their publication The Dickens. Meetings of the Minds Publications published her poetry chapbook Threshold, nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Read a short sample of Heron’s Path right here.

To learn more about Alethea visit her website:  Heron’s Path

Now available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble!


Don’t hide from your story

written by Nichole Canniff

Why do we always end up having countless untold stories and ideas just sitting around? They are the Post-its littering your desk; the two line word documents floating about your computer; the scribbled remarks in that blue notebook sitting by your bed named “ideas”; or maybe they are 10 line long ideas from your MFA in Creative Writing program. Wherever they are it really doesn’t matter. All that matters is that they are untold stories waiting to be written.

So why are they pushed aside? If we have so many stories and ideas, why aren’t we sitting at our desk at 2:00 a.m. typing away? We hide from our stories. In the beginning we are filled with so many ideas but once we decide on one, we get to a point that we just don’t know where to go. Then we all know what happens to that story — it goes into hiding. They build up in our bank of untold stories never to be looked at again.

There is always going to be a time in our writing that we get stuck on where to go. That doesn’t mean we stop with the story. This is actually when you push yourself to continue. We are all different in what inspires us but when you hit this point, you need to get yourself past by finding your inspiration. It might be a change in direction of the story, rewriting chapters or just adding new characters to give the story more depth.

You have to remember that you’re not going to come out with a bestseller with your first draft. More often than not, first drafts are crap. The characters might lack depth or the relationships might seem superficial. Your first draft will not get your story picked up by a publisher. You will need to revise it and sell your story idea. But it’s important to get it finished. It’s easier to revise your story than to have no story at all.

My advice to you is simple: don’t hide from your story. Go riffle through your bank of stories and push yourself to finish your first draft. Who knows, that story you are hiding might be Spectacle Publishing Media Group’s next published novel.

Book Review: 90-Days To Your Novel

 

 

written by Nichole Canniff

Can you be a novelist in just 90 days? Many well-known authors write their novels in just weeks according to 90 Days to Your Novel – A Day-to-Day Plan for Outlining & Writing Your Book by Sarah Donet.

 

Can it be you? It all depends on your commitment to your project. 90 Days to Your Novel will require you to push yourself to invest two to three hours per day for the twelve weeks. At the end of the twelve weeks you will have a first draft of your novel but be warned, this book does not guarantee a great end product, only that you will have your draft finished.

 

Can reading a self-help book really create a bestselling book? Not a chance. What this book will do is breakdown how to create your outline as well as give you different techniques for writing. Do you know the difference between the Note-Card Technique vs. the Signpost technique? If you are new to writing novels, probably not and in the end, it really isn’t that important to know the difference. The most important thing you will take from this book’s Part I is figuring out how you want to start your writing process. What you are comfortable doing. What it’s called really doesn’t matter.

 

Part II is the “90-Day Writing Challenge”. The book advises you to not start reading the rest of the book until you can commit to the scheduled two to three hours a day for writing. When starting this book, your first three weeks are mixed with assignments that don’t necessarily pertain to your novel on the surface but if you really think about what you are writing, eventually you could incorporate those events, people or places into a scene of your story. An example of this is assignment #1, which is to brainstorm as many memories as you can on people, places and things from earlier moments in your life.

 

It’s important to remember in your first three weeks you are in the brainstorming, chart making and outline designing time period. If this wasn’t your first novel, you could probably skip over the first three weeks but really if you have already gone through the novel-writing process, you don’t need this book. It isn’t until week four that you start getting into your novel so you will need to have the patience to stick to your schedule.

 

Do you really need an assignment based, step-by-step guide to write your novel? Maybe, maybe not. It’s all about your commitment to your project. Your success of writing your novel has nothing to do with the how-to book you read. It has everything to do with the fact that you have committed yourself to sticking to the two to three hours per day of writing. If you can do that, why do you need a book to tell you what to write and when to write it? Well for those you are aspiring novelists who just don’t know where to begin, this book will help you organize each writing process to completing your novel.

Show Don’t Tell!?!?

 

written by Eric Staggs

Show don’t tell—at once the best and worst piece of advice a writer can hear. The first reaction is “But I’m telling a story!” The next thought in line is “this isn’t a screen play!”

A writer must balance their story with visual descriptors to avoid setting their story in a void. If the setting is not intrinsic to the story, then the audience will have a more difficult time sinking into it, melding with it. For example, while taking a writing class in my undergraduate program, I found myself in a discussion with a fellow student, about his work—a highly emotional tale about homosexual lovers in Nazi Germany. But he didn’t know anything about Berlin in 1938. His knowledge of the setting he’d chosen for his opus was based on WWII movies. Most of the story happened in very neutral environments that only happened to have a Swastika or Nazi flag in them. Without the Third Reich, his story could have taken place in New Jersey 1978 or Dubai 2001. It could have happened in space, aboard the starship Velvet. He was failing in his primary task of showing us, the audience, the world his characters lived in. His story happened in a void and made it unsympathetic to everyone.

Setting and place is just one aspect of “show don’t tell.” The other piece is engagement of the reader. Look at the following example:

A: He drank the whiskey. It burned and he coughed. His eyes watered. He sighed.

B: He jerked his head back and choked down the liquid gold. The smoky poison made his throat clench tight. His eyes, suddenly wet from the burning vapors, turned the piss colored lights of the dirty bar into watery snowflakes. As the chemical heat suffused his body, he let out a long breath.

Both A and B accomplish the same thing: they tell us that the character had some whiskey. In both A and B we get a sense for the characters comfort level with whiskey. That’s where the similarities stop.

B also tells us that the character is in a bar (not a void), more about what the character is experiencing and feeling. The character is more real because we can more easily imagine his discomfort. His eyes are burning; he’s fighting back a knee-jerk cough from a shot of hard liquor. We also get the impression that the character is under stress—but we don’t know how or from what. In fact, while B gives us huge amounts of information, it leaves us with many questions. Not to mention the fact that it tripled the word count.

The question now becomes, “How about situations where there’s a lot of telling naturally?” That is, what about dialogue? It can be argued that dialogue is naturally expository—we talk about things. But in reality, contrary to what George Lucas believes, most characters, people, monsters, aliens and animals do not say what they feel. Example:

C.
“I am hurt. You are doing things to hurt me.” She said.
“You’re uncommunicative.” He retorted.
“I shouldn’t have to tell you how I feel.” She said.
“But how will I know then?” He asked.

D.
She wouldn’t face him. He moved around the kitchen, trying to make eye contact, but she always found something else to occupy her attention. Finally, he stopped moving.
“What’s wrong?” He said softly, hoping his desperation didn’t come through in his voice. He felt a pressure in his chest, almost an ache.
“Nothing.” She pulled some carrots from the fridge and cut them slowly and firmly, feigning intense concentration.
“Can I help?” He reached out to take the knife from her. She recoiled in mid stroke and hissed as the silvery blade chewed deep into her finger.
“Look what you made me do!” She held her hand up accusingly, the crimson droplet growing bigger by the second. He glanced from her hand to her eyes, noticed they were red-rimmed and puffy.

C and D tell the audience there is a conflict of an unclear nature between the man and woman. C tells us there are hurt feelings and frustration.

D tells us (or implies) the couple lives together and that they have a ritual and routine of preparing a meal and eating it together. It tells us that they are both emotionally bound to one another, but are unable to communicate their emotions for some reason or other. The cut finger is a convenient (and heavy handed) metaphor for the woman’s emotional state. While D is predictable, it is still far better than C.

A rule of thumb, when writing to show and not tell, is to stop and look around. Center yourself in your characters eyes and look around. What do they see? What do they feel? Can they feel the soft padding of a high back leather chair? Maybe it’s the hard vibrations of a metal bench on a rattling subway car? Put yourself in their skin. Is it raining? Do they feel raindrops or stinging pellets of heavy water, splashing down with incredible force and fury, soaking their coat and clothes?

Think about it.