Hyperbole and Purple Prose by Betsy Ashton

Don't you get sick of hyperbole? I mean, everything can't be the biggest, bestest, greatest, -est thing/event/sale/speech ever. And when did all national holidays become the place for the biggest, bestest, greatest mattress sales ever! EVER!

I'm going to stay away from political speech here. We've all heard the promises. If you are like me, you're tone deaf to wild promises, silly answers and character attacks. November can't come soon enough.

This is about hyperbole in prose. Too often we've all met books that needed the help of a professional editor. I recently received an ARC from a writer I didn't know with a request for a cover blurb. Forget the fact that he wrote in a genre I didn't even read. It didn't matter to him. He sent an email with his ARC attached. This was my introduction to this stranger. Because he was within the six degrees of friendship with a writer I respect, I took a look at the draft.

I tried, really tried, to read his ARC.

I could see from the first page that the book had never met an editor in its life. Beyond the incorrect punctuation (commas vomited all over the place) and incorrect word usage (lay instead of lie, him and me used as a subject), the author was in love with CAPITAL LETTERS and EXCLAMATION POINTS!!! These weren't in dialogue, where I can tolerate (and use) a very few exclamation points. In one paragraph, six sentences ended with exclamation points. Six. Or, SIX! I began to wonder if he knew the difference between a period and an exclamation point.

Want to guess how many pages I lasted? Four.

I'm sorry, dude. You need to hire an editor, learn your craft and revisit your fifth grade grammar books. Needless to say, but I will say it anyway, I politely declined to offer a cover blurb. I suggested his cover real estate would be better suited for a writer in his genre. He asked for introductions to such writers. Sheesh.

And purple prose. I thought gone were the days of a young girl seeing a handsome stranger across a crowded room and "falling into paroxysms of passion." With apologies to all the great romance writers on this blog, this is not a slam at your genre. The book I read for my book club is a NYT best seller. It was not listed as a romance. And in no way would it ever appear on the USA HEA lists. (Congrats to those of you who have landed there.) Short pithy sentences were frequently followed by elaborate descriptions full of strings of adjectives.

I really, really wanted to like this book. I really, really, really tried.

I love unreliable narrators. Heck, I'm polishing a WIP for publication next year where the narrator is both unreliable and unlikable. No one likes serial killers. And this one is a pip. Female. Tells her own story in the first person. May or may not have a moral compass. Knows why she kills. Learned her craft and practices it frequently.

The writer of this best seller "buried the lead" in this novel, to pick up a journalism term. The writer lost the opportunity to set the hook on the first few pages. I didn't know for several chapters who the primary narrator was. Just when I thought I was on top of the story, just when the pithy images grabbed my attention, the writer dipped her quill pen into a pot of purple ink and let adjectives and adverbs take over where character development and plot growth would have been a better choice.

I try to "write tight." I try to write with a reasonably spare prose. I love dialogue and let it carry the plot more often than not. My style isn't for everyone. Those readers who wait for my next book like it. I thank them every day when I sit to write more paragraphs that become pages.

So, writer peeps. What are your thoughts about hyperbole and purple prose? Thumbs up? Thumbs down?

###

Betsy Ashton is the author of Mad Max, Unintended Consequences, and Uncharted Territory, A Mad Max Mystery, now available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I'm really excited that the trade paper edition of Uncharted Territory was released this week. Please follow me on my website, on Twitter, Facebook and Goodreads.

3 x 3, A Different Way To Look At Books by Betsy Ashton

I went to a fantastic week-long writers' workshop last week at Hollins University in Roanoke, VA. Only 50 minutes from where I live, I chose not to drive back and forth daily but checked into a dorm. Yes, a college dorm. Rows of stall showers. Common rooms where we met nightly to do our homework and chatter. And drink, of course.

Tinker Mountain Writers' Workshop has helped me so much. I first went four years ago where I workshopped what eventually became Mad Max Unintended Consequences. Two years ago I workshopped a key scene in what became Uncharted Territory.

This time, I took my troubled serial killer novel. I was mired in how to start the damned thing, so I took one start for review. I was right. The opening stunk. General consensus. Was I pissed? No. Was I hurt? Maybe a little, but the six others in the workshop validated what I knew in my heart: I was starting in the wrong place and using a frame that was a cliche.

Out went the frame. No longer do I start with a letter to "someone." I start at the beginning and will let the story unfold in real time. No longer do I start at a point later in the narrative and then fall into a backstory. Yikes! What was I thinking? Or was I over thinking? Still not sure, but I do know the opening lines of "My sorority sisters and I tried sex, drugs and rock and roll, but they weren't enough for me. Then I killed someone and found my true calling." had to go. And out they went where they were. They may reappear at a later point.

One exercise we did was incredible. It's called 3 x 3, hence the title of this post. It's all about reducing your book to three words x three lines. Laura Benedict, our teacher of this writing genre workshop, used The Shining, by Stephen King as her illustration. 3 x 3 goes like this:

Writer caretakes hotel
Ghosts haunt writer
Writer goes insane

Boils King's many words to the core. My 3 x 3 might look like this:

Woman kills stranger
Woman desires rationale
Rational defines woman

Had to admit, this was a tough exercise. Can you do this for your current WIP? Try it and let me know how it works.

###

Betsy Ashton is the author of Mad Max, Unintended Consequences, and Uncharted Territory, A Mad Max Mystery, which is now available in e-book at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Transience and Perseverance

A dear friend of mine posted a terrific entry on his Snowflakes in a Blizzard blog. He wrote about art not being meant to last. His metaphor was a sand artist who creates glorious pictures only to have them washed away at high tide. (You can find the blog post here:  http://bit.ly/1EQ4vz6) Darrell's metaphor got me thinking about life in general.

Many of my friends have lost parents or uncles in the past two weeks. Those of us who have reached "a certain age" find our friends or their parents failing. Younger friends who have not reached the "certain age" lose members of their parents' generation. Life, it seems, is fleeting. That's why the Japanese use the cherry blossom as a favorite poetic metaphor for life's impermanence.

So too is it with writing. We work hard to put our best words on paper (or in the computer) only to find that better words come along. We edit. We send out meager efforts to friends who come back with comments for "improvement." So far, I've been lucky. No one has said I should seek alternate employment, but I learn every time I sit at my keyboard.

I've recently been beta-testing an online master class taught by a New York Times bestselling author, Many times over bestselling author. He writes genre fiction. He writes books we want to escape in and emerge hours later satisfied we've enjoyed a good read. I was halfway through the course when he came to two lessons on outlining. I wanted to skip them. I'm a panster. I write by the seat of my pants and let the words flow. I then hit the edit mode and go through many iterations.

This writer says he spends a month or two writing and rewriting the outline. Not the type we learned in school. Not I. A. 1. a. but a working description of what happens in every scene. EVERY scene. Who's in it. Why it's important. What the conflict is. By the time he is finished with the outline, he can sit back and let the sentences flow.

I really wanted to pooh pooh is approach, until I smacked myself on my forehead. I'm stuck in a work that I've been writing diligently for over a year. Really stuck. I now know I have no idea what the conflict is in several scenes. I'm taking a week or two to create that outline he suggested. Time line. Characters. Motive. Action. Conflict. Importance. I have a table that lays this all out. I have 50+ chapters to put into the table. I think by the time I'm done, the transient words that don't work will give way through perseverance to a cohesive story that at least I will want to read.

I stood after his lesson, took my Wonder Woman pose and said, "Yes I can." Moreover, yes I will

###

Betsy Ashton is the author of Mad Max, Unintended Consequences, and Uncharted Territory, A Mad Max Mystery, which is now available in e-book at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Butt First, Not But First by Betsy Ashton

Our lives are fashioned by our choices. First we make our choices. Then our choices make us -- Anne Frank

How true this is for writers. Or wanna-be writers. Or best selling authors. We choose to become a writer. It doesn't happen over night because we have to work on our craft. We write, delete, rewrite, repeat.

The first choice a writer must make is to think of herself as just that: A WRITER. If you can't tell yourself that you are a writer, you aren't one. You're a pretender. Sure, you've always wanted to write a book. We hear that all the time. Add, "I have the greatest story. I want you to tell it." It's your story. Tell it.

Once we've decided we are A WRITER, we have to begin. It's as simple and as complicated as putting your butt in the chair and your paws on the keyboard. If you are A WRITER, you must carve time out of your busy life to write. It can be as little as a page or two a day, or twenty minutes, or whatever small increment of measurement that works for you. Start small. Build on yesterday's story with today's. At the end of the year, you'll have a draft of a complete story, be it novel, memoir, whatever.

You must decide what is important. If it's writing, that butt in the chair is the most important thing you do. Do it every day. Forget how well you are writing. Just write, darn it.

What? You haven't cleaned the kitchen? The bathroom floor needs to be mopped? You have to reread Moby Dick before lunch? None of this is important if you are a writer. It really isn't. Stop but firsting. No, you don't have to clean the kitchen right now. It can wait until after you write your pages. Your bathroom floor can wait until you take a break, unless the toilet is overflowing or someone barfed on the rug.

Do you feel the power of saying you're A WRITER? You don't? Why not? Oh, you equate being A WRITER with being a published writer. I get it. You see the end of the road before you take the first step. As Anne Frank said, you make the first choice. That's to write. The second choice makes us. We may never be published, but that doesn't mean we can't accomplish something with our words. Write for yourself. Write for your family.

My advice: make writing your priority with your butt in the chair. No excuses. You can do it. BTW, I hated Moby Dick. I'd never give up a minute of writing time to reread it.

###

Betsy Ashton is the author of Mad Max, Unintended Consequences, and Uncharted Territory, A Mad Max Mystery, which is now available for pre-launch e-book orders at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

When to Let Advice Fall On Deaf Ears by Alison Henderson

Have you noticed that everyone wants to tell you what to do all the time? The Internet is chock-full of advice on every imaginable topic every day. New studies are released weekly telling us what we should eat (and not eat) in order to ensure optimal health and ultimate immortality. Do you suffer from aches and pains? Hiccups? Knock knees? Dozens of experts want to tell you what to do so solve your problems. And people eat this stuff up. Based on my news feeds, our collective appetite for advice appears insatiable.

But what about writing advice? 

Over the years, I've learned a great deal about craft, marketing, and publishing by attending workshops and reading articles. Some of the presenters' advice has been invaluable, but some has seemed repetitive, obvious, or simply not for me. I've been told I must be on every social media platform I can find. I've also been advised to choose only the ones I enjoy. I've been told to spend half my time writing and half my time marketing. Some authorities say write only the stories of your heart, while others say ignore the market at your peril.

We get the same conflicting advice about writing craft issues. Editors have pet peeves they impose on their writers. So do some agents. I'll never feel the same about the word "that" after working with my first editor. Some writers and editors are very strict about POV. Others take a more relaxed approach. Some slash all adverbs; others are more lenient.

I recently read a mildly paranormal/ghost love story written by a new writer friend. Finishing that short book was a painful slog. I had to force myself to read past the first chapter because she broke every single rule I had ever been taught. Yet this book had been contracted, edited, and published by a professional publisher (albeit a very small one). She has 20 5-star reviews on Amazon. For all I know, those may be from family and friends, but they still gave me pause. Who am I to say this woman is a terrible writer just because I hated nearly every page of her book? If she asks my opinion, I simply plan to tell her we are polar opposites as writers, both in the stories we tell and the way we tell them. Nothing more. 

I have come to the conclusion that both reading and writing are such intensely personal activities that we should take all advice with a grain of salt. Choose what resonates with you and don't feel guilty about setting the rest aside. One writer whose advice I always trust, however, is Stephen King. I'll leave you with a few of my favorite quotes from his fabulous On Writing.

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.”

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.”

And, perhaps, the most astute observation of all:

“Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life.” 

Alison
www.alisonhenderson.com
http://alisonhenderson.blogspot.com