Bev Robitai
  • HOME
  • Writer
  • Publisher
  • Photographer
  • BLOG - Plunge Right In
  • Store

How to Pick Your Genre - Tips from Kristen Lamb

25/5/2015

0 Comments

 
Kristen Lamb writes one of the best blogs for new writers and manages to de-mystify all the impenetrable fog of confusion that besets the novice. (Or even the mature writer!) Here she gives an overview of genre to help you decide where your story fits. Take it away, Kristen!
...........................................................


 Understanding your genre will help immensely when it comes to plotting. It will also help you get an idea of the word count specific to that genre. I am going to attempt to give a very basic overview of the most popular genres. Please understand that all of these break down into subcategories, but I have provided links to help you learn more so this blog wasn’t 10,000 words long.

Mystery—often begins with the crime as the inciting incident (murder, theft, etc.), and the plot involves the protagonist uncovering the party responsible by the end. The crime has already happened and thus your goal in plotting is to drive toward the Big Boss Battle—the unveiling of the real culprit.

Mysteries have a lot more leeway to develop characters simply because, if you choose, they can be slower in pacing because the crime has already happened. Mysteries run roughly  75-100,000 words. Mysteries on the cozy side that are often in a series commonly are shorter. 60,000-ish. I'd recommend that you consult the Mystery Writers of America of more information.

Thriller/Suspense—generally involve trying to stop some bad thing from happening at the end. Thrillers have broad consequences if the protagonist fails—I.e. the terrorists will launch a nuclear weapon and destroy Washington D.C. Suspense novels have smaller/more intimate consequences. I.e. The serial killer will keep butchering young blonde co-eds. It is easy to see how thriller, suspense and mystery are kissing cousins and keep company. The key here is that there is a ticking clock and some disastrous event will happen if the protagonist fails.

So when plotting, all actions are geared to prevention of the horrible thing at the end. Thrillers can run 90-100,000 words (loosely) and sometimes a little longer. Why? Because some thrillers need to do world-building. Most of us have never been on a nuclear sub, so Tom Clancy had to recreate it for us in The Hunt for Red October (Clancy invented a sub-class of thriller known as the techno-thriller).

Pick up the pacing and you can have a Mystery-Suspense. Think Silence of the Lambs. A murder happens at the beginning, and the goal is to uncover the identity of the serial killer Buffalo Bill (mystery), but what makes this mystery-suspense is the presence of a ticking clock. Not only is the body count rising the longer Buffalo Bill remains free, but a senator’s daughter is next on Bill’s butcher block.

When plotting, there will often be a crime (murder) at the beginning, but the plot involves a rising “body count” and a perpetrator who must be stopped before an even bigger crime can occur (Big Boss Battle). These stories are plot-driven. Characters often do not have enough down-time to make sweeping inner arc changes like in a literary piece.

Pick up the pacing and raise the stakes and you have a Mystery-Thriller. Think Killing Floor by Lee Childs. The book begins with a murder of two unidentified people at a warehouse, but if the killers are not found, what the killers are trying to cover up will have global consequences. And I am not telling you what those consequences are b/c it would ruin the book :D.

When plotting, again, there is often a crime at the beginning with rising stakes, and the protagonist must stop a world-changing event from happening (Big Boss Battle). The focus of your plot will be solving the mystery and stopping the bad guy.

For more information on this genre, consult the International Thriller Writers site.

Romance—Guy and girl have to end up together in the end is the only point I will make on this. Romance is all about making the reader believe that love is good and grand and still exists in this crazy world. The hero cannot be your Big Boss Trouble Maker (read Structure Part Three if you want to know what a BBT is). Yes, the guy will likely be a scene antagonist, but that is different.

Romance, however, is very complex and I cannot do it justice in this short blurb. If you desire to write romance, I highly recommend you go to the Romance Writers of America site for more information and that you join a chapter near you immediately. This is one of the most amazing writing organizations around and a great investment in a successful romance-writing career.

Word count will depend on the type of romance you desire to write. Again, look to RWA for guidance because there are SO many categories of romance that it could make a book.

Literary Fiction is character driven. The importance is placed on the inner change, and the plot is the mechanism for driving that change. Literary fiction has more emphasis on prose, symbol and motif. The events that happen must drive an inner transformation.

Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Road is a good example. The world has been destroyed and only a few humans have survived. The question isn’t as much whether the man and the boy will survive as much as it is about how they will survive. Will they endure with their humanity in tact? Or will they resort to being animals? Thus, the goal in The Road is less about boy and man completing their journey to the ocean, and more about how they make it. Can they carry the torch of humanity?

When plotting for the literary fiction, one needs to consider plot-points for the inner changes occurring. There need to be cross-roads of choice. One choice ends the story. The character failed to change. The other path leads closer to the end. The darkest moment is when that character faces that inner weakness at its strongest, yet triumphs.

For instance, in The Road, there are multiple times the man and boy face literally starving to death. Will they resort to cannibalism as many other have? Or will they press on and hope? Word count can vary, but you should be safe with 60-85,000 words (The Road was technically a novella).

Note: Literary fiction is not a free pass to avoid plotting. There still needs to be an overall plot problem that forces the change. People generally don't wake up one day and just decide to change. There needs to be an outside driving force, a Big Boss Troublemaker, and a tangible physical goal. Again, in The Road, the man and boy have a tangible goal of getting to the ocean.

The only difference in literary fiction and genre fiction is that plot arc is now subordinate to character arc. In commercial genre fiction the plot generally takes precedence. In Silence of the Lambs catching Buffalo Bill is top on the priority list. Character evolution is secondary. In literary fiction these two arcs reverse. The character growth and change is of primary importance and plot is merely the vehicle to get them to change.

For instance, in Joy Luck Club, June's impending trip to China is what brings the women together and what forces each of them to change the patterns of the past. The trip is irrelevant save for two purposes---1) bringing the women together to face their demons and 2) when June actually makes the trip to China to meet her mother's twin sisters (the lost babies) we know the change has occurred and the chains of the past have been loosed.

Fantasy and Science Fiction will involve some degree of world-building and extraordinary events, creatures, locations. In plotting, world-building is an essential additional step. How much world-building is necessary will depend on what sub-class of fantasy or sci-fi you’re writing. Word count will also be affected. The more world-building, the longer your book will be. Some books, especially in high-fantasy can run as long as 150,000 words and are often serialized.

In regular fantasy, we will generally have a singular protagonist. In high fantasy, the various parties each become protagonists. Think Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings.

Consult the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America for more information.

Horror—This is another genre that breaks down into many sub-classifications and runs the gambit. It can be as simple as a basic Monster in the House story where the protagonist’s main goal is SERE-Survive Evade, Rescue, and Escape. The protag has only one goal…survive. These books tend to be on the shorter side, roughly 60,000 words.

Horror, however can blend with fantasy and require all kinds of complex world-building. Clive Barker’s Hellraiser is a good example. Stephen King’s horror often relies heavily on the psychological and there is weighty focus on an inner change/arc. For instance, The Shining chronicles Jack’s descent into madness and how his family deals with his change and ultimately tries to escape the very literal Monster in the House.

Horror will most always involve a Monster in the House scenario. It is just that the definitions of “monster” and “house” are mutable. Word count is contingent upon what type of horror you are writing. Again, I recommend you consult the experts, so here is a link to the Horror Writers Association. 

Young Adult---I won't talk long about YA, since YA breaks into so many subcategories. Often YA will follow the rules of the parent genre (i.e. YA thrillers still have a ticking clock, fast pacing and high stakes just like regular thrillers). The differences, however, is that YA generally will have a younger protagonist (most often a teenager) and will address special challenges particular to a younger age group.

For instance, in Veronica Roth's Divergent, Tris is taking on a very real political battle between factions. But the plot also involves her evolving from child to adult, how she defines her identity aside from Mom and Dad and forging a new romantic relationship with Four. These are all prototypical struggles for someone in that age group.

Picking a genre is actually quite liberating. Each genre has unique guideposts and expectations, and, once you gain a clear view of these, then plotting becomes far easier and much faster. You will understand the critical elements that must be in place—ticking clock, inner arc, world-building—before you begin.

This will save loads of time not only in writing, but in revision. Think of the romance author who makes her hero the main antagonist (BBT). She will try to query, and, since she didn’t know the rules of her genre, will end up having to totally rewrite/trash her story or change the genre entirely because she actually wrote a Women's Fiction and NOT a romance.

Eventually, once you grow in your craft, you will be able to break rules and conventions. But, to break the rules we have to understand them first.
.................................................................................

Thanks Kristen - it's all much clearer now!
I recommend you hop over to Kristen's blog - she's just done a whole series of posts that are gold for new writers. https://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2015/05/25/choosing-a-genre-anatomy-of-a-best-selling-story-part-7/


 

0 Comments

May 18th, 2015

16/5/2015

0 Comments

 
  'It's easy," they said, those nice people over at Indies Unlimited. (Yes, I'm talking to you Kat Brooks!) You can just post monetised links to anyone's books on your own blog and earn money when there are sales. Yeah, right.
OK, I've had a stiff coffee, my head is as clear as it's gonna be - let's DO this!
First step is to upload the cover of Vicky's book. That's easy enough.
Then I embed the code that I copied from her book via my Amazon Associates page so if anyone follows the link to her book from here and buys it, I'll get a tiny percentage of the sale. I think I've done that right but I won't know till I publish this post.
Stand by caller...
Picture
All right - cover me, I'm going to publish this page and see if it works!
Sometimes being an indie author is a lot harder than it looks.

PS. Ok, I think I made it work! Turns out I didn't need to post the cover photo at all - the code I copied held all that info and clicking on that image took me to the right place.

So if all you lovely readers out there would click on Vicky's book and GO BUY A COPY that'd be great! I get a few cents, Vicky gets a few more, and you get a few hours of thoroughly enjoyable reading. Win-win!
0 Comments

Real Characters

7/5/2015

0 Comments

 
Sometimes as writers we create completely fictional characters for a story, other times we borrow somebody we know and use many of their genuine characteristics. Either way, the danger is to use a kind of shorthand – to make a stereotypical character so that readers recognise them quickly and we don’t have to spend a long time building them up. But flat, one-dimensional characters are boring, offering no surprises and no insights.

Take the standard Little Old Lady, for instance. She’s small, sweet, and her family think she’s not very bright. She dotes on her children and grandchildren, goes to church on Sundays, and likes to cook and sew. To most writers – and I’m including TV and movie scriptwriters here – she’s a comic figure with little to offer beyond light entertainment.

But look past that façade. She may not be educated, she may mispronounce words and mangle her language to comical effect but she’s incredibly wise. She’s had a lifetime of close observation to know how people tick so she understands why your marriage is falling apart or why your children are in trouble, and her advice is worth heeding. Yes, her religion is illogical, but her faith gives her astonishing strength to deal with any situation. Her framework of belief gives her resilience no matter what disasters occur so she can comfort you despite her own sorrow.

She’s the glue that holds together a far-flung, disparate family. She’s the shoulder to cry on, the phone call in dark hours, the one person who loves you no matter what. That Little Old Lady has depth.

I once borrowed my mother-in-law to play a minor character in one of my books, slipping her in to provide comic relief. I don’t know if she’s ever recognised herself, but I rather hope she hasn’t.

I didn’t do her justice.

(Happy Mother's day, Mom!)


0 Comments

One Lovely Blog Hop

20/4/2015

1 Comment

 
I've been challenged by Shauna Bickley to join in the Lovely Blog Hop. It’s one of those invitations that inspires both delight and apprehension at the same time. At first it’s ‘Oh wow, someone likes my blog and I’m being invited to play with the cool kids!’ There’s a giddy delight at being considered socially acceptable. But then nagging doubt sets in. ‘Wait, I’ve only done a few posts – what if I’m not the sort of interesting writer they think I am? Doing this will really blow my cover and expose me as a fraud.’ But hey, I can be brave, I can do this – besides, I can write whatever I like, can’t I? I make stuff up for a living after all.

Apparently the blog hop is intended to let you in on seven of the things in my life that have helped make me the person and writer I am. Let’s see what a positive spin I can put on the events in my life so far…

1. I learned to read very early, mostly because I grew up in my mother’s nursery school and absorbed the lessons going on around me. Taking advantage of this new skill, my mother used to keep me sitting quietly whenever necessary by placing a book in my eager little hands.

The earliest book I can remember is Orlando the Marmalade Cat, who was a firm favourite on my many trips to Staines Library.

Picture
Picture
Incidentally I Googled Orlando to look for a photo for this piece and was diverted by the author’s obituary which makes extraordinary reading. This was my favourite line – “Kathleen Hale was part of a very English artistic tradition of mild bohemianism and modest bloodymindedness.”  What a great tradition to live up to, and what a character! She was clever and unorthodox and died at the age of 101 in 2000. I’d love to think she had an influence on me.

2. My mother inadvertently taught me to speed read by sharing Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons series. We’d read together lying on the sofa and I always galloped ahead as fast as possible to make sure she didn’t turn the page before I’d found out what happened next. That has influenced all my reading since as I prefer fast-moving adventure stories to slow, thoughtful, emotional books. It also set my preference for likeable, intelligent characters who have integrity and solve their problems with clever solutions rather than strength and violence. (Even Jack Reacher tries to use violence only as a last resort.)

3. Being an only child meant that I had plenty of time to read and it has always been my favourite activity. It used to worry me when grown-ups asked ‘what are your hobbies, Beverlie?’ It seemed so lame to say ‘reading’. Didn’t everybody read? And I never dared answer with my other real enthusiasm – climbing trees. Why didn’t I have a ‘proper’ hobby like stamp collecting or playing the piano?

4. I grew up beside the River Thames and knew every inch of my stretch of it intimately. It was a delight to discover Wind in the Willows – the first book I’d read that was in a setting I could relate to. I did plenty of travelling as my mum was an adventurous woman always keen to explore far-off places with strange-sounding names. My dad played along with good grace, erecting tents on sand dunes in the south of France or staying home to earn the money to allow us to cruise round the world. My reading ranged far and wide too with Willard Price adventures, King Solomon’s Mines, Biggles, Ngaio Marsh mysteries and Agatha Christie. I still read crime fiction for preference.

5. When I was twelve my father died, Mum sold everything and we emigrated to New Zealand. Inspired by comedic writers like Alan Coren in Punch, I wrote a few funny stories about our exploits but never tried to get them published. High school was tough for a new immigrant but life improved immeasurably when I left home to go to University.(Languages and literature) Assignments and later teacher training knocked all pleasure in reading and writing out of me for a while, then marriage and a busy lifestyle left little time for such pursuits.

6. It wasn’t until I was visiting my mother-in-law and found myself snowed in during a Canadian winter that I had time to read again – and the only books she had were Mills & Boon romance novels. I’d never read one before and it was a revelation. If something this simplistic could be published, surely I could write a book too. It lit the spark. I did a bit of research and found that romance publishers would accept unagented manuscripts so I bashed one out and sent it off. No other eyes saw it, so it was untested, unedited, un-proofed and totally amateur. I had no writerly community for help and support, and it was before the days of the internet, so I had no way of knowing what to do. Unsurprisingly it was rejected, but with an encouraging note. (Sound familiar?)

7. Now I have seven titles out there and a wonderful set of colleagues nearby that I meet regularly for critique and discussion. Others interact online from around the country and around the world, sharing information, insights, and pats on the back when deserved. I’m about to start my eighth book, and have helped to publish over a hundred titles for other writers as my new full-time job. There's a small selection of the print titles '''below. I’m immersed in the writing world up to my neck and loving it!


Picture




The rules for this Lovely Blog Hop are that I’ve shared 7 'Lovely Facts' about myself, and provided links to other blogs that I enjoy reading. If I’ve nominated your blog (see names below at the end of post and my apologies if I've missed somebody I should have included) please don’t feel any obligation to join in but, if you do, please link back to the blog of the person who nominated you (me), share facts about yourself and nominate other blogs (as many as you can).

Vicky Adin - http://vickyadin.co.nz/blog/

Yvonne Walus - http://yewalus.blogspot.co.nz/

Z R Southcombe - http://www.zrsouthcombe.com/blog/

Melissa Bowersock - http://mjb-wordlovers.blogspot.co.nz/

Yvonne Hertzberger - http://newfantasyauthor.com/blog/

And just to balance the female bias with some testosterone…

Matthew J Wright  - https://mjwrightnz.wordpress.com/

Mike Crowl - http://mikecrowlsscribblepad.blogspot.co.nz/

(It’s OK guys, you can rename the blog heading to suit!)







1 Comment

Beards – fashion statement or unavoidable?

6/4/2015

1 Comment

 
Picture
Picture


It’s interesting to see how fashions come and go, repeating in cycles through the decades. The current crop of full beards decorating the faces of Western men are an echo from several eras in the past, most recently the seventies, and already the same articles are appearing that were published then that will probably sound their death knell as a fashion statement. ‘Beards are unhygienic and cause skin disease.’ ‘More germs in a beard than on your toilet seat.’ ‘Food scraps linger for weeks.’ All of which cause men to feel uncomfortable enough to eventually shave off the apparently offending hair growth lest they appear dirty and unappealing. Fashion returns to cleanshaven faces until the next wave of designer stubble or soul patches.

Now imagine the Sunstrike scenario when solar storms have eliminated Earth’s technology so there are no electric razors, those with batteries have run out, and there is no longer a ready supply of disposable blades. Those beards are going to be back with a vengeance. How many men would make the effort to find and maintain a serious cut-throat razor of the kind you see in old Western movies?







My prediction is a return to the full facial fuzz of the 1900s and before with men’s faces as bushy as a badger’s bum in a matter of weeks after the event. It would be one of the most visible signs of the changes in our post-apocalyptic lives – but how often have you seen that in the Hollywood versions of an apocalyptic world where the hero remains clean-jawed and manicured throughout?

Picture
How do you feel about men with beards?

What would you miss most if technology died?

1 Comment

The Perils of being a Specialist

24/3/2015

0 Comments

 
As we’re staring down the barrel of an approaching milestone birthday, my significant other and I have been looking at careers and how they’ve changed over the years. Our generation was raised to be generalists, fairly independent and able to do most things for ourselves. It was normal to change your own oil in the car and rotate the tyres, bang up your own plasterboard when building a house, cook dinner from scratch and sew your own clothes. (Okay, I was never strong on that last one, but I knew the theory.)
Picture
Here I am with my beloved, hammering up ceiling battens while he plastered. (Himself as much as the wall!) We couldn't afford to pay tradespeople so we learned on the job, and those skills have served us well over the years.

Maybe it's because we live in the city, but these days we seem to be living in a world of specialists rather than multi-skilled generalists. We pay people to do stuff we used to do ourselves, either because we no longer have the skills, or the tools, or the time to do the job. And this worries me a little. It’s one of the reasons I wrote Sunstrike, to look at how stuck we might be if our present comfortable world shut down because solar flares had wiped out our technology. How many of us now know the basic survival skills we’d need?

Those highly-skilled IT specialists would be out of a job for a start with no functioning computers to work on. What other skills would they be able to trade if all their training had been focused on one small area of expertise? They’d have to learn fast or starve.

Stripped of our technology, we’d be functioning as physical human beings again rather than intellectual ones. Our daily needs would be food and water, not a faster internet or newer smart phone. Our social circle would reduce to those in our immediate vicinity because there’d be no way to contact anyone else. We’d actually talk face to face instead of texting, Skype or Facebook. We’d depend on the shared knowledge of just a few people.

Picture
These might be the only people you'd see day to day if transportation was reduced to bicycles and horses.

In that situation, generalists would thrive. We know a little bit about a lot of things, so with no recourse to Google or a range of handy experts we’d still be able to muddle through. I guess what I’m saying is that everyone, no matter what their situation, should know how to look after themselves – to find and prepare food that doesn’t come out of a packet, to identify and deal with basic health problems, to be mentally and physically equipped to survive. It may not be the Sunstrike scenario that takes us down – it could be a localised natural disaster or some sinister human action, but we should be ready to cope.

These are the thoughts I cling to when feeling increasingly marginalised by younger, cleverer specialists who dazzle with their highly-skilled online interaction. Tweet that, you smart bastards!

0 Comments

Death takes Terry Pratchett

12/3/2015

1 Comment

 
Picture
The world lost a great writer this week with the untimely death of Terry Pratchett, though we’d slowly been losing him ever since the cruel diagnosis of his unusual form of early-onset Alzheimers. He leaves an exceptional body of work. There are very few writers whose books I buy to keep, and only a handful of those are writers whose every book has to go on the shelf, but I have nearly all Terry Pratchett’s right the way from Diggers, Truckers, and Johnny and the Bomb through all the Discworld novels to Raising Steam. His Discworld series is loved by readers everywhere, illuminating the essence of our own lives in the gentle guiding light of fiction to show how we might do things better. Many of his characters have become old and treasured friends –particularly Sam Vimes, the Patrician, Granny Weatherwax, and Tiffany Aching. Through them, Terry Pratchett holds up a mirror to let us see our own lives more clearly. A man of ferocious intelligence, he knew how things worked, from politics to family life to religion to human nature.

I met Sir Terry once at a book signing after one of his talks and found him to be a slightly daunting character. His comments in the talk had made it clear that he didn’t suffer fools gladly, and anger was never far below the surface, though he signed books and fulfilled the tasks of publicity and promotion with grace. But that daunting persona was uppermost in our minds when our local theatre group staged a season of Mort, as permission to use the script came with many provisos and warnings. (Royalty payments all went to the Orangutan Rescue society, incidentally.) On Opening Night, a ripple of gasps ran round the theatre foyer as a tall, dark, grey-bearded figure strode in, topped by a flamboyant black hat. Is that HIM? Should we give him a free ticket? Do we tell the actors? No, they’ll go mental! What if he hates it? Will he stop the performance? Yes, Sir Terry’s reputation put the fear of God into us – but it turned out to be a local audience member taking advantage of a certain look-alike quality to get into the spirit of things.

As a writer, I find enormous encouragement from how bad some of his early books were! The Dark Side of the Sun is a confused mishmash of sci-fi fantasy that lacks the apparently effortless coherence of his later works, giving me hope that any writer can get better if they persevere and work at their craft. It tells me that it’s OK to suck at first as long as you get better, and that even the most brilliant writer learns and improves as they go along.

He has entertained and inspired countless people round the world, and worked hard to make it a better place. That’s a pretty good legacy.

1 Comment

How to Set out Your Word Doc for Maximum Efficiency – Part Two

6/3/2015

1 Comment

 
Ah, you came back! Welcome to part two of beating your book’s Word doc into shape, where we’ll be dealing with Headings. You’ll find these up in the top toolbar in Word where you found ‘Normal’ last time. Look along to the right and you should see Headings 1, 2, 3 etc. These are brilliant for authors because they help you to navigate through the document, they provide an instant view of all your chapter headings to make sure they’re consistent (and sequential), and best of all Word can use them to make a perfect Table of Contents that even updates page numbers if you adjust things later.

You can adjust the style of your headings just as you did with the Normal setting – highlight the text you want as your heading – like Chapter One - click on Heading 1 (for example), then set the font and centering as you want it and right-click to on the heading 1 box to ‘Update heading 1 to match selection’. Bazinga! All subsequent chapter headings will follow suit.

A note about centering items on a page – DO NOT TAB OR SPACEBAR them across to the middle! That way madness lies. Use the centre-justify button on the toolbar. You’d normally use centred text for your title, possibly your dedication page or a quote at the front of the book, and those little do-dads you put in to show breaks in the narrative – either a line of asterisks or suchlike. Handy hint – call your row of asterisks Heading 4 and update the style to centre (making sure the first line indent is at the margin for that line.) Then make all your asterisks Heading 4 and they’ll stay centred even if you alter the page size or make other changes. Heading 4 means they won’t show up in your Table of Contents, which only goes to Headings 1,2 and 3.

To see all your chapter headings, use the ‘Find’ function. When you click ‘Find’ and select the first icon in the navigation panel on the left, your heading will show up.

This is invaluable for spotting where you’ve got two Chapter 7s, or gone from Chapter 7 (numeral) to Chapter Eight (word). It also provides instant access to every heading in your document which makes finding your way through the text much easier. Click on a heading in the side panel and you’ll be taken to that place in the text.

Make sure your chapter heading spacing is consistent – for example two spaces down from the top of the page, then the header, then two spaces before the text – whatever you select it doesn’t matter as long as all chapters are the same. It’s helpful to write a style sheet noting your fonts, chapter header styles and spacings to refer to when you are deep in the text adjusting things. Whizzing down the headers on the left makes it easy to check each one and adjust if needed. When you reach the end of a chapter, insert a page break. Top toolbar, insert tab, page break. DO NOT HIT THE RETURN KEY over and over to get to a new page! Then type your next chapter heading on the fresh page, highlight it, and click Heading 1. (Or whichever style you selected.)

These steps will make doing your book layout much easier.

When you’re ready to do your Contents page later, go to the appropriate place near the start of your document where you want the contents page to be, then click on References on the top toolbar, and Table of Contents should appear. Try clicking on Automatic table 1 and Word will create a table of all your headings on the left end of the references toolbar. (When I first discovered this I was giddy with excitement. It saves HOURS of laboriously adjusting page numbers.) You’ll need to update the table if you make changes in your book. That function is in the References tab on the top toolbar, next to the Table of Contents tab.

Now, if you have an existing Word doc that you’ve been fiddling about with for years, with tabs and Track Changes and weird formatting all through it, there is a way to clear it all up. Mark Coker of Smashwords calls this The Nuclear Solution because it’s quite drastic, but if you ever plan to upload your book as an ebook this is worth doing. Copy and paste your entire document into a program like Notepad which comes as standard on most PCs. The simplest text-only program you have should do the job, and it’ll clear almost everything except your paragraph returns. Copy the entire text that you just put in Notepad and open a NEW Word doc to paste it back into. Hey presto – a clean, fresh file that you can now apply just the formatting you want to. Chapter headings, bold, italics, all that sort of thing. The clean file will upload as an ebook much more successfully and you won’t find patches of undersized text or overlapping lines which can drive you demented when they show up in your Kindle file!

Any questions? See me after class, or grab a copy of A Reassuring Guide to Self Publishing to get a step-by-step explanation.

If there are any topics you’d like me to cover in later blog posts, let me know in the comments or drop by and say hi on Facebook.

1 Comment

What gems are in YOUR Memory?

24/2/2015

1 Comment

 
It may have been some childhood reading of prisoner of war stories that fuelled a question that has stayed with me for years. If I was incarcerated without recourse to any other form of entertainment, what cultural gems would I be able to access from my memory?

In Victorian times it was normal to have a repertoire of songs and poems which could be performed at will to delight friends and family in the parlour between games of Charades and pass-the-parcel.

I suspect many mature readers still recall poems learned by rote as children, like The Listeners by Walter de la Mare

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses   

Of the forest’s ferny floor:

And a bird flew up out of the turret,   

Above the Traveller’s head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;   

‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.

How about Shelley’s Ozymandias?

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies,


Yes, I thought you’d know it.

Personally, I can recite the entire poem Silly Old Baboon by Spike Milligan as a party piece, along with Monty Python’s sketch about an elderly German gentleman with a name that takes a full twenty seconds to say. And I’ll never forget the antipodean bonds formed on my OE when a bunch of Kiwis all flawlessly recited ‘We are the blokes from down on the farm, we really know our cheese.’

Yep, that’ll keep me entertained when I’m banged up in solitary. Or when sunstrike wipes out any electronic play-back device.

But I fear our culture is declining. Those from later generations may not be lucky enough to have such literary gems in their heads and will have to make do with words like -

What do they make dreams for
When you got them jeans on
What do we need steam for
You the hottest bitch in this place
I feel so lucky
Hey, hey, hey
You wanna hug me
Hey, hey, hey
What rhymes with hug me?
Hey, hey, hey


Ah yes, the classy refrains from Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines. Give me Spike Milligan any day.

1 Comment

How to Set out Your Word Doc for Maximum Efficiency – Part One

21/2/2015

0 Comments

 
As an editor I see all kinds of book files from writers with varying degrees of presentation skill. Some have had typing training that is now obsolete, others are afraid of their computers, and almost all of them could save a lot of editing time if they’d started out writing their book with a few basic things in place. When a Word document is done correctly from the beginning, it’s very easy to make changes throughout the file later without throwing the whole book into chaos.

The first thing to do is make sure the main part of your text is in the ‘Normal’ style. You’ll find that on the top toolbar, highlighted with a yellow box if your text is ‘Normal’. If you can’t see a box saying Normal, try clicking on the Change Styles tab shown in the picture below and choose ‘Default’. The Normal box should appear as one of the Style options.



The beauty of setting up your main text properly is that you can change fonts, change sizes, change indents, paragraphs and justification all in one action in the Style menu.

It’s worth playing around with this feature to get a feel for it before you try it on something terribly important. Copy and paste a chunk of text into a fresh Word page. Make sure it’s ‘Normal’. Now select a couple of lines and change the font and size. Now go to the yellow-edged Normal box in the Style toolbar, the one that the red arrow is pointing to in the picture. Right-click to give a drop-down menu which has as its top line ‘update Normal to match selection’. Select that, and watch your whole page of text change font and size to match the chosen lines.



Easy-peasy! So much better than trying to highlight the whole book to change the font, or battling the Find and Replace menu to alter the format.

You use the same process to choose your paragraph type – whether indented (no space between paragraphs) or block paragraphs with no indent and a space between them. You don’t have to put in a space manually – Word will do it for you, and it can be undone easily if you change your mind and want to use indented paragraphs instead.



Here’s the tab to choose your paragraph style – this post is written in block style with a space after the paragraph, as is common in non-fiction writing. Most fiction is written with indented paragraphs with no space between. Add or remove the space to suit. And hey, look, here’s the line spacing option too. Really handy to alter it back and forth to see how it changes the page count and readability.

That’s enough to get your head around today. Come back next week for a look at headings, and some great labour-saving options that Word provides.

And remember, ‘normal’ is just a style – not a judgement of your brilliant, sparkling, innovative and far-from-normal writing!

Happy typing!





0 Comments
<<Previous
Forward>>

    Author

    Finding interesting things about life, writing, photography, publishing, and cute fluffy animals where appropriate.

    Archives

    April 2020
    May 2018
    May 2017
    January 2017
    September 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    December 2013

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.