The Heat is On

I am having trouble with my MacBook. It made a horrible clacking noise last week, so I backed everything up, shut it down and took it to the Apple Store, where the Genius Bar dude listened and fiddled and finally diagnosed a clogged fan. He blew some compressed air in the vents, dislodged a wad of cat hair (shocking, I know...) and sent me home, sans noisy fan.

Well, it looks like my MacBook is actually sans working fan altogether. It heats up after less than a half hour, hot enough to be felt through a pillow. So... I'm going back to the Genius Bar and hoping it's something that can be fixed quickly and easily or I'm gonna be sans MacBook for at least a week. I can write on my Neo Alphasmart, but I won't have my WIP to refer to while I'm writing . Maybe this will be good for my productivity... maybe not. We shall see.

So. Since my beloved MacBook is heating up even as I type this, what do YOU do when your computer poops out temporarily? Pen and pad? Tape-recorder? Inquiring minds want to know!

Too Much Dialogue

by Jean Henry Mead

Dialogue makes or breaks a novel. Excessive conversation accelerates the plot and your reader can’t relax. It’s like a nervous people who can’t stop talking because she’s afraid of silence. Dialogue must be balanced with narrative as well as action.

If your characters all sound alike you’ve got a problem. You have to vary speech patterns so they can be recognized without dialogue tags. Make effective use of speech patterns by having a character “murder” the language with “he don’t” or “you was.” Or have someone stutter or use cliches. Those are extreme examples of speech patterns but they individualize your characters.

The quality of information your character imparts is also important. One of your characters can be feather-brained and rattle on without making sense—but not for long. Another character may sound like Einstein because his words are few and wise. Like the old brokerage firm commercial: “When you whisper, others listen,” remember that short bursts of dialogue elicit the reader’s attention while long diatribes can put them to sleep.

If you’re writing about Abe Lincoln giving his Gettysburg Address, you need to split it up with a gunshot or someone interrupting him so that it doesn’t go on forever. Monologues belong on the “Tonight Show,” not in your novel.

Dialogue should be lucid. Don’t have a character reciting a laundry list of complaints without taking a breath. Again, have another character interrupt him by asking a question or punching him in the nose.

Don’t overedit your dialogue. No one, whether living or in fiction, speaks with perfect diction—unless he’s an actor reciting a script. Make sure there's plenty of emotion as well as color in every character’s speech.

Bharti Kirchner’s article, “What Did You Say?” emphasizes dialogue as a language unto itself. “It has its own rules and rhythm and is tightly focused. You don’t necessarily answer a question, but, as often as not, go off on a tangent and start a fresh topic. This keeps the reader in suspense.“

For example:

“Joey!” She frowned at him from across the room.
“Mama.”
“You’re late.”
“You look so beautiful today that I’m going to take your picture.”

When you leave out tag lines, the conversation is allowed to flow more smoothly. But, make sure that each character's speech patterns area easily recognizable.

Forensic Tips and Other Stuff

The Public Safety Writers Association conference turned out wonderfully! I was in charge of the program--and like anything else, I wasn't sure how the speakers would be or how well they'd be received.

Steve Scarborough, who I'd met the year before, is a newly retired forensic expert who gave us some intriguing tidbits. I put them on my own personal blog, but think they are good enough to spread around a bit more:

Steve was wonderful. He's been an expert forensic witness on all kind of crimes. I'm just going to mention a few of the things he told us.

Forensic Evidence can narrow the leads and eliminate suspects.
Forensic facts can make your story come alive, but you need to be careful.

You should know the direction your story is going before you do the research.

Fingerprints are the most conclusive form of forensic evidence though Fingerprints and DNA should get equal billing.

It's hard to get fingerprints off of towels, the sofa, etc. metal and glass works better.

Ballistics evidence depends upon certain conditions of the bullet.

Other types of evidence are hair, fiber, glass fragments, ABO blood type, shoe prints.

Everything is circumstantial evidence except an eye witness.

What you must have is Means, Motive and Opportunity.

It's a myth that anything can be done--nothing is proven quickly, and some of the science seen on TV is make-believe.

You can't tell race or sex from fingerprints.

There is no such thing as a three point or four point match in fingerprints.

Detectives don't follow the evidence to the lab.

And the labs don't have everything they need in forensics. The smaller the place, the less they will have in the way of crime labs.

Steve was fantastic, worth the price of the conference. (And by the way, he had to pay to come too. Because it's such a small conference, all the speakers had to pay to come. Guess how much fun that is to explain when you're trying to get speakers. Despite that, we had other great speakers, Betty Webb for one, Sheila Lowe who is a forensic handwriting expert, and Joyce Spizer Foy who besides being a private eye has written screen plays and any number of exciting pursuits.)

In my books, the police officers use old-fashioned detective work--I never use much in the way of forensics, found it easier that way. Even had a reviewer say once that he suspected most police departments operated like my fictional Rocky Bluff P.D. using old-fashioned police work to find out the answers.

And as a P.S. I'm already planning for next year. If you'd like to be a speaker (writing information or as an expert) and don't mind paying your way, please do contact me.

Marilyn a.k.a. F. M. Meredith
http://fictionforyou.com

Of Hopping Vampires, Witches, and a New Series

I'd like to welcome Hailey Lind aka Juliet Blackwell aka Julie, President of NorCal Sisters in Crime as our guest today! This intro should have gone up with the post, but my computer started making ghastly noises yesterday, so I backed everything up and hastily shut it off. As a result, no intro this morning when the post went up! I'm happy to say the noises were caused by cat hair in the MacBook's fan - the Genius at the Apple Store shot compressed air through it and POOF! Out came a big old wad of fur. I am shocked, I tells ya! Anyway, please welcome the lovely and talented Julie/Hailey/Juliet!

I was at a book reading the other day listening to two author friends, Eric Stone and Tim Maleeny. Eric was talking about his series set in China and Hong Kong, based upon true stories that he gathered while there as a journalist. Fascinating stuff. But then, as an aside, he happened to mention that Chinese vampires hold their arms out stiffly in front of them, and hop.

Wait.

What? They hold their arms out like mummies, and hop? That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard! I know that there’s a Mexican type of vampire that is sort of a cross between werewolf and vampire, the terrifying chupacabras. The Chinese version sounds like a cross between a ghoul and a vampire. I can just see a new blockbuster movie trilogy: The Ethnic Vampire Wars.

But it’s really the hopping I find most enthralling. Plus, upon further inquiry one learns that the Chinese vampire fighter’s arsenal does not include stakes. Instead, you can zap the fearsome creature by writing a symbol on a piece of yellow paper and sticking it to his forehead. And, if you throw uncooked rice at it, or –why stop there?-- set a whole bag by the door, your average Chinese vampire feels compelled to pause in its ghastly pursuit of blood, and count each and every grain of rice.

This got me thinking about how folkloric traditions vary from culture to culture, even when they start out with a lot in common (this is the way my mind works -- I used to be an anthropologist). When I set about writing my new Witchcraft mysteries (Secondhand Spirits, the first in the series, will be released from Obsidian July 7), I was determined to take the Witchcraft seriously, and for the idea of witches to make sense historically and culturally.

What do I mean by that? When I set out to write a Witchcraft book, I decided, first and foremost, not to allow anyone to think that I was revisiting “Bewitched”. I’ll confess it was one of my favorite shows when I was a child…but it truly butchered the real history and cultural traditions of witches, whether European or otherwise.

My protagonist, Lily Ivory, comes from a small town in Texas. She inherits a witchcraft tradition based on her adoptive grandmother, who is a curandera, a Mexican “curer”. Curanderas do exist in much of Latin America, and they often are a village’s only source of health care. But people being what they are, a powerful curandera might also be feared and despised, and re-labeled a bruja, or witch. They are often believed to have a Nagual, a type of nocturnal familiar that sneaks around town while they are asleep, keeping an eye on people, for good or for ill.

I may not be a practicing witch myself, but I respect the tradition(s). I revere the weight of history; the strength of folklore as a manifestation of communal angst and desire; and the awe-inspiring power of nature. And when it comes right down to it, I’m open to the idea that there is much more unknown than known in our world.

There are witch traditions all over the world –just as there are vampire traditions. The majority of us in the U.S. are most familiar with the European concept of witchcraft, but in other countries there is a strong and continuing tradition associating witches with healing and medicine, as in the traditional “witch doctor.” I hope Secondhand Spirits delivers an entertaining cast of characters (including a shape-shifting miniature Vietnamese pot-bellied pig), an engrossing mystery, and plenty of compelling urban fantasy; but most importantly, I hope it respects the ancient, universal, and fascinating tradition of witchcraft in its myriad forms.

Now, if I could just come up with a way to include hopping vampires in the storyline, I’d be all set. Or would that be too over the top?

Juliet Blackwell, aka Hailey Lind, is the pseudonym for a mystery author who, together with her sister, wrote the Art Lover's Mystery Series—including the Agatha-nominated Feint of Art and the IMBA bestsellers Shooting Gallery and Brush with Death. The fourth in the series, Arsenic and Old Paint, will be released in fall, 2010. Juliet's new paranormal Witchcraft Mystery series begins with Secondhand Spirits (July, 2009), about a witch with a vintage clothing store in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. Cast-off Coven will be the second in the series. If These Walls Could Talk, to be released in 2010, is the first in the Sophie Tanner Historic Home Renovation series about a failed anthropologist running her father's high-end construction company.

A former anthropologist and social worker, Juliet has worked in Mexico, Spain, Cuba, Italy, the Philippines, and France. She currently resides in a happily haunted house in Oakland, California, where she is a muralist, portrait painter, and recipient of the overly zealous attentions of her neighbor's black cat, who seems to imagine himself her new familiar. Juliet/Hailey is two-term president of Northern California Sisters in Crime. Visit her at her website.

Hair Trigger

by Ben Small



One of the first things the Tacti-ccol set buys for a pistol is a trigger job, usually defined as a smoothing out of the trigger action, shortening the stroke, taking up creep, and lightening the pull. But if this is for a self-defense gun, the owner's trigger job may result in a shot to the head, legally speaking.

The self defense claim is held to a fairly high standard in most states. To be proven, it must be shown that the force used was reasonable with regard to the threat and not an over-reaction. Whether you or the state has the burden of proof will depend on the state. But the last thing the potential defendant needs, are facts that may tend to show an eagerness to use deadly force.

To a prosecutor, a trigger job becomes a "hair-trigger," one intended to release a deadly missile with the least of a finger tug.

One more arrow in the prosecutor's quiver.

But jail-time or a possible death penalty aren't the only risks. Sooner or later, a civil lawsuit -- or several of them -- will be filed. And civil cases don't require a 'beyond a reasonable doubt" standard; the criteria, instead, is "more likely than not." You can imagine what fun a plaintiff's attorney will have with the term "hair-trigger." And since the shooting will be deemed an intentional act, more than likely, homeowner's insurance won't cover any liability and may not cover defense costs.

As O.J. showed, one can be acquitted in criminal court and be convicted in civil court. And punitive damages will be awarded with a verdict.

Defense costs alone, criminal and civil, will cost the defendant a million dollars or more. In the meantime, the defendant will have lost his or her job and will likely have sold most of his or her assets to cover expenses, fines and judgments.

Quite a price to pay for a simple trigger-job. And that's why seasoned veterans of the gun culture caution one to leave one's self-defense pistol alone. Don't use special hand-loads, don't mess with the trigger. The gun manufacturers provide trigger pull standards, and those standards and why they were set, as testified to by expert witnesses, will track the differential between factory triggers and production loads and trigger-jobs and hand-loaded ammo.

That's why cops use double action pistols with high weight trigger pulls. If they shoot, they have to justify the shooting. Special bullets and trigger jobs signal a trigger-happy officer. That's bad news. When a cop shoots, he goes on administrative leave while the shooting review board considers the circumstances. Handloads or trigger jobs will spell t-r-o-u-b-l-e; the cop may be brought up on disciplinary charges, and civil suits are sure to follow.

So if your protag is carrying a gun, make sure there's been no trigger job, and use production hollow-point ammo. Hollow-point bullets are standard police issue these days. What used to be called "dum-dums," a term used during the day when prosecutors and plaintiff's lawyers sought excessive force claims, is now considered the safer bullet. Ballistics tests have proven that hollow-point bullets are less likely than wadcutters or ball ammo to penetrate through a body and strike a bystander.



Funny thing that. Concern for bystanders. For it could also be claimed that a smoother, lighter trigger means a more accurate shot, less finger push or pull. And accuracy means less likelihood that bystanders will be hit.

But lawyers like how the term "hair trigger" plays to a jury.

Inspirations That Didn't Pan Out

By Chester Campbell

My colleagues Mark Troy and Ben Small recently wrote about inspiration, so I thought why not (thoughts are usually italicized, aren’t they)? Mark wrote about things that inspired his plots, while Ben wrote about locations and music and such that inspire his muse. I decided to make mine a trip down memory lane, to use an appropriate cliché, and cover works never published.

Going back into ancient history, 1948 to be exact, my first mystery novel was inspired by the reading of No Pockets in a Shroud by Horace McCoy. The book told the story of a crusading newspaper reporter fighting crime. I was 22 at the time, a neophyte reporter for The Knoxville Journal at night, a journalism junior at the University of Tennessee during the day. In my spare time I pounded out a mystery on my little Smith-Corona portable about a reporter solving a murder. I later learned McCoy was born near Nashville, my hometown. Dear old Kirkus called No Pockets his worst book. They won’t get the chance to say that about Time Waits for Murder. It rests peacefully in the brittle brown envelope in which it was returned by THE EDITORS at David McKay Co. in Philadelphia.

Following an all-expense-paid vacation in Korea during the early fifties, courtesy of Uncle Sam, where I worked as an Air Force intelligence officer, I shifted my reading preference to Cold War spy stories. Helen Macinnes, John Le Carre, Graham Greene and Len Deighton were my favorites. And my inspiration. In the mid-sixties, while editing Nashville Magazine, a slick paper monthly, I squeezed in time to write a novel dealing with a Russian plot to foil U.S. radars in Iran that monitored the Soviet Union’s airspace. I got the idea from my familiarity with radar, having gone on active duty in 1951 with the 119th Aircraft Control & Warning Squadron of the Tennessee Air National Guard. This manuscript also resides in the historical section of paper piles on my office floor.

After retiring from the Air Force Reserve and from management of a statewide trade association, I turned to writing fulltime (more or less) in 1990. The Cold War was coming to an end with the Soviet Union going down the tubes, and I penned my first spy thriller. Actually, I didn’t pen it. Anything I write by hand is undecipherable a few hours later. I had upgraded my computer and bought a rudimentary word processing program that would only hold a few chapters in a file. The inspiration for the character was an ex-FBI agent I had met during my magazine days. His almost unbelievable experiences provided the protagonist’s background. The story involved a plot to save the Soviet system by killing the American and Russian presidents.

Titled Beware the Jabberwock, that was the first book in a trilogy. Number two came out of my service in Korea and a visit there shortly before my retirement. The plot involved the assassination of North Korean President Kim Il-sung and his son, Kim Jong-il. It would surely have saved us a lot of current trouble if the plot have proven true. My character from the Jabberwock was set up as head of a company that was a CIA spinoff. He made a business trip to South Korea to coordinate the operation.

Book three found ex-KGB agents working to thwart the governments of Russia and its former satellites and re-establish the old Soviet state. The inspiration for that one came from my habit of watching the Independence Day symphony concerts on the Mall behind the U.S. Capitol. As I watched the canon fire during the 1812 Overture, I thought what if somebody used that as a cover to fire nerve gas mortar shells into the crowd? This manuscript got me a contract with John Grisham’s first agent, who he later sued. I didn’t sue but wound up canceling the contract after they let this one and the next two gather dust on the shelf. When they had finally sent it to Tor Forge, the editor liked my writing but said the manuscript was “dated.” If it had been picked up and published when I first submitted it, the book would have come out about the time of the subway nerve gas attack in Japan.

A son and daughter who graduated in computer science and pursued careers in computer programming led to the story of a young programmer working on a voice synthesization program that would mimic a person’s voice enough to fool a voice print analysis. He gets involved with an investment firm I modeled after a famous Depression Era case. It winds up with a chase around Nashville by the bad guys and an attempt to eliminate my hero by funneling carbon monoxide into a sealed-off computer room.

The next book was inspired by stories told by my younger son who served for several years in Army Special Forces. A former Green Beret officer comes across a document that indicates a paramilitary outfit is preparing to bomb critical installations in two weeks. He talks to a former FBI agent who turns up dead. He winds up on the run from both the police and the secretive militia organization.

After that came a story that mirrored a trip I took with a church seniors group to New Orleans. In my version, one of the passengers is a former investment advisor to a Mafia family. He testified against the mob and went into the witness protection program but left it to pursue his own path. After several years, a mob enforcer finds him just before the bus leaves for the Big Easy. There are a lot of complicating factors, but it ends during a hurricane just outside New Orleans. The touring events on the trip are exactly as I experienced them.

I wrote one other manuscript during this period which I won’t go into for personal reasons. Suffice it to say after nine unsuccessful tries, I finally hit the shelves in 2002 with Secret of the Scroll, my first Greg McKenzie mystery. I now have five books out, but I’ve run out of space to talk about them.

More Summer Reads By Christine Duncan

I can't help pinging off Libby's post because I too love summer reading. I don't know why--memories of the beach at Sea Isle where I spent my childhood summers? Anyway, there just seems to be more time to read in summer.
I read a bunch of different ways. The paper books I'm reading right now are both historical mysteries. I picked up the first one, The Serpent's Daughter by Suzanne Arruda, because I "met" the author on Twitter. I can identify with Suzanne's heroine, Jade, who is a likeable and outspoken heroine and I'm learning a bit of history with the book too.
The other historical mystery I'm reading is Fiona Buckley's The Fugitive Queen. I've liked the whole series which is set in Elizabethan times. Ursula is, frankly, a lot braver than I am but it is interesting reading without pushing my "scaredy cat" button. Makng its way to the front with these two is Sharon Short's Tie Dyed and Dead. This series has been a lot of fun for me as I really like the heroine, Josie Toadfern.
Last but not least, I'm in the middle of Web of Evil by J.A. Jance which I'm listening to on audio as I run. I loved her Sheriff Joanna Brady series so I just couldn't bring myself to make the change to this one until now. But the whole divorce/lost job theme is so real, I'm finding reasons to do more running so I can listen--always a good thing in summer when I'd rather sit in a lawn chair on the patio with a lemonade.
So what are you reading? Help me beef up my TBR list.


Christine Duncan is the author of the Kaye Berreano mystery series. Book two, Safe House is due out in print in July from Trebleheartbooks

Summer Reads

I love summer reading – it’s like ice cream on a hot day without the calories! I move from genre to genre, somehow always coming back to the mystery or the suspense/thriller category, though. There’s just something about trying to figure out whodunit, while sitting in the shade of an oak or maple tree, even a shade umbrella, that relaxes me. I don’t consider summer reading the time for fluff either – I love books and reading at any time, but somehow, the relaxation of summer means it’s okay to spend an afternoon reading.

Right now, I have a couple of books on the go. I tried a new author with Michael Blair and his Depth of Field: A Granville Island book. I’m really enjoying it so far and it’s always great to discover a new-to-you author.

Tried and true – I’m also reading the James Patterson and Maxine Paetro book The 8th Confession on my iPod Touch. I’m a Women’s Murder Club addict and was very displeased when they didn’t pick up the series for more than one season on television. I really liked the casting, and it was a case of the series led me to the books. Anyway, just getting started on this one, but I can always count on the perfect summer read in this series.

I also like how Patterson works with other authors – can you imagine the career boost (even if you’re already successful) of working with Patterson. It’s a guaranteed sale to the publisher and lots of sales, and thus royalties. I’m not sure how the collaboration works, but it would be fantastic to have the opportunity to work with an author like Patterson who has the process down to a fine art when it comes to writing, marketing, publicity, etc.

Anyway, what are your favorite summer reads that you’re either already indulging in or looking forward to reading?

Why Focus on Characters?

We talk a lot about how to create good characters, and I plan to spend a few blogs focused on the subject, but it raises a question that may be lurking in the minds of new writers. Why are characters so important?

I believe that characters are the main reason people read fiction. Sure, plots are important, setting is valuable, and it’s nice to have something to say, but fiction is about the characters. Fiction is gossip about people whose feelings we don’t have to worry about hurting, since we made them up.

I have heard it said that the difference between literary and genre fiction is that genre fiction is about the plot and literary fiction is about characters. As a genre writer I feel that literary fiction is about characters and their feelings only, while genre writers have to be able to write great characters AND have them actually DO something. Whether or not you agree with me, just accept that for any kind of fiction, your story won’t work unless it is carried by full, well delineated characters.

So what makes good characters?

Every character has a personality all his or her own. The final indication of how good a character you’ve created is simply how fully the reader feels he knows that personality, and how strongly the reader reacts to the character emotionally. Speaking generally, I believe that good characters have four important markers.

1. They are people we recognize. You know it’s a good character when you say, “Hey, I know a guy just like that.” You might not be personally acquainted with any 19th century business owners, but we all know an Ebenezer Scrooge, don’t we? Is he a stereotype? Well yes, he is now.

Are stereotypes bad? Only if that’s as far as you take the character. Heck, in real life everyone is a stereotype when we first meet them. We like to slot people when we first encounter them, so let’s allow our readers to do the same thing when they first meet our characters.

Consider Scrooge. At the beginning of the story, no one could like him. He is selfish, arrogant, greedy and mean. But as we learn more about his reasons for being who he is we begin to feel compassion for him. So as an author it’s okay to start with a stereotype as long as you go on to show the reasons for his or her behavior.

2. They are people we can identify with. Or, with whom we can identify for the grammarians among you – although this rule about ending sentences with a preposition is a foolish anachronism up with which I will not put.

But I digress. Good characters do thing that you or I might do if we were ever in their extraordinary circumstances. When Sydney Carton faces the guillotine in Darnay’s place at the end of A Tale of Two Cities, the act gives his whole life (and the whole book) meaning. We all want to believe that in that spot we’d do exactly the same thing. Likewise, none of us wants to literally tilt at windmills, but don’t we all identify with Don Quixote’s idealized view of life?

3. They are people we can predict. That comes from creating consistent characters. And that comes from thinking your people through. How do you get to know your characters that well? A good exercise for this is to write your character into a number of different situations, just to see what he or she will do. If you’ve developed them well, they may surprise you. But then you’ll know how they’ll behave in your book or story.

4. They are people who surprise us. That may at first seem contradictory, but people surprise us in life all the time. One reason is that none of us lives in a vacuum. Our relationships and our environment shape us. My detective, Hannibal Jones, is of mixed heritage, although in our society such people are generally regarded as Black. I think I’ve added depth to the character by showing my readers how differently he behaves and speaks among his friends than he does in the mostly white business world of Washington. His behavior may surprise you in some circumstances, yet it’s completely consistent. Consider yourself as a fictional character. Consider how your parents might be surprised if they saw you with your drinking buddies, or how your poker partners might be surprised if they met you in church. Then you can extend that to consider yourself in extraordinary circumstances.

You may consider yourself a nonviolent person, but if a terrorist was threatening your mother’s life and all you had at hand was your drinking glass, would you break it and try to tear his throat out with the jagged glass? If you answered yes, consider this: does she know that? You might well surprise her in that situation.

We all have split personalities and as long as you can explain your character’s motivations, it’s okay for them to occasionally surprise your readers. If the Christmas Carol had been told in a different order, Scrooge’s actions on Christmas Day could have been as surprising to the reader as they were to the other characters.

By now you’ve gathered that authors should know a good deal about their characters. I will go farther and say that you should know everything about your characters. In fact, you should know far more than you tell the reader about characters. You should know their history, their motives, their loves and hates, what they’re proud of and what they’re ashamed of. That’s how they get to be consistent.

In my writing class I offer my students a handout as one way to approach building characters. It is an inventory of personal traits through which you can learn all the important things about a character. This list of traits and details can be used as a fill-in-the-blank character starter. Each of those traits tells a bit more about your character. You can find an example of one such character inventory on line at eclectics.com http://www.eclectics.com/articles/character.html

If writers remain consistent with all of the character traits they choose they will have a great character who readers will take to their hearts because they will feel as if they really know the person they're reading about.

Writing Tight

By Earl Staggs

I’ve heard writing is easy. All you have to do is open a vein. Ooooh. Sounds painful. And bloody.

In addition to being painful, writing is NOT easy. It’s hard work. We want our readers to envision a setting exactly as we did when we described it. We want our characters to materialize in the reader’s mind as they did in ours when we created them. We want our story to unfold for the reader exactly as we planned. To accomplish all that takes a lot of time and effort. Plus, you have to stop once in a while and mop up the blood.

I’ve also heard only ten percent of what we do is writing. The other ninety percent is rewriting. If that’s true, and it seems that way for me, once the first draft is done, the hard work – and pain – have only begun. After the major components of our masterpiece are in place, we have to scrutinize each word, sentence and paragraph to make sure they’re the best they can be. We want to be certain we have the right words in the right order, eliminate unnecessary words, and replace weak words with stronger ones if we can find them. Call it polishing, tweaking, pruning, or what you will. I call it tightening. Tightening requires hard work, a lot of time, a working knowledge of the cut, copy, paste and delete functions, a big fat dictionary, and a Thesaurus.

If writing is like opening a vein, tightening is like removing your own appendix. Ouch.

I recently became a regular columnist for Apollo’s Lyre, a wonderful ezine owned and operated by the magnificent Lea Schizas. In each bimonthly issue, in a column called ”Write Tight,” I’ll talk about methods and processes of tightening our writing with examples and discussion. To give you an idea, for the June issue, I worked with this example of a passage in need of tightening:

“Years ago, when I was in high school, the other kids referred to me as a nerd. Whenever they saw me, it seemed as if I had my arms full of books, and they never missed a chance to tease and taunt me about it.”

In the article, I went through the tightening procedure step by step and reduced it to this:

“In high school, the other kids called me a nerd. They’d see me with my arms full of books and make fun of me.”

Fewer words, simpler, and says all that’s needed to make the point. Passive words and phrases have been eliminated, weak words made stronger. The entire passage slimmed down to bare bones.

Of course, tightening down to bare bones is not always what we want. There are times when we want the reader to slow down, dwell on our words a second or two longer, give the messaqe time to sink in. In those times, we may purposely pad our work with passive words or phrases here and there and sneak in a modifier or two.

How does a writer know when to tighten to bare bones and when to pad?

Practice, practice, practice.

And keep a few pints of blood handy for transfusions.

Earl Staggs