Time to Write

irritable vs. irritating: write it right

A description of an article in the New York Times read, "PreCheck, the expedited-screening program used by a quarter of all passengers in domestic airports, is making for a less irritable experience."

They meant irritating. Here's what dictionary.com says:

ir·ri·ta·ble

  [ir-i-tuh-buhl]  Show IPA

adjective

1.

easily irritated or annoyed; readily excited to impatience or anger.

2.

Physiology, Biology . displaying irritability.

3.

Pathology . susceptible to physical irritation.

4.

Medicine/Medical . abnormally sensitive to a stimulus.

 

ir·ri·tat·ing

  [ir-i-tey-ting]  Show IPA

adjective

causing irritation; annoying; provoking: irritating questions.

 

I find going through security at airpots, especially those scanners that make you stand with your hands up in surrender, irritating but maybe I'm irritable.

 

ps: A friend suggested that I subhead these posts, "One man's doomed attempt to promote proper usage." He's probably right, but I'm not giving up!

15 examples of hyperbole that will rock your world, blow your mind (etc. etc.)

In a desperate bid to get us to click on articles or posts on the web, writers are creating headlines making ever-bolder promises and claims.

Here are a few I spotted this morning. Apparently if you read or look at these articles, they will:

...make you reconsider history

...make you speechless

...make your tummy rumble

Adjectives are gettting in on the act, too. One article promises to reveal websites that are not only useful but amazingly useful. Yes, there are many amazing things on the internet, including "Amazing Illustrations by Sayurikemiko" and "10 Amazing jQuery Typography Plugins for Your Site." If they're not amazing they're awesome, like "60+ Awesome Infographics After Effects Project Files."

The web also calls your attention to earth-shaking events you might otherwise miss, such "Why tonight's epsiode of Game of Thrones changed the rules forever." 

You'll find a lot of promises of ultimate experiences, like "Some of the Most Hilariiously Bad Racing You Will Ever See," and "This 'Ulysses' Auto-Correct Prank is Perhaps the Best Ever' (that "perhaps" is an unusual sign of modesty) and "10 Films That Can Teach You Everything You Need to Know About Cinematography." 

You'll also find a lot of useful life guidance, including "How 5 Post-It Notes Can Make You Happy, Confident and Successful" and "How to See Clearly Without Glasses Using a Simple Trick."

I'm sure diligent readers of this blog will be able to find a few cases where I've used titles that were a bit hyperbolic but I try to resist it.

I'm starting to skip reading  articles with headlines that make overblown promises. Not only do I know that the contents seldom, if ever, fulfil the claims but I'm also turned off and a little saddened by the whiff of desperation as they try to find new ways to say LOOK AT ME!!! PLEASE!!! HERE!!! ME!!!

A no-cost way to boost your creativity (wake me in 20)

Do you feel that your creativity is being held hostage by the 24/7 demands affecting many people these days? 

Here's a no-cost remedy: take a nap.

We know it's good for kids. One study found increased levels of anxiety and decreased problem-solving ability in kids who miss their afternoon nap. I don't know whether they measured crankiness but I bet that went up, too.

Minds.com has a helpful infographic about how long you should nap depending on the result you want. Here's a summary:

For increased alertness and energy: 10 to 20 minutes.

For improving memory: 60 minutes (but you may be a bit groggy about waking)

For increased creativity and all-around benefits: 90 minutes, a full sleep cycle that includes different levels of sleep including rapid-eye-movement sleep which usually is associated with dreaming. 

I'm partial to the 20 minute naps myself. They don't take too big a chunk out of the day but they really help me to revive when I'm flagging. 

(For a creative, right-brain approach to managing your time and life, get Focus: Use the Power of Targeted Thinking to Get More Done, published by Pearson and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

Do you have defining moments like this in your script or novel?

When you think back to your favorite novel or film, what moments in the story stick in your mind? Often there is one scene that reveals something new or even something very familiar about life and stays with us.

In an interview with Publishers Weekly, novelist Courtney Maum (I Am Having So Much Fun With You) talked about the mix of heartache and humor that often occur together. She gave a wonderful example from her life:

“For instance, last summer I was eight months pregnant and we had to put our cat down. I mean, we really loved this cat. While we were burying him in the backyard, two men were painting our nursery. And the painters were singing along to ‘Love Shack’ on this awful radio with terrible sound while we were outside crying.” 

I think if you can find this kind of moment when your character experiences something that illuminates the tragi-comedy that is his or her life (and ours) it enriches the story.

What moments like this did your characters experience?

Did they notice them at the time?

Were they changed by it?

Even if you don’t use those moments in your manuscript, being aware of them will help you get to know your characters more intimately.

As an exercise try looking at a photo and brainstorm what else might be happening or about to happen that would make it a dramatic moment (example below).

(Get tips on writing from Anton Chekhov and the other greatest writers of all time, collected in Your Creative Writing Masterclass, now available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

How to make a story about a table (or anything else) interesting

This is a link to a short video about the design of a table the top of which looks like its full of water with a couple of goldfish floating in it. As you'll see, no goldfish were harmed in the making of the video or the tables.

https://vimeo.com/91622252

Why am I suggesting you watch it? Because it's a great example of how you can make a story about just about anything interesting. Yes, the more cycnical among us may feel it's a bit over-the-top (after all, it's a table, not a cure for cancer). But there are some useful lessons we can draw from it. 

One is the power of passion. The man who narrates this video is passionate about his table and it's catching. If you tell your story with this level of conviction it will capture the imagination of a lot of listeners. Very useful if you're pitching a story to a producer or editor.

It's about people as much as about a product. Specific people. The fisherman turned fish sculptor, especially. We learn only a couple of things about him but it's enough to make him come alive, you know there's more to the story than the bit we glimpse. His story is couched in an old-school way, there's a little echo of Hemingway in there somewhere (maybe because I read The Old Man and the Sea at school).

It's about a problem and how somebody solved it. That's what most stories are about (although of course there's not always a happy ending...I guess in a more tragic version of the story they'd be using real goldfish).

There's a secret. In this case, how they get that effect. Notice how they call your attention to the fact that it's a secret. Ultimately I'm not going to lose any sleep over how they did it, but within the story it raises a little point of interest.

It leaves you with something to think about. In this case, I thought, wait a minute, I just got hooked (pun intended) by a story about a table. A nice table, but still a table. And that led me to consider how they did that, and that led to this post. 

 

The case of the fake screenwriting teacher (non-fiction!)

Author and TV producer Lee Goldberg wrote on his blog recently about one James Strauss (AKA James Robert Straus), who has been going around to writing conferences as an expert on writing for TV. Some of these gigs have involved free travel and speaking fees. Well, when you look at the great TV shows he's written, you'd be impressed, too...except that he made it all up.

He's never written for any of those shows and he's no expert. He claims that sure, he did write them, but he didn't take a writing credit because he was paid under the table...by some of the top TV producers in Hollywood, who belong the Writer's Guild...yeah, sure.

In a new post, Goldberg reveals that this con is small potatoes compared to Strauss' past. In 1998 he admitted defrauding a school out of $400,000 and while waiting to go to jail for that, he was charged with embezzling $20,000 from a company in Santa Fe.

I found an earlier case where he was sued for professional negligence relating to an insurance business.

The curious thing, as Goldberg pointed out, is that none of the people who hired or invited Strauss to speak checked on his credits. It's easy to look at imdb.com or to contact the Writer's Guild to see what somebody has written. Apparently Strauss is a smooth enough talker that nobody thought to check his credentials. Goldberg said, however, that as soon as Strauss started describing how TV writing works it was obvious he didn't know what he was talking about. 

By the way, the money Strauss stole from that school was for the teachers' retirement fund. He got a sentence of 21 months and was ordered to pay back the money he embezzled. It's not clear whether he did the latter.

Stranger than fiction, indeed!

Write it right: Sea change or sea of change?

In a news story today I saw this quote:  "“It is very unusual, even over a period of 40 years, to see such a sea of change in public attitudes."

Actually the phrase, courtesy of Shakespeare, is sea change (without the "of"): 

sea change - noun

1. a striking change, as in appearance, often for the better.

2. any major transformation or alteration.

3. a transformation brought about by the sea

Coined by Shakespeare, in Ariel's song, "Full Fathom Five," in The Tempest (1611)

 

 

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Awhile or a while? Write it right.

Write it right: Incredulous or incredible?

The all-important first sentences of your novel

It's probably not fair that people judge whether or not to buy a novel based on the cover, the back cover, and the first sentence, but that's how it works much of the time. Now that more people are buying books online, the back cover doesn't matter as much, but the cover image and the first sentence or two (as reached by the "look inside" feature) still carry most of the weight.

That's why the first sentence is so important. I belong to Bookbub.com, which offers ebooks free or at a reduced price, and I find a lot of times I don't opt to take even the free books if the first few lines don't grab my attention. I thought it might be interesting to take a closer look at a few openings. Let me hasten to say that these books may be excellent, I'm just sharing my personal response to their first lines.

The stocky man pumped his flannel-covered arms around the steering wheel as the white box truck he called Bessie rounded the corner.

The first problem I have is with the word "pumped." The motion I associate with pumping (as in working the handle of a pump) is up and down, which is not easy to link with a steering wheel. If I stop and think about it I can imagine the turning motion as pumping, but ideally a first sentence doesn't make you stop to figure out an image. Next we have his flannel-covered arms. I assume he's wearing a flannel shirt, but again the image makes me stop for a split-second to figure that out (rather than imagining it's only his arms that are flannel-covered). Then we have the information that he calls his box truck Bessie, which doesn't pull me into the story nor is it essential information at this point.

If the job of the first sentence is to effortlessly carry you on to the second sentence, that example isn't great. Let's look at another one.

Years ago, Once Upon a Time was Right Now.

OK, that's an interesting enough variation of the classic fairy tale opening to keep me reading. It goes on:

And eventually, Right Now will become Once Upon a Time. In fact, it just did. Time is funny like that. In most stories time is very important. Not in this one. The story may have horses and not cars, but really it could happen now like it did then. Then Being Once Upon a Time, years and years ago.

I'm starting to lose interest but let's see give it a few more lines.

The story is one of passion, and last time I checked, passion was still around. It exists in love, hate, obsession. For instance, I have a passion for pickled herring. I can't live without it...

Nothing is happening and I have no idea who the "I" is who checked whether or not passion is still around and loves pickled herring. Next!

My daddy once called me a cockroach, because when I was a kid I dug in the trash for food scraps and drank from the dog's water to survive. He said he meant it as a compliment.

We have a winner! Why is this one better? Because it raises a question. It makes us curious why the character dug in the trash and drank from the dog's water to survive, and what kind of father would consider calling a child a cockroach a compliment.

Contrast that to the first example, which doesn't make me wonder anything about the man driving the truck, and the second, which doesn't make us wonder about much of anything until it gets to pickled herring. By then, following a consideration of the nature of time and passion, pickled herring feels a bit of a let-down.

I don't know if you feel the same way about these particular examples, but looking at these has sent me back for a closer look at the first lines of the projects I'm working on; maybe it'll prompt you to look at yours as well.

(Want friendly guidance on writing your novel? You'll find it in Your Writing Coach, published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

 

Awhile or a while? Write it right.

I spotted this sentence in an article in US Today:  "And because his presence 'inspires people' and makes them forget about their problems for awhile."

That got me thinking about the difference between awhile and a while.

According to Dictionary.com: 

The adverb awhile  is spelled as a single word: After stopping in Hadley awhile, we drove to Deerfield. As the object of a preposition, the noun phrase a while is used, especially in editing wriing, but the single wordform is becoming increasingly common: We rested for a while (or awhile).

I know that lots of people think "increasingly common" is the same as "correct," but being a curmugeon, I don't agree. 

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If you can do this, you don't need to be a great writer

Crime novelist Denise Mina told Writing Magazine, "I really think if you are taking a reader to somewhere they've never been before you have to make the reader think about things in a new way. You have to have a narrative arc and a central pacing which can often be achieved by chopping up the chapters in the right way. You don't answer the question and finish the chapter, you pose the question and finish the chapter."

In other words, you end the chapter just at the point at which the reader is eager to know what happened next.

Often the next chapter starts at a different location or a different time, so that the question isn't answered right away. However, you don't want to go too much further without giving at least a hint of the answer or the reader may lose interest.

This ability to manage the plot in a way that keeps the reader turning the pages is more important than your literary style--at least in terms of selling books if not in terms of winning awards. One of the best practitioners of this skill is Mary Higgins Clark. Here's one of her typical sentence, from I've Got You Under My Skin:

"Thirty-six years old, with shoulder-length hair the color of honey, hazel eyes more green than brown, a slim build, and classic features untouched by make-up, Laurie was the kind of woman people turned to take a second look at when she passed by."

Pretty clunky.

One more: "Behind the dark glasses, bright blue eyes glittered, and the skater laughed aloud." Don't people generally laugh aloud?

However, she does know how to keep a story moving forward at a good clip and how to keep you turning the pages. For that alone it may be worth your time to read one or two of her books to see how she does it. I'd recommend one of her early books, like Where are the Children?

You may find it useful to make a list of the various end of chapter devices, like the appearance of an unexpected danger, the revelation of an important piece of information the protagonist doesn't know, and a different (ominous) perspective on something that seemed harmless. Without copying any specifics you can use these in crafting your own chapter endings.

 

Ahh, the modern journalist (and the parrot)

A story in today's London Evening Standard is headlined, "Heroic parrot rescues female owner from attack in park."

It was a bit of a let-down to read what the parrot's "heroic" action was: "But the attacker was stopped in his tracks after the parrot flapped his wings and squawked, startling the man, who ran off down Great North Road."

However, the bird turned out to have more impressive powers, judging by this sentence in the article: "The woman and the parrot escaped unscathed and called the police."

Presumably the woman held the phone and the parrot pecked the number. 

If you write for teens (or have one) this study may interest you

A recent study conducted at ten high schools with high-performing students suggests that being assigned a lot of homework results in stress and even physical health problems.

The students reported having to do an average of three hours homework per night. That's at odds with the popular impression that students these days are getting an easy ride. 

Some of the students reported being overwhelmed; one described it as "an endless barrage of work" and another said "there's never time to rest."

They cited homework as the main reason they didn't get the recommended 9.25 hours of sleep per night. Excuse me for being skeptical but you don't suppose Facebook might have something to do with that as well?

Also, I don't remember getting the 9.25 hours of sleep per night when I was a teen-ager, except on weekends, even though I didn't feel overwhelmed with an endless barrage of homework. Of course that was long before the internet; my excuse was listening to the local radio station's rebroadcast of Jean Shephard's show at 11pm weeknights. He was a fantastic storyteller.

The report also said "students will often do work they see as 'pointless, useless, and mindless.' Hey, welcome to the real world, kids!

I don't doubt that some schools are assigning too much homework, but I also think any study like this would benefit from more objective measures and should take into account the self-dramatizing propensity of teens. Also, the study characterizes the schools they studied as "upper middle class," "privileged" and "high-performing" so it's not representative of the average schools.

However, for people who write for teens this is useful as a little insight into how some of them feel about the demands being made of them.

I vote FOR the Oxford comma. How about you?

Yes, I know that in the UK the Oxford comma is not too popular but I'm for it. How about you? Here's a short (3 minute) animation about it...OK, we may be overthinking this, but...

A delightful animated history of film in just over one minute

Designer Pier Paolo has created a delightful little animated history of film. See how many of the movies and characters you recognize:

Cinematics from Pier Paolo on Vimeo.

A new web site format - take a peek

The folks at Webpgr.com have developed a new format that puts an entire book on one "interactive" web page. 

The first one they've made available in this format is old favorite Alice in Wonderland. You can see it here. The interactivity is clicking on a chapter, which then zooms into view. It's not really any more interactive than turning a page but it's a very simple way to distribute and access a book

Alice is one demonstration of a new approach to web design. They call it "the (web) editor for the digital native."

It's in closed beta but you can request access and see a video with a brief look at another, more complex and interesting use of Webpgr.

If I get access I plan to play around with it and I'll share the results with you.