Stitches Thru Time: writing tips

Showing posts with label writing tips. Show all posts

Saturday, July 8, 2017

Paint Yourself Into a Book With Special Guest Leeann Betts

Today we sit down with author and storyteller Leeann Betts as she brings us inside her house and writing projects. Welcome, Leeann! Take it away.

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Living in an old house provides lots of opportunity for devising plots, particularly when the task at hand is painting a room. As I slathered yet another coat of paint over the neon blue bedroom walls, I got to thinking about how painting and writing require similar processes.

Here is mine:

When painting a room, the first step is to visualize what color you want on the walls: choose the genre, then the characters and setting. If your book is a romance, you want to choose your hero and heroine and an antagonist who will try to keep them apart. For a mystery, you will choose the problem, who did it, and then create a sleuth to find the solution. Setting includes the time period as well as geographical location. Understand your characters’ goal, motivation, and conflict, and make the goal worthy of the journey.
The next step in painting a room is repairing the defects: come up with a plot line. Most often, you’ll find that the first thing you think of for a plot will be the easy point. To create a compelling story, you must think beyond that first idea, and ask more “And then what?” questions. Fill in the holes in the plot. Don’t let your hero off the hook too easily.
Unless you want your entire room the same color, you’ll likely tape off areas: In writing, your outline, synopsis, and elevator pitch will keep you on track. For seat-of-the-pants writers, you don’t have to write a ten-page outline. Even an elevator pitch, fifty words or less, can keep you on track. And for those who love to outline, the joy still emerges when a character says or does something you weren’t expecting.
Finally, after all the preparation, now paint: Writing requires tools. Included in your toolkit will be something to write on; a notepad and pen; a space where you can write; some software, and patience. Set daily or weekly goals for your writing. Occasionally read over what you wrote the previous day and make a few changes. Keep your outline in front of you to keep you on track. Review your characters’ GMC to make sure your character is changing and moving toward their goals.

Sometimes I fool myself into thinking I can paint a room in a couple of hours, forgetting all the preparation and clean-up to make the job truly complete. Just as painting a room doesn’t begin and end with a single brush stroke, writing a book takes a lot of preparation, process, and finish. But it can be done. I am living proof of that. I’ve painted many rooms and written a number of books. You can too!

Readers, leave Leeann a comment to get your name in the drawing for this week's giveaway of a book by Crystal Barnes!

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Leeann Betts writes contemporary suspense, while her real-life persona, Donna Schlachter, pens historical suspense. She has released five titles in her cozy mystery series, By the Numbers, with Hidden Assets released the end of June. In addition, Leeann has written a devotional for accountants, bookkeepers, and financial folk, Counting the Days, and with her real-life persona, Donna Schlachter, has published a book on writing, Nuggets of Writing Gold, a compilation of essays, articles, and exercises on the craft. She publishes a free quarterly newsletter that includes a book review and articles on writing and books of interest to readers and writers. You can subscribe at www.LeeannBetts.com or follow Leeann at www.AllBettsAreOff.wordpress.com All books are available on Amazon.com in digital and print, and at Smashwords.com in digital format.

Facebook: http://bit.ly/1pQSOqV

Twitter: http://bit.ly/1qmqvB6

Books: http://amzn.to/2dHfgCE

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Distinctive Speech Patterns for Your Characters

Each character in your story needs to have their own unique voice within your voice as an author. The reader will become easily bored if each character uses the exact same words or phrases. How do you make them sound different, and how do you decide what they should sound like without irritating and overwhelming?

Two of the most famous examples of authors who created unique character dialog are Mark Twain in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and Harriet Beecher Stowe in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Reader’s either love it or hate it, but their characters have made an impression on millions over many years.

Your character’s background should include where they came from, their education, and distinct personality traits. This will give you a clue for what kind of speech patterns to look for. Each of us speaks a little different, so you can use nicknames unique to a particular character. My female protagonist’s long-time friends call her “Bon,” short for Bonny, and even “Carrot-top,” because of her red hair. Her friends in Scotland never use these terms, so it also adds a feeling of long-term familiarity between the characters.

Not all characters in a story come from the same background, even if they currently reside in the same local, so research needs to be thorough. It’s hard to do if you’ve never been there before, so reading books set in the same place and time as your book can help. Watching movies set in the time period and location help you get a feel for it, but you still have to write the dialogue so the reader understands.

When I set my book in Scotland I had to do some research because although they speak English, it’s not the same as in my native New Mexico or even the same as England. So where can you find information about how English is spoken in a unique fashion in different places?

Here are some helpful hints on how I gave my characters from Scotland and New Mexico a distinctive sound. The same can be done for most dialects and languages.

· Visit the location. I would never have known that when ordering water in a Scottish restaurant the waiter will ask if you prefer “still” or “sparkling.” I would have no way to know that when it comes to entering and leaving a place the signs would say “way out” and “way in,” rather than “entrance” and “exit.” My Scottish characters call their phone a “mobile,” while my American characters use “cell phone.”

· Have someone proof-read or edit that lived in the place your story is set

· The male protagonist is very educated, but in moments of deep emotion the female protagonist, depending on the POV (point of view) will think to herself that his Scottish burr is becoming stronger. To emphasize it further, he often drops the end of words ending in “-ing,” so “feeling” becomes “feelin’.”

· Google it. You would be surprised how many articles you’ll find about language and linguistics.

§ Wikipedia

§ Omniglot.com has a variety of pages about pronunciation and even lists of words and common phrases, some by region

§ YouTube has many videos of people speaking and also illustrating pronunciation

§ Watch movies set in the place, or better yet, made in the place you are researching

§ Articles about dialect like http://www.whoohoo.co.uk/scottish-translator.asp; lexilogos.com; and freelang.com

§ Internet lists of common slang terms for the region

Don’t go overboard with foreign words that no one understands. Make certain to italicize the phrase and offer a glossary of terms. This does not work well in Kindle or Nook format, so choose a few common terms that your characters will use and reuse. For example, Land of My Dreams is a romance so a frequently repeated phrase is “I love you.” In Scots-Gaelic (which does differ from Irish or Manx Gaelic) the phrase is Tha gaol agam ort. Give the phonetic pronunciation in your glossary, in this case, Ha gool akum orsht. I would certainly never have pronounced it like that!

Have a few phrases that will become easily recognizable to your readers, and whenever possible, try to include a translation in the text. For example, in my current WIP, the sequel to Land of My Dreams, the Scottish male protagonist uses the Scots-Gaelic for “my darling” when speaking to the American female protagonist:

“Mo gràdh…”

My darling, the Gaelic endearment coupled with his tender smile was enough

to make her head spin…”

The reader immediately learns what the character has said, and it becomes even more romantic to discover how the female protagonist feels about it.

The female protagonist is from New Mexico, a very distinctive region of the United States, and her speech reveals that. She uses words such as adobe, luminaria, chile and chili (the first being the uncooked variety, and the second being the cooked variety), and sopapillas, when talking about her home. She also manages to get her Scottish love hooked on New Mexican food and courageously eats haggis and Forfair Bridies.

Once you’ve written a scene where you try out some of these ideas, bounce it off a Facebook friend or someone who lives in the area you’re writing about. You can give your story the flavor of another country or a region of the United States in a way that enhances the story and makes the characters unique, without overwhelming the reader.

About the author:

Norma Gail’s debut contemporary Christian romance, Land of My Dreams, set in Scotland and New Mexico released in April 2014. She has led weekly women’s Bible studies for 19 years. Her devotionals, poetry have appeared at ChristianDevotions.us, the Stitches Thru Time blog, and in “The Secret Place.” She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers, FaithWriters, Romance Writers of America, and the New Mexico Christian Novelists. She is a former RN who lives in the mountains of New Mexico with her husband of 39 years. They have two adult children.

Connect with Norma:

Website: www.normagail.org

Book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQbZIoC_JSE

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorNormaGail

Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+NormaGailwrites

Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/normagailth/boards/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7874459

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Norma_Gail

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/norma-gail-thurston-holtman/42/71a/3b2

Book Links:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Land-My-Dreams-Norma-Gail/dp/1941103170

Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/land-of-my-dreams-norma-gail/1119606864?ean=9781941103173

Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas Bookstore: http://store.lpcbooks.com/product/land-of-my-dreams/

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Make Them Think You Live There: The Importance of Setting

Can your readers smell the food on the table and hear the sounds of the countryside? Setting is a critical feature of any novel, and should be another character; drawing the reader in and making them feel the rain on their face. One of the greatest challenges in writing Land of My Dreams, my debut contemporary Christian romance, was to make the reader feel as if they were in Scotland. This was no small undertaking, considering I have only spent two weeks there in my entire life.

In 2006, when my husband and I were preparing for a trip to Scotland, I began to gather information in order to see as much as possible. However, it wasn’t enough to make me an expert. Here are seven steps which helped me create a story world capable of convincing readers I had lived in Scotland:

First, if at all possible, travel to the place you’re writing about. When I went to Scotland, it never occurred to me that I would someday write a book about it. I kept a trip diary, and we took over 700 photographs, but only a few are of the area where the book takes place.

Second, learn cultural details, music, food, speech, history. I filled my iPod with Scottish folk tunes and classics and devoured tour books. Scotland is not northern England. It is a country with a rich and moving history of its own. And yes, I ate haggis.

Third, what is the weather like? Rain is a part of life. If Scots waited for the weather to clear, they would never do anything. Sunshine is as unique for them as rain is in my native New Mexico. Children played in the pouring rain wearing sleeveless shirts and shorts while I was bundled against the dreich weather, and hoping not to get drookit.

Fourth, learn something about how people talk. Basically, dreich is wet and rainy, and drookit is soaking wet. They use “Way In” instead of “Entrance,” and “Way Out” instead of “Exit.” When you order water the waiter will ask if you want “Still” or “Sparkling.” I was criticized for having male characters say it was a “lovely day,” but it is a common term for both men and women. There are websites of common Scottish/Gaelic names, slang, and phrases.

Fifth, I created a screen-saver of over 400 photos of the area where Land of My Dreams takes place. I have scenery, historical places, road signs, shop windows, and animals, almost anything that is a part of everyday life. If I need to describe something I look at the photos and then write and revise until it feels right.

Sixth, create similes and metaphors that compare and contrast things familiar to your audience with things that are commonplace to the characters. For example, Kieran is drawn to Bonny “like a bee to heather.”

Last, find someone who has lived there. I offered a $75 Amazon card on the Romance Loop of ACFW for someone to edit for Scottish content. Contemporary must be as accurate as or more so than historical because people can go there and see if what you said is true.

Efforts to make your story world appealing, realistic, and mood-setting will be worth all the research that goes into creating it. When someone reads Land of My Dreams, I want them to smell the New Mexico chile roasting and hear the skirl of bagpipes.

About the author:

Norma Gail’s debut contemporary Christian romance, Land of My Dreams, set in Scotland and New Mexico released in April 2014. She has led weekly women’s Bible studies for 19 years. Her devotionals, poetry have appeared at ChristianDevotions.us, the Stitches Thru Time blog, and in “The Secret Place.” She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers, FaithWriters, and the New Mexico Christian Novelists. She is a former RN who lives in the mountains of New Mexico with her husband of 38 years. They have two adult children.