Archive for September, 2009
Double Checking Material
In an effort to complete manuscripts and get them ready for publishing, authors often miss a few important steps that can make the difference between a wildly successful book and a cautionary tale of what not to do. Certainly no one can begrudge an author for feeling elated after finally completing a work that has consumed his or her life for a long period of time. However, it is important to take pause and evaluate your completed work.
The most common, and most important, thing authors need to check for after the completion of his or her work is that there are no content concerns that could lead to future legal headaches. There are three major ways there could be hidden problems in your manuscript: invasion of privacy, libel and copyright infringement. If you don’t already have a firm grasp of these, or even if you do and want a little reminder, please look through your manuscript to make sure it does not fall into one of these three categories.
Invasion of Privacy: An invasion of privacy lawsuit can occur when a living individual feels the right to control personal information has been violated, causing emotional distress caused by those statements. There are various categories of invasion of privacy, but for publishing purposes, those that apply include: the disclosure of private facts that a reasonable person would find objectionable; publication of facts that portray the individual in a false light, even if the facts themselves are not libelous; and appropriation, or the unauthorized use of a person’s name or likeness. Even if you change a person’s name in your book, that won’t be enough to protect you if there is enough in the story for a reader to deduce who the person is.
Libel: Libel is the written form of defamation of character, while slander is the spoken form. Defamation of character and libel are any false statements that could hurt the reputation of a living individual, company, entity or institution. If you make a libelous claim in your manuscript and publish it, an individual or party has the right to take legal action against you to sue for a monetary sum. Although truth does negate a libel claim, it can be extremely hard to prove in court, as well as time consuming and costly. Additionally, truth does not protect you from invasion of privacy suits.
Copyright Infringement: A copyright infringement lawsuit can occur when copyrighted materials, such as quotes, pictures, excerpts, etc. are used in a work without permission from the copyright holder. Any material obtained from a book, newspaper, magazine, the Internet, an artist, photographer, or another author is copyright protected by law, even if it is an unpublished work. This also includes any clip art images that come with your word processing software.
If you feel you are not sure whether you fall into one of these categories, please speak with someone who is a copyright specialist. Or, for more information you can visit the U.S. Copyright Office website at http://www.copyright.gov/. Remember, it is better to take precautions early on to avoid any future legal conflicts.
-Michael F.
The World Needs Writers
Writers have a direct impact on our daily lives — every day, all day. As a society, we’re increasingly consuming more and more headlines, verbs and adjectives. It’s amazing how many times a writer touches our lives each day, and you may not even realize it.
Take this example: You’re watching TV and your favorite show airs its season premiere. No writing here, right? This is TV after all … the anti-book. But, as you watch the closing scene fade to black, it happens: you think, “Man, they must have different writers now; this show has changed a lot since last season.”
That’s right, writers.
But writers don’t only influence our entertainment. Every morning or evening (or both) we rely on news sources to inform us of the day’s local and global events. Whether you watch a news program on TV, read the paper, or visit a Web site, writers are behind this transfer of knowledge. And, even though journalists try to stick to the facts, they play a big role in how the story is told, thus, interpreted by you.
It’s not just large scale media where writers intersect our lives. For example, when you read the description of the cob salad or chicken sandwich from your lunch menu, someone wrote that. Another writer composed the instructions to your new camera. And another wrote the marketing copy on boxes in the cereal aisle; and another typed the words written on the parking ticket you received because you spent too much time in your grocery store’s cereal aisle. From the tag inside your shirt that you ignored when you did not “lay flat to dry” to the millions of pages of text on every single Web site that you visit today, they are behind each sentence, each letter, each apostrophe.
Writers play a necessary role in our society beyond the obvious “author” role. Of course, there are novels, magazines and poems, but even if your book never hits the bestseller list, the world needs writers.
-Angie Kelly Pheifer
Six Dialogue Writing Tips Every Writer Must Know
A fiction writer must excel at writing dialogue. Dialogue is the natural bridge between external action and the internal character — belonging to the external world but conveying a character’s thoughts and personality. Writing dialogue, however, does not come easy for every writer. 
The ability to write realistic dialogue successfully is power. Using realistic speech between characters will engage your readers and create a steady flow to your story. Retrospectively, poor dialogue will simply distract and pull the reader from your words.
Dialogue allows you to develop each character as well as advance your story’s plot. Readers get a feel for the “person” behind the character and how they relate to the progression of the story. Here are six tips to help you in creating dialogue — the inner thoughts and outward expressions of your characters.
- Listen. Pay attention to the natural sounds of speech. Note the expressions and patterns of everyday conversation.
- Write Real Speech. Your dialogue should read like real speech … but with the dull parts taken out. Edit out the unessential or filler words, and only include those contributing to your plot.
- Dialogue, Action, Dialogue, Action. Add breaks in dialogue with external action and vice versa. Dialogue is easier on the reader when broken up by description and is a reminder of the connectivity between the physical character and physical world.
- A Little at a Time. Let your story naturally unfold and allow the dialogue to subtly offer important facts to your readers. Be aware that you don’t have to tell everything at once. Readers will remember details throughout your story.
- He Said/She Said. It is quite alright to actively use he said/she said during your dialogue. Too much of an effort to alter the word “said” will draw attention to the tags and away from the actual dialogue.
- Punctuation. Take the time to learn the appropriate method to punctuate dialogue, making it easy for readers to follow your story.
Effective dialogue is a craft and takes practice. Dialogue can make your story believable and vivid to the reader, or it can break the fluid progression of your story. Within your own work as well as the work of others, take notice when a character comes to life or when you stopped believing. Is the action and physical world intertwined with the characters? And how did the dialogue link the internal thoughts with the evolving external plot?
- Melissa
Oprah’s Book Club: Say You’re One of Them by Uwen Akpan
Many of us in the book world have learned that Oprah Winfrey has supreme power to influence the direction of the popular book buying community. Several titles that she selected in the past have created huge waves of sales, controversy and interest.
People have been excited recently, having heard rumors that there was a new pick on the way.
Well we have a winner.
Say You’re One of Them by Uwen Akpan is unlike Oprah’s other 60-plus recommendations. The Nigerian born author has been recognized with awards, nominations and accolades* for this collection of stories. Notably, Akpan, who teaches in Zimbabwe, has a strong talent for selecting the voice and narrator to best convey the piece.
The terrible settings and situations and the gentle nature of the characters are a hypnotic combination. The situations in Rwanda and Kenya and other African hot-spots are fully and unapologetically drawn out with brutal honesty and a powerful sense of the humanity of the individuals involved. The writing can help us to more fully understand what humanity means and what it is that makes life so precious.
Admittedly, I have not agreed with every selection for the Oprah Book Club, but this one is worth considering.
Uwen Akpan is a perfect example of what all writers might be capable of. Having come from a world in which resources were very limited, he has moved mountains with raw talent.
*Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
Nominated for the Guardian First Book Award
Nominated for the Caine Prize for African Writing
Nominated for the Story Prize
Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book, African Region
Nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award
-1000 Chimps
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
The phrase “graphic novel” has long been used as a code name for comic books. And since the stigma attached with comic books is that they are not real literature, there has been an unwillingness by some to accept graphic novels as a genre of novelization. However, there have been some great books published in the past few years that have broken 
down some of the misconceptions that books with pictures are somehow lesser works.
Marjane Satrapi, Iranian born author of Persepolis, won critical acclaim with her autobiographical account of growing up in Iran. Her unique portrayal of her childhood allowed readers to connect to a dark time in Iran’s history that would otherwise be dry and unrelatable. The beautiful and sometimes haunting imagery draws a reader to a book in a way words could not.
Using imagery to capture what words cannot is not limited to Persepolis. A dark time in United States history has also been captured in the book A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld which follows the catastrophic events in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina.
While difficult topics may be easier to handle when imagery is involved, not all critically acclaimed graphic novels are gloom and doom. Gene Luen Yang, in his book American Born Chinese, incorporates Chinese folktales into a brilliantly crafted coming of age story.
These graphic novels have broken the mold, and have proven that real stories transcend our own preconceptions of text versus drawings. Because of this, the market for graphic novels is coming into its own. If you don’t believe me, pick up one of these books and prepare to be surprised by how the story moves you.
-Michael F.
Use Twitter to Promote Your Self-Published Book
Love it or hate it, Twitter has reached a critical mass that cannot be ignored. It is time that self-published and traditionally published authors alike embrace Twitter and use it to promote their books.
Here are a few reasons why you may consider jumping on the twagon:
1. Reach a larger audience. You can connect with a wide, global audience of potential readers.
2. Twitter is easy to use. You don’t need to invest in an eight-week course. Sure, there are tips and tricks that come in handy (see resources below), but if you have basic computer knowledge and you are familiar with blogging or social networking, jump in and join the twitter-mania.
3. Twitter is free … Enough said.
4. Further establish your online presence. The more places you pop up online the better. (Well, I can think of a few places you may not want to show up … America’s Most Wanted fugitive list to name one … but you get the idea.)
5. Attract interested individuals with relevant keywords. Your book’s title, your book’s genre and your name are definitely keywords to mention every so often.
Now, there is a lot of fine tuning to optimize your Twitter usage. It’s not rocket science, but there are definitely good and bad techniques and a few “best practices” to keep in mind.
Here are a few helpful resources to help you get started tweeting to promote your book:
- The Beginner’s Guide to Twitter
- The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Marketing Your Business on Twitter
- The Top 5 Mistakes Internet Marketers Make on Twitter
- Social Media 101: Use Twitter to Attract Prospects and Engage Customers
- 14 Essential Twitter Tools That Keep Your Tweets Going
With a little effort, research and spontaneity, you can promote your self-published book using Twitter as one piece of your marketing campaign. Remember: While Twitter is a wonderful tool, authors cannot survive on tweets alone.
Keep writing.
-Angie Kelly Pheifer
Language of Landscape
“Desire path — the shortcut worn across a park.” The language of landscape evokes precise, descriptive images in the reader’s mind. Transformation of what is seen into a term or phrase creatively and uncommonly used, adds lyric and a sense of literary hierarchy. Speak to your setting and listen to its’ story. Becoming familiar with your surroundings, understanding how landscapes constantly evolve, and appreciating the beauty in that transition will yield to you the evocative language of landscape.
Our surroundings — our landscapes — call to us and create a language of poetry and renewal, blending descriptive writing and precision. “A stand of trees.” When you learn the language of landscape, you gain a vocabulary of setting, mood and metaphor that alters your place into a character itself. You are able to enrich your writing and deepen your awareness with knowing that the little peninsula of sand or gravel has a name (point bar), a history and maybe even a story to tell.
Understanding the landscape nomenclature awakens a deluge (flood) of possibilities expanding beyond the common canyon, foothill and stream. These words are numbered in the thousands and continue coming. Whether the landscape element is a regional and folksy term, or you have coined a new idiom, this language, the crag (mountain) for example, offers a new direction of thinking which will add rhythm to your writing. You are able to enlighten your readers through terms of intriguing quality explainable through your context.
When a landscape element is added to your literary thinking, whether you utilize it or not, your writing language has been altered as you now hold a secret avenue to precise descriptive storytelling. A heath may be a term used by various writers, however what you ask of it will be unique and to your readers, that grassy field will be what you make of it.
- Melissa
Resources to enhance your language of landscape:
Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, Barry Lopez
The Describer’s Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms and Literary Quotations, David Grambs
Windows, Hands and DSM IV: Literary Tools of the Trade
As writers, we develop our style as we mature. Many prolific artists develop an ability to use patterns to engage their audience. It is a slippery slope, as these literary tools can seem inauthentic and forced if they are overused, but at a reasonable rate they can carry the reader to the next page — and that is really the goal in writing.
Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club and Choke, among other famous works, is a glaring example of the good and bad sides of literary tools. In Choke, he uses formatting and style similar to the DSM IV, the diagnostic manual that psychologists use to categorize the issues of their patients. This adds flavor to the layout of the novel and also gives a reminder of the background of the main character, Victor Mancini, who had dropped out of med school within inches of getting his degree.
Palahniuk can be masterful, but many feel that in his attempt to use tools such as this he falls short. Critics argue that Lullaby and Diary, some of his other works, push readers away with themes that seem to show the brush strokes of the artists too visibly. In my opinion, it is likely that these critics might just be judging too harshly due to “Palahniuk fatigue”. Perhaps if they had read these novels first, then they would have been a bit more open to the style.
But formatting is not the only artistic tool available to the writer. One of my associates is a skilled writer. A tool that she uses to convey setting is describing windows and hands, rather than describing the weather. She is able to give perspective in record time, which is a powerful asset in the short attention span age we occupy. Whether she is writing a song, a poem or a longer work of fiction, she can add breadth to the dialogue without sounding sophomoric.
What kind of tricks do you have up your sleeve? We’d love to hear your secrets.
-1000Chimps
A Bastian of Promoting Childhood Literacy Gone
As children turn on PBS this week, there will be something missing from the program schedule that has become a center piece of the network, Reading Rainbow. After 26 years on the air, the show aired for the last time on Friday. The program won more than twenty six Emmys, a Peabody Award, and holds the third place slot for longest running show on PBS.
Reading Rainbow had a very simple concept: focus on a book and include an on-location segment that is entertaining and informative. Each episode also had children featuring a book they read that they really liked. The show actually filmed its final episode in 2006, but there was always some hope that it might return. Long time host, LaVar Burton, said this about the importance of the show, “It’s just such an integral part of the human experience — that connection with the written word.”
With the conclusion of this chapter in PBS broadcasting, it is important to remember how successful this project was. It is rare to have any show last this long, and for many younger readers, growing up with Reading Rainbow was what first encouraged them to pick up a book.
The cancellation can be attributed to a shrinking pool of financial support in recent years. Funding is a surprising axe
for a show that promoted child literacy and enjoyment of books. However, there has been a shift in recent years as to how best to approach child literacy. Although the efficacy of this shift might be debated, there is no debating that Reading Rainbow will be missed by both kids and parents alike.
