I read a story today that started with the sentence “This story has to begin with a small lesson in geography.”  First, starting a story with a geography lesson will earn you an instant rejection (see question #8 under the fantasy subheading).  But I was almost as annoyed by the self-referential “this story.”  When you remind the reader he’s reading a book, it’s harder for him to immerse himself in the fantasy.

Cadet Davis reviews and revises the titles of 30 manuscripts submitted to a writing workshop. This will help you evaluate and improve your titles.

Above Average

1. The Merchant of Venison. This title does a remarkably good job of identifying the story as a Shakespeare parody. Also, it was the only title this week to get me to chuckle.
2. Dogs in Clogs. This was a real head-scratcher and failed to foreshadow the plot in any meaningful way, but was invitingly weird.
3. Creeping Death. It foreshadows the story and tone well. If I were rewriting it, I’d make it more subtle and less cliché.

Continue Reading »

This article gives nine tips to writing a title that grips readers and sells your book.

1. Tell us enough about the book to make us want to read it. This is what separates bland, forgettable titles like The Dragon from classics like His Majesty’s Dragon. The more we can surmise about the plot, the better.

2. Do not use imaginary place names. Readers haven’t heard of Asgardia, Lukawanda, or whatever your fictional kingdom or city is called. Your invented words won’t interest us because they don’t mean anything to us. I think the place names most appealing to prospective readers are those that use English words, like the Temple of Doom. We can guess what a temple of doom is.

Continue Reading »

Cadet Davis reviews and revises the titles of 30 manuscripts submitted to a writing workshop. This will help you evaluate and improve your titles.

Above Average

1. One Brown-Haired Girl With A Stick. This title slaps readers across the face and dares them to start reading.
2. A Labyrinth of Entrails. This story easily bests its horror competitors with comically gruesome imagery.
3. Moral Issues Aside. This has potential, but I think it would help to identify its genre and subgenre or add details about the plot. For example, “Moral Issues Aside, It’s Time For You to Die” or “Moral Issues Aside, Killing My Boss is a Bad Business Move.”

Continue Reading »

Continue Reading »

Just because a character has an accent doesn’t mean he has to ruin all of his scenes. This article describes how to keep your characters from sounding like Hagrid.

Continue Reading »

Continue Reading »

When an interjection like “well” starts a sentence, it’s usually wasted space.  If you start sentences with any of these common offenders, double-check to make sure that they actually contribute something to the sentence.  Otherwise, please remove them.

1. Well
2. You know
3. Oh
4. Like
5. Umm
6. OK
7. I mean
8. Seriously
9. Basically
10. Yeah

Don’t have your characters spend too much time musing about events that have already happened in the story.

When characters are preoccupied with something that’s already happened, the author has probably lost track of where the story is going. You can give your story forward momentum by drawing our attention to what’s just around the corner. If someone tried to kill the protagonist yesterday, we will care more about what the assassins are planning for tomorrow than what the character thinks about the attack today.

If you are interested in building on what has already happened in the story, it will probably be more effective to try to have your characters investigate the mystery. But an investigation is very different than just musing with your friends and confidantes. An investigation will add evidence, either by looking for clues or trying to get witnesses to talk. Investigations are superior to musing because the search for information adds more to the story than just talking about what has already happened. (There’s also more potential for conflict, particularly if someone’s trying to sabotage the search).

Here are a few common scenarios that frequently lead to characters musing about the past.

1. Musing about the death of a loved one, particularly one that  sacrificed himself to save the protagonist.
2. Romantic failures.
3. “Why me!?!”

The Associated Press describes a California town that is so xenophobic that it has a vigilante “Border Patrol” tear down all the road signs that might help motorists find it. What a delightfully gruesome detail. Would you like a writing assignment? Write a detail that describes a fundamental flaw of a place or character. The more flavor, the better.

Conclusion 1: Don’t set a story in your hometown or place of birth.

Continue Reading »

Continue Reading »

The authors that try to present political or religious opinions usually confuse their opinions with insights. How is your message different from what people have already heard about abortion? For example, your readers have already heard many people chant “abortion is good” and “abortion is bad.” Is your story just another voice in the chorus or will it actually add something? Why will anyone care about your opinion? Do you have any unique perspective on the subject material? Do you have relevant professional or scholarly experience? Are you personally affected by the issue? Etc.

Continue Reading »

Authors shouldn’t tell cue their readers to laugh. Consider the following comedic exchange. “What’s the difference between the Yankees bullpen and Pizza Hut?” asked John. Mary shrugged. “Pizza Hut delivers,” said John. They laughed. “They laughed” cues the readers to laugh at John’s joke.

That’s insulting to your readers. If your comedy is effective, readers will know when to laugh. Reminding them to laugh at something that wasn’t funny to them will just draw their attention to ineffective writing.

Here are some situations that are usually examples of laugh-tracking:

1. When a character laughs at a joke, particularly his own. Seriously, who laughs at his own jokes?
2. When a character says something like “that’s funny.”
3. In certain circumstances, when a character cracks a smile. (This is forgivable if the character’s reaction to the joke is significant to the plot).
4. “Touché.”
5. “I walked into that one.”

According to TV Tropes, the CSI Effect is “the growing tendency of juries to refuse to convict if the prosecution fails to provide comprehensive crime scene analysis, even in trivial cases,” because of the influence of forensic crime scene dramas. Now, prosecutors sometimes try to weed out jurors that have watched CSI. That’s where conversations like this one come from…

Prosecutor: Have you ever watched CSI before?

Prospective Juror: Yes.

Prosecutor: Do you think crime scene investigation really works like that?

Although I think the name comes off as a kitschy attempt at Real Ultimate Power, ultimately I think Dr. McNinja is far superior to RUP.  Plus, because McNinja is a webcomic, it has graphics.  Suitably badass graphics, of course.

Gimmicky writing is when a writer tries something “new” that annoys readers, rather than actually giving a better reading experience.

Continue Reading »

This short article will help beginning novelists avoid another five common mistakes that will usually cause publishers to throw out a manuscript.

You can read the first three articles in this series here, here and here.

Continue Reading »

Continue Reading »

“U.S. Agent Fires at 3 in Sleepy Town on Quebec-Vermont Border“

One common superhero archetype is the national paragon, a hero designed to represent a country, ethnic group or other group of people.  The most obvious example is Captain America, but the list is long.  For example, Hadji from Johnny Quest exists only to charm snakes and hack computers.  (Also, have I mentioned that “haji” is an ethnic slur?)

Here is a list of potential problems with using national paragons…

Continue Reading »

FIRST COMIC — PREVIOUS COMIC — NEXT COMIC

FIRST COMIC — PREVIOUS COMIC — NEXT COMIC

In fiction, children are almost as one-dimensional as puppies: cute but useless.

Picture taken courtesy of David at Umoja.

Much like a puppy picture in the middle of a writing article, children characters add little except for intolerable cuteness and are rarely, if ever, worth the time it takes to introduce them. Why bother introducing an 100% cliche character? Unfortunately, the vast majority of children characters are props that fall into two categories: the adorable angel and/or the spunky brat. Either way, the kid usually serves two purposes.

1. To inject nauseating cuteness into the story.
2. To develop the main characters (the parents), usually by getting kidnapped by Bad Guys.

Picture seen here.

Like puppies, children are interesting only when they have a bit of killer instinct or at least some ambition other than being as cute as possible. Perhaps the kid wants to make his difficult parents proud, or has some crazy-eyed dream like becoming Santa Claus, or whatever. Maybe he wants to be taken seriously by someone older. Alternatively, if you’d like to use the child as a minor antagonist, you could use him as a bully like Harry Potter’s Dudley.

If you’d like to use a child character, here are some questions to help you develop him.

1. What does this child character contribute to the story? Did you put him in because you think his parents “need” a child or because the story “needs” more cuteness?
2. If you’re using the child mainly to develop his parents, in which ways does he do so?
3. What sort of character traits drive the child’s personality or mindset? If you used “cute,” “spunky” or “sassy,” please redesign the character and answer again. Is the child curious, adventurous, independent, perceptive, etc? Is it possible for him to contribute to a scene when his parents aren’t around?
4. What is the child’s relationship with his parents and other older characters like? Please give yourself something more interesting to work with than “his family is totally loving and nurturing.” Unless you’re writing a book about parenting, readers probably don’t care much about your vision of the utopian family. There are definitely stresses involved with being a parent and some parents, although definitely not all, have lousy or even adversarial relations with their children. What are the stresses in the family? If there’s a dispute in the house, what’s the point of contention? Etc.
5. Is your child character extraordinarily gifted? If so, please do not make him extraordinarily savvy with mechanics or electronics. Techno-kids like Micah from Heroes are usually insufferable in a way that generically gifted kids (like Ender Wiggins or Encyclopedia Brown) are not. A generically smart child can demonstrate his intelligence in a way that the audience can appreciate. For example, when Encyclopedia Brown solves the case, readers can see that he’s pretty smart. In contrast, when a techno-kid performs an impressive technological feat, that isn’t self-evidently impressive.

Do you think children characters are as problematic as I have suggested? How would you suggest improving them?

Reviewer: I like your work, but I think that [some aspect of your writing] is flawed.

Author: Oh, that? I meant to do that.

Reviewer: Ahh… do you think you could fix it?

Author: But that would ruin the style of the piece!

Deliberately inflicting substandard writing on your story for “stylistic” or “literary” purposes is usually a prelude to rejection. If your reviewers were able to discern that it was either stylish or literary, they wouldn’t be complaining about it.

Here are a few areas that are especially prone to intentionally bad writing…

Continue Reading »

The Hellboy Quote Generator is out, although it has been technically unreliable. On a comedy scale of 1 to 10, I’d give this a 5: amusing but uneven. It’s a well-done piece of viral advertising, though. (“Let me put this to you as delicately as I can.” *BANG*)

Continue Reading »

Have a happy 4th of July!

FIRST COMIC — PREVIOUS COMIC — NEXT COMIC

FIRST COMIC — PREVIOUS COMIC — NEXT COMIC

Thanks for coming.

I submitted a potential rewrite of our introduction to the Critters Writing Workshop. It’s very short (2 pages) and I expect that we’ll eventually expand it to about 5. Currently, it’s rated PG-13 for adult language, but we’re considering modifying it to PG.

Continue Reading »

Like The Fantasy Novelist’s Exam, we’ve written a list of questions to help you identify problems with your writing. Continue Reading »