Getting Published: Form Follows Function

Effective writing--that is, writing that's publishable--is more than simply stringing a few well-thought-out words together; it's also the format in which you present them.

Here are a couple of tidbits you can take with you to the bank:

1. Editors are overworked.

2. Editors hate having to take the time to look through a slush pile of unsolicited manuscripts.

3. Editors look for every excuse imaginable to eliminate manuscripts from the reading/consideration phase of the editing process as quickly as possible.

Now, with that said, here's the obvious question. Are you shooting yourself in the foot every time you send a manuscript out for review? Are you a self-destruction machine just waiting to detonate? Are you doomed to remaining an unpublished (or under-published) writer the rest of your life?

Probably so, if you're committing the most basic of writer's flaws--failing to present your manuscript professionally. I'm not talking about typing it instead of writing it out in long-hand (that just goes without saying). I'm talking about the form you present to an editor from your manuscript's very first page.

If you follow proper manuscript-presentation etiquette, you increase your chances of publication a hundred-fold. If you ignore it, you'd better get used to rejection, fast!

What's that, you say? But you're a creative writer with creative talents just yearning to be set free ... and you want everyone in the world to know it? Uh-huh. Then show it in the content of your writing. And keep the form traditional for the editor's sake ... and for yours.

Remember those three bankable statements, above. Editors being editors means editors are also human. (Well, sort of.) Show an average human being something out-of-the-ordinary (like a really wild opening manuscript page, for example), and that human being is going to duck for cover. Show him something he's seen a million times before, and he's going to be as comfortable with it as he is with his old cardigan sweater and moose-hide moccasins.

That holds true for manuscript presentation. Show an editor something off-beat and crazy, and his first thought is going to be This guy is obviously no professional. In the trash heap for him.

Sad? Sure. True? You bet. Should you be incensed? Maybe. Better yet, be smart. Sometimes, if you want to play in the big game, you need to learn the rules. All the rules. And rule number one in getting published is this:

Instill in the editor the belief that you are professional, dependable, and talented.

Notice that the "talented" part came after "professional" and "dependable." By showing an editor you know the form a manuscript should take in its presentation, you show him you're a professional. By using that form time after time, you show him you're dependable. Convincing an editor of these two things is the only way you're ever going to have a shot at showing him you're also talented.

So, what is the accepted form in which to present a manuscript for publication? I thought you'd never ask.

Marty Martinovich 80,000 Words
26220 West End Lane First N.A.S. Rights
East Hampton, NY 10030
441-111-1111




Under Wraps
(Thriller/Mystery)

by Mat Maddy

It was a dark and gloomy Sunday morning when Dirk heard the car doors slam outside his bedroom window. Two of them. Some shuffling feet and the creak of the front gate let him know he had visitors. Again. And no one in particular he'd hoped for.

He pulled himself up, grabbed for his head, and leaned forward to look out the window. All he saw were two sets of shoes climbing the concrete steps to the front door, two sets of Oxfords, shiny and wet.

For a moment he toyed with the idea of slipping back down into bed, pulling the covers up over him, and playing possum. After all, they didn't know for sure he was actually home. Unless ...






Under Wraps/Martinovich, Page 2

"Yeah, yeah," Dirk called out as he tied the robe around him, glanced at the mirror, tugged at the hair sticking out in every direction.

His head pounded as he bent down to coax size-ten feet into size-eight slippers. A pain shot suddenly through him, all the way down to his toes and back, and he sat up, struggling to remember what he'd done the night before to deserve it. What he'd ever done.

The buzzer rang once more.

"Yeah, I'm coming!" he shouted, unsure of whether or not his visitors could hear him. "I'm coming," he repeated softly as he wiped his hand across his face.

He shuffled out of the bedroom and across the floor to the front door. He fumbled with the lock for several moments, finally yanking at it in desperation until it sprung free. Drawing the door open, he slipped half his body out into the cold dark hallway leading to the front stairwell and stopped to look back into the apartment just to make sure he hadn't left anything he shouldn't have lying around.

Not too bad. A little messy, but considering I just woke up, not too bad ...

So what, you ask, is so great about this format? Looks kind of boring, doesn't it?

Well, it's not a question of being good, bad, or boring. It's a question of being functional. Here's what I mean:

• A paper size of 8-1/2 x 11 inches, white, is the industry standard. It's easy to handle, easy to read, and it fits into folders, envelopes, and file holders made expressly for the purpose.


• The single-spacing of the name and address in the upper left-hand corner of the first page gives the editor a quick glance at who is submitting the manuscript.


• The number of words and the rights being sold in the upper right-hand corner tell the editor at a glance how long the piece is (so that he doesn't waste time reading something that's too short or too long for his market) and what rights are for sale (in this case, First American Serial Rights, the most commonly sold).


• The centering of the title, the genre (thriller/mystery), and the by-line (which may or may not be the same as the author's legal name) make for comfortable, quick viewing. The genre, just as with the length, is important to include because it tells the editor at a glance whether or not the manuscript is something for which he has a market.


• The double-spaced flush-left copy makes for ease of reading without excessive eye strain (hey, you try plowing your way through fifty manuscripts in a day and see how perky your eyes feel by dusk). Double spacing also allows the editor sufficient room to scribble any notes or make any editorial changes he feels are necessary.


• A margin of about an inch all the way around the page reduces eye fatigue and allows the editor additional space for making notes or corrections to the manuscript.


• The Times New Roman, Courier, or similar typefaces used widely in the print industry are also the most comfortable to read.


• On the second page, the manuscript's name, author's name, and page number in the upper left-hand corner remind the editor of what it is he's reading and make the manuscript easier to reassemble should the pages get shuffled or the manuscript dropped.

Of course, following these guidelines won't guarantee that your manuscript will get published ... or even read, for that matter. But they will guarantee that your chances for either one will be greatly increased. And in a tough, competitive industry like ours, isn't one more advantage over the competition worth the effort?

So, take a look at some of the stuff you've been sending out lately. See how it stacks up to industry standards. If you need to adjust the way you present your manuscript, consider doing so. Immediately, if not sooner.

Humor Writing: Make 'Em Laugh

So you wanna be a humor writer ... and start making the big bucks fast ... is that what's bothering you, Spunky?

Here's the deal. You have this once-in-a-lifetime chance to crack a really big market. Or, better still, you know a book publisher just dying for a big humor book--now!--and you think you can fill the bill. Except that you don't know a damned thing about writing humor.

Is that what's bothering you? Your lack of humor? Or, umm, your lack of confidence in being able to write humor? If so, step right up, 'cuz Uncle Deej is gonna show you how to be funny in two dimensions.

The first thing to do when writing humor is to relax. Humor isn't humorous if it's forced or contrived. Take a deep breath. And then move on to Step Two.

Pick a subject

For example: dogs. Now, if that's not a subject ripe with humorous possibilities, what is? But when are dogs funniest? When they're eating (or waiting to be fed)? When they're sleeping (or looking for a place to curl up)? When they're running around outside (or begging to go out)? When they're hunting?

Hunting! That's it. That triggered something in me. I remembered suddenly an experience I had with my own two dogs in Steamboat, Colorado.

Chaucer was an extraordinarily accommodating golden retriever. By the time we had moved out of the country, he had attempted to befriend every porcupine in the neighborhood. And succeeded. In his first run-in, his barking at a cornered porker led our young Corgi down the steps and out into the field, where both dogs jumped the animal before returning, howling, to the house. A good pair of pliers did the trick.

On C's next encounter, the Corgi once again went barreling down into the field to see what was happening. This time, she pulled up short and started barking some three feet away from the animal as Chaucer, once again, went charging in. Back at the house, he growled when I approached with the pliers, so I ended up paying my local veterinarian fifty big ones to play the heavy.

On Chaucer's third run-in with a porcupine, the Corgi lay shivering under the bed. When I went down to grab the retriever and pull him back to safety, he caught site of me and--recognizing the universal sign for attack--leaped upon the cornered beast, only to go running, whimpering and yelping, back to the house. That trip to the vet cost me a cool hundred-and-a-half, what with the lateness of the hour and the anesthesia required to knock the dog out so the vet could reach the quills farthest down his throat.

Growing tired of spending all my discretionary income on my veterinarian's burgeoning retirement fund, I finally asked him why one dog would continue attacking porcupines while the other had apparently learned her lesson.

"Well," John said thoughtfully. John was a big, burly Irishman whom you couldn't help but like no matter how much money he sucked from your veins. "It's been my experience that some dogs get stuck by a porcupine and say, 'Oh, no, I remember what happened the last time. I'm not going through that again!'

"Other dogs see a porcupine and think, 'Oh, you're the son-of-a-bitch I didn't nail last Tuesday. But you won't get away today!'"

Take your time

Don't race to your punch line. Sometimes, a humorous anecdote is short; other times, not. The point is, let the story develop naturally. If you force it in order to get to the punch line more quickly, no one will find it amusing.

Once you've committed the image to paper, go back over it. Read it out loud. Listen to its cadence, its literary "voice." When you're convinced that it sounds natural, start analyzing it for injections. Can you stick some humorous word or phrase in here? Can you shoot a short quip in there?

Don't feel that every sentence has to be a thigh-slapper, though. If you try to work too much funny stuff into a short anecdote, you'll simply wind up confusing your reader to the point where nothing will seem funny. Remember that the recipe for humor is simple: a straight line followed by a punch line. Take the time to set your reader up before bowling him over, and you just might end up laughing all the way to the bank.

Reaping What We Sow

Garden writing is a world all its own--but does it have to be so damned deadly boring?

I used to write a garden column. It was syndicated to nearly 2 million readers a month. I was an expert, and I wrote with expertise. That, after all, is the biggest part of being a garden writer.

Isn't it?

Well, yes and no. Anyone writing about any topic so specific as gardening has to know his beans. But he has to remember that being an expert and being an expert garden writer aren't exactly one-in-the-same.

We've all read "experts" who were dull as stripped screws. (You draw further conclusions.) At least, we've all started reading those experts. Whether or not we finished is open to debate. I have a feeling it's the rare reader, indeed, who will plow through those heavy-as-molasses tomes simply because they're written by an expert.

On the other hand, what a joy to find an expert in any field of expertise writing in a flip, lively, imaginative way! What a joy ... and what a rarity! Why is that? Why can't experts also be expert writers?

Well, the simple answer is, they can. The tough solution, though, is that it takes a whole lot of energy to write with vim and verve and vigor and ... oh, hell, I'm running out of "V" words. But you get the point. It's one thing to know your subject well. It's quite another to know your subject well and to know how to write it up so that everyone finds it interesting.

To wit:

The tomato is not actually a vegetable but a fruit. It's habitat ranges from the near-Arctic to the Equator, making it one of the most far-flung adaptable fruits on the face of the earth. It's habit, too, is similarly wide-reaching. It can be short and squatty or tall and leggy. It can be bush-like or vining. In short, it's one of the most remarkable of fruits known to man.

Excuse me while I excuse me.

Hey, what's going on here? A writer thinking that, as an expert, he need only put words on paper to capture everyone's imagination? Apparently. And apparently wrong. Just how many pages of writing like that would you be willing to suffer through? Oops, and here's a thought. If you can't endure such mindless dribble, how do you suppose the average editor (jaded, stilted, saturated with cliches, longing for creativity) feels? So, what's the lesson to be learned?

Take a dull subject (sorry, I love to garden, but it's a dull subject to most people who couldn't care less whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable, only that it's 99 cents a pound at Safeco and not $2.99 at Wal-Mart), figure out where the dullness lies, and avoid that chasm like the plague.

I give you:

The Tomato. Humble, unassuming, common. If your supermarket has a produce department--and I know it does--it's deluged by the ruby reds 12 months a year (okay, yeah, sometimes they're yellow or orange, I know, but 99 percent of the time, they're red). And why? The question is, rather, why not. Tomatoes are the most popular fruit (technically speaking) on the face of the earth, mostly because they're so versatile, partly because they're so prevalent--ranging from the near-Arctic to the Equator and south to just shy of Antarctica. And absolutely because they're so damned tasty!

Okay, okay. I set you up. It's easy to write a bad paragraph; it's easier still to write a better one. What's difficult is to write a good one all the time, even with potentially boring subjects. Are we beginning to see eye-to-eye here?

My philosophy on writing non-fiction is simple. Make it interesting.

Fiction is a breeze. You have something to say, it's extraordinary, remarkable, unbelievable, mind-boggling, made-up. But non-fiction? Ahh, there's the rub. That's where we, as writers, tend to want to let the "facts" (Just the facts, ma'm) speak for themselves. But facts, as any good fiction writer knows, are deadly boring. Do you think you could write an intriguing novel using "facts" alone? Well, neither can you write an interesting non-fiction piece.

Facts, to experts, are the end-all and be-all. That is their downfall. Facts, to a good writer, are a jumping-off point. What do they tell us? How can we relay that information to others in a lively and entertaining way? In short, how can we use factuality as a tool to enliven our writing styles, rather than as a writing style itself to deaden our effectiveness as writers?

The answer lies within each and every one of us. Read the "facts" that you write, and then ask yourself--be brutally honest with your answer, here--just how interesting what you've written would be to someone outside your field of expertise. If the answer, on a scale of one-to-ten, is anything but an eleven, you'd better drop back and punt.

And tomatoes, by the way--as far-flung as their empire flies--are far less impressive in that respect than the common pepper. Or even the pole bean.

Who knew???

To Outline or Not To Outline?

In many ways, writing is like a game. As with a game, you must follow certain rules. As with a game, you invest some time, pursue some courses of action, and emerge the winner ... or the loser. And, as with a game, you must always be on your toes, ready for unexpected.

Of course, for a story, the unexpected is good. It keeps the reader guessing, wondering, wanting to read on to learn more. But for a writer, the unexpected can be deadly.

When I wrote my first novel at the age of 15, I knew I wanted to be a writer and knew I had to write. I learned my craft as well as any kid my age could. I practiced diligently. I learned the rules, played by them, and still couldn't get published. Published, hell, I couldn't even get a decent reading. By the time I was 18, I'd collected enough pre-printed rejection slips to paper the walls of my basement "office" (which, by the way, I did).

I also did something else--something, as it turns out--that played a pivotal role in my not getting published. I avoided outlining like the Plague I knew it to be. Why spend time dinking around, I argued with myself, when I could be cranking out pages, paragraphs, entire novels? I had written half a dozen of them by the time I was out of school. You can only guess at their quality.

I know there are some pros who don't outline even today, and, in fact, I'm one of them ... occasionally. But that's the exception rather than the rule. When I do take the time to outline, the book flows easier, the errors in time and space are fewer, and the results are almost always better. Here's why.

An outline is a perfectly organized way for a perfectly disorganized human brain to keep things straight as words flow from stem cells onto paper. And a novel is nothing--including, by the way, readable--if it's not organized.

Outlining allows you to write the book in miniature so that, when you return to begin fleshing the story out, the tough stuff has already been done for you. It's much easier and far more efficient to fill in the blanks and round out the rough spots than it is to craft the story on the fly and do all that filling in and rounding out. Working from an outline, you can decide what descriptive passages go where, what character traits to reveal when, and how to connect all the dots without having to worry in between about what your story line is and whether or not the whole thing makes sense.

So, in effect, an outline should be composed of the following elements:

A story line

Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? Here's an example:

Bob stood up and stretched. He was tired of waiting for his contact, but at this point, he had no choice. It was either that or 20 years-to-life doing hard time in prison. When his contact showed, he was surprised to see it was a woman. Denise was 25, 30 at the most--a good ten years younger than he--with tawny good looks and a smile he took to immediately. She had expected someone younger than he and told him so. She said he didn't seem young enough or dumb enough to be involved with something like this at his age, which he took as a left-handed compliment.

They climbed back into her car and drove the three hours to the reservoir. There, they got out, Bob dragging the sack he'd brought with him along to the edge of the spillway. She asked to look inside, and at first he thought better of it. He asked her why, and she said she didn't know, she guessed that she just wanted to see what a couple of hands and feet looked like disconnected from their body. And she smiled.

That's a good start to a story, and at this point in time, I needn't know why Bob is carrying around a sack of human parts with him ... or even what his relationship to his contact is. I'll find that out as I get deeper into creating the outline. The bottom line is that, in five or six minutes, I got the novel off the ground and pointed in a specific direction. Were I to go back and flesh that much of it out--adding description, some flashback or recalls to fill the reader in on Bob's history, some character traits--I would probably end up with between ten and fifteen pages of finished work on my hands.

With that said, an outline might also include some elements beyond a story line, such as these:

A list of characters by name (added as they enter the story line

Descriptions of places you may need to go back to

Character traits, peculiarities, and brief biographical snip-its of characters you may need to go back to

Time frames (the car blew up on Tuesday, March 13, and wasn't fixed until that Friday)

Having those elements in your outline can be valuable, if you're going to use them. I rarely do, relying instead on my word processor's "search" feature to find out when the car blew up or what the spelling of Bob's last name is, etc. So my outlines are pretty much similar to the sample above. The point is, once you have a story line, you can include in your outline as much or as little additional information as you desire.

All of these points make a pretty strong argument for writing an outline before crafting the novel, but there's an even better one: most publishers will insist upon it. These days, when a publisher (or an agent or an editor, etc.) asks to see a book, he usually wants an outline and the first three chapters. He spends a few minutes speed-reading the outline to tell whether or not the book is even remotely related to the types of books that publisher sells. If not, you can expect that recurrent rejection slip, again. (But that's another story). If so, he'll invest more time in a more careful read of the chapters. Then, if he's convinced the writing is up to par, the story is handled well, and the other elements of the novel that he expects to be of high quality are, indeed, so, he'll call or write, requesting the rest of the book.

So, should you outline before writing your next novel or shouldn't you? That's the question???

Exercise: Outlining, Getting Down to Business

Outlining, is the key to literary success. But how do you learn to outline? For some people (of course!), it comes naturally. For others, it's a bear.

Here's one way to brush up on your outlining skills.

Take a five-to-ten-page piece of literature. It can be something you wrote or something you like (a magazine article, a short story, a segment of a novel). Then outline in reverse. In other words, start with the finished product and create the outline from that. Although the premise is not quite the same as starting with an outline and ending with the finished product, the techniques of outlining are identical--reducing a story to its most basic terms.

Take the story of The Three Little Pigs, for example. It breaks down quite comfortably into five sections. The first we'll call the introduction. The second is the pig that built his house of straw. The third is the pig that built his house of twigs. The fourth is the pig that built his house of bricks. The fifth is the conclusion.

The outline would look something like this:

Introduction

Three pigs set out to build houses to provide protection from the Big Bad Wolf.

Pig One

The first pig decided to build his house of straw. Straw was easy to come by, inexpensive, and easy to work with. In no time at all, the pig had completed his house, and he moved in before any of his brothers had finished their houses. He danced around and chided his brothers for not having had the same stroke of brilliance.

Pig Two

The second pig decided to build his house of twigs. Twigs were stronger than straw, inexpensive, and easy to work with. Twigs did take longer to build with, but, still, in little more time than his straw-building brother, he, too, had built a house and moved in.

Pig Three

The third pig decided to take more time, evaluate the situation, and react accordingly. The wolf, this pig realized, was shrewd and cunning. He was strong and resourceful. Besides that, he had a fondness for the taste of pig flesh. So this pig decided to build a house that no wolf anywhere could defeat--a house made of bricks. While the pig labored away, sweating beneath the weight of his own tenacity, his two brothers danced and frolicked and cajoled their older brother for his foolishness. Why spend so much time building a house of bricks, they argued, when he could accomplish the same feat more quickly and easily using straw or twigs?

Conslusion

When at last the third Pig had completed his house of bricks, the Big Bad Wolf made his rounds. When he arrived a the house of the first little pig, he smiled. With a huff and a puff, he blew the house in, and the pig went scurrying for his life to the house of his twig-building brother.

When the wolf succeeded in destroying the house of twigs, as well, the two little pigs scurried to the only place they knew to take refuge--the house that their brother had built with bricks. As the wolf appeared, the two foolish pigs trembled behind the closed door, fearing that the brick house, too, would be blown away.

But the wolf, try as he might, failed to damage the house made of bricks and, in complete exhaustion, finally gave up and wandered away, never to be seen again.

"You see," said the brother who had built his house of bricks. "Sometimes, the quickest and easiest way is not the best."

Naturally, this is an oversimplification of an age-old tale reduced to its main elements. But it serves a point about outlining: Include the story line (plot) and any critical dialogue (very little) and some of the personalities of the characters (the pigs) so that you can go back later and flesh in the details.

The results? Well, hey, if you'd written the story of the three little pigs, you'd have Walt Disney Studios knocking on your door right now! Get the picture?

Minding Your P's and Q's

When I was a kid, struggling to break into the "bigs" (which meant getting a by-line anywhere for anything), I regularly abused the time-honored etiquette of author-editor relations. Oh, sure, I knew from reading Writer's Digest that I was supposed to enclose an SASE (Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope) with all of my submissions. But when you're fourteen and cranking out a short story and a few dozen poems a week, that return postage mounts up! While other kids raided their mothers' purses for cigarette money, I launched periodic assaults on the family desk for postage stamps. (It's hell to be poor.) And when that avenue dried up, I began "forgetting" to enclose an SASE, knowing that, once an editor got a look at my work, no return postage would be necessary, anyway.

Sometimes, I would include the SA and leave out the SE, making it look as though I were merely absent-minded, instead of outright larcenous. Or (and this is the one I thought to be the slickest of all), I would enclose an SASE but would fail to place enough postage on the package for its guaranteed return. I assumed, of course, that the publisher, if dumb enough not to know great literature when he saw it, would at least be smart enough to know how much additional postage the package required for its return.

I did all these things, as I say, out of necessity. By the time I was all grown up and working as an assistant editor for a national magazine, I had enough money of my own to insure a continuing supply of postage for those SASE's.

Imagine my surprise when an editor returned my submission one day as not being right for him, then actually suggested that I submit something else without bothering to enclose an SASE!

That, I soon enough came to understand, is an editor's prerogative--bending the rules--not a writer's. Before long, I instituted the same policy with writers submitting their work to me. It's a small touch, but one that says, "Hey, even though I may not use everything you submit, I like your style, want to give you a break, and encourage you to submit more."

There are other writer-editor rules I learned about from that first editorial job. Most are common sense, written on an understanding instead of carved in stone. Still, they are as important for a writer to know and follow as is the SASE rule.

Submitting to the wrong market

As an editor, I was responsible for creating all those writer's market listings you see popping up everywhere (you didn't really think they wrote themselves, did you?). I would specify in them that I wanted to see a short, succinct query letter (enclose SASE) and that we weren't interested in poetry, fiction, travel, humor, controversial material, or off-color stuff. I expected, after going through all the trouble of updating those listings several times a year, that a writer would check them out before submitting.

It took me just three seconds to eliminate those who didn't (and to label them mentally as rank amateurs). "I read your magazine all the time and have a great fiction piece about a woman torturing a man until he falls in love with her" rated an immediate trip to the out basket. Market listings are there for a reason. Usually, they relate strongly to a publisher's time-tested editorial policy. Don't think you're going to change that policy by offering something the publisher doesn't want, no matter how good it is.

Revising a turned-down piece

One editor I know used to complain constantly about authors whose work he rejected revising and resubmitting the work. "If I wanted a revision, I would have asked for it," he told me.

By voluntarily reading between the editor's lines and resubmitting a piece without being asked to do so, you're essentially telling the editor that you're desperate for a sale and you don't believe there's anything else of value within you, waiting to come out. Few editors are interested in developing a working relationship with a one-shot author. They're looking for writers they can depend upon, who come through for them on time, and upon whom they can call for future work.

Lying

It may seem hard to believe, but I occasionally came across writers who would outright lie in an attempt to get their material read. "Here's that piece you asked to see on stock-car racing." That might work with a few absent-minded editors, but most know what they've asked to see and what they haven't. Even if I were looking for a piece on stock-car racing, I wouldn't buy from a writer who was trying to con his way in through the back door. If a writer is that lacking in moral integrity, how can I possibly assume the "facts" in his article are legitimate or that the piece is even his?

The "buddy" system

As an articles editor, I had a job to do. It consisted of developing ideas and procuring editorial content, editing raw manuscripts to fit the magazine's editorial style, reviewing and returning unsolicited manuscripts not right for our pages, sending manuscripts out for typesetting, proofing the galleys returned from the typesetter, sending those galleys back to typesetting for corrections, proofing the corrected galleys returned from typesetting, laying out each magazine issue, developing a stable of reliable and professional freelance writers, coordinating editorial copy with our art director, and justifying everything I did to our magazine's publisher. And that's only the stuff I remember off the top of my head!

The last thing in the world I needed or could afford was a freelancer into long, chatty relationships in an effort to buddy-up to me so that I'd be more receptive to his material. Telephone calls, chatty letters, unannounced visits ("I was just in the neighborhood and thought I'd drop by"), and invitations to his baby's barmitzvah were not high on my list of things I wanted to experience on any given day. Whenever I came across a writer who insisted on doing business the "buddy-system" way, I made it clear that the deal was off.

Sloppiness

I'm something of a perfectionist. I believe most editors are ... at least, they are if their pages are any good. Whenever I came across a writer who forgot to enclosed page three or who didn't proofread his material for proper spelling or who switched verb tenses mid-stream, I bailed out on the work. My rationale? If the writer didn't think his own work was good enough to merit the extra effort to make it "perfect," why should I?

That's not to say that an occasional slip-up can't happen. I'm sometimes amazed that, even in this era of spell-checking word processing programs, a typo will get by me and make it all the way to an editor's desk before I find out about it. But when a writer submits a 10-page article complete with 47 typos, 17 errors in syntax, half a dozen erasures, and marinara-sauce stains on the accompanying cover letter (as actually happened once), it's a sure bet I'm not going to work at developing a continuing relationship with him!

So get smart. Learn the rules of writer-editor etiquette and follow them. You'll be better off for it, and your work will get more (and more serious) attention on account of it.

On second thought, maybe the stain was grape jelly ...

Breaking All the Rules

Every writer does it; so why shouldn't you?

We all know there are rules to good writing. There are grammatical rules (ouch!) and there are syntax rules, or rules that govern your usage of one word over another. There are even rules that I call social rules (things that are no longer strictly grammar rules, like not ending a sentence with a preposition, but still considered bad writing in the right social circles).

Yet, we all know very successful writers who break, well, if not all, at least some of these rules on a regular basis.

So what gives? Are rules meant to be kept ... or broken?

Some of the most notorious rule-breakers have also been some of the most lauded writers. You can't get through Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms or For Whom the Bell Tolls without stumbling over hundreds of broken rules, grammatical, syntax, and social. Similarly, the Beat era beacon, Jack Kerouac, broke rules regularly. Yet, both these writers are generally regarded as giants in literature. (Well, okay, not by everyone ... Truman Capote once said of Kerouac's work, "That's not writing--it's typing!)

So why does everyone tell you to follow the rules of good writing if you want to be a good writer?

Actually, I don't. Or, rather, I don't, given one inviolable admonition. You must know the rules before you can break them.

Breaking the rules out of ignorance results in poor, convoluted reading. Rules are rules for a reason. We cling to them in order to make literature easier to read and understand. Without any rules at all, reading would be virtually impossible. (That's one of the things that made the Beat era's writing so difficult to read; one of the reasons Shakespeare is such hard going for so many people unfamiliar with old English.) Simply put, when you violate the rules unwittingly, you make it more difficult for your readers to understand your writing.

One of my least favorite broken rules from ignorance is the misplaced modifier. Take this sentence:

"Seeing the speeding car, the gutter was the first place Jack thought to jump."

Since the noun, "gutter," has been unwittingly placed nearest to the introductory adverbial clause ("seeing the speeding car"), the reader's mind automatically reads the sentence as saying that the gutter saw the speeding car; and--of course--that's not only confusing, it's impossible. The proper, and thus more acceptable, sentence construction is this:

"Seeing the speeding car, Jack jumped into the first place of which he thought, the gutter."

Now the reader's mind quickly and correctly places "Jack" as the noun being modified by the introductory clause--it is Jack, and not the gutter, who sees the speeding car.

The first sentence is a perfect (and perfectly common) example of breaking a rule and creating poor writing out of ignorance. Breaking rules for dramatic effect, however, is nearly as common and far more acceptable. Here's one example:

"Seeing the speeding car, Jack stopped. Looked. The gutter! It was his only chance."

In this example, "Looked" is treated as a complete sentence, and yet it has no subject to support the definition of a sentence. Similarly, "The gutter" is treated as a complete sentence, although it possesses no verb, the other component required in order to have a complete sentence.

But put together with the surrounding words, the thought conveyed is still easy for the reader's mind to understand (partly because we tend to talk that way, therefore we are comfortable in thinking that way). It is also far stronger, more dramatic, and more emphatic than the grammatically correct, "Seeing the speeding car, Jack jumped into the first place of which he thought, the gutter."

Of course, simply knowing the rules of good writing doesn't mean you can break them with impunity. Think of a correctly worded sentence as a perfectly painted landscape. The tones all work together, the direction and movement are beyond flaw, the perspective and proportion are perfect.

Now think of re-inventing that landscape as a cubist or an impressionist painter might. The results would nr equally acceptable, even preferable, to an art patron schooled in cubism and impressionism, although they may be scoffed at by a realist with little patience for such "new fangled notions" in art.

The same is true when you break the rules in writing. You do so not to cause the reader difficulty in reading or in understanding what you're writing, but rather to re-invent the sentence for a very specific, intentionally created purpose.

So the next time you want to break the rules, go right ahead. Just make sure you know what rules you're breaking and why. The goal in breaking rules--just as the goal in writing--must always be to create better, more understandable, more effective literature.

Until you've reached a point in your development as a writer in which you can do so, do yourself and everyone else a favor and pick up a copy of Strunk's The Elements of Style or A Dictionary of Modern American Usage or The Chicago Manual of Style ... and use it! Over and over again. Until you know your craft inside out.

Sound tough? Some people might find it so. But for them, I am reminded of one of my favorite literary quotes: "Easy writing is damned vile reading."

Touche!

Exercise: Perchance To Dream

One of the freest forms of storytelling takes place not between two friends or a couple of snuggling lovers. It takes place within our own minds. It is our psyche relaying a tale to us. We call it a dream.

Recall for an instance a dream you have had--any dream, ever. If you're like most people, you found that the dream was rich in imagery, sometimes in color, that the dialogue, if any, was sharp and to the point, free-flowing, unstilted. The imagery was fantastic, often including flying stairs and headless children who suddenly sprout eyes and mouths and ears when it is convenient in the dream for them to have them. In short, the way our dreams unfold is natural, realistic, and believable because, within them, we suspend the constraints of reality.

Imagine what it would be like if you could write so wonderfully freely. Imagine if you could create a world unfettered by conventions. Not only would your story lines, your plots, be wild and free, but your characters would be believable and really, really, real. Their dialogue would wound unstilted. Their relationships would be as natural and unquestioned as the figurines in your nocturnal fantasies. Imagine if you could write like that.

What's that you say? You're not into fantasy writing? You want to write the great American tragedy or the last lasting literary tome of the new millennium? Yes, but if you could incorporate into your writing the same wild freeness that takes place in your dreams, the same believability, even a book solidly based on reality could sing!

Think about this sentence: "Donnie was so angry, he wanted to kill him."

Now think about Donnie, his image, what he looks like, how he's dressed, how he smells, looks, moves, sounds. Think about his quirks, his shortcomings, what sets him off, moves him apart. Those are all the things you would experience if you had a dream about a Donnie who was so angry that he wanted to kill someone. If you could relay some of those dream images, you could capture the scene and start a book that or a short story that just might be a new classic.

Of course, one way to learn to write in such a way--a way similar to that in which we dream--is to write out your dreams. But we only dream so much and often remember so little. Besides, there is a better way.

Write out a dream image. Not one that you have actually experience, but one that you are making up. You are the dream factory. Now, doctor, create the dream.

As you do so, remember a couple of points.

1.) Start your dream image anywhere. As in a dream, you don't need a beginning, a middle, and an end. Sometimes thinking in linear terms stifles our creativity. By picking up with an image and then letting the story unfold, we loosen our creative bindings.

2.) Place no restrictions on your image or characters. Just as the human mind doesn't limit what it conjures up during that beautiful REM time, you, too, should let yourself go. Flying donkeys? Talking birds? Hey, it's your dream.

3.) Include all the senses. Don't tell us something smells beautiful, describe it. Your mind doesn't explain that something smells beautiful in a dream, why do so in your real-time writing? Do the same with the other senses--describe the site, the feel, the sound the way it's unfolding in your dream image.

Follow that advice, and you'll be amazed at just how creative you really are ... and how unnecessary it is to rely on those old stand-by literary conventions to get your image across.

Keeping the Mystery Alive

Putting the Suspense Back into Your Writing

”What is it that keeps a reader reading?” asks Peter Gelfan. Gelfan is a ghostwriter and collaborator-editor. He continues, “In nonfiction, it's information. In fiction, however, the pull is information's exact opposite: mystery. We're not talking about mystery as a genre here, but the essential quality in all fiction that cultivates curiosity, stimulates imagination, invites participation, and generally keeps the reader hooked.

“Every step of the journey should be fraught with questions, not only about how the story turns out but about the characters, their motives, and their history (also called exposition or back-story). All of this is designed to get the reader to connect, to put himself in the hero's or villain's shoes.”

In short, Gelfan seems to be talking about incorporating the traditional journalist’s questions of Who, What, When, Where, and Why into every fiction writer’s arsenal. After all, if it works for non-fiction news writers, why wouldn’t it work for fiction writers, whose goal is to be believable enough so that their stories might be true (Hey, it could happen!).

Ahh, but that doesn’t mean you need to load up the first two paragraphs of your fiction with all of the answers. A news article, because of its brevity due to a newspaper’s space restrictions and the reader’s short attention span, must spill its guts out early on, then go back later to fill in the details, providing the fine tuning that far few readers will ever see (or even want to see). So when you read a news story about the U.S. attack on Afghanistan, you walk away with something like this.

“United States and British combined forces launched a massive counter-attack against Afghan Taliban strongholds early Sunday morning. The attack, in response to the September 11 Taliban-backed terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, was launched from land- and sea-based staging areas, including two aircraft carriers and two submarines.”

Now the reader has learned—in 10.3 seconds or less—all he may need or want to know about what happened. If he has the time and patience, he may read on for the details.

Picture for a moment a novel about the very same occurrence. It is more likely to start out something like this.

“The moon--full, swollen, ripe, sweeping across the starless sky over New York, the misshapen buildings, the spirals of smoke and dust still snaking their way up to meet it--was a mere sliver of condensed light here, half a world away. Suspended midway between heaven and earth high over the capital city of Kabul, it seemed strangely surreal, out of place, like the stick figures in a Paul Klee painting. As Paula stared out over the countryside, she could hear the plaintive wail of the karakul in the fields, smell the thick, pungent smoke beginning to rise from the ovens of the bakers in the market square.”

Notice that the second, fictional, story contained more words than the first news piece and yet revealed far less about the actual story than did the straight reportage. That did not happen by accident.

Beginning writers of fiction often tend to provide too much information too soon, as though they are in a race to see which will give out first—the writer’s ability to provide information or the reader’s desire to devour it. They forget that the reason readers read fiction is to be swept away, to have their senses exposed to sensations that would otherwise be foreign to them, to be entertained. The reason readers read non-fiction is to learn.

Maintaining mystery in fiction is critical to the telling of the story. Once the reader knows basically everything there is to know about the story, it no longer holds allure or interest. It becomes old hat. It is little more than an overly long news article.

That doesn’t mean that the reader cannot know—or, at any rate, highly suspect—the outcome to any fictional tale he reads without losing interest in reading on. Some of the most intriguing tales of suspense start out with the outcome of the story clear and only the mechanism of how the characters got to that point remaining in doubt. Remember Double Indemnity? We knew everything we needed to know about the story from the very beginning ... except how it happened.

So the next time you put pen to paper in order to create that extraordinarily memorable piece of fiction, take a few moments to ask the five W’s of good journalism. Then, once you have the answers, spend the rest of your writing time not sharing them with your readers until absolutely necessary. Suspense, mystery, the unknown—they’re what make great fiction great. Try it. I'm betting you’ll like it.

Writing the Mystery Novel

Mystery. The word ripples with excitement. We can thank Edgar Allen Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle for that. And Murder She Wrote, as well. Mysteries throughout history have been mysterious, of course. But they've also been loaded with action, brimming with possibilities, bristling with drama. That's what makes mysteries so popular.

Everyone enjoys a good who-dunnit. We all like to be kept on the edge of our seats, waiting for the inexplicable suddenly to clear.

But how does a writer go about writing a winning mystery? Ahh, that's easier said than done. Still, with a little forethought, lots of perseverance, and plenty of creativity, even a novice mystery writer can write his own literary ticket to success.

So, let's take a look at what makes a good mystery tick.

First, a mystery is simply a story about the unknown. We don't necessarily care at this point just what that unknown is, so long as it's unfathomable to the reader. A writer creates mystery by actively working to prevent his reader from knowing the truth. Take a look at this example:

A car roars by a fast-food restaurant. A Muslim suicide bomber dressed in a black robe leaps out the car's back door and goes tumbling through the crowd. Dazed and barely conscious, he comes to rest in a pool of blood in the courtyard, where several people cluster around, anxious to help. Suddenly a bomb hidden beneath his coat explodes, sending tables and chairs, shards of glass and human flesh flying.

Mystery? Hardly. The writer has explained it all--except, of course, why it happened. But once you know what happened, the "why," except in psychological thrillers, is rarely more than an also-ran. What spoils the plot for this mini-mystery? Well, for starters, we know that the man in the car is Muslim. We know that he leaped from the car, that he's a suicide bomber, and we instinctively know what suicide bombers do. We know that a bomb explodes from beneath his coat, and we know the horrific results.

Now check out this version of the same story:

A car roars around the corner. It slows briefly before a fast-food restaurant and the back door flies open. Perched halfway out of the car is a man wearing a long coat, despite the grueling mid-August heat. As the driver hits the accelerator, the man flies out of the car, tumbling through the crowd until his body slams up against the brick facade of the building, where he lay for several minutes in a swelling pool of blood. A crowd gathers. A woman undoes his coat. Stepping back in horror, she screams.

Now, all of a sudden, we have a ton of mystery. Who are the people in the car? Why did the driver slow down? What made the car door open? Why was the man perched at the edge of the door? Why was he wearing a long coat in the middle of summer? Why did the driver suddenly hit the accelerator? What sent the man flying from the car--did he leap, or was he shoved? Who is the man? Is he dead or alive? What did the woman see that made her scream? And, most importantly of all, what's going to happen next?

Mystery. So much mystery. And all because the writer of the second passage chose to hold back some very pertinent information from his reader, to prevent his reader from learning more.

Holding back information from the reader is the lifeline of all mystery. Doing so accomplishes two things.

First, it keeps the reader in the dark and, presumably, makes him want to know more. He doesn't know what happened or why, so he's forced to guess (everyone wants to know if his "hunch" is right). That creates tension and intrigue within the reader and keeps him turning the pages, coming back for more.

Second, holding back information creates multiple avenues of action for the writer to explore. As a writer unfolds a mystery, even one that has been impeccably outlined, he slowly, deliberately doles out new possibilities, new wrinkles, new clues. Changing an outline on-the-fly to incorporate new concepts is often one of the most enjoyable things about writing a mystery. Not only has the writer figured the mystery out in advance of starting the book, but also he gets numerous opportunities to alter the mystery's course along the way to its completion. Talk about fun!

But what--I know you're getting ready to ask--makes a run-of-the-mill mystery a great mystery? After all, mystery is mystery, isn't it? Withholding information is withholding information, no matter how it's done.

Well, that's true, but only to a point. A well-done, stylistic mystery, as I define it, is an unmistakable uniqueness to a character or a situation. Here's an example of mystery with very little "style" in its opening graf:

John watched as the young woman got onto the bus and slipped into a seat across the aisle. As she opened her purse to reach for a tissue, he saw the unmistakable glint of hardened medal--blued metal--the kind of metal you find nowhere else but on the barrel of a gun. "Now what the hell would she be doing with a gun?" he wondered.

That's an example of what I call a generic mystery scene. It works. It creates suspense; but it carries little, if any, style. Now, listen to this version of the same scene:

John settled into his seat, his knees pressing hard against the metal frame before him. His eyes, twin slits in an otherwise placid face, scanned the bobbing heads of the passengers--"I hate buses," he thought--finally settling on the sylvan shape of a young lady picking her way slowly down the aisle. She stumbled awkwardly to one side as the bus veered left before continuing its way through late-night traffic.

Grabbing the polished metal frame of the seat just across the aisle and in front of John, she slid down into the time-worn vinyl. She shifted her hat and tilted her head. John ran his slits down the side of her body, the red chintz of her dress, her heels--black backless with no straps--and then back up again in time to see her open her purse and reach inside for a tissue. The slits suddenly widened. Peeking out at him from the corner of the bag was the gaping muzzle of a snub-nosed revolver--its time-dulled steel-grey complexion in marked contrast to the honey-blonde hair dancing only inches above it.

Notice how the second passage relays the same sense of mystery as the first one: the reader knows that John saw a gun in the woman's purse and that he wondered what it was doing there.

But the second passage goes on to spread a thin layer of jam across the bun. Its sweet, sticky tastiness draws the reader in more deeply, gives him a sense of what the characters are all about ... and maybe what the tone of the story is about, too--something the first passage fails to do.

It accomplishes all of this, of course, through description. Not just general descriptive banter, but description that adds to the sense of mystery, of the hush-hushedness, of something going on that the reader can't quite fathom.

In the second passage, the woman suddenly becomes a lady. John's eyes are narrow slits. Her form is sylvan. She wears a hat and tilts her head forward. Her dress is red chintz; her heels, black strapless. The gun is a deadly snub-nosed revolver. Its coloring is time-dulled steel grey; while her hair is honey blonde.

All of these descriptive references feed into the reader's sense of heightened mystery. By the time these paragraphs are history, the reader is absolutely convinced that something wonderful, something awful, something sinister and unpredictable is going to take place here. And, chances are, the reader is right. The author has succeeded.

So, you want mystery? Plan in advance. Work carefully. Give the reader enough information to make sense but not enough to make too much sense. Never, ever give him enough to allow him to figure out who did what and why until you're ready to tell all.

You want mystery with style? Give the reader exactly the same thing and then some through careful use of description ... but still leave him wondering--and wanting--more.

Writing Leads That Sell ... and Sell and Sell

What you say right up front is likely to determine whether or not you sell the work you're writing and for how much

I was thinking the other day (something that comes dangerously close to an oxymoron) about how editors function. I mean, what pulls an editor toward one piece and pushes him away from another? And how many editors actually read--from start to finish--every word of every manuscript placed before them?

I know the answer, of course. But before I break the bad news to you, let me share a little bit about the way one particular editor works.

Sam (not his real name) edits a monthly magazine called Family Journal (not its real name). The publication has been around long enough so that, even though it has space to run only five or six freelance articles a month (the rest of the publication is staff-written), it receives 30 - 40 submissions a day.

Still, Sam is a lucky editor. He has an assistant, Chester. One of the first duties Sam gave to Chester when he hired him was to peruse the "slush pile"--the stash of unsolicited manuscripts that comes in "over the transom." The reason Sam gave this assignment to his assistant isn't that he doesn't want to be the one to pick and choose what articles the magazine runs. On the contrary. Sam has Chester weed out the articles that are obviously not suited for publication in the Journal. This includes all fiction, poems, and personal reminiscences ("When I was a bombardier in WW-II ..."). It includes all off-color stuff or pieces of an overtly sexual nature (the publication is family-oriented, remember). It also includes pieces that are too long for the magazine (which lists a maximum word length of 3,000 in its market report but actually prefers shorter pieces). Finally, the magazine excludes departmental pieces, short fillers, jokes, and other things that the staff can assemble themselves or pull from the wire services free of charge.

By the time Chester is finished culling the obvious misfits from the slush pile, he has reduced the day's work load to ten articles.

Now, the second thing Sam trained Chester to do was to recognize bad writing when he sees it. Conversely, it might be reasonably argued, Chester can then be relied upon to recognize good writing when he sees it. Another five articles drop out of the running.

Finally, when Chester has culled the five good articles from the day's submissions, he asks Sam if he has time to review the survivors. Naturally, Sam--being busy laying out the book or coordinating the editorial content with the advertising department or working with the art director on cover and interior-article illustrations or finding appropriate illustrative photographs to go along with next month's articles--hasn't. But, not wanting to discourage Chester from doing his job, Sam humors him by asking for a brief oral run-down of the five articles. It goes something like this:

Chester: "This one is about growing squash in containers on the patio or deck. It's pretty cute and could be useful to our readers."

Sam: "Does the writer have any gardening qualifications?"

Chester (scanning the writer's cover letter): "Ummm, he doesn't say."

Sam shakes his head.

Chester: "Well, here's one that's a comparison of the quality of automobiles today versus fifty years ago. It's really well written. The author used to work for General Motors."

Sam: "What's his conclusion?"

Chester: "He says they can't hold a candle to the cars made even two decades ago, let alone in the Fifties or Sixties."

Sam (shaking his head): "Nope. Can't do that. Advertising is running a special automotive spread this month. Ford would shit green apples."

Chester (sighing): "Here's one I really like. It's about how parents need to spend more time with their kids, do more positive things with them. The writer is a child psychologist and a former fifth-grade teacher. It makes a lot of sense."

Sam: "Does he say how parents are supposed to find the time when both of them are out working so they can afford to buy a car that's inferior to the last car they bought?"

Chester (setting the article off to one side): "This one you're going to love."

Sam: "I love 'em all."

Chester: "It's a piece about how the White House has failed to protect our borders from illegal aliens. It makes some good points in light of 9-11. I think it's terrific. A good investigative journalism piece. Scarier than hell, but it really cuts to the chase."

Sam: "I agree. I read a similar piece in Reader's Digest last month. Anything else?"

Chester (shaking his head): "This is the last one."

Sam: "What is it?"

Chester: "It's a little weak, but you might like it. It's the story of the PT-109 and how Jack Kennedy saved his crew's lives during World War Two."

Sam: "Any photos?"

Chester: "A couple of old Navy black-and-whites, one of the ship and the crew, including Kennedy, and another of Kennedy in the hospital after they were rescued."

Sam: "Bingo!"

The lead's the thing

Sam is not that unusual an editor. And if you think book editors are any different than magazine editors, you're right--they're worse. Imagine some poor working stiff with 40 book-length novels to plow through before the editorial meeting on Thursday morning. Do you think he'll read every word of every book? And, if not, what will he read?

Nearly all editors read the first sentence of a manuscript. If it's a book, they read the first sentence of the synopsis. If that catches their attention, they'll likely go on to read the first paragraph. If that "sings," they'll probably read the first page. If the work is still in the running (and by now, most aren't), the editor will likely set the manuscript aside for more careful review later. If, after a week or two, he goes back to the piece and still likes it, he may read the entire article or the first few chapters.

With that done, the editor now has a solid enough understanding of the project to take it in to his publisher or editorial board for review. If they come back with a thumb's up, he'll likely read the entire thing and then contact the writer with the good news: they're going to publish his work.

What this means for you (and if you're reading between the lines like a good writer should, you already know) is that you need to re-think your approach to writing. Your work has to fly from the very first line. It has to have a dynamite opening paragraph. If it's a book, the first chapter has to sing like a soprano on steroids.

Check out these two leads to the same short story:

Lead One: It was a cold and dreary night. The rain pelted the windshield. Inside the car, Jack Trembleau, a fisherman on his way back from a day on the lake, struggled to see the road that stretched out ahead of him. It wasn't easy. It was harder, in fact, than it had been the last time he'd gotten caught in a Nor'easter--a torrential storm that blew havoc in toward shore from somewhere out in the Atlantic. And that storm had been so bad, he seriously doubted that he'd ever see Annabelle Lee again. Now, it seemed even less likely.



Lead Two: Jack would not survive the night. Everything that he knew, all that he loved, gone. Poof. In a split second. He wondered what it would feel like ... the end. He wondered if it would be horrible, filled with terror and wrenching pain, like in the movies. Or if perhaps it would simply slip over him--death--like a comfortable old sweater. He could pull over. Hold up until the storm settled in. But if he did that, she'd be gone. And that would be even worse than death. No, it was better this way. No matter what.

In Lead One, the writer started out with a cliche, which he promptly followed with another cliche. Then he wasted more valuable time and space by specifying that Jack Trembleau (who needs to know his last name, anyway?) was inside a car--something even less astute readers might have figured out themselves from the previous reference to a windshield. He wasted more time in catching the reader's imagination by defining what a Nor'easter is, even though it doesn't matter. Finally, he bogged the lead down even further with the awkward introduction of the name of some woman who means absolutely nothing to the reader.

Hook 'em, book 'em, and cook 'em

Get the point? When you lay out your leads, keep them short and punchy. Make them gripping. Ask yourself, will this catch the reader's attention and hold it through the next sentence. If the honest answer is "no," (or even if you're not sure), re-think your lead. Revise and rewrite and keep rewriting until you come up with something grippy, grabby, and tense, as in Lead Two. Then--and only then--will you be sure that the editor's eye you're trying to grab isn't going to wander from your manuscript to someone else's after the first few words.

Don't worry about not providing all the details in the first paragraph. Writers who do that are literally a dime a dozen--and their writing is worth even less.

Remember, if you think your lead sounds trite, weak, and uninspired, you'd better believe that some jaded editor on the business end of a desk will think the very same thing, in spades. Your job as a successful, marketable writer isn't to show the editor that you have all the facts right from the start. Your job is to convince the editor that he hasn't ... and then make him want to read on to learn more.

What's that old phrase about men and women and their eternal quest for love --He chased her until she caught him? Well, it may be something of a stretch, but when the words you put into your lead chase an editor until he catches them, you've done your job. And you can start planning to get published ... soon ... and often.

Selling the Self- Help/Inspirational Article

We all love to give free advice; so why not get paid while we're doing it?

We're all self-help gurus to one degree or another. You give advice to someone about relationships. That person gives advice to someone else about car care. That person gives advice to someone else, still, about growing bigger tomatoes.

Statisticians estimate that we give advice at least half a dozen times a day. You may not have noticed yourself on the giving end of the Dear Abby Syndrome, but that's only because giving advice is about as spontaneous as breathing. It's only when we stop that we notice.

Admittedly, not all the advice we share is earth-shattering or mind-boggling. Some guy advises his wife to lose the red sweater and put on the brown one. Before she walks out the door, she tells him to be sure to mail the mortgage check on his way to work.

So the exchange of advice is everywhere. Most of the time, it's free. (Some of the time, it's not even wanted--but that rarely stops us from rendering it!) But nearly as often, someone somewhere is making money off of it.

Your doctor advises you to give up smoking, then bills you $35 for the privilege. Your broker tells you to dump the blue chip stocks and pick up some high-tech loads. Your lawyer warns you to get a new lease from your landlord with a non-cancellation clause in it. Whenever a professional gives advice, the cash register rings. In fact, we're betting you pay hundreds of dollars a month on advice that you could just as easily be getting free...if you knew where to look. In fact, you could be getting paid for looking. Check this out:

American Fitness, 15250 Ventura Blvd., Suite 200, Sherman Oaks, CA 91403, 818-905-0040, Web site: http://www.afaa.com/. Contact: Dr. Meg Jordan, editor. "We need timely, in-depth, informative articles on health, fitness, aerobic exercise, sports nutrition, age-specific fitness, and outdoor activity." Absolutely no first-person accounts ...."

Now, you may think this is a market listing for American Fitness magazine. Wrong! In reality, it's a desperate cry for help. Some editor named Meg Jordan is asking for your advice. She wants you to offer something that will make her readers take notice. Furthermore, she's willing to pay up to $200 for it. See what we mean?

But what do you write about? Which area is most likely to net you an assignment? How can you turn your willingness to offer advice into dollars? That's where the fun begins.

Where free advice usually involves narrowly defined areas of expertise ("Oh, I wish I knew which shoes looked better on me, the brown or the black!"), paid advice in the form of a self-help article is wide open. To hell with brown or black shoes, go for the juggler. Think out of the box. Get creative!

We noticed in the market listing above the phrase, age-specific fitness, and we wondered what that meant. Exercises for teens? For infants? Or, perhaps, for octogenarians? So, pulling up our trusty meta-search engine, we plugged in the terms, "octogenarian" and "exercise."

With very little searching, we found an item on an energetic octogenarian who still teaches yoga at the age of 80. Here's the query we drafted:

Offbeat Octogenarian Workouts

When Mary Cavanaugh demonstrates a Yoga position to her students these days, it's no big thing. Until, that is, you realize she's over 80!

After more than 35 years of teaching yoga, Cavanaugh still approaches her daily workouts with the blind enthusiasm of youth. As limber as a teenager and twice as energetic, she is anything but blaze about her work.

"It still blows me away when I see the improvement in people," she says. "I say 'Wow, this really works.' Every time I see it happen, it surprises me."

It shouldn't. Cavanaugh's own spiritual mentor and yoga adviser, Indra Mataji Devi, is still teaching at 103! "She's an inspiration to me," says Cavanaugh. "To all of us. I only hope I can move as well when I'm over a hundred."

A hundred? Does she really expect to live past the century mark? "And that's just for starters," she chuckles.

So what gives with all these "old people" and yoga? Have they found the long-elusive Fountain of Youth? Are they onto something the rest of us can only hope for?

Do you see what we mean? Inside of half an hour of reading that market listing, a light bulb went on, a search was initiated, and a query was written. Another half hour later, and it could have been winging its way to sunny California.

So get in the habit of thinking of yourself--the writer you--as a professional advice-giver. Whenever you peruse a magazine or book market listing, think in terms of what might make for interesting, unusual, or entertaining words of wisdom that--with just a little bit of research--you can pass along to your readers. That's what self-help and inspirational writing is all about, after all, isn't it?

Hey, would we steer you wrong? Take our advice.

Historical Novel: Is It History, or More... Much More?

There's a truism in selling non-fiction history to a book publisher. If it's history, it has to be accurate! Yet, every editor who has ever worked in the field of non-fiction history has come across at least one writer who has played loose and free with the historical facts. The results: not only did that writer not get published, but also he'll never even get another read at that publishing house.

That's how important accuracy in research and writing is to history. How much easier it would be to sell history with a twist--quasi-history, sort-of-history, a book that's based on history and is historically accurate, but only to a degree. Well, that's where selling the historical novel comes in.

Author James Michner once said in an interview that, when he wrote historical fiction (and he wrote a lot!), he never particularly cared whether or not the steam engine in his book about life in 1820 Nebraska didn't actually arrive in Nebraska until 1830! And neither, it seems, did his readers.

At first glance, the scenario of being able to take history and manipulate it without regard for historical accuracy looks like a writer's dream. And, in many ways, it is. If writing accurately about historical situations is the difficult part in writing and selling history, how much easier it would be not to have to worry about such trivialities as facts in the first place!

But that begs the question: what do historical fiction editors look for, and, even more importantly, what do they shy away from when selecting a historical novel to publish?

One sure answer is character assassination. Remember the recent Ronald Regan fiasco that CBS commissioned and planned on airing until word got out that it was downright "mean-spirited" and "vindictive"? That's something few editors want to be associated with. So, when peddling historical fiction, it's important to be sure that--if you make a controversial or denigrating statement about a historical person--you can back it up.

Another thing editors look for is reasonability. It's one thing to try to sell a book about JFK in which you present him as having had an affair with Marilyn Monroe. That's absolutely believable. It's something else entirely if you present him as having had an affair with Rock Hudson. See the difference?

"If a writer wants me to believe that something actually took place in a historical novel, it at least has to be plausible," according to Don Bacue, International Features Syndicate executive editor, "otherwise it will turn the reader, not to mention the editor, off--long before the book makes it to market. And that's sure death for any writer trying to sell a book."

Most importantly of all, a writer trying to sell a historical novel must show some faculty for the subject. If someone writes historical fiction about Louis Pasteur and has no knowledge whatsoever of bio-chemistry, he's doomed to failure from the start.

That doesn't mean that a writer must be a bio-chemist to write such a book. Michner wasn't a minister or a native of the islands when he wrote Hawaii. But he did do his homework. He studied about the time period, the islands, the missionaries of the era, sailing ships, etc. By the time he set about actually writing and then selling the book, he knew as much about his subject as any historian alive. Well, nearly.

So, how do you impress upon an editor your proficiency with a particular historical topic or time period? Spell it out in your query letter:

Dear Editor Person:

John Wilkes Booth has long been one of the most hated men in American history. But I have a different take on the man whom people knew and loved before he leaped from the balcony where the president had just been shot. In my historical novel, Pirates from Hell, I speculate upon how this man who had been a healing physician for years might have turned out if abolitionists hadn't poisoned his outlook on the War--and then how they went on to change a saint into a sinner in a single night.

Briefly, I'm a full-time freelance writer with previous publishing credits. I'm also a serious student of Lincoln, from his birth to his death. Booth has been a fascinating micro-study for me. Not only was the man brilliant and compassionate, but also he was an ardent Republican who actually voted for Lincoln in 1860!

If you'd like to see more, I can send you an outline, synopsis, and sample chapters by return mail or e-mail, as you wish.

Sincerely yours,

Fred Writer Guy

The letter is quick, snappy, pointed, and informative--the perfect query for what sounds like an eminently publishable (i.e., marketable) book. We think you get the message, and we're pretty sure an editor would, too.

There's an old adage in writing. A writer must know the rules of grammar before he may break the rules of grammar. The same could be said of historical fiction. A writer must know his history before he sets out to rewrite it.

Any way you look at it, the historical novel is a strong and powerful genre that many publishers feel comfortable in tackling. But before doing so, they want to be absolutely certain that you--the writer--have done your homework.

The Excellent Writer Within

The art of good writing comes from the artist within. All humans have the ability to become great authors, poets, artists and musicians, etc., so why do most folks find it such a difficult task? Why do many people say I could never be a writer or I could never aspire to write poetry? And why do folks who do write get discouraged when their work is rejected?

We are what we think, so if we believe we cannot succeed in our daily actions, then for sure we will never get away from our perception of who we think we are. This self defeating attitude was not of our making. As we were growing up and maturing into adulthood, we were indoctrinated with thousands of negative thoughts. This gave us a belief that we are only a housewife or only a truck driver. This limited vision of our role in life-gives us a limited life. People the world over have great creativity. Once we start to understand who we are and the reasons we exist, we start to cultivate eloquent works
of creativity.

Just writing worthy, meaningful, literature will not get the success it deserves unless we possess the resolve to carry on writing in spite of the critics. There will always be those who criticize a writer, no matter how good the composition. Rejection is an everyday
experience for most writers. This is a joy we must accept and grow from. Just because someone does not like our essay, does not mean it has no value. It means it was not acceptable to the editor or book reviewer that was reading the essay.

We can do two things when we are constantly being rejected. We can give up and say it was not meant to be. Alternatively, we can say; "How do I become a better writer and have my work accepted by more of the "establishment." Once a small section of the general public start to take an interest in our writing, the sheep mentality of the "establishment" will no doubt follow. It always has. It always will. Success breeds success.

Until we can find the inner core of creativity and start to write from the soul, we will never become a great writer. We may achieve a modicum of success by writing a few columns for a newspaper or magazine but that could keep us in a vacuum. We can scrape a living, but may not amass a fortune, for we are trying to write and trying will never cut the mustard.

The secret to excellent writing is to enjoy with ecstatic abandonment each letter and syllable we put down on paper. The pure joy of writing makes us a success, nothing else will. Those who tell us we have to struggle and sweat have not grasped true meaning in their lives. We need no approval of any human to be a success.

Stop trying to become a success. We are a success already. We were born.

We are a success of life. The sperm hit the egg and here we are.

Hello world!!

Everything else we do and achieve is just a bonus.

Life is to be enjoyed not endured. Joy brings true meaning to life.

Now the next question to ask is what is Joy? What does Joy mean and how do we achieve it? Look within - take time to silence the mind and feel the texture of nothingness. Smell the perfume of celestial splendor. Discover the sound of cosmic waves flowing though our subconscious mind. Palpate infinity. Breath eternity. Conceive the splendor of maturating into the essence of a successful writer. Be the word, become the poem, live the adventure. Everything we do is inscribed in our book of life. We just need to learn how to read the instructions written within every cell and molecule of our being. Each tissue and sinew bleeds muscular power of infinite, majestic might. Fly on the wings of limitless mastery. Escape the shrouded cocoon and become the enchanting butterfly. The dreams of authentic reality are about to manifest a rainbow of magical delights.

Writing the Western Novel

Thanks to the wonders of television--and now of re-issued DVDs, ad nauseum--is there any doubt that every human being walking the face of the earth is intimately familiar with the modern Western genre? Even before Hollywood began gobbling up western fare and spitting out true-to-celluloid reality, most Americans knew the genre well.

Either they grew up cutting their literary teeth on the likes of Zane Grey and Brett Hart, or they thumbed through the slough of western fare in the form of pulp magazines and, later, comic books, novels, and Cliff's Notes. In a way, nearly everyone is an expert on westerns...or everyone was, at least, until Larry McMurtry came along.

McMurtry rejuvenated and revitalized the steadily declining art of western writing by de-glamorizing the American West. Unlike most of his predecessors, he didn't paint his characters or their surroundings with a broad brush swathed in black and white. He created a canvas of what the Old West was really like, the real West, drawing on a palette of a thousand different hues.

The good guys no longer wore white hats and rode stealthy Paints. The bad guys no longer dressed in black and lumbered along on Chestnut geldings. Suddenly, everyone was more complex. You won't find a single John Wayne or Lee Marvin character among the hundreds McMurtry has created over the past half century. With McMurtry's new brand of western writing, suddenly the Old West became more alive, more vibrant, more real, less predictable. People of the West are a combination of good and bad. Indians are trustworthy and dependable as often as they are savage and bloodthirsty. Entire towns are built of sticks and old rotting boards and sod roofs that look as if they are about to blow away at any second.

That's the kind of western most editors are looking for today. And the next Larry McMurtry is the kind of western writer they hope to discover.

So, what's a writer to do? For starters, try research!

If your entire perspective of the American West has come from old films and older cliches, you're not going to make it as a writer of westerns in today's competitive marketplace. If your knowledge of the West comes from painstaking trips to the library, thumbing through old National Geographics, watching History TV about the real characters of western lore, what they did, how they lived, and how they died, well, pardner, you just might have a chance!

Ditto if you've studied McMurtry's realistic western classics, such as his lauded Lonesome Dove mini-series, or read his books. You recognize immediately the amount of research he's done on the Old West, beginning with his earliest writings and extending to the very twilight of his career. You know in a heartbeat that this western writer is eons apart from those who came before him.

You can also research the Old West on some of the many educational Web sites on the Internet. We think so highly of one PBS-associated site that we have it listed under our "Storyline Resources" page at the American Society of Authors and Writers Web site. It's called New Perspectives on the American West, and it's worth a look even if you never plan on writing a western novel.

Once you've done enough research to give you the confidence you need to start that very first Western, the rest should come easy. Just remember to tell the story from your characters' own perspectives--the way you imagine they felt, acted, talked, and lived, warts and all. Make your "good guy" characters likeable (or at least tolerable), make your "bad guy" characters multi-faceted (even bad guys do good things every now and then), and place them in relationships that would be similar to people living today--tempered, of course, by the restraints of the era. After all, people are people, no matter where or when they lived.

Once you've completed your book, go back and read it out loud. Edit it two or three times, read it aloud again, and sit back and smile. Then go ahead and round up the usual suspects...a list of editors currently hot after realistic western novels. (See our "Book Markets" page for editors currently buying western fiction.) Finally, start cranking out those queries!

And remember, if your book doesn't sell at first, try, try again. There is an editor for every marketable property ever conceived. It's only a matter of time until you find the one who's right for you.

Now's the time for you to write for businesses

When you say the term 'freelance writer' most people - including writers - automatically think you're writing for newspapers and magazines. But there's an enormous, untapped market out there that is primed for enterprising writers - the corporate market.

This is the field I have been involved in for most of my 20 plus years as a writer.

If nothing else, I've learned that the major advantage of writing for businesses is the income. Businesses, by and large, pay far more handsomely than magazines.

Secondly, once you have written for a business, generally speaking, you become their principal writer. You have the ability to write a wide variety of communications for the one business. This could include customer sales letters, speeches and video scripts as well as internal and external newsletters, brochures, ads and more. That's the potential with just one business client. You can see how lucrative this line of work can be with just a handful of clients.

Now, using that same criteria, if you have one magazine as your client - that publication will work with a string of writers, including staff and freelancers. Whether you write an occasional article or a series of articles, it's unlikely you will gain the volume of work and income from one magazine as you would from one business.

Depending on the way a writer operates, freelancers approach magazines generally with story ideas or sometimes pitch completed articles. Either way, there's no guarantee the magazine will accept and pay you for your effort.

However, once you have written for a business, the chances are far greater that you will continue to work with them and you will increase the number of writing jobs over time. I have handled one-off writing projects for businesses, but in most cases, a one-off job has led to a long-term relationship.

With some clients, I manage several projects a year. With others, I work for them on a regular basis, and there's a few who I speak with virtually on a daily basis. That's one of the great things about being an enterprising writer - the work is consistent, but it's also interesting because it's varied.

As you can see, writing for businesses versus writing for magazines, can be a far more profitable and stable exercise. And, once you have a number of clients, the amount of effort required to gain new assignments is far less because existing clients will call you, rather than you calling them for work.

Another advantage to writing for businesses is the amount of time and energy required to produce your work. If you're writing for magazines, in most cases it is up to the writer to identify stories and gather their own leads. When writing for businesses, in most cases, the client will have a ready supply of writing activities for you. The business, for example, may be releasing a new suite of products which require press releases, ads, direct mail letters and brochures. Depending on how well you're briefed, the client will provide base information and contact names for you to gather more information. Essentially, much of the ground work is already done for you.

Conversely, some writers may argue that one of the advantages writing for magazines is that it's more interesting, because you can choose your own topics and write them any way you wish.

Certainly it's true that when you write for business - whether you?re writing a press releases or an ad - the copy must have a certain corporate spin and it must be approved by the client. When you write for companies, you do not have the journalistic integrity you have when writing for magazines.

Secondly, in some ways, you also lose that 'thrill of the chase' that you can have tracking down a newspaper or magazine story.

Some may say it's more glamorous to write for magazines than businesses. I think that's a personal opinion. For me, I have enjoyed working in both fields, but I find writing for businesses far more profitable and sustainable. For those magazine writers who are considering writing for businesses, but don't wish to give up journalism - I would suggest that do both, as I did for many years.

Writing for a couple of companies can pay the bills and give you the security to continue writing for magazines. In this business, you can enjoy the best of both worlds.