Tara Maya's Tales

  Editing has made me realize something I've always been reluctant to admit. To explain what I mean, let me tell you what I'm doing right now. I'm working on Book 11 of The Unfinished Song: Flute. The title references the infamous Bone Flute that when played by someone with all six Chromas of magic, forces everyone else to dance to his tune. I have a strong draft of Flute, but it's one that I wrote before I revised Book 10, Sworn, the book right before this in the series. For a long series like this, it's essential to work form an outline. But what do you do when the outline changes? Or when you read the scenes of you draft and realize they aren't as strong as they could be? In my case, the outline itself isn't so wrong, but I feel as if many of the scenes just aren't doing enough work. This, I can see, is going to drag out the story too long, and I'll have the same problem in this book as I did with Sworn, fighting to keep my wordcount at a reasonab...

A great editing technique on  QueryTracker Blog : First, I take an honest inventory of the areas of writing that aren't my strong suit. I make very sure to assign each of those a color. Then I look at what things I might go a little overboard on and add those to the list. Lastly, I add the things that are important structurally to the story. Then I assign each item a color. So my list might look something like this: Dialogue (You could even do separate colors for each main character if you wanted to.) Description Metaphors Similes Adjectives Adverbs To Be Verbs Pacing Characterization (Here, I would assign each major character and important side characters a color. If I'm running low on colors, I would assign a color and add bolding, italicizing, changing the font, or underlining.) Inciting Incident Clues that tie in together (I would be specific here. For example: All the clues that hint at the hero's destiny.) World Building Story Arcs (I'd assign ea...

"I just can't face editing my novel!" Do you hate editing? Me too. Or I used to. That’s because editing usually involved the mental equivalent of ripping open my chest with a rusty knife and tearing out my internal organs. It doesn’t have to be that way. When I first used the Rich Outline method – and it was hard for me, not coming naturally at all – I discovered that if I wasn’t trying to rearrange the major plot organs of my novel to force it to make sense, Revision was actually the most enjoyable stage of the work. That’s because I had raced through the draft, writing crudely and sloppily, but now I could relax and polish my prose to my heart’s content. I was easier to focus on writing beautifully when I wasn’t also trying to figure out what was going on at the same time. I’m hoping that if these Tips helped you (or me) at all, you’re in the same position now. You have a solid but ugly draft, which is akin to the steel scaff...

Puddlepaws, the Gratuitously Adorable Kitten, from The Initiate None of this post will apply if you regularly read (or write) in the literary genre. I love literary writing...in small dribbles. There are are certain gorgeous books, with such exquisite sentences and turns of phrase that they seduce my inner logophile into rapturous sighs of bliss. I can usually make it half-way through such a book before I realize I'm...bored. The rest of the journey is a slog. Often, I'll find that the true power of the story doesn't hit until the end. So it's worth it to push through that boring part. It's not like the boring part of a badly written story, which you'd be better off without. It's drawing you in to the character's world or mind, making you love this person against all logic and expectation. Literary novels revolve around people who aren't admirable doing things that aren't interesting. The literary writer's job is to write so beauti...

I think we'll be seeing a lot more of this : Harper Voyager has launched an international talent search, with aspiring writers invited to submit their un-agented manuscripts directly to the publisher. The HarperCollins sci-fi and fantasy imprint will be opening a two week window in October where writers can submit their novels, with plans to publish selected titles digitally. Writers are wondering if this is a good deal . Obviously before the digital revolution and the possibility of cutting out an extra layer of middlemen, this would have been a great opportunity. But is it now? I have a couple of thoughts: 1. The only possible reason to go with a traditional publisher at this point would be to get your books into a bookstore, hopefully in hardcover. So why on earth would you sell ebook rights only? 2. There's no such thing as "free" editing, cover, proofreading and promotion. You are paying for these services by forking over a huge percentage of your roy...

--> KEEP THE BEST FOR LAST: BACKLOADING TECHNIQUE by Rayne Hall Angrypotato's Centaur Girl by Etoli Here is a nifty technique to give your writing style more impact: Structure your sentences so the most powerful word comes at the end. The last word touches the reader's psyche more than any other, so make it count. Short, evocative nouns, adjectives and verbs are best. Here's a list for your inspiration: death, dead, kiss, lust, treachery, blood, fear, die, kill, deep, cold, heat, dark, boil, pull, grave, grip, grasp, hope, sear, scream, thrill, scar, bone, flesh, skull, wound, pray, pain, soul, child, flee, trap, teeth, curse, escape, safe, love. These words, on the other hand, have no particular effect: it, then, them, across, through, there, somehow, around,   under, of, off, for, that, be, others, his, her. Often, restructuring the sentence is all it takes, or perhaps adding, deleting or replacing one word. Before She knew...