Rules of the Road by Jenny Jensen
September 19, 2020 by Jenny Jensen in category On writing . . . by Jenny Jensen, Writing
Rules of the Road
I enjoy driving, except for those time when some numptie ignores traffic rules. Whizzing through red lights, flying through stop signs, speeding, texting, ignoring yield signs all certainly disrupt the smooth flow of traffic, often catastrophically. We good drivers know that those who chose to ignore the rules are the bad drivers—or failed ones. While I have the choice to take defensive action in traffic and avoid most collisions I find I can’t defend against, avoid or ignore writers who chose to ignore the rules of grammar and punctuation. I’d rather just close the book or delete it.
I’m not a grisly grammarian or a pedantic pedagogue (redundant?) – really! It’s that I love our beautiful language and I love to read, to immerse myself in the lyrical flow of words well written and a story well told. I admit there have been times I wished I carried a big read marker so I could correct an egregious misuse. “Hunters please use caution when hunting pedestrians using walk trails” being one example that gave me really itchy fingers. I was laughing too hard to be incensed, though I did worry a bit about getting shot.
The rules of the written word are like the rules of the road, a map to smooth sailing. Correct punctuation guides the reader, unconsciously and effortlessly, to get where she wants to be; lost in the story. Commas tell the reader to take a breath, or make instant sense of a string of adjectives or a list. Commas are what show the meaning, cadence and flow of a character’s voice. A semi colon or an em-dash tells the reader to yield just a touch then get onto a related point. Quotation marks show who is speaking and for how long. An ellipses indicates a pause or shows that a thought has trailed off. A period brings our reader eye to a full stop.
The rules of grammar set the reader free of confusing nests of conflicting definitions. Does “Their on the way to the concert” mean ‘The goose/uncle/cockatoo belonging to the characters is headed to the concert and the object of the sentence just got left out? Or is the dialog meant to suggest there is the way to the concert, or did the writer intend a sensible contraction, they’re? Sneaky homophones.
I’m disappointed when an intriguing story is riddled with errors of grammar and punctuation. I really want to hear the tale but I’m forced to puzzle out meaning and narrative flow – even if it only takes an instant to understand, that instant is too long. It just isn’t necessary. The only time the rules of grammar and punctuation are unimportant is during the process of creating. Who cares if draft #1 is a grammarian’s nightmare? Or drafts #2 – 4 for that matter. What’s important at that stage is getting the story down, then making it work, then making it sing—no matter how many drafts it takes.
Once the story pleases the author there is no excuse to launch it into the world without a proper proofing. If a writer feels a full edit isn’t needed, that’s their choice but believe me when I say every published work should first be proofed. There are hundreds of editors—including myself—who offer that professional service at a reasonable price. A thorough proofing is worthy of the energy put into creating the book and respectful of the language and the reader.
Whew! A rant. Thanks for listening.
Eighteen and Eight by Larry L. Deibert
September 18, 2020 by marianne h donley in category Apples & Oranges by Marianne H. Donley, Writing
Eighteen and Eight
Since the Postal Service has been in the news recently, especially with the removal of high-speed sorting machines, I thought I would tell you all about the Jurassic days of casing all our mail by hand.
Before the Postal Service
Working at Mack Trucks was great. I made a good wage, only had to work Saturdays if I chose to do so, and after thirty or more years, I could collect a pension, including health care. I had a sedentary job for most of my thirteen and a half years, and only did physical work near the end of that short career, working on the line in Macungie.
First, I worked on the cab line where I put on door and window handles on the driver’s side, the aluminum step, and squirted sealant into the grommets and all open holes in the firewall, a not too difficult job, if one kept up, or even a little ahead.
My second job, after being bumped off my gussie, by a more senior employee, was to help another guy install the windshield of a cab, working above my head most of the time.
My third and final job, before being sent back to Allentown, was to install mufflers. I spent my working hours on a creeper under the truck as it moved down the line, picking up the muffler, bolting it to the frame, and then keeping it up by installing U-shaped hooks and attacking them to the frame. It was so tiring that most times I just laid on the creeper for my two six-minute breaks. Lunch was twelve minutes, and I would crawl out to eat my sandwich and drink a soda.
The Exam
I knew that I was going to lose my job soon, so I applied to take the exam to become a postal worker. Several weeks before the exam, I took a four-hour course where I learned the shortcuts I would need to ace the test.
Casing mail is all about speed and accuracy, and the exam tested one’s ability to perform this task. It was a two-part, eleven-minute test. Part one was about ninety-five questions, if memory serves. On the left side column was a list of addresses, on the right-side column was another list.
I had approximately three seconds to determine if the side by side addresses were exactly the same, or somewhat different. The most difficult part, after making my determination, was to completely blacken the answer circle with my number 2 pencil. That concluded the speed part of the test.
Part two dealt with memory and accuracy. There were five address blocks, with five different addresses in each block. On the test, you would see one specific address and had to answer which block it was in, A to E. I think we had eighty-eight questions in this section, and had to answer and mark your circle in about five seconds.
I scored ninety-six out of one hundred, plus was awarded an additional five points for being a veteran. Disabled veterans received ten additional points to their score.
The Job
I was hired and my first day on the job was December 16th, 1986. I was thirty-nine and a half years old, a rookie, when most employees my age were midway through their careers.
The next task I had to pass was my ninety-day probation period. My supervisor would judge my performances during the Post Office version of Basic Combat Training. As a recruit in BCT, I was fat, and out of shape, and now I was also old.
Most of my days were spent delivering routes. A carrier would case the route, pull it down, and I would grab the loaded satchel, and either be transported or walk to my first delivery point. Generally, when a professional carrier cased the route, there were few errors, and having to be quick, when we delivered, we rarely had time to check to see if we were delivering the correct mail. As long as we delivered to the correct address, we rarely got into any trouble.
The accepted method of handing the mail was to rest the flats, which were large pieces of mail and magazine sized mail, in the crook of your arm, and hold a bundle of letter-sized mail in your hand. Using your free hand, you would peel letters for a specific address off the pile, and then peel of the corresponding flats, collating both piles together to deliver to the mailbox, or slip through the door slot.
Casing the Mail
Finally, I was given the opportunity to case mail, so before leaving work the day before, I walked to the route to check out the case. A mailman’s case consisted of two or three five row metal boxes with every address, or two addresses in a section, marked off on the case and split up by metal separators.
The job at hand was to grab a handful of letters and begin sorting them into the proper divider, your eyes and hands moving all around the case until you would finally recognize where to put the mail piece from memory. It was sort of like the game Concentration.
After casing the letter mail you were going to take out, you would pick up a handful of flats and rest them on your arm. The flat case was a series of cubicles with multiple address labels—remember the test—where you would throw the flats into the proper bin, and then when finished you would have to sort them into delivery order on your desk.
Eighteen and Eight
Doing the job properly, and speedily, the speed that was required was eighteen letter pieces a minute, and eight flats. I think I used to case close to thirty letters and fifteen flats a minute once I got the hang of it.
Today’s mail sorters now ‘case’ about thirty-five thousand pieces an hour, and in delivery order. I had been retired once they began using flat sorting machines, and I know literally nothing about them.
Note: If you want to learn more about Larry, read his interview A Time Traveling Man
Larry L. Deibert’s Books
Never Say Never: Online Publishers
September 15, 2020 by Rebecca Forster in category The Write Life by Rebecca Forster tagged as A Writer's Life, business of writing, digital publishing
Three years ago a friend asked me to advise her niece about publishing her book. She was a new mom, married to a man in graduate school, and she needed to make a lot of money. We spoke at length; I told her publishing is not a road-to-riches. She thanked me, but clearly still had stars in her eyes.
A week later she e-mailed me with the news that she had signed with a traditional publisher. I was floored. I wrote for the big five for twenty-five years, and it took longer than a week to get a rejection letter. Then again, perhaps she had an amazing book. I congratulated her and asked which publisher she would be working with. It was not one I had heard of because she had signed an egregious contract with an online publisher.
She was locked into a ten-book schedule, the royalties were miserly, the contract did not promise traditional distribution as she believed it did, and there would not be publisher promotions or advertising. Most concerning were the ladies who ran the company. Their qualifications were that they were all avid readers, one had a degree in English, and another had worked in marketing for a manufacturing firm.
I called my friend, a businesswoman, outlined the problems with the contract in regards to her niece’s objectives. The reality was that she would never be in bookstores, would be responsible for her own marketing, and would make next to nothing (sadly this proved true even after she’d written five books). When my friend asked if I would ever work with such a publisher, my answer was ‘never’.
SO MUCH FOR NEVER
Two weeks ago I signed a three-year contract with Wolfpack Publishing, an online publisher. Here’s why I did it:
1) The owner and his team are professionals in their book related fields (editing, online marketing, graphic artists, etc.).
2) The owner and his team are accessible to every author, at any time.
3) Wolfpack curates their catalogue, carefully choosing their authors.
4) Wolfpack is dedicated to understanding, nurturing, and marketing each author in their very specific genres (action adventure, westerns, thrillers).
5) Wolfpack is transparent, giving their authors monthly accounting of their sales and publicly celebrating those who hit lists.
6) Wolfpack encourages camaraderie not competition among their authors.
7) Wolfpack constantly evaluates the corporate and individual brands and adjusts for success
8) Wolfpack joyously promotes both the Wolfpack brand and their individual authors.
9) Wolfpack’s contract is reasonable, responsible, and fair.
10) Wolfpack asks their authors to do one thing: write good books.
As in traditional publishing, online publishers are not created equal. It is up to the author to do their due diligence, look closely at the online publisher, their capabilities, qualifications, and their contracts before signing on the dotted line. In publishing there is no golden ticket, there is hard work, luck, and, hopefully, support. For me, Wolfpack Publishing knocked the paradigm for online publishing out of the ballpark. I’m thrilled to be ‘running with the pack’.
Read Rebecca Forster September Featured Author
September 14, 2020 by Rebecca Forster in category Featured Author of the Month tagged as Josie Bates, Lost Witness, new release, Rebecca Forster., September Featured Author, The Witness Series
Read Rebecca Forster!
Rebecca marketed a world-class spa when it was still called a gym, did business in China before there were western toilettes at the Great Wall and mucked around with the sheep to find out exactly how her client’s fine wool clothing was manufactured. Then she wrote her first book and found her passion.
Now, over twenty-five books later, she is a USA Today and Amazon bestselling author and writes full-time, penning thrillers that explore the emotional impact of the justice system. She earned her B.A. at Loyola, Chicago and her MBA at Loyola, Los Angeles. Rebecca has taught the Business of Creativity at University of California Long Beach Writers Certificate Program, UCLA and UC Irvine extension. Married to a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, she is the mother of two grown sons and spends her free time traveling, sewing, and playing tennis.
Have your read Rebecca Forstest’s Witness series?
Josie Bates is back in Lost Witness the eighth thriller in the Witness series.
It’s two in the morning and an aging cargo ship lies off the Port of Los Angeles. Deep in the bowels of the vessel, an important man is dead and the woman who killed him is mortally wounded. On shore another man staggers out of the sea determined to save the woman before she dies or the ship sails. Exhausted and terrified, he goes to the only person he trusts to help, Josie Bates.
He brings with him a history she can’t ignore, a problem that seems insurmountable, and a plea she can’t refuse. But Josie is up against international law, maritime justice, a Port Authority that doesn’t want anything to get in the way of profit, the U.S. Coast Guard who dances to the tune of politics and a captain who swears the people in question were never on his ship.
With the clock ticking, Josie becomes ever more desperate to prove the woman is real and get her safely ashore. What Josie doesn’t know is that the sands of time that are running out may be her own.
Read Rebecca Forster
The Shape of Fiction by Carol L. Wright
September 13, 2020 by Bethlehem Writers Group in category From a Cabin in the Woods by Members of Bethlehem Writers Group tagged as fiction, kurt vonnegut, story graphs, story shape, writing
The Shape of Fiction
Writers are accustomed to thinking about writing with a 3-Act structure, often shown as an incline plane of action rising gradually throughout the story towards the climax. But another way of looking at stories is their shape based not on action, but on the rise and fall of the protagonist’s fortunes—good or ill.
As I understand it, the notion of these story shapes was first proposed by Kurt Vonnegut. Inspired by his research into stories from various cultures while studying anthropology at the University of Chicago, he discovered common patterns of the fortunes of the protagonists. He found that there is not one universal pattern, but several designs, just as the rise and fall of volume and intensity give shape to different styles of music. These shapes cross cultures and time periods to create the stories we love to read and retell.
To visualize these shapes, he used a simple graph. The vertical axis, or what he calls the G-I axis has good fortune at the top and ill fortune at the bottom. The higher on the vertical axis a character is, the happier they are. Conversely, the lower they are, the more miserable they are.
The G-I axis is bisected by a B-E horizontal axis. This takes the story left to right from the beginning (B) to the, uh, well Kurt Vonnegut has various ideas for what the E stands for, but let’s just call it the ending. It looks a bit like this:
Interestingly, his theory was proven when researchers at Washington State University and the University of Vermont did a computer analysis over 1700 stories. (https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180525-every-story-in-the-world-has-one-of-these-six-basic-plots ) Text-mining of these stories revealed six basic story shapes, most of which Vonnegut had already described. They graphed each, renaming Vonnegut’s G-I axis to “sentiment scale.” They found that each of the 1700 stories conformed to one of these six shapes:
1. Man in a hole
Our protagonist begins high on the sentiment scale but, by mid-story, finds themselves in low ill-fortune. But, don’t despair. Good things follow, and by the end of the story, our protagonist is once again up in the good-fortune range. This shape is often found in mystery stories and adapts well to the three-act story structure we’ve been taught.
2. Rags to riches
This shape has the main character begin on the lower end of the sentiment scale, but then they rise steadily throughout the story to the upper portion of the G-I axis by the end of the story. An example of this is the story of Little Orphan Annie who starts out as an orphan in a miserable workhouse and becomes the ward of the extremely wealthy Daddy Warbucks, or the story of another orphan, Oliver Twist. Everyone loves a happy ending.
3. Cinderella
From the obvious example, our protagonist begins very low on the sentiment scale, but then rises to a high good-fortune point—only to have it snatched away. Despite being once again in the lower portion of the G-I scale, the protagonist’s despair is not as low as it was. As the story progresses, the protagonist moves back up again to the top of the sentiment. (You have to see Vonnegut describe this one and others on YouTube below.)
4. Riches to rags
This shape is just the opposite of #2. The protagonist begins in the upper range of the sentiment axis, but who falls into poverty and despair. A simple tragedy.
5. Icarus
If you know the Greek myth about Daedalus and his son Icarus who escaped from the island of Crete by flying with wings made of feathers and wax, it won’t be hard for you to envision this shape. Starting around the midpoint of the G-I axis, it rises into good fortune, then falls into the ill fortune range before falling further to the bottom of the G-I scale (when the wax melts because Icarus flies too close to the sun). Not a happy ending.
6. Oedipus
Named for another Greek tragedy, this pattern falls (as Oedipus wanders toward Thebes, killing Laius along the way). But then it rises (when Oedipus defeats the sphinx, becomes king, and marries the queen with whom he has several children and plans to live happily ever after). Oh, but our protagonist is not destined for a happy ending. The story ends with a plummet to the low ill-fortune range (when Oedipus discovers Laius was his father and he has married his mother—who then kills herself. Oedipus puts out his own eyes). A less than cheery shape.
I must confess that I was surprised that every one of the stories studied fit in one of these six shapes. But Vonnegut tells us about two more shapes.
A flatline story shape
While he tells this shape is boring, he also says it often can be found in primitive cultures. There is, however, one Shakespearean classic that employs this shape. Things start low on the sentiment scale, stay low, and end low. Can you guess which one this is? See the video link above to get the answer.
And one final shape Vonnegut offers for your consideration—one we don’t often see—where the protagonist starts at the bottom . . . and goes down. Which story is this? Here’s a hint: Kafka!
All this brings new meaning to the question: What kind of shape is your story in?
In addition to writing posts for From A Cabin in the Woods, Carol was interviewed on A Slice of Orange here.
Books by Carol L. Wright
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