In Today’s Journal
* My Quote of the Day
* A New Short Story
* A Short Excerpt
* A Few Pet Peeves
* An Explanation of Passive Voice and…
* The True Pulp Anthology
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
My Quote of the Day
“I never know (or care) what’s going to happen next in a story, and I never know or care what the characters are going to do or say next. I’m only the recorder. I just write it all down as it happens.” Harvey
A New Short Story
“A Shiny Life” went live yesterday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. Go check it out. It’s free.
Note: I wrote this story probably 10 or 11 years ago. Note the difference in the pacing and paragraphing of this story compared with the pacing and paragraphing in the excerpts I recently posted from the novel I’m working on now. (grin)
A Short Excerpt
One more (short) excerpt from my current novel. This is the moment, as Sam and Dot were dining, that I first found out Grouse was a female. Isn’t WITD wonderful?
I hesitated, then cleared my throat. “So anyway, what time will— What’s his name? Grouse? What time will he pop in tomorrow?”
The hostess chose that moment to come back with Dot’s whiskey sour and my iced tea. She smiled as she set Dot’s drink on the table. “Ahn’ you’ waiter ees on hees way. Enjoy!” Then she turned to me, set down my tea glass a little harder than necessary, flashed me a look, and left.
I grinned at Dot. “You should consider recruiting the hostess. That woman has a serious attitude problem.”
She laughed. “All women have an attitude problem, Sam. You hadn’t noticed?” She paused, then leaned forward and put one hand on my forearm again. “Oh, and Grouse will drop by when she’s able, but probably not before about 9.”
A Few Pet Peeves
I’m not getting on my high horse here. I call the following pet peeves because they nag me. Meaning I have to watch for them in my own writing.
In writing fiction, you learn as you practice. “Practice” does not mean consciously revising and rewriting. Practice means putting new words on the page. I first became aware of these and others as I was putting new words on the page.
I catch and replace most of them during my first cycling session as I read over what I wrote during the previous hour or so. But sometimes I don’t catch them until I cycle back over everything I wrote the day before. Sometimes some of them slip through even then.
And yes, they also pop out at me—often repeatedly—while I’m conducting a copyedit:
it, that (meaning a particular object), he, she, we, they, and other too-general or collective terms—
In almost every case, the words on this list can and should be replaced with their antecedent. Especially when the antecedent occurs in an earlier paragraph.
Occasionally I’ll even start a chapter with the vague “He” or “She” did or said something or other because I’d just mentioned the antecedent (the character’s name) somewhere in the last few paragraphs of the previous chapter.
But readers often take a break when a chapter ends, don’t they? So it’s always better to mention the name again in the next chapter opener.
“could” plus any sense verb: could see, could hear, could smell, could taste, could feel (physically or emotionally)—
These “could” phrases are a problem because most writers who use them overuse them. Every now and then (maybe once or twice in a novel) using a “could” phrase might be the only way to say it.
But 99% of the time, when you see “could” in your story, the author is intruding, coming between the reader and the story, and there’s a better, cleaner way to write it.
So instead of writing “I could see the wood smoke curling from the chimney,” write “Wood smoke curled from the chimney.” Instead of writing “I could smell the wood smoke curling from the chimney,” write “An acrid scent stung my nose. Wood smoke was curling from the chimney.” Something like that.
In other words, don’t step in and tell the reader what the character’s seeing, smelling, tasting, etc. Instead, step aside, describe the scene, and let the reader see, smell, etc. it for himself.
gave—
use “gave” only when a physical object changes hands. Instead of “He gave her a wave” write “He waved.” (You know, unless she’s in a hair salon and he’s her hairdresser.) Instead of writing “She gave him a smile” write “She smiled.” And so on.
For a quick way to do this, use the Find & Replace function to look for instances of “gave.”
An Explanation of Passive Voice and State-of-Being Verbs (Be Verbs)
Almost every writer out there has been told at one time or another to avoid “be verbs” (especially “was” for some reason) because they create passive voice.
Put bluntly, that is sheer nonsense.
Like all other parts of speech, state-of-being verbs are necessary, and they serve a specific function. They describe a state of being.
And state-of-being verbs do NOT, by themselves, create passive voice.
As an aside, neither does a state-of-being verb plus a gerund (an ‘ing’ word) create passive voice.
In every case, passive voice is the result of writing a state-of-being verb followed by what I call a “‘by’ phrase”: That’s a prepositional phrase that begins with the preposition “by.”
You can get rid of passive voice by replacing the be verb with the verb that occurs directly after the be verb:
So instead of writing “The pizza was delivered by Harvey,” write “Harvey delivered the pizza.”
Bam! Just like that, the sentence has gone from passive to active. And yes, I realize this is a simplistic example, but what matters is the pattern. And this pattern holds true in any example.
The True Pulp Anthology
Remember this one? Been awhile, hasn’t it? (grin)
Anyway, Vin Zandri says it’s available to the public now via this Amazon link. He also reports that it’s also available wide, meaning anywhere else ebooks are sold.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
The Scammer Next Door A rare inside look at India’s scam industry. Great easy research.
How to Build Suspense into any Story
The Numbers
The Journal………………….. 1040
Mentorship Words…………….. 90
Total Nonfiction…………………. 1130
Writing of “SamDot1”
Day 1…… 2803 words. To date………… 2803 (done)
Writing of Blackwell Ops 50: Sam Granger | On Rocky Ground
Day 1…… 1440 words. To date………… 1440
Day 2…… 2986 words. To date………… 4426
Day 3…… 3523 words. To date………… 7949
Day 4…… 3315 words. To date………… 11264
Day 5…… 4128 words. To date………… 15392
Day 6…… 2990 words. To date………… 18382
Day 7…… 3330 words. To date………… 21712
Fiction for October………………………… 83503
Fiction for 2025…………………………… 662041
Nonfiction for November.…………………… 1130
Nonfiction for 2025………………..……… 240600
2025 consumable words………………… 895072
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 16
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 36
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 120
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 310
Short story collections……………………. 29