Hey Folks,
There’s a lot to explore in “Of Interest” today.
I’ll begin with a new favorite quote: “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” ~ Ray Bradbury
***
I have a slightly altered routine that I have to get used to.
I’m leaving the writing computer in the Hovel now, hooked up to the big monitor, instead of carrying it back and forth to my office in the house. So I have to remember to carry a flash drive back and forth with me.
Each day I’ll transfer the WIP, the .txt version of this Journal, the reverse outline and the spreadsheet on which I keep track of my writing to and from the flash drive.
It’s a little extra effort, but it’s actually better this way since I’ll now have two backup copies of everything instead of only one.
Topic: Dangling Particpants (or Don’t Leave Your Characters Hanging)
I call this effect “dangling participants,” a play on the always humorous “dangling participles.”
One great example of a dangling participle is “Sitting on the park bench, the sun disappeared behind the clouds.”
Obviously, the sun wasn’t sitting on the park bench, but that’s how the sentence sounds. That’s because the participle, “sitting,” is intended to modify a subject that isn’t there (probably “I” in this case). See? “As I was sitting on the park bench, the sun disappeared behind the clouds.”
So dangling participles are always funny, but they don’t do your story much good, and they’ll drive away your readership.
A “dangling participant” will have the same effect on your readers, mostly because it will leave them confused. It has the additional downside of not being funny at all.
If your character John twists around in the front seat of a van to talk with a character in the back seat, at some point you have to let the reader see John face front again. Otherwise, in the reader’s mind, John will remain twisted around in the front seat.
If he then suddenly twists around in the seat to say something else, it will confuse the reader.
If the character Raymond is standing at a curtain looking out over a veranda, and in the next paragraph he and Melanie are walking along a hall, that will confuse the reader too.
When did Raymond turn away from the curtain? For that matter, who in the world is Melanie and when did she come into the room? Did she say something to Raymond that caused him to turn away from the curtain and accompany her out of the room and down the hall? What did she say?
More than likely, as you’re writing the scene, all of that is in your mind. That’s a good thing. In fact it’s wonderful.
But if those thoughts don’t make it onto the page, your reader won’t have a clue what’s going on or how it came to be.
Just so you know, dangling participants is one of the problems I experience while writing. But during the cycling process, most of that gets fixed. (grin)
Don’t leave your characters (and readers) hanging.
***
To the Hovel at 5, where I updated the reverse outline while cycling through what I wrote yesterday. I added about 500 new words, then to the house for a brief break.
Back to the Hovel at 7:15. I wrote a lot of the stuff above, then turned back to the novel. About a thousand words later, to the house at 8:15.
Back to the Hovel and the novel at 8:40. Only a half-day today, so no more details, but it was a good day. (grin)
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
See “How to Write Killer Tales, and Music” at https://www.leelofland.com/how-to-write-killer-tales-and-music/.
See “Business Musings: Getting To The Stories You Love” at https://kriswrites.com/2018/11/07/business-musings-getting-to-the-stories-you-love/.
See “Thanks To Those I Met This Morning” at https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/thanks-to-those-i-met-this-morning/.
See “Valor: Military SF Bundle” at https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/valor-military-sf-bundle/.
See “Deadlier than the Male” at https://killzoneblog.com/2018/11/deadlier-than-the-male.html.
Via The Passive Voice, see “Murder, She Wrote” at https://crimereads.com/jessica-fletcher-and-murder-she-wrote-are-alive-and-well/.
Also via The Passive Voice, see “Having No Time is the Best Time to Get Writing Done” at https://lithub.com/having-no-time-is-the-best-time-to-get-writing-done/.
If you enjoy poetry and poets, and also via The Passive Voice, see “The Burying Party” at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/wilfred-owen.
And from Linda Adams, for fun, see Kristen Lamb’s “Flawed Characters vs. ‘Too Dumb to Live’: What’s the Difference?” at
https://authorkristenlamb.com/2018/11/flawed-characters-dumb-characters/.
Fiction Words: 3428
Nonfiction Words: 720 (Journal)
So total words for the day: 4148
Writing of Consequences (Nick 4)
Day 1…… 3894 words. Total words to date…… 3894
Day 2…… 4701 words. Total words to date…… 8595
Day 3…… 1941 words. Total words to date…… 10536
Day 4…… 2577 words. Total words to date…… 13113
Day 5…… 4870 words. Total words to date…… 17983
Day 6…… 3286 words. Total words to date…… 21269
Day 7…… 3570 words. Total words to date…… 24839
Day 8…… 3428 words. Total words to date…… 28267
Total fiction words for the month……… 28267
Total fiction words for the year………… 406797
Total nonfiction words for the month… 5170
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 156276
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 562823
Calendar Year 2018 Novels to Date………………………… 8
Calenday Year 2018 Novellas to Date…………………… 3
Calendar Year 2018 Short Stories to Date……… 11
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)………………………………………… 34
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)……………………………………… 7
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……………………… 193
Short story collections…………………………………………………… 31