Revision workshop Part 2 - The Nitty Gritty of revising

On Saturday 8 September I went to Sara Grant's workshop on revision part 2. She called it the nitty gritty of revising. Here is what I learnt, and will use for my revising for future wips.

One of the first things we did was to highlight each scene in our first chapters. Once you have done this, you have to ask yourself these questions?

Where are you?
Do they follow on?
What is the timing and setting?
Is there action?
Is everything in it important?
Can it start later and end sooner?

I found this exercise very useful. I thought I'd cut out plenty of words that weren't needed, but I was wrong after this exercise. I soon found lots more that could be cut and didn't get the story moving. I will definitely use this again for when I revise all my wips.

We also highlighted each verb. Again another useful exercise, as you can see any repeated actions you give your characters. Mine blink a lot.

Flashbacks were mentioned - Sara said see if you can lose them, when you do, do you really need them?
Look at exposition, again do you really need them?
Look at structure of phrase eg he said and physical actions.
Do you have complex sentences? Are they compelling and tight? (Mine aren't). Don't put mundane actions in sentences unless your character lives a mundane life. (Just read this again, and see that this is what I have done for my mermaid story).
Passive verbs - check if necessary. Use find for 'ly' words. Underline nouns.

It was mentioned that when writing for teens, five years before the present day they won't know any TV programmes. This made me think, as I'd mentioned one in Rosie that they prob wouldn't know now, so I have changed it to generalisation.

I think then we were asked to pair up with someone we didn't know, give each other two pages of our mss, and read them.  Then write down at the back what genre, age range you thought it was for, things you gathered about the character. My partner thought Rosie was a coming of age novel. So, have now decided to write about more magic in the first page.

Then we were asked our pet peeves as a reader, and common errors as a writer.  Here are mine:

Pet peeves are: Too much tell and no show (I think this for new authors, as to me, it means they haven't got their ms professionally edited). And too much head hopping, making me confused as to whom is speaking.
Common errors - too much dialogue without action and indication of who's speaking. No character background (this was mentioned to me about my ghost story), and repetition of words. (The above highlighting exercise should now cure that).

One last bit of advice - consider age range for your book and check the wordage.

Overall a very useful workshop, which I will use exercises from for my wips. Thank you, Sara.

The Next Big Thing - Indie Exchange

Rules:

***Answer the ten questions about your current WIP (Work In Progress) on your blog

***Tag five other writers/bloggers and add their links so we can hop over and meet them.


Ten Interview Questions for The Next Big Thing:

What is the working title of your book?

‘Don’t Get Mad’

Where did the idea come from for the book?

An agony aunt letter in my paper. A woman wrote up to say she was worried about a friend who was sad and mad about her failed marriage.

What genre does your book fall under?

Romance

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Chris Fountain (Tommy Duckworth in Coronation Street) and Kate Beckinsale

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Sandra is sad and mad about her failed marriage. Until she gets a visit from her dead aunt Geraldine who advises who to ‘Don’t Get Mad, Get Even’. Sandra joins the local fitness club, meets Troy an instructor and falls in love again.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? Self. It’s the fourth in a series of seven all linked by the dead aunt.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I am still writing it. I had edits for a YA and a romance novella to do. I hope to finish it by the end of this month, and to my editor end of October.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

 Christina Jones’ books. They have magical romance in them.

Who or What inspired you to write this book?

Christina Jones. As mentioned above, an agony aunt letter inspired me to write it.

Eve Farr. She was going to set up as an epublisher and accepted one story from me, which made me think to do a series of stories linked by the dead aunt. Don't Get Mad is the 4th in the series.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

The magic in it. Sweet romance.

I am meant to tag 5 other indie authors, but unfortunately no one wanted to be tagged by me, so it now stops here at my blog.

Having Asperger's and learning to drive

I am continuing my series of blogs about living with Asperger's, by now writing about how having Asperger's affected learning to drive for me.

In 1996 I started driving lessons because I had two v young nephews whom I wanted to see often, and my brother lived in Kent. My first instructor I have to say was rubbish. He was meant to go through with me a book on road signs in each lesson but he didn't. Needless to say, I failed a mock test by going up a road with a no entrance sign on (didn't know what it meant then). It was during one lesson with this instructor that my Asperger's, which I didn't know I had at the time, kicked in. One of the things I was asked at my Asperger's assessment was ' Am I easily distracted?' The answer is yes. Esp with my own thoughts. And this is what happened one lesson. I was driving, and for one moment I thought of something and my mind was taken off driving, and what happened? I nearly crashed into a railing on a corner of a pavement. Thankfully the instructor managed to take control and saved us crashing completely. He had a go at me for that. I was a bit shaken.  I didn't have that instructor long,  He was sacked after the failed mock test.
   I had a second driver who did show me the book and got me improving on my driving. When he felt he had taught me enough, I had a third instructor.

I passed my test on the fourth attempt. The first one I failed because I was using a car that had been adapted for disabled people and I accidentally had flicked the disabled signal.  I didn't know what the noise was, neither did the teacher. So it was a fail. I can't remember why I failed the second one, but the third one I know I failed at my reverse parking up a hill. I hit the curb, and didn't check the wing mirror to see why I couldn't move any more. I learnt from that mistake, and when I had this again at the fourth go, I remembered what to do and I passed. Was I happy?  Very. I have now been driving my car (the same one all these years) for 14 years now and am proud to do so, esp knowing what I have now.

There was a time earlier this year that I made myself very aware of driving with Asperger's, and I think I made a few slight mistakes whilst driving. I feel I am more aware of what I am doing and am more careful than before.

So, my motto from this to anyone who has autism and wants to learn to drive is - if you are easily distracted, try not to be and focus on what you are doing at the time and nothing else.

Launch party for One Good Turn - Day 2

Welcome, everyone, to my blog and to the second day of my online launch party for my first romance enovella 'One Good Turn'. Here is the paperback 3D version of the cover.

What do you think of that? Great, isn't it?  That is the 3rd version now I have; normal 2D, 3D and this one.

So, today's question is this: the premise of the book is that Geraldine dies and goes to Heaven, but she has to earn her place by getting her ex love (her true love) to be a happier and caring man again. I won't tell you how she does it, you have to read it to find out, but this is what my question is based on. Imagine you are Geraldine.  You are at the Gates of Heaven but can only enter if you can romance your ex love, who has to be a true love, so he is a normal loving, caring and happier man again (as he has turned grumpy and angry at where he is).  What do you do to return him back to the love you knew?  The most romantic suggestion will win a prize, to be revealed the end of today.  So, get your thinking caps on and let me know how romantic you can be.

Will be popping in and out to see what comments you give me. See you later. Need to check my emails again.

Blog Party for One Good Turn

I am hoping that my first romance enovella 'One Good Turn' will be out by the end of next week. I am waiting for the final proofs from my editor and the proper sized covers for each website, then it can be all systems go for it. A few days after that, in two weeks time, I plan to have a blog party for a few days to celebrate the start of my romance writing career (there are six more stories to come in the series of this one and I have others, inc a similar story, I have planned). I will put a notice out on FB and Twitter when it comes out, and when the party starts. I need to do a schedule of what I want to do for it, but I do know that there will be a question for everyone to answer relating to the enovella. And there will be a prize for the best answer.

I won't be having a physical launch as yet. If the short story I am currently revising for an anthology coming out in October gets accepted for it, then I will have one for that and include promotion for the romance and my YA novellas.

So, watch out for messages from me announcing the start of a blog party. I can't wait.  See you soon.

My next post will be about the stats of how many ebooks I have sold so far, before the start of my romance series comes out. I want to compare it to what effect having published a romance has on it all, as I have read that romance writers earn 170% more than their peers. We shall see.

Me and Asperger's - Sensory Overload

A couple of months ago, an illustrator friend of mine, mentioned something about her daughter who also has Autism.  She said that her daughter sometimes has trouble coping with the world and at the end of the day she shuts herself off.  This got me thinking about a few incidences I had a few years ago at work, and made me wonder if I had sensory overload - you can't cope with the world and everything that is happening and what you do.  It made me realise that Asperger's isn't always about difficulty communicating with others, but there are other problems.  Here is what happened to me.

A few years ago (about 5-6) I was at work having my lunch. As usual I was reading after I had eaten my lunch.  I had just started reading when my brain went into a fog and it felt like it couldn't take any more information in.  I felt I couldn't cope with doing anything.  It was a struggle to even walk back to my desk.  I ended up in tears and going home. It took me a couple of hours in bed, resting, to get back my energy.

This wasn't the first time it had happened to me. On other occasions it had happened at the end of the day when I was walking home from the train station.  I had got half way home, when my legs felt heavy and seemed to me that they couldn't cope with it all anymore. I started feeling faint and had to stop at the bus stop to rest before I could manage to carry on walking to get home. When I got home, I had to go to bed and rest for a couple of hours. It has always been after a few hours resting that I am able to get up and live normally again.  It has also happened first thing in the morning or during the day.

I have always thought it was a virus, but now I am not so sure.  Could this be sensory overload?  Could my brain have been telling me that it had had enough and couldn't go on and I needed to rest to carry on again?

I would like someone's opinion about this.  If you read this and think yes, it was sensory overload, let me know.

Ebook pricing

Over the last few weeks I have read blogs about pricing ebooks, and there seems to be a bit of a hoo-ha about it.  It seems that some people think that authors should price their books higher because of all the hard work they have done for it. There is also some hoo-ha whether 'free' books are now working, esp with Amazon KDP Select.  I have now decided what price I will put on my ebooks - it all depends on the length, and this is what JA Konrath does.

Short and long short stories under 10K words = .99c (Apart from my first Angel ebook which is now free - as part of the freeway experiment that DD Scott has done. And it has worked. Slowly getting to 5000 downloads)
Anthologies/novellas from 10K to 20K words = $2.99
Novels/Boxed Sets from 20K to 30K words = $3.99
Novels over 30K words = $4.99

So, with that guideline for myself, my next Angel ebook, which is turning out to be a novella and over 10K words, will be priced at $2.99.  At some point, I might reduce it for a while.

So, how do you price your ebooks?  Let me know.