Copple’s Creations

I don’t dish out this writing tip because I think I have it down, but more to get us thinking on this topic. “What’s the topic?” you ask. Guess with that title, it could mean several things.

What I’m thinking of is writing so that our character’s passionate moments really pop out. This is a bit of a hard one, in that what is the “right” amount is so subjective. I’ve heard everything from “less is more” to “have your characters stomping about and crying their heads off.”

And what I tend to be guilty of myself is not bringing out a character’s passion in a moment they should be feeling some strong emotions. Only on occasion have I had someone say I overdid it. And I’m sure because in part I’m a level-headed guy who rarely gets extremely angry, sad, or anything. When I do, watch out. It’s like Mt. St. Helen coming apart. But it takes a lot of pressure to blow that top off. So I think I tend to write my characters that way.

And therein may be part of my answer. The character. Every character we write should respond differently than another character. What I sometimes receive in crits is that this or that character should be hitting things, or ripping the place apart. I think that’s because that’s what that critiquer would do, whereas I would not. I would respond to such a situation differently. And I’ve been in a few as well.

But the key is to write what that character, with their history and traits, would do in such a situation. Let’s bring this from the abstract to the concrete.

The traditional scene, John enters the room to find his wife lying dead on the floor. His oldest son and daughter file in behind him. The father might be stunned and simply stand there, not believing his eyes, not wanting to acknowledge that what he’s seeing is true. The son, meanwhile, may bang his head on the door post and squeeze his eyes shut, tears welling up and falling to the floor. The girl might scream and throw herself over the dead body, weeping.

And if we threw more people in the room, we could have each one react differently, different levels of emotional reaction, and they would all be true to life, and realistic. But what happens is when a reader picks it up, if that specific reaction isn’t in their experience, they tend to say it isn’t believable. It isn’t believable that the dad would just stand there, stunned. They would never react that way and they don’t know anyone who would.

But I think we can toss aside the question of whether a specific reaction is realistic or not. I think most any reaction would be realistic. Even the girl who remains in denial, plays and makes jokes as if her mother’s body isn’t laying on the floor, is realistic. There are as many valid reactions as their are people.

However, we also have to acknowledge that we are writing fiction. We are attempting to tell a compelling story, which at times requires a “not realistic” approach. For instance, as I mentioned in the article on writing descriptions, how many people go through their day noticing all the descriptions you traditionally see in a novel? I seriously doubt anyone does. To be going through your day, thinking about the leaves waving the breeze, the smell of exhaust in traffic, hearing a train pass by, the colorful sign we pass everyday on our way to work, etc. What you see in a novel is totally unrealistic. Yet, to make the story work, we have to put that level of detail in there, even though the character wouldn’t likely notice 10% of that detail in real life.

As one author I read said, dialog in fiction is likewise unrealistic. Few of us go around speaking with each other in smooth, flowing sentences that are crisp and clear. Our conversations go something more like this: “Well, yeah, I see your point. Uh, sure. Where can we meet, how about Jerry’s? No, I forgot, I have an appointment at that time. How about ten instead of nine? You don’t like Jerry’s? Okay, let me think. Hum, well, we could try the Lucky Duck. Cool, well, how about we chat then. Yeah. I agree. See you later.”

Can you think of reading that for a whole novel? You’d die from boredom. Yet that’s the kind of stuff our days are filled with. Menial task, discussions, that would be borrring to watch or listen to. You don’t want to have realistic dialog in your novel! Oh, yes, you have to have a level of realism, but you don’t want it to be realistic to life. That would be boring.

The same thing applies here with emotions and conveying passion. The point isn’t to duplicate true life as close as possible. The point is to keep the reader entertained and involved in the story. And when you’re trying to write that emotional scene where your characters should be reacting to a horrific situation, for instance, you could realistically have a man stand in shock and not react immediately to such a scene, but that doesn’t create good drama. It doesn’t keep the reader gripped to the scene.  So I think while one has to be careful to not overdue it, there is a time and place for drama.

The problem with overdoing it is when the reaction doesn’t fit the situation. Then it’s seen as the author trying to generate emotions that the situation doesn’t call for.  So, for instance, if the man entered the room and found a sandwich on the floor, he might get angry that someone knocked his lunch on the floor, but if he ran in, grabbed the plate and smashed it against the window, kicked the chair across the room, and fell to the floor crying his head off, we’d be calling the for the white men to bring the straight jacket with them. They guy’s cracked.

But, in the end, you need to stay true to your character. If it is a Clint Eastwood type character, he probably will remain stoic and unmoved, even in the face of danger or what is otherwise an emotional scene for others. The character and story will guide on what is too much or not enough. This is one of those areas where it becomes a judgment call, and except for blatant over or under done moments, each author’s call will likely be right.

I’ve been writing fiction stories and novels for a little over four years now. Sure, a newbie in the grand scheme of things. But one can learn a few things even in four years that are worth sharing. And I was thinking about this particular writing issue, character vs. plot.

Or to put it another way, which do you focus on? Some people say that a character story is where it’s at. You need compelling characters. Forget the plot twist, the surprise ending, just write good characters. And there is some truth to that. One does need compelling and interesting characters.

Others might focus on plot and story. Characters are fine, but if your story is boring, forget it. Who wants to read about great characters doing nothing? (I guess some people do, or you wouldn’t have literary stories–*ducks and runs.*) But you’ll see people who will say what Dean Westley Smith says:

*3) Should I tell stories while practicing or just write paragraphs or scenes?*

Oh, heavens, you are practicing being a storyteller, so every session is focused
on telling a story. Nothing else matters. Everything you practice goes to
telling a story, so every practice session should be on a story of some sort.

Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: Writers Don’t Need to Practice

This is not to say that he doesn’t care about characterization. And that really is where I’m going with this. For a quality fiction story, you need both. A great story to tell, and compelling/interesting characters to tell it with.

The classic books have both. Some were stronger in one department or the other, but they usually had strong elements of both plot and characterization. Yet, it seems beginning writers (myself included, I’ve done this), have one or the other, sometimes neither. But consider their story to be great, and woe to the poor reviewer who happens to say otherwise!

And basic storytelling is harder to pull off than many think. Many of us have heard stories all our lives, and think it should be as easy as sitting down and cranking out a masterpiece. The first novel I wrote, quite by accident, my wife and kids figured I’d be a famous writer within a year. I was a little more cautious. I figured it might take a couple of months to edit it into shape, then another two to six months to sell it to a pub house, and then it usually takes a while from acceptance to actually holding a copy in your hands, so I figured I’d give it a couple of years. Then I’d be famous. After all, who couldn’t love this story!

Well, come to find out, the crit group couldn’t love it. I’m in the middle of totally rewriting it from scratch to solve some of the issues I had with it, when I wrote it not knowing what I was doing. I’ve grown since then. I know it may take years, or even might not ever happen. But the joy is in the writing and that I must do. Famous or not.

But plot and a great story that draws a reader into it, keeps them there until the climax, leaves them gasping for breath, coupled with characters that add dimension to the story and make it a fun ride, is what will be a great story years from now. There’s no reason to decide to only fire with half the engine on purpose. Why not use all the pistons and make that story hum?

Passive voice and passive usage. What is it? When should and shouldn’t I use it? Well, let’s lay it out.

First, I want us to think about this in a different way, a way I hope will make it clearer why and when you should and shouldn’t use these modes of writing. I want us to think in terms of the flow of movement in your verbs.

There are three ways the action in the verbs you chose to write with will flow: forward, backwards, and static.

Forward action is what is generally referred to as “active voice.” Simply, the action of the verb flows from the subject of the sentence to the object of the sentence. Henry kissed the blond girl. The action flows from Henry to the girl.

Backwards action is when the flow of action moves from the object of the sentence to the subject. The blond girl was kissed by Henry. Here, the subject, the blond girl, is receiving the action from the object of the sentence, Henry. This is known as “passive voice” because the subject is being passive, that is, not acting, but being acted upon.

But action can also be static. There is no flow from or to either subject or object. These are usually typified by the use of linking verbs. The girl Henry kissed was blond. You’ll notice the action of kissing is still there, but it is no longer the focus of the sentence. It has been demoted to a modifier of which girl we are talking about: the one Henry kissed. Rather, the focus now is on the fact that the girl’s hair is blond. Though it mentions kissing, there is no real action present here. Rather, it is descriptive in a non-active way. This is what is known as passive usage in that the sentence itself contains no real action, the whole sentence is passive. So, I’m terming it static action.

Now that we have the definitions down, let’s take a look at these. I’ve heard some people want to say that backwards action is simply their style, how they write, and chaff at the suggestion that they should change it. Why do editors want and good fiction writers use active voice or forward motion? Why do they say to avoid passive voice or backwards motion in fiction writing?

It’s very simple. In story telling, in most all cases (there are always exceptions to most any “rule”), people want to see your main character do something which affects the outcome of the story and brings resolution. A story where everything happens to your main character isn’t nearly as tense or interesting as one where your main character struggles to overcome some obstacle, whether they succeed or not. But to see your character do that, you have to use active voice. Otherwise, your main character will either not be the focus of the sentence(s), or the action will be flowing at him all the time instead of him doing the action.

But is there a valid use for backwards action? Yes. One, when you want to show your main character as having lost control, when things are spinning out of control and everything is happening to him. That’s a time to use passive voice. If you know what affect it has on the reader when they read a passive voice, you can intentionally use it at times to create a sense of disaster happening all around.

Also, there may be times when you want the keep the action with your main character, but you want the focus to shift to a different character for some affect. For instance, your “hero” is about to strike the final blow that puts the villain in the slammer. Rosh was hit by Captain Flyboy, knocking him out cold.

Another time passive voice is handy is to create distance. The direct object isn’t as intimate as the subject is. You are no so much in their head, so distance is created. In the example above, you may not want to make the action of Captain Flyboy as harsh as it might be, and so use passive voice to create some distance so the view is more objective than subjective.

The goal here is to know when you are using backwards action and do it to produce a specific affect. To use it as a style of writing may work for a news article or academic research paper, but for telling a story, its use would be limited to some very special cases. Otherwise, what you will produce is fiction lacking tension or intimacy.

While there are those who overuse backwards action, the bigger overuse is static action. Most writers who don’t train themselves, will tend to write with a lot of static usage.

Don’t think you do? Try this. Open your story in your word processor of choice. In most, you will find a search function which will highlight your search parameter throughout your document. Open that up and use “was” for the search parameter. Have it find all, and note how frequently this word appears in your story.

For most writers unless they’ve trained themselves otherwise, you will see it in nearly every sentence, sometimes multiple times in one sentence. What does this mean? It means your action is static which is really worse than backwards action, and you lose the effect it could have when you do want to use it.

Here are some common ways that static action tends to happen. One, when we attempt to describe the action of someone, but instead of describing the action, we describe the state of being of the one doing the action. She felt he was an idiot for not taking her seriously. Here, you are saying what she thought he was instead of describing the action itself. It would be more active to say, She felt he didn’t take her seriously. In both, the subject does have forward action, but here the subject of the dependent clause is more active.

More commonly, you see static action appear in descriptions. The car was red. The dog was shaggy. Her hair was brown. In each of these, you are simply saying what something is. There is no action to speak of at all. But how much better to put all that into action when you describe something: A brown haired girl drove a red car as a shaggy dog chased it down the street. Make such statements into adjectives describing the objects, while those objects are in motion, when they are doing something.

But you can even make descriptions themselves come alive: The car flashed red as it passed a dog’s bouncing shaggy hair covering a collar connected to a leash held by a girl flipping her blond hair in the breeze. A little wordy, but you get the idea. Learn to drop the linking verbs from your descriptions and they will move the story along rather than put it on pause while you lay out the scenery.

But are there times you want to use static action? Of course! One is in using a valid progressive verb. Henry was thinking she was smart. The first instance of was is a valid progressive verb use, “was thinking.” You wanted to indicate that he didn’t just think that in the past but had now moved on, but that he started to think that in the past and was currently thinking that in the present. But be careful, there are actions that progressive usage doesn’t fit with, actions that by their nature can not be a continuing action. Henry was blowing up the building. There is only a split second when that statement would be true. He’s either about to blow it up or he has. Yet, you’ll see people use the progressive verb usage when it would be better to simply use past tense.

Another prime time to use static action is when you want to state specifically what something or someone’s state of being is. This is often used for a revelation of some kind. Henry was right! Or in a murder mystery you might read, Henry was the murderer!

However, what happens if these statements are buried in an avalanche of static action usage? They don’t stand out at all. They are simply one among hundreds of such statements. But, if they are one of the few, the brave, the proud, guess what? They have impact. The realization has force because the story isn’t full of wases.

Another time I will use the more static action is in dialog. You don’t want to overdo this, but it does give a more natural way to talk. We frequently use them in talking with each other. One of the reasons this works is that static action is more “telling” while forward action is more “showing.” While showing is good for narration, we don’t naturally talking in showing mode, we talk in telling mode. So, instead of, Henry said, “Did you see her car? It flashed red as it sped past me, the exhaust vibrating in my ears,” it would sound more natural to say, “Did you see her car? It was an awesome red!”

But do searches on “was” and other linking verbs and evaluate each use to determine if you could say it in a more active way. This also will identify much backwards action which frequently uses a linking verb. What you should be left with are those uses you really want to keep in there, and they will stand out more when not in a crowd.

As you train yourself, you’ll find your writing will be more dynamic and exciting by only using backwards and static action flows to specific instances when they serve a purpose.

Do the writers who read this blog workshop your novels?

An interesting question. I bring this up for a couple of reasons. One, there are so many critique groups out there for critiquing stories. No doubt about that. I’ve been involved with one on-line group since 2006. And I’ve worked in a smaller, more personal one for some years as well.

And I have to say, both have been a big help. The first one I joined shortly after getting my feet wet was a big help in many ways. I had no clue what I was doing, and I learned a lot. And the novel I’ve had published I can say is a better novel for having gone through the critique group I’m a part of. I had some blind spots that were uncovered concerning the plot, and it became much richer of a story as a result.

So, upon reading the blog postings from Dean Wesley Smith titled: Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: Workshops, I had to take a second look on this topic. He certainly makes one think through these things, and I’m sure that makes him very happy.

His post does answer one question I had. That is, do professional authors who have made it use these groups? I sort of doubted it, because the time it takes for me to get a novel critiqued in one of these group, posting one to two chapters a week, it can take half a year or more, if the critiquers keep the pace up steadily. Since a lot of authors earning a living at writing fiction crank our more than one or two books a year, I had serious doubts that many, if any, used the sort of on-line or even in-person critique groups that I was using. It simply wouldn’t be efficient time usage for them.

And I’ve also been aware of the problems inherent in critique groups, many of which Dean touches on in that article. For instance, some of my critiquers I know who they are and their qualifications. But especially in one group, by and large, I have no idea of their real names. I don’t know what they’ve published, if ever they have. I have no clue whether they really know what they are talking about or not. They are individuals hidden behind a screen name who may be able to sound like they know what they are talking about, but have never published a story in twenty years of trying for all I know. They may be Orsen Scott Card as well, trying to remain hidden to avoid being treated differently. The point is, I have no clue, and so I have no clue whether their advice will kill off my novel’s unique voice, or resurrect it from the ashes of my own incompetence.

But aside from all that, if I’m to learn and grow as a writer, at some point that process becomes a hindrance more than a help. In the end, it’s your novel. Once you’ve learned whatever there is to learn from someone, and that I do agree with Dean should be the goal of these groups, it no longer makes sense to spend half a year or more gathering input. If you’re going to make money, you write it, edit it, have someone beta read it, edit it, and send it out. Then repeat the process.

The other reason is I’m starting an on-line writer’s group. Strange, I know. It sort of took on a life of its own as NaNo ended and several of us who spent all month on-line together wanted to keep the group together and perhaps help each other to edit their novels now that we had a rough draft to work with. So I’m forced to revisit this topic so I will know how to approach it myself.

There appear to be two options if we go to critiquing each other’s novels. One, what I’ve been doing which is to post a chapter every so often. Once a week or two chapters a week, get critiques, etc. Then edit again at the end of the process. Or two, to go through and edit it as quickly as I can, send the whole manuscript to a couple of beta readers I trust, do final edits when I get them back and then ship the manuscript off.

For those new to the editing process, the first makes more sense. One, it gives them bite-sized chunks they can deal with and digest. Two, it provides them a deadline of sorts which helps get them moving on their novel when otherwise it’d sit gathering dust, virtual or otherwise, tucked away in a folder somewhere. But for the more experienced writer who has a few stories and novels under their belt, the later may make more sense. It will speed up the process, and the crit group instead provides the beta readers instead of a chapter-by-chapter critiquing process.

The one area I’m not so sure I totally agree with Dean on is to only say good things about the other person’s work. I know personally I want to know what is wrong with it. That said, I have discovered that what works in my novel is also very important to know, and so I agree with that. I’ve had to work at mentioning and stating that myself when I critique.

However, here’s the gray area I’m dealing with. There are times when I, and I’ve seen others do this, tell a person what they find wrong about their novel or story. And what they’ve found wrong is naturally a personal opinion. It’s usually something that the individual critiquing the story thought didn’t sound right, wasn’t natural, too trite, the character(s) wouldn’t behave like that (one of my favorites!), and on and on. But what it really boils down to is a personal opinion on whether some facet of the story is believable. And whether something is believable all depends on the history and culture of the person reading it.

Which is why so many stories with giant plot holes make it into books, TV, and the movies. Some of them with plot holes big enough you could fly a 747 through them. And yet, despite all that, the public loves them! They buy them and they become best sellers, they spend tons of money to go watch the movie full of plot holes. How can this happen? Because there are people who care, and there are people who don’t care about those things. Some people simply want to be entertained, no matter the implausibility of the story. The people who usually get their ire up about it are other writers. Especially one’s trying to make it as a writer. Not always, but I bet the 80-20 rule holds here as well. 80% of the writers will be bothered by plot holes, uninspired or wooden dialog, while 20% of them aren’t. Conversely, 80% of the general population couldn’t care less about those things, they just want to see a great story, and 20% of the general population will complain about it. Guess which 80% is bigger and will get the aspiring writer more sales?

So, guess what? You have a great story, even with plot holes or mediocre writing/acting, it can still make lots of money and do well.

What? You think I’m saying if it sells well that’s all that matters? No, not hardly. But if it sells well, that means one primary thing: your book is in the hands of thousands compared to hundreds. It means people think enough of your story to plunk down cash they’ve worked hard for because they know it is worth that money. Strangers you may never meet rave about your book with coworkers and friends. Sales is how the general public votes on whether they liked your book. It is the vote that matters more than any of the awards, because without that, it don’t get shared much, it doesn’t reach very many people with its story and/or message.

And before I hear someone say its all about marketing, that simply isn’t true. No amount of marketing will make a book people don’t like into a bestseller, and the only way a book really becomes a best seller is if people like the story and talk about it to their friends. Marketing only provides the push that gets the snowball rolling down the hill. But then its up to the snowball to gather more snow to become big. If it doesn’t, it simply loses steam and comes to a halt less than a quarter of the way down the hill. You still have to have a story that people enjoy. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it has to be fun!

And Dean’s point is a critique group won’t help you make it anymore fun, engaging, or your unique voice than it is when you finish the last page of the rough draft. It may help close up some plot holes. It might tell you that the story isn’t fun and engaging, and if the people have a clue about good story telling, they might even be able to point you in the right directions as to why.

So if I’m hearing Dean right, and I hope I am, the point of a good workshop is for writers to help each other learn to write better, learn new tricks by looking mostly at what each other have done right more so than what they’ve done wrong. But I still think we can learn from what we’ve done wrong. I think the point there is we be very careful about making changes on what people have thought we have done wrong unless we ourselves are in complete agreement. But to focus on what works, that should be the idea if we want to learn what works. Yes?

What’s your experience with critique groups?

Of late, I’ve been following Dean Wesley Smith’s blog. He is a writer who’s published over 90 novels. A prolific writer who’s doing exactly what I want to do as well, make a living at writing great fiction. In a recent post, he wrote:

The truth: Writing a story is fun. And those of us lucky enough to do it for a living have the best job in the world, period. I sit alone in a room and make stuff up and people pay me large sums of money to do that. What is so hard about that?

I feel the same way, and is why I wanted to focus, not only for any readers of this blog, but also for myself, on a spin-off thought from his most recent blog post, Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: Book as Event. He certainly challenges the common assumptions people make about writing novels and getting them published, and I’ve learned a lot following his blog and his “Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing” thread. Worth your time to read if you’re an aspiring novelist.

But this one is his big sacred cow to kill, and I can see why. So allow me to take some time from my National Novel Writing Month word piling to put my own thoughts down that his post inspired.

Most people assume that to write a best selling, or even good selling book, it has to be an amazing story, a heart-pounding read, flawless word usage, or as Dean Wesley Smith puts it, “art.” And one might be led to believe that, if the facts corresponded with said theory. Just a look at recent best-sellers in the publishing world would draw the conclusion that there is not a one-to-one correlation.

Take Eragon by Christopher Paolini. Written by a teen, this book becomes a best-seller despite the fact it is criticized for the writing being wooden and full of trite plots and characters. But the end result? It worked for a lot of people.

And then there is The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Violating numerous writing rules for good stories, and roundly criticized among fellow writers, it topped the best-sellers list. Do any of my crit partners wish to say he could do that because he knew what he was doing? Ah, I thought not. Yet, apparently he did.

And we could no doubt go down the list and find others that if one were to listen to fellow writers and critics, should have never seen the light of day, much less made the best-sellers list. But what does this show us?

One, that a book doesn’t have to be perfect to make it. It’s one of the points Dean makes in his recent blog entry linked above. Browse your library fiction shelves sometime. You’ll find great books, but you’ll also find books that will make you say, “How on earth did this ever get published?” Or, “What was the editor drinking when he decided to send out this contract?” A lot of bad writing and poor-excuse-for-stories get put into print by major publishing houses all the time. And some of those stories actually make them money. People will really plunk down good money, read the book, and enjoy it!

Two, I hear far too many of my writer friends and fellow National Novel Writing Month buddies lament that their stories are not that good. And maybe some of them aren’t. It may be that they are just tossing in words, detailing everyday, boring events in the lives of their characters with no real story, plot, or even character development/interaction that is not worth anyone ever sloshing through. They only care about getting a word count. End of story.

Great, more power to you. But I suspect there are also a great number who try to get something down on paper that works. They know it won’t be perfect, but they hope it will be something they can edit into shape, maybe become the seed for other stories, novels, or a future rewrite. But as Dean says, most of those stories end up getting thrown into drawers, rarely to see the light of day again, much less an editor’s desk.

I can relate to Dean’s writing style, to write quickly. Every novel I’ve written I did within a month’s time. At the end of this NaNoWriMo, I will have six novels done. How many have been published? One. It was, just like Dean, my third novel I’d ever written, Transforming Realities. Before that was my first published book, a novella, Infinite Realities, but I don’t count that as one of my novels.

My 2006 NaNoWriMo novel is fairly polished. I thought I’d do a little tweaking, but it is nearly ready to go. The rest are either rough drafts or in the middle of edits. And my edit process has been long and drawn out. I write in a month, but take a year or more to edit and get it ready. So each NaNo I add to the novel count waiting to go out.

Now, it isn’t that I don’t think these stories aren’t good enough. As a matter of fact, I’m sure they are all good enough to be published. I have no doubt. But I will admit that I’ve fallen into the idea that I needed to get my book, if not perfect, near perfect before I send it to the big editor or agent who will be reading the first lines, and stuffing it back in the envelope with a rejection slip before he/she gets to the end of the first page.

My goal to this point for the next year was to get the third and final book in the Reality series published, The Reality. I also wanted to finally get Mind Game, that near-ready novel, out to someone, start shopping it. But that was about it.

Now Dean has inspired me to pull the stops out. Don’t worry about getting it perfect. These are good stories, and need to get into the hands of editors so people can read them. And who knows, one of them might sell well. One of them might become a best seller. I might actually end up, to the protesting of my bosses, be able to quit my job and make a living at this writing gig I enjoy. I might be able to get paid well for making up stories. But I’ll never know if I allow myself to think my story has to be just right to make it.

What really needs to happen is it needs to be a good story. People vote with their money, and that is, in the end, the vote that counts if one’s goal is to write so people enjoy what you write. The lack of sales doesn’t necessarily mean its a bad story, mind you. There are several factors that come together, but great sales does validate one fact: people enjoyed the story. If they didn’t, no amount of marketing would get people to buy it in sufficient quantities.

And that’s what stories like Eragon and The Da Vinci Code were. Good stories despite their imperfections, and people voted with their wallets. My stories are just as good, maybe even better. And I need to release them to see if they fly or not. If I keep them in the nest, we’ll never know.

And so I’m making a new year’s vow, pledge, whatever you call it, a little early this year. I’m going to get out to editors as many of these books sitting on my hard drive as possible during the following year. I’m still going to do NaNoWriMo. I’ve too many stories needing to get out to stop writing, and I may write in between! But my focus will be to get these stories out into hands, first the editor’s, then the public’s.

And how about you? If you have a story sitting on a hard drive, don’t tweak it to death. Do the edits, then send it out. Then start on the next one. Dean’s inspired me, and I hope he’s inspired others to do the same.

Enjoy the journey!

One of the pitfalls writers attempt to avoid is being trite. Being trite, first on the writing level itself, and then being trite in a story plot.

There are, however, some forces that work against that.

First, we should probably define trite. In reality, people tend to think of the term too rigidly. They say if it’s been done before, then it’s trite. But there is another golden rule contradicting that: there is nothing new under the sun. No matter the phrasing, the story line, etc., most likely you can find someone who has said it or written that story before.

Okay, so some might narrow that down a bit to say, “if it’s been done frequently before.” That hits closer to home. But still is too formulaic. Here’s why I say that.

What is trite is more subjective. What is trite to one person isn’t to another. Depends on what they’ve read and how many times they’ve read it. So my definition of trite is any writing or plot that makes you say, “Oh, this has been done to death,” or “I’ve seen this a million times.”

I ran across that the other night. On the TV was a movie about a ragtag soccer team from  a hick town that was formed by a teacher at the school. Of course the kids know nothing about soccer, and the first thing they do is go play against a championship team and get slaughtered. Right then I told my son, “Here’s how the rest of this movie is going down. They will practice and get better, and at the end of the movie they will go to the championship game and barely defeat the team that’s won it for the past several years.

Predictably, that’s how it went. But it gets better. They predictably tie the game at the end, and each team gets five tries to get a ball into the goal, and whoever gets the most in wins as a tie breaker. The last of the five they chose for their team was the runt and least likely to pull it off of the team. So I told my son, which players would miss, and that it would come down to the scrawny runt winning the game. Sure enough, it happened just that way, even those missing the goal that I predicted would miss it.

But despite that and some unbelievable moments both in action and plot, it wasn’t all that bad. I watched the whole thing. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad either. It had its moments. But it had all the predictable elements of the ragtag sports team type story.

Now, if someone had never read or seen one of these type stories, they wouldn’t consider it trite. I would. And there have been things I’ve written that I didn’t think were done all that much, that I later found out was.

One such story was my flash fiction The Wheel of Curses which Everyday Fiction accepted and published back in 2008. It is a story of Josh, a young wizard in training, who gets turned into a fly and for a while it is written from the fly’s perspective. While they accepted it, they did mention in the comments that “although we get many of these fly perspective stories…” I thought, “What? They get a lot of these? I’d never guessed.” But they liked my take on it enough that they accepted mine.

And that is a good segue into the next point. Even if you have a trite story line, if you still can write a good story that captures people’s imaginations, it won’t matter that the plot line is tired and worn out. A good writer can take a tired and worn out plot line and give it life.

There are two ways to do this. One, is to have some unexpected elements in the plot line itself. This lends itself to trite plot lines because then everyone thinks they know how its going to go down, and when it doesn’t go where they expect it to, then suddenly it’s not trite any longer.

The other way is to make the characters and their exchanges interesting. Mainstream stories rely upon this, because in mainstream it is much harder to find an original plot line. Practically everything has been done before. Speculative fiction gives you a little more freedom to create original plots, whereas mainstream is more limited to this life in that regard.

The way that most mainstream stories keep from reading trite is the unique and interesting characters they infuse into the story. So say you take the story of the divorced man raising a kid or kids. Predictably the plot centers around one or all of the kids feeling like dad doesn’t pay them enough attention. That same plot line appears frequently in marriage situations as well. “The Santa Clause” movie is a good example among many with such a plot line in it. But if you can write good dialog, provide deep characters that the reader can care about, even if they know the dad or mother will come to their senses at the end and become the best dad in the world, it can still be interesting and not so trite if the characters are compelling.

Then there is the final point: sometimes trite sells. When Anne’s “Dragon Riders of Pern” came out, it was fairly fresh. It became very popular. So what do publishers do? They want to ride that wave, and so acceptances of dragon rider stories grew. Everyone wanted to write a dragon rider story. So, after a while, the plot became a little trite.

Then along comes Eragon, about a boy who finds a dragon’s egg and ends up becoming a dragon rider. The book in literary circles was denounced as too trite and predictable. It had all the cliche elements of such a story in it. But yet, it became a best seller, people loved it. Why? Because it had a good story and interesting characters…even if the writing was a bit “wooden” as I recall on reviewer putting it.

Trite goes in cycles. For instance, it’s not like no one had written about wizards and such, but when Harry Potter came on the screen, it was fresh. Likewise, I don’t know how many times I’ve seen sites say they don’t want anymore vampire stories. They get too many of them that are apparently pretty bad. Yet, Twilight hits the shelves and sells well. As a matter of fact, I can predict at some point we’ll see another story like Lord of the Rings sell well sometime into the future.

In the end, it’s much like what the judges often say on American Idol and the like: you’ve got to put your own stamp on it. That’s what really makes it unique, even if the subject matter has been dealt with a thousand times before. If I were to write the Star Wars book, it wouldn’t have the same feel as someone else might do it. If Tom Hanks had directed the first Star Wars movie, it wouldn’t be the same as what we have now. In the end, if your story sounds like every other story out there, doesn’t have your unique voice in it, then it will tend to sound trite.

So, keep writing, keep developing that voice, and eventually you can write the next “we need to destroy the evil object before it falls into the wrong hands so we can save the world” type story, and actually have it sell well.

I’ve read some perspectives on points of view recently, primarily first person, that I find myself disagreeing with.

Nancy Kress in her book, “Characters, Emotions, and Points of View” writes that in first person, it is like you’re in their head all the time, so you can’t do multiple points of view (though she suggest there are novels that do that successfully). And in first person, the point of view is artificial compared to others, in that people don’t go through life giving a word-for-word accounting of what they were thinking or a dialog that took place.

I understand where she was coming from, and who am I, a newbie published author, telling Nancy Kress she’s wrong? But I don’t feel that first person is any more artificial than third person. In each case, what you have is someone telling a story. In third person, it is someone telling a story about someone else. In first, someone is telling their own story. In either case, it would be artificial for them to recall word-for-word dialog and details. On that point, third person is just as artificial. That’s what it all boils down to. People realize that fact and generally accept it in trade for having the feeling of “being there” with the character and sinking into the story. No narrator is going to have that much detail at their fingertips. As a matter of fact, one would expect a first person narrator to know more of the details than a third person narrator.

I’ve also heard it said that scene breaks are not proper for a first person point of view. In a stream-of-consciousness story, I would suggest that would be true. That is the only type of story where you are in someone’s head without break. But if you can have scene breaks in third, you can in first as well. After all, if someone is telling us a story, no matter who it is about, and they want to skip over the parts that don’t really move the story along, why would you include that?

To put it another way, if I’m telling my son about something that happened to me and I wanted to dramatize it, it would be natural for me to skip over the parts that weren’t relevant to the story. Same as third person. Scene breaks in first person are quite natural, in fact and don’t violate the point of view.

I think what confuses people is that first person is automatically associated with a close first person. For by default, that is what most first person is. It is one of the advantages of first person, down to being able to see things the way the character sees them, even if it is wrong and not the truth. Out of all the points of view, you can get the closest to a character in it. So when it is used, it tends to be used with that goal in mind.

But, you can have a more distant first person. This is a case where the narrator “I” becomes more overt, just like in distant third or even omniscient. Yes, there is an omniscient first. But it is not the same as omniscient third. In first, you don’t jump from head to head at will. However, it is the blatantly overt narrator who already knows how the story will play out, and may make comments like, “If I’d known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have entered that building.” They’re omniscient in the sense they will look over the whole story as it is being told, knowing how it all fits together, who will do what, and how it all will end. It is more like sitting by a fire while your uncle tells you a story from when he was in the war.

So first person can have distance like third can, or be close where the narrator, though there, is invisible and you’re reading it “as it happened.” But the past tense still says, “this happened in the past so someone is telling you this after the fact.” It is still narrated and so can take all the same rules that a third person narration would take. What changes that is whether either is close or more distant.

Another assumed rule about first person is that you cannot write a first person story where the point of view character dies. The idea is, who is telling you the story? If it is past tense, which most first person is, then that assumes you have a dead narrator telling you the story. How can that be? Third person avoids that because it is someone else who is narrating.

But I’m not that hung up on that issue. Here’s why. The above only holds true if you’re of the belief that once you die, that’s the end of things. You pass away into oblivion and exist no more. But there are plenty of beliefs out there which would say otherwise–that say you do continue to live on in another state. And in many of these beliefs, there are stories of people who have come back to help others or talk to them. Christianity, for example, has plenty of stories of saints returning to guide someone in need. It would not be hard to imagine that such a person has returned in spirit form to tell his or her story. This explanation even works for mainstream, but certainly for fantasy and non-hard science fiction.

So, whether such a “framing story” is explicitly stated or not, I find it probably that you could have a narrator telling us his or her story who no longer is bound by this life. But on this issue, the practical reality is that there are a lot of editors out there who see it differently. So violate at your own risk. I’ve had stories rejected because my first person point of view character died.

If you find yourself in such a situation, there are three things you can do. One is to create that framing story explicitly. Have the ghost return to tell someone his story. Maybe he can’t be released from this world until he gets it off his chest. We’ve seen such stories, so making it into a framing story would help make sense of the first person character dying in the end.

Two, convert your story to third person. You can keep it in a close third and not lose much. But if your plot depends on the reader seeing an untruth as true through the first person point of view, you could consider the third option, as unlikely as you are to use it.

Three, you could convert your story to a first person, presence tense. Being in presence tense, your story ends when the character dies…because he’s the narrator. But since it is present tense, you can take the narration right up to when he or she dies. But, you’ll have to balance what you gain from that with what you lose, which is difficulty in the reader adjusting to a hard-to-swallow point of view. Few like present tense for a story. I’ve read one, and it did take about three to five chapters before I wasn’t thinking about the oddness of it. It takes some skill to write one that people will accept.

A possible fourth option, though it may not fly with an editor, is to explain in your cover letter why you’re using first person past point of view even though your character dies in the end. Acknowledging that you’re aware of this fact, and you are doing it on purpose for a specific reason may be enough for the editor to give it a chance.

In my Reality series, I use first person point of view in a semi-unique way. The basic rule is that the first person point of view follows the ring. You get a hint of that in the recently released book, “Transforming Realities,” but it comes out even stronger in the last book, yet to be published, “The Reality.” Because of that, I’ve done a couple of unconventional things. But as you can tell by this post, I’m not opposed to breaking the “rules” when I have a reason to do so. And I disagree with some of the rules given to begin with, radical that I am.

My article on why I write fantasy as a Christian garnered some comments in a group I’m part of a few months ago when it was published at Residential Aliens. Part of the concern dealt with fear that such things as magic, wizards, and witches lent a sense of “it’s okay to dabble in the occult” and that the Bible prohibits such practices as sorcery of any kind. I’d promised to address this Biblical issue more in depth at the time and have finally done it.

Magic and sorcery, are they evil? That in part depends what you’re talking about. If you’re talking about a magician who uses card tricks and such to entertain people, then I would say no. Such magic isn’t inherently evil.

But what about “black magic” or the like? In real life, such things are usually understood from a Biblical perspective as evil. However, it is not the simple casting of a spell itself that is at issue. No, far from it. If that were the case, then such evil magic would appear to be no different than someone offering up a prayer for healing and having it happen.

This is clearly illustrated for us in Exodus 7 and 8. In those chapters, Moses performs what we would call miracles. He tosses his rod on the ground and it turns into a snake. He strikes the water of the Nile and it turns to blood. He calls out frogs to plague the land. The problem is, the magicians of Pharaoh’s court do exactly the same thing. So what makes the magicians “evil magic” but Moses’ “miracles”?

I make the point in my article on why I as a Christian write fantasy to show that the principle that all comes from God has to be upheld. That sin is a perversion, a corruption of God’s intended use for anything. This is no different here.

To understand, we must go back to Genesis 1. God created man and woman on the sixth day, and on the seventh He rested and called it the Sabbath. The number “six” becomes associated with man. Now jump to Revelations, to the infamous passage that the number 666 will be placed upon the forehead and/or hand of every person, and it is called the “Number of the Beast.” Many have gone through elaborate systems to attempt to determine who will be the anti-Christ based on this number. But there is a more basic meaning here that applies to all of us, whether or not we ever see a literal 666 stamped on our bodies.

For repeating 6, man’s number, three times poetically indicates completeness. The number at its heart represents man as self-sufficient, as not needing God—secularism. The foundation of sin is man wanting to be like God, to eat the fruit, desiring to be in charge, to have the power. But all such desire does is corrupt the good that God has created into something destructive to us spiritually and physically. We bear the mark of 666 when our thinking (on our foreheads) and our actions (on our hands) are steeped in secular thinking. A belief that there is a reality and power apart from God.

This illustrates why Moses and the magicians did the same feats, but one we call magic and sorcery, while with Moses we call them miracles from God. Indeed, when the magicians finally cannot match what Moses accomplishes, they conclude that his God is too powerful.

This shows us that the ability itself to do something supernatural is not evil. Rather, it is whether one acknowledges that such a supernatural ability comes from God or not. It just so happens in everyday life and in the Bible, rarely is the word “magic” and “wizard” used to speak of a prophet who makes axe heads float on water. Those words are reserved for those who believe their power comes from another god, or from themselves.

In other words, the magicians were using the same power as Moses did, but they failed to acknowledge its source. They wanted to claim the power as being under their control, not God’s. And for that blaspheming of the Holy Spirit by not acknowledging Him as the source, they have corrupted God’s power and are using it in an evil way.

So when you see passages in the Bible condemning sorcery, wizards, witches, and the like, it is referring to someone who accesses God’s power but claims it as their own or another god’s. In Scripture, such words refer to the corruption of God’s power.

It is with that understanding as a foundation that we can now move into the realm of fiction. There are those Christians who cannot look beyond a surface level understanding of what a word means, and when it is used in a different context, fail to understand it properly in that world created by the author. For instance, in the Harry Potter series, much maligned on this point, magic is understood as a force you can learn to control. Good people will use it for good, evil people will use it for evil. The word “wizard” in that world doesn’t mean what it does in ours. It is someone who has learned how to control what is there in creation even if by means of a gift at birth. A wizard in that world is not the equivalent of a wizard in our world.

Rather, one must understand what an allegory is, and the limits of allegory. There is never a one-to-one correspondence on all points with “reality,” but often such allegory illustrates the truth. It is a fictional world created to tell a fictional story. Therefore, to make assumptions that it is identical to its equivalent in this world is foolish. It’s called fiction for a reason, because it’s not reality.

Magic and wizards in most of these stories bear little resemblance to one called such in real life. If you’re curious, research real pagan rituals and see if it looks anything like what you saw in Harry Potter. Nope, not the same. So much so that real-world witches and wizards despise the books because they feel it promotes stereotypes of who they are.

Rather, allegorical stories can highlight the issues in our reality in unconventional ways, making them easier to swallow, not just for the Christian, but the non-Christian as well. In my own story, I have an evil wizard, a good wizard who derives his power from God and knows it, and a prophet. They all do supernatural things. But it illustrates the fact in our real life that we are all given gifts by God to use, and how we use them determines whether we use them in an evil way, not the term we chose to label them with.

Am I, or any other author who uses wizards and such in their stories saying, “Hey, this is the occult and it’s fine to use it?” Not hardly. Do we suspect Poe is saying we should be psychos simply because his stories have some in there? Does one really think CS Lewis using the term “Deep Magic” to refer to God’s power mean that he thinks God’s power is occultic? No, it’s an allegory illustrating the power of God and the gospel message. What is occultic about God’s power? Just because he labels it “Deep Magic” doesn’t make it occultic in his world anymore than calling an orange an apple turns it into an apple.

In reality, using such terms within a fictional story in a way not often used in real life highlights the fakery of real-life occult practices. They are nothing more than perversions of God’s power and creation being used for selfish purposes.

I should add that there may indeed be cases where someone who has converted to Christianity from an occult group may find such things too tempting. If that is true, then I would suggest that person stay away from fantasy stories, Christian or otherwise, or be very selective in what they read, just as I would recommend an alcoholic stay away from bars.

However, for any who have come from that religion they would be hard-pressed to equate what happens in most fantasy stories with what they experienced from that world. For most of them, it won’t be a temptation to return to paganism—in which case there’s more at issue than reading a fantasy story going on—but a realization that this fantasy world is indeed made-up and not real.

The Biblical injunction against sorcery in the Bible is specifically referring to those people who use God’s power for selfish purposes, believing the source of the power derives from somewhere other than God. It’s forbidden because it’s a lie.

But if a character in a fictional story is labeled as a wizard but believes and understands his power comes from God, then he is really no different than a prophet in the Bible. He asks God via a “spell” that is the same as a “prayer” and God does it. The label doesn’t change the reality presented in the story to equate to the Biblical prohibition against wizards because they do not treat God’s power the same. The former believes God ultimately does it, the later that they or their “god” does it. And that is what underlies the Biblical prohibition against wizards and witches. Not merely the label that is used.

So, why use the label? Why not just call that wizard a prophet?

Simple. If you are wanting to reach a certain audience, you use terms and concepts they are used to seeing. By so doing, and establishing a different underlying basis for why one is bad and the other is good, you aid in helping to change their perspective. It’s a form of evangelism, subtle but effective.

When St. Paul stood before the philosophers of Athens, and claimed to tell them about the “Unknown God” they had an idol to, guess what current day Christians would say about that? They would lambaste St. Paul for equating our God with an idol. Why, he can’t do that! That’s totally unbiblical! There are countless prohibitions even in the famous Ten Commandments against it. Yet, there’s St. Paul telling the Athenians that their idol is really talking about his God. Why? He used their language, their point of reference to help them see something beyond what they currently understood.

We are not going to reach many in the world by speaking Christianese all the time. They’ll turn it off faster than a televised Billy Graham crusade. Sure, sometimes you can reach someone that way, but many more never even give a thought to Christianity because they assume it is like what they experienced as a child, or what their annoying “Ted Flanders” neighbor is like, or how it has been portrayed so often in movies and TV. So the first mention of anything Christian and their ears plug up. If you want to reach them, you use their terms as a starting point.

As a fantasy author, I can guarantee you that my wizards are nothing like their real-life counterparts. They are fantasy, not real. They are creations of my own mind to serve specific purposes. I know it can be a little work, but don’t assume labels point to the same things in a fantasy world as they do in the real world. That’s the point of fantasy, is that they don’t. It is an un-real world even if it illustrates for us some real world issues and conflicts that we all face.

Real-life sorcery is to be avoided. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t use their concepts and turn them on their heads to show what God’s reality is really like in ways they’ll be able to see and relate to. If I can do that in an entertaining way that will make the pill easy to swallow, I’ve accomplished my purpose.

Enjoy the journey!

This information is based upon Open Office version 2.3.

Open Office is a suite of software applications, including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software, and database. It is an “open source” application which for the end user means it is free to download and use on your computer. It rivals MS Office for ability, and on the whole does a good job of it, actually improving in some areas. You can download and read more about it at: http://www.openoffice.org/.

One of the cool things for authors is the ability to set up Open Office’s Writer (the word processor) to accomplish many of the task novel writing software claims to make easier. Task like easily navigating in your document, quickly moving scenes or chapters, automatic renumbering of scenes and chapters, as well as document wide task like saving to a Word doc file, printing, formatting, find/replace, etc.

However, it takes a little setting up to accomplish these task. But it is time well spent before beginning a big project like a novel.

Setting up styles

The first thing to do will be to set up some styles. There are three paragraph styles you will need. Novel Body, Chapter, and Scene.

Novel Body:

This should be the style the body of your text will be in. Naturally, you would want this to be in “Standard Submission” format. Open the “Style and Formatting” box by hitting the F11 button, or in the menu, “Format,” “Styles and Formatting.” A window box will pop open listing various styles.

* Right-click on a default style, like “Text body” and select “New”.
* Give your new style a name, replacing the “Untitled” name it gives, such as “Novel Body” or whatever you prefer.
* Select a non-proportional font from the “Font” tab like “Courier New” and make it 12 point.
* Select the “Indents and Spacing” tab, set the first line indent to “0.5″ and the line spacing to “double.”
* Click “OK” and your new style has been created.

Chapter:

Do the same as above, right-clicking on “Heading 2″. Modify this to select the font of your choice, you can left set it or center it. But in the “Organizer” tab, give it the name, “Chapter” and set “Novel Body” (or whatever name you gave it above) to be the next style used after pressing enter. In the “Indents and Spacing” tab make sure all indents are 0.0. Click “OK”.

Scene:

How you set up the scene style depends on how you intend to use it. The most common way would be to set it up as a heading, which will work for most functions.

In the “Styles and Formatting” box, right-click the heading style you would like to show scene headings as (recommend Heading 3), and select “New.” Give it the name in the “Organizer” tab as “Scene” and select “Novel Body” in the “Next style” field. Make any other adjustments necessary and then click “OK” to save this style. If scene headings are going to be printed out, you will probably want to set this as italics and centered.

You will be able to show either scene headers you type like, “The beast rips him apart,” or you can simply show numbered scenes that will change automatically if you move them. Once you are ready to print, but don’t want to print those as headings, you right-click the style in the “Style and Formatting” box, and select “Modify.” Then “Font Effects” and click the “hidden” box in the lower-right corner. Once you click “OK” those headers will not print out. Remove that check to once again show them.

If you are going to use the first paragraph of each scene as it’s “marker,” then right-click the “Novel Body” style we created at the top and select “New.” Simply give it the name “Scene” and select “Novel Body” as the “Next” text to pop up. The first paragraph of each scene will have this style.

Setting up Header Hierarchy

Now that the styles are set up, it is time to make them part of the heading outline. Click “Tools” in the menu, and then, “Outline numbering.” In the “Level” window on the left, select “1″. In the center drop down box, select the “Chapter” paragraph style we created earlier. In the “Number” drop down box, select “1, 2, 3…” from the list. In the “Before” field, enter “Chapter ” with the space on the end. Leave it blank if you only want the chapter number to show up, but no additional text.

Now in the “Level” window, click “2″. Select “Scene” from the paragraph style drop down list. If you want them automatically numbered, select “1, 2, 3…” in the “Number” drop down box. If you want “Scene” for a title, in the “Before” field enter “Scene ” with the space on the end. In the “After” field, enter a “:” or whatever you might want.

You have set up your outline headers so that Chapter and Scene paragraph styles point to a level in the outline and will show up in the Navigator as well as automatically reflect numbering based on what order they are in the document.

Saving for future use:

Naturally, you’ll want to save this so you can use it anytime. If you have these styles set up as you want them, and there is no text in the Writer document at the time, save this as a template.

Click in the menu “File,” “Templates,” and “Save.” Click on “My Templates” to save there, and give the new template a name, like “Novels”.

When you want to start a new novel file, click on the drop down arrow to the right of the new button and select “Templates and Documents”. Select “Novels” from the “My Templates” folder and click “OK” to open a file. Your novel styles will be available for use, without affecting Writer’s standard defaults.

Using the styles for writing a novel

To make use of the new setup, open the Navigator window in your document if not already open. This shows up as a compass looking graphic in the tool bar, or you can click “Edit” and “Navigator,” or hit F5. If the window is floating, you can dock it by dragging it to a side. If you can’t see it, make sure the right side of the Navigator box isn’t slid all the way to the left by clicking on a handle and dragging the window open. You should see a list of several items, the first one being “Headings” which we are interested in. Open it up far enough so you can see the four boxes on the far right of the window’s toolbar that allow for movement of the pieces. They look like “text” with arrows beside them going up or down, right or left.

Now, you can either begin writing a novel, outlining, or you can take a novel you have already started and prep it.

Outlining:

To outline, start with a synopsis. Type that out first. You can start with a small one, and build to a larger one. You can even detail out characters here if you wish, for easy future reference.

On the first chapter, click F11 and double-click the “Chapter” style. You will see the “Chapter 1″ appear, centered and formatted as you set up. You can either leave it at that, or hit enter, then give the chapter a title by using a standard header style, like Header 2. Center if need be.

Below that, summarize the plot point(s) this chapter should fill. Once done, hit enter, and then do this over for the next chapter.

Once done, you can go back to the top to detail out each scene if you so desire. Click under the chapter summary/plot point. Hit F11 and double-click the “Scene” style. Type out any heading desired, or just a summary of that scene’s plot point.

Just write it!

If you’re the type that just starts writing, when you are ready to begin the first chapter, hit F11, and double-click the “Chapter” style. The Chapter and # will appear automatically. Hit enter.

Then click F11, and double-click “Scene”. If set, it will automatically pop in the scene number and text in. You can then enter a header, or if set for it, the first paragraph of your scene. Then type away.

Next scene comes up, do the same thing. Next chapter, double-click on the “Chapter” style. Once used in your document, you can also see them in the style drop down box in the toolbar that is opened by default in Open Office Writer.

As an added tip, you can also set in the “Text Flow” tab of the style, to automatically start a new page at each chapter. Hit F11, right-click “Chapter” style and select “Modify.” Select the “Text Flow” tab, and check the “Insert” box in the “Break” section. Make sure “Page” is in the next drop down box, and “Before” in the far right one. Now when you double-click the Chapter style, it will add in a new page as well as the text with automatic number formatting.

Import it:

This is a more tedious process. Open your novel in OO Writer. Hit Ctrl-A to mark all text in the document. Double-click the “Novel Body” style in the style window, and all the text will be changed to the standard submission format.

Now, go through your novel and apply the Chapter and Scene styles to the appropriate spots. You may need to delete chapter number info if you have manually entered it before.

Navigating and Moving Text

Now that you have done this work, you should see in the Navigator, under “Headings” a list of the chapters and scenes in an outline format. If you do not, make sure you have the “Display” set to show at least 2 levels, but safest to set it for all ten.

To go to a scene in the Navigator, double-click on that scene. You are now there.

To move a scene or chapter, select that scene or chapter. Use the buttons at the top of the Navigator window, square text boxes with arrows pointing up and down, to move the scene or chapter to a new location. If you have the tips turned on, it will call them “Promote a chapter” and “Demote a chapter.” By clicking on the button with the arrow going down, it moves your scene or chapter one section down. Likewise, the up arrow moves it up. Click on it enough times till it is where you want it.

You will notice that automatic scene or chapter numbers will adjust as you move it around. This effectively allows you to shuffle pieces any way you want within your document.

And since this is all one document (not chapters in individual files), you can easily get a word count for the whole project, or do a find/replace if you need to change something over the whole project, set formatting for printing, etc. Anything you can do in a regular OO Writer document, you can do here because that is what this is.

The down side is if you want a word count of a section in the middle of your novel. Or if your publisher/agent wants one chapter of your novel sent to them. It means first marking the section in question, and then running a word count, or doing a copy/paste into a new document to save separately.

You can get a word count of a chapter fairly easily if it is the last chapter in your document. When ready, double-click on the chapter in the Navigator. Hold down the “Ctrl-Shift” keys and hit “End”. It will mark the chapter to the end of the document. Then run the word count.

You can use the master document feature in OO Writer, which has its benefits. You can drag and drop the chapters to move them around, but creating scenes in it becomes cumbersome because you will either have a separate file for each scene or keep the scenes in each chapter file, which means to move scenes between chapters requires a mark, cut and paste operation. If scenes are in each chapter file, it also means you lose the detailed “overview” of your whole project, chapters and scenes, that you get with it all in one document.

However, the automatic numbering will still work for chapters in the master document. Within a chapter file, it will always say “Chapter 1″ but in the master document, they will be numbered according to their position.

In the master document, you can also easily edit the chapter file (each chapter is its own separate file) and get a word count of just that chapter, or send the file to someone who wants that one chapter without any fuss. The downside to it, is it is harder to move scenes from one chapter to another, and there are restrictions on what you can do in a master document. (You can’t save it to one large file, for instance without the master document “features,” but have to copy/paste the whole document into a regular Writer file.)

Some of the writer software duplication here is a bit crude, like story plotting and character notes. You may find it easier to keep track of those either in another Writer file, or other application like Excel or a database. But this can give you a free, novel-writing application with the flexibility of the big boys, but with a full featured word processor (unlike many of them). Just a little time investment to set it up.