Karen S. Wiesner: Do I Need a Professional Editor?

 

Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner

Do I Need a Professional Editor?

From CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships}

Once upon a time, it was standard practice for every book to go through content editing, line editing, copyediting, and then one or more rounds of proofreading. Every book needs those steps, even those written by professional, highly skilled authors. It might surprise you to know that once upon a time even "vanity publishers" (i.e., those that charge you possibly exorbitant fees to publish your work) had rigorous editing requirements. But, while there are still traditional publishers around who enforce an in-depth editing process for all authors under contract, self- and indie publishers have little or no guidelines, let alone quality requirements placed on them. Far too many authors are cutting corners and self-publishing books that are as far from quality as it gets.

A qualified editor can see quality writing even if he or she doesn't personally enjoy the story. That's not up for debate. Good writing is good writing and free from as many errors as possible. I've read countless books in my line of work as a freelance editor, writing instructor, and contest judge that were wonderfully written. I didn't particularly enjoy them or engage and connect with them, but I could see they were well written (and well edited). So I stand by the fact that good writing is good writing and a true professional can be trusted to judge quality or lack therefore.

A professional editor will point out structural flaws, weak characterization, and bad writing--will absolutely content-, line- and copy-edit as well as proofread a book from start to finish (conceivably multiple times) before it's published. A professional editor won't ask you to revise something because of a difference of opinion, personal bias, or anything that can be considered "up for debate". Professional editors consider their work an art or even a science--and it is for those who have this very rare skill. I could open up yet another can of worms here concerning what makes a professional editor "professional" but that's not the point here. However, keep in mind that there as many unprofessional, unskilled "professional" editors out there who need solid professional credentials as there are unprofessional, unskilled authors who need a professional editor. Do your homework. Find someone who has the credentials (beyond being an author one distributor or a review publication calls a bestseller) for charging authors to edit.

A professional author trusts her editor or she walks away but, either way, an author can't afford to have an overinflated sense of worth or confidence about his work, let alone see every word as golden and therefore set in stone, not to be altered by a lesser mortal. If you realize you simply don't have the skill to do the revisions required to make a book quality, own up to it. Don't slap it up for sale and take money from poor, unsuspecting readers who almost never have an endless amount of money to spend on entertainment. The number of buyers of books is shrinking. Authors and publishers, respect yourself and respect the reader by making it a requirement that you'll only offer the highest quality stories to those readers still out there willing to pay for a good read.

That doesn't change the fact that far too many flawed, poorly written and edited books are being self-published by amateurs who are cutting corners and being lazy about their craft, taking money they haven't earned from readers whose only available course isn't to return the book but to write troll reviews at a distributor's website or never buy another book from that author (not exactly damaging unless riot mobs are amassing at an author's borders). Maybe it's true that these books are being sold in an author's own community and most readers aren't even aware they exist (and let's hope it stays that way). But shouldn't we start thinking about whether bad, sloppy, poorly written books should even be published? They're absolutely flooding the market so everything--good and bad--can only drown in the deluge. If we don't consider it now, when should we? When it's too late? Or is it already?

I would never want to be the one to judge whether a book is worthy to be published, but I've wondered countless times if the publishing industry wouldn't be a stronger place and readers wouldn't benefit immensely if authors and publishers and even distributors actually took the time to evaluate whether a book is quality apart from sales figures. I've also wondered if publishers shouldn't be more discerning. Is the fact that the publisher/editor likes the story reason enough to publish it? If a publisher doesn't have the skills to professionally evaluate and edit the material, or if the editor they hire is subpar (there are so many writer-wanna-be-editors without hard skills working at indie and small press publishing houses these days, it makes me want to cry), the publisher isn't doing the author or readers a favor at all--regardless of what either party believes about the quality of the story in this regard.

I know of an author who came into the indie market presumably because traditional publishers turned him down often and, through a series of what I consider unfortunate events, he went through several small ebook publishers--none of whom required him to do any serious editing of his work. Such a disservice was done to him! This author learned erroneously through these events that he was a good writer when, in fact, the opposite was true. If he'd been forced to do good editing and revisions from the very start, he might have gone on to become a good writer through practice and experience with the correct process for producing a quality book. Ultimately, when he got to the point of being required by a new publisher to do extreme editing of his severely flawed books, self-publishing became the easy out for him. I honestly don't know who to be more disgusted with: All the publishers who weren't discerning enough to turn this author away in the first place or require serious editing from him as a condition of publication, or the author who seemed to prefer not having to do the hard work of being a professional author and didn't mind offering readers low-quality books.

No one has any excuse for publishing bad, poorly written stories. Authors, publishers and distributors, listen up: The true test of a whether a story is quality is not because of any of the following:

1) Friends, family, colleagues, and maybe even a few strangers liked or even loved it (maybe enough to post a 5 star review in a public place).

2) It's published (self-, indie, or any other kind of publisher) or, for that matter, because someone agreed to publish it for the author.

3) The book has sold a lot of copies, whether legitimately or because you or your publisher used a discounted ebook marketing service or simply gave it away free or at a massive discount from a distributor's website.

4) It's a bestseller on any list. Mind you, it is possible to make a bestselling list by "ad stacking"--in other words, you have ads on as many of the discounted ebook marketing services as possible at the same time, which will probably cost more than you make in profit during this time, but your goal is gaining "credibility", not making money. Do an internet search to find out how this is done if you're interested (or, if you're like me, just want to be shocked that people actually do this--why and doesn't it make them feel dirty? because I would feel guilty using this kind of "publicity" to make myself sound more worthy than I actually might be). Bestseller lists are based on how many books are sold or are expected to sell. Is bestselling status retracted from a book that doesn't sell the way it was supposed to? Doubtful, but I can practically guarantee that the status will never be neglected in promotion by that author or publisher. They're absolutely no indication of actual quality of product, merely quantity.

The only true test of a quality book is whether readers found it worth the price they paid for it (or if they would have paid more) and enjoyed it, possibly enough to buy and read other books written by that author. This isn't something that can be adequately tested "in a laboratory" or statistically. Most writers may never know if they passed the quality test unless a reader sends them a note to tell them, puts up a review at a publisher's, distributor's, or the author's own website; or fans prove they love your work in some other definable, quantifiable way.

Karen S. Wiesner is the author of CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships}

Volume 6 of the 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection

http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html

Happy writing!

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Folklore 101

At this year's ICFA, I heard a paper by folklore scholar Jeana Jorgensen and was so impressed that I immediately ordered her book FOLKLORE 101. This isn't a book OF folklore, but an introduction to the study of folklore. Jorgensen explains her field in a breezy, colloquial style but also includes an extensive bibliography of books for further, deeper exploration, should readers be so inclined. She defines folklore as "informally transmitted traditional culture." It's shared and passed on outside of official, institutional structures. Thus, while an established religion isn't folkloric, folk religion does exist, e.g., wearing saints' medals for protection or burying a statue in the yard to ensure a quick sale of one's house. Variation and flexibility characterize folklore, whereas an institutional product such as a printed novel by a known author has a fixed form (unless the author or film director releases a revised official version). Tradition need not stretch back centuries or even years to be "traditional." Moreover, the "folk" don't mean just people in preindustrial eras or present-day tribal societies. Folk groups can include hobby clubs, coworkers in an office, people serving in a branch of the military, online virtual communities, even the members of a single family—any group that shares a common culture. It surprised me to read about "personal narratives" as a folklore category. Did you know the retelling of an anecdote about your wedding day constitutes folklore within your family's tradition? Coincidentally, earlier this week I read an article about the top ten stories from their own lives people tell over and over. (Frustratingly, the article didn't list the ten topics.) Older people don't repeat stories mainly because they're forgetful; they do it because those anecdotes hold vital meanings they want to pass on to the younger generations. Just as we all speak prose, we all belong to folk groups and practice folklore.

I ordinarily think of folklore mainly in terms of verbal culture, such as songs, tales, legends, and anecdotes. Proverbs, jokes, and slang also fall into that general area. As Jorgensen's book explains, however, folklore includes many more categories, e.g., foodways, rituals, superstitions, arts and crafts, dance, holiday customs, folk medicine, internet memes, and various other human activities.

Is fan fiction folklore? Yes, although her book mentions it only once, in passing. It's produced informally, outside official, commercial structures. It exhibits variation and is communicated within a folk community. The fanfic community has its own traditions and dialect, e.g., the invention of the term "slash" for same-sex romance between fictional characters. Filk music is certainly folklore. Songs can be set to either composers' original tunes or existing music. The latter can consist of either parody or serious rewriting. The videos made by some fans by combining clips from movies or TV shows would also count as folklore, although they don't come into Jorgensen's book. So material originally produced by official, institutional, and/or commercial sources can become appropriated by folk culture, subject to variation and traditional transmission.

When does a commercial product created by a known artist become folkloric? How old does it have to be? Does it have to be in the public domain? Woody Guthrie's song "This Land Is Your Land" is probably thought of by many Americans as a folk song. Guthrie himself encouraged others to add verses. Nineteenth-century composer Stephen Foster's "I Dream of Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" was parodied by Bugs Bunny, a commercial song being "filked" by a commercial animated character. Similarly, the tune of the Civil War song "Aura Lea" was used by Elvis Presley for "Love Me Tender." There's a filk song about the Apollo 13 near-disaster sung to the tune of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." Despite Jorgensen's lucid explanations, I'm still a little fuzzy on the boundaries of "folk" transmission and variation. To cite a shift in the other direction, Jean Lorrah wrote a collection of Star Trek fanfic stories called the "Night of the Twin Moons" series—folkloric variation on a commercial popular culture product. However, her professional Star Trek novels THE VULCAN ACADEMY MURDERS and THE IDIC EPIDEMIC clearly belong to the same fictional universe as her fanfic, although with "the serial numbers filed off," as the saying goes. And the origin of the commercial bestseller FIFTY SHADES OF GREY as thinly veiled TWILIGHT fanfic is well known.

The richly diverse nuances of folk creations in the overall category of songs and stories can be endlessly fascinating.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Earth Month, IP Week, Earth Day....

April is Earth Month. Earth Day is April 22nd.

Intellectual Property week is April 25th - 29th (a very short week), and IP Day is April 26th.

 

The CopyrightAlliance is also celebrating Arab American Heritage Month by sharing profiles of Arab American creators on the copyrightalliance's social media sites every Friday in April.

 

The WIPO theme for IP Day this year is  Intellectual Property and Youth, Innovating for a Better Future.

https://www.wipo.int/ip-outreach/en/ipday/

 

The official hashtag for 2022 is #WorldIPDay.

https://www.wipo.int/ip-outreach/en/ipday/2022/toolkit/social-media-guidelines.html

 

Although the theme is focused on young persons (defined as under 35 years of age), IP day is a great name-exposure opportunity for any writer or blog author who takes the time to register their blog or website in advance, and to write an on-topic blog for the day, and to link it to the WIPO and copyrightalliance bloglinks.

 

There will also be multiple events and presentations, and blog-hopping, and if you are set up with a photo and textlink sig file, and are willing to leave encouraging and selfless comments on other persons' pages, that is more excellent exposure. 

Some sites use spam filters, such as Akismet, which is why it is important to know how to avoid being mistaken for spam!  Not every site allows links within comments. Know the policy.

If you have not joined copyrightalliance.org, membership is free and very good value.

 

WIPO offers tools.

https://www.wipo.int/ip-outreach/en/ipday/2022/toolkit/index.html

 

The secret is to promote the cause (intellectual property awareness + interests of young creators), and probably keep a count-down calendar so that you are registered and ready to participate in as many events as possible, in the best possible taste (to coin a phrase), and with maximum generous relevance.

 

The Copyright Alliance will be updating their website with blog topics in the coming days.

https://copyrightalliance.org/trending-topics/celebrating-world-ip-day/

 

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation is hosting two events: Innovating For A Better Future  and The Way Forward for Intellectual Property Internationally.  

 

You can expect that Music Tech Policy, and TheTrichordist will probably support the international day of blogging about IP. It is likely that some of the legal blogs such as FileWrapper, The IP Law Blog, and The Global IP and Technology Law blog may also celebrate IP Day.

 

As for Earth Day, I plan to plant a herb garden!

 

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ 

http://www.spacesnark.com/  

http://www.rowenacherry.com

 

 

 

 

Karen S. Wiesner: Advice for New Authors

 Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner

Advice for New Authors

From CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships}

First, I don’t believe there are absolutes in writing. There are so many writing trends, no-no’s, and must-do’s. I admit I find most of them silly. The only rules are the ones you enforce yourself. Don’t let anyone else tell you differently. Here are seven pieces of advice for becoming a professional author:

1) Do your homework in learning to successfully navigate the extremely treacherous waters of trying to book writing and publishing. Don’t rely on anyone else to give you all the answers. Figuring out how all this works is your job and it’s vital that you learn all you can because you’re at the helm of your own career. Do you really want someone else who may or may not be trustworthy floating your boat? 

2) Learn how to use a critique. Get used to having your work picked apart ruthlessly by your peers now because I guarantee that even an editor who loves your work can rip it to shreds. And let's not even get into readers who live to destroy not only one book by an author by conceivably a whole career with their trolling. Develop a thick, tough skin before you get published, so you can handle it professionally when the time comes. But also keep in mind that an edit who’s rewriting your story the way he or she wants it isn’t helping you at all.

3) Even if--or more aptly, especially if--you're choosing the self-publishing route, good editors will make your books better, even if it feels like they’re destroying them in the process. Don’t assume a heavy edit makes you a bad author (and vice versa—a light edit doesn’t necessarily make you a good one either). One way or another, editing is part of the process.

 4) Don’t try to write what’s popular, what’s expected or what’s selling. How many more teenage vampire books do we need? Write what moves and inspires you, regardless of trends. In the same vein, don’t limit yourself to writing what you know. Honestly, I know nothing about what it's like to be a werewolf—but I love writing about them! Write the book of your heart. Be true to your story first. 

5) Develop self-discipline now, before your book is published. When you’re first starting out, it might work to write by the seat of your pants. A professional author knows the more efficient you are in the process of writing each book, the more momentum you build in your career because you can offer more high-quality books in less time. While not everyone can use a full-blown outline, some kind of a blueprint, however loose, is crucial. You can’t be a productive writer if you’re constantly going on blind treasure hunts, hoping that a story will eventually immerse from hundreds or thousands of pages of the written word (and may not). Be disciplined. Use a guideline instead of writing blindly and set goals for your writing so you're always moving forward with continuous momentum.

6) Be responsible for yourself as an author in as many aspects of your career as you can. I realized early on in my career that there was little a publisher could do for me that I couldn’t do just as well for myself. I try to make sure every book I turn in to an editor is of the highest quality (and ensure that my editors hardly have to do anything at all for me) so in that way I’m my own editor as well the author of the material. I can’t blame anyone else if I’m not disciplined or subpar. I’m responsible for my own success (or failure) in that way. Authors are also capable of designing quality covers with software and utilizing cover designer services available all over the internet.

7) There's a growing trend, especially with traditional publishers, for the author to "prove their worth" and become a social media star, if they aren't already, by doing all the promotion for every book they sell--in fact, often there's a requirement for the author to detail their aggressive marketing plans before a contract will even be offered. All of this means that most publisher don't do a whit of promotion for their authors (though, in my case, I got lucky with a publisher who's all over the social media blitz). Maybe it's true that authors can market their own books better than anyone else, but publishers need to do their part as well. In the treacherous waters the book industry has become these days, publishers have almost exclusively placed the weight of promotion solely on the author's shoulders in order to stay afloat in the shrinking marketplace. Many contracts signed these days force authors to promote in ways that may not be financially feasible for them (in that case, they probably had to forgo a contract altogether). Publishers have traditionally been the ones to make sure a book is available in all the formats readers use and to list the books at distributor websites. But publishers these days no longer want to be the ones to make the books move in those channels--and the publishers are the ones who can provide the biggest push and momentum. Without them, that means authors swim upstream right from the get-go. Because of this, it's not at all surprising that so many writers choose to self-publish or "indie publish" rather than deal with the drama and bad contracts that give them little or nothing in return for a piece of their soul and the absolute limits of their blood, sweat, and tears.

Make the rules for your own career as much as possible, but remember your first priority is to provide the best quality book you can that readers will not only want to pay to read but will feel is worth every penny they spent after they read it.

Karen S. Wiesner is the author of CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships}

Volume 6 of the 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection

http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html

Happy writing!

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

SF Versus Fantasy

At this year's ICFA (which I wrote about last week), one of the free goodies distributed at meals was a copy of the March/April 2020 ASIMOV'S magazine. It happened to include a provocative article by David D. Levine called "Thoughts on a Definition of Science Fiction." The author takes an approach to distinguishing science fiction from fantasy that never occurred to me before.

Of course, this perennial and never-settled question has many proposed answers. And many works cross genre boundaries; SF is a "fuzzy set." Anne McCaffrey's Pern and Marion Zimmer Bradley's pre-rediscovery Darkover, although science fiction, have a fantasy "feel." S. M. Stirling's Emberverse series, beginning with DIES THE FIRE, clearly near-future or alternate-history SF, also includes something like magic. Diane Duane's Young Wizards series focuses on the protagonists' learning and using magic—which they prefer to label "wizardry" to avoid the implication that it can do anything, unbounded by rules—yet they visit distant planets and make friends with extraterrestrials. Cases like these are part of why the term "speculative fiction" is so useful.

Levine suggests that the distinction between fantasy and science fiction rests on a fundamental difference between worldviews. Science fiction arises from an Enlightenment worldview and fantasy from a pre-Enlightenment worldview. In SF, "the universe is logical, predictable, and understandable, governed by rules that are impersonal and have no moral dimension." Fantasy, on the other hand, inhabits a universe that "has a moral compass, and is governed by rules that, though they may be understandable, are not necessarily always consistent, logical, or predictable in their application." For example, fantasy contains swords that can be drawn only by the "pure in heart" (a moral dimension). As an extension of this definition, Levine focuses on the central importance of "the means by which characters affect the world," whether by technology or by magic. Using this principle, he maintains that the later Star Wars films, after the original movie, slip further and further into fantasy territory because of the way the Force becomes more powerful and less scientifically plausible (e.g., action at a distance).

While I admire his theory, it doesn't align completely with my own concept of the SF-fantasy divide. I've always seen the distinction as—perhaps too simplistically—primarily a matter of authorial intent as it appears on the surface of the text. If the text claims a scientific rationale for its phenomena, it's science fiction. If not, it's fantasy. Edgar Rice Burroughs's interplanetary adventures count as science fiction, even if most of the science is obsolete. Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy mysteries, set in an alternate-history England in a world where magic plays a commonplace role in society, are fantasy even though the rules of magic are systematic and predictable. What about works such as Madeleine L'Engle's A WRINKLE IN TIME and its sequels and spinoffs, invoking scientific principles, featuring visits to other worlds, and marketed as SF, but containing some elements of apparent magic as well as a religious worldview? Or C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, wherein the superhuman intelligences ruling the other planets are also identified as angels? The Wild Sorceress trilogy, co-written by my husband and me, starts as apparent fantasy, to be revealed as SF at the end of the third book. Well, that's where the flexible terms "science fantasy" and "speculative fiction" come in handy.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Tail End of Women

That is, "Tail End of Women's History Month", which is much too long a title.

https://womenshistorymonth.gov/

With only five days remaining of  March, there are still things to do and see. The United States Patent and Trademark office has quite a calendar of events, most of which are free to attend virtually. 

On March 30th, the USPTO's Women's Entrepreneurship Symposium event shares the secrets of success of a few remarkable women who turned their passions and ideas into profitable ventures. It's free.

https://www.uspto.gov/about-us/events/womens-entrepreneurship-symposium-part-three-inspiration-commercialization

Men seem to get one day: https://internationalmensday.com/ and the entire month of June to think about their health: https://nationaltoday.com/national-mens-health-month/ but their history is not celebrated.

Not just for women: Members of SFWA may be able to purchase health insurance outside the regular enrolment period with LIG Solutions. Authors Guild members can also use LIG.

https://www.ligmembers.com/sfwa/

And now for something legal. Crystal Broughan of the Marks Gray Intellectual Property Blog, discusses a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by the Heavy Young Heathens (musicians) against two figure skaters for playing the Heavy Young Heathens' recording of  "The House of the Rising Sun" during a performance at the winter Olympics.

https://www.marksgray.com/copyright-infringement-at-the-winter-olympics-house-of-the-rising-sun/

Lastly, just -metaphorically- to tie the bow on the tail, do you know what a "baculum" is? 

https://religionnews.com/2015/07/28/was-eve-made-from-adams-rib-or-his-baculum/

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™ 

http://www.spacesnark.com/   

http://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday

Karen S. Wiesner: Advance Your Career: Writing in Stages, Part 4

 Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner

Advance Your Career:

Writing in Stages, Part 4 

Based on CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships} 

This is the final of four articles with techniques to advance your writing career. 

In the previous part of this article, we talked about the steps 4-7 in writing in stages. Let's continue. 

Stage 8: Setting aside 

This latter setting aside, though, is slightly different in that this is usually a good stage to get critique partners and beta readers involved. Everyone knows writers can get too close to their own work. It’s an occupational hazard. While you're hopefully feeling you’ve got a story beyond compare, it may need a little more work and you simply can’t see it (or vice versa--you think it's manure, but it's actually really good, and you're too close to be able to see that). That’s why it’s so important to turn your beloved opus over to a trusted spouse, friend, or, preferably, a critique partner (or three) for a critical read. The opinion of others is very important. You’re probably not ready to send that book out to a publisher or agent until you’ve had enough reader reactions to judge the strength of your accomplishment.

During this project downtime, you might be sick of your book and/or stinging from some of the glaring holes others saw that you somehow managed to miss. I highly recommend that you give yourself this shelf-time time to digest the comments made about your beloved baby. When you return for the final editing and polishing, perhaps for the last time before you submit it, you might even agree with your friend on several points…but you may also disagree. Ultimately, what you decide is best for your book is up to you. You'll hopefully feel confident enough to evaluate, unbiased, what needs to be done to shine it up.

In Steps 4 and 6 mentioned in Part 2 of this article is pertinent here as well.

Stage 9: Editing and polishing 

What most writers call revising is actually just editing and polishing. Writers get excited about their stories at nearly every stage, since they have a picture in their mind’s eye of what will emerge. The "editing" portion of this task is called copyediting in publishing circles and entails the correction and enhancement of grammar, vocabulary, and punctuation details. Editing and polishing are a lot like turning a rough gemstone into a finished one. You’re cutting the bad, replacing it with the good, and polishing up what remains until it shines. A writer unquestionably does also need to remove clutter to make a story understandable, to prevent a reader from tripping over clumsy prose, and to infuse a story with vivid, interesting narration that speaks succinctly to the reader, concurrently bringing the whole story to life. Editing and polishing add a very definite extra layer to your story. Without it, your story probably won’t read smoothly, nor will it shine. The process of editing and polishing can also involve any or all of the following: 

·         Ensuring a completeness of three-dimensionality in character, plot, and relationship

·         Rearranging sentences or paragraphs

·         Showing (more frequently) and telling (at times), where these are most needed

·         Tightening sentences and individual words (such as changing passive to active and dull to impacting; cleaning up repetitiveness)

·         Smoothing out roughness and making your writing more natural or interesting

·         Punching up tension and suspense

·         Ensuring variation in sentence construction and length

·         Diversifying and enriching words 

Editing and polishing should be almost as simple as reading through the manuscript and making minor adjustments that allow the words to flow like music to the ear. A solid outline followed by a rich first draft virtually ensures that. The difference between revising and editing and polishing is generally in the amount of work you'll do for each. 

Stage 10: Setting aside (optional) 

While I’ll get into the in-depth reasons for continuing past Stage 9 in Stage 11, the basic reason for this shelf time for the project is obvious. You just finished editing and polishing. You’d have to be insane to want to read the book again right after you finished going over it from start to finish. You’ll have gained no distance from it if you jump directly into Stage 11 at this point. So give yourself another few weeks or more, if your deadlines allow, before moving on to Stage 11. See Stages 4, 6, and 8 for more details.

One other thing I alluded to earlier is that writers don’t want to get burned out when it comes to any specific project. When writers say they’re burned out, they mean they’ve been working too much and not taking the time off to refresh themselves and keep their creative energy flowing. (This is completely different from writer’s block, which can stem from situations like a story not ready to be worked on, not enough brainstorming or inspiration, or sheer laziness usually attributed to a fickle muse.) This is especially true if you're working on one project, doing all these stages back-to-back, without taking a break from the project or from work in general. You bring back your own love for a project each time you set it aside and then come back to it fresh. Don't underestimate the importance of doing that. You and your stories will suffer for it eventually if you skip over the setting-aside stages.

There's another reason for avoiding burnout whenever you can. The soil in your brain is like the soil farmers sow crops in. It needs rest and rotation (writing in stages, for the author) in order to become fertile and nutrient rich again. When you work up your yearly goals, you're not only deciding what you’re going to be working on during that year, but you're also planning your breaks from writing. If taking weekends off doesn’t refresh you, take a week, weeks, or even a month off during the year. Read, watch movies, relax, and reenergize your creativity. (This doesn't mean you can't be brainstorming or researching for upcoming projects during this time.) By the time your vacation is up, you’ll be raring to go on your next writing project. Take your scheduled vacations when you’ve planned them, unless something wonderful happens (an editor contracts a series from you, you're asked to write a screenplay of your book…fill in the blank for your own idea of wonderful) in your career or life, and you can’t let the opportunity pass you by. As soon as that thing is finished, take the vacation you planned. Reward yourself by allowing your creative soil to become fertile again. 

Stage 11: The final read-through (optional)

Following Stage 9, some authors may be ready to get the book out where readers can buy and fall in love with it. A couple situations prompted me to add two steps to my original nine-stage process, though, that I think even savvy, confident authors might want to evaluate before letting the book be released. First, we live in a digital world. Everything is started, managed, and completed on the computer. But the very real and inescapable fact is that human eyes are fallible. They aren't capable of seeing everything on a computer (or something similar to this) screen and frequently what you see on the screen isn't necessary what's in the hard copy--spacing, formatting, and other issues may crop up from one medium to the other. We need the hardcopy to truly catch everything that demands our attention (like typos and "Track Changes" errors) in the final draft of a manuscript. Our eyes may only see some of these things on the printed version of the book. This is essential, and I guarantee if you're not getting this hardcopy (from your own printer of the final proof after edits, directly from your publisher, or from another means like the one I'll describe in a second), you're missing a (possibly) tremendous number of issues that readers are going to catch. Do yourself a favor: Get a hardcopy to do your final read-through from.

Second, the current state of the industry--exploding with indie publishers and authors--requires another stage in which to find the errors that seem to creep into our stories like lice. The fact is, there are very few legitimately professional editors and/or copyeditors working at publishing houses these days--especially at smaller publishers--and authors who are self-publishing their own works may even skip the professional-editor-input altogether. For that reason, it’s even more crucial to have a stage where the writer sees his book in this final form (and this is true even if the book is only released as an ebook without a paper companion), where he can catch (probably not all but most) typos. We'll talk more about the current and future state of the industry in the conclusion chapter.

As soon as I'm done with the editing and polishing, and the story is as clean as I think it can get "digitally", I'll put the book into a value-priced trade paperback format (what I call my print test paperback) and order a copy. When I'm ready for this final read-through, I like to put myself in the position of being the first reader for this book. As much as possible, I try to ignore the fact that I have a very personal affiliation with the book and I simply read it--in both a critical and savoring mind frame This isn’t easy, but I consider this my very last chance to make changes before my editor sees it; I want her to find the finished product almost perfect. I take my time reading, as well, sometimes lingering for weeks if the deadline I have to submit it to my editor is way out there, to evaluate how the story goes over in this unhurried mode.

When I get to this stage in the process, I usually find very few changes are required. The story is brimming with life, and there’s almost nothing left to stumble over or smooth out. Most important, though, in nearly every case I come out loving the story more than I ever have before. It exceeds the expectations I had for it when it was little more than a spark that incited me to write. Truthfully, I don't consider that conceit. I'd worry if I didn't have that reaction. If you don't love your own work, don't become immersed in the worlds, characters, conflicts, and relationships contained in your stories, how can you expect readers to?

Each of these stages is a layer of your story--nine to eleven strong layers that, for career authors, should be the first step in ensuring multidimensional writing that has strong CPR development. Each time you add something new during these stages, you're creating another vital layer that makes the whole story stronger, richer, with almost guaranteed strong, three-dimensional CPR elements.

All of my projects are done in these eleven stages. I love that I’m never doing the same thing in terms of outlining, writing, revising, or editing and polishing a project. I move from outlining one book, to revising a different one, to writing something else altogether, layering and building and developing each project into something wonderfully three-dimensional.

I also love that I rarely have to start from scratch on any project. While I do set the book aside multiple times, the rest of the steps are done once. I can't remember the last time I had to outline, write a draft, revise, and edit and polish more than once for each project. I’m always fresh, always enthusiastic, always eager to complete a book a little more at each stage, knowing my work will be solid, lifelike, and ready to send to editors when I'm at last ready to let go.

One other thing I want to point out is that I generally spend each year (though the year isn't necessarily January through December) working on five novels--in some years I also write at least five novellas--all in various stages in this process. To give you a point of reference, visit my WIP page at https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/works-in-progress.html, which includes not only my accomplishments every year but also several past years' and the current year's works-in-progress. You'll see, broken down month by month, how I juggled each project through the various stages, to complete everything.  Note that my vacations aren't included on the monthly breakdown but, rest assured, I am taking long and short ones in between projects to prevent me from becoming overwhelmed and burned out on writing. I recommend studying my WIP page to see how I did this with individual projects. You can see the juggling act there of all my books over the course of a year or more, allowing every single project all the stages needed to get solid, three-dimensional stories with all the proper layering for CPR development every single time.

There's a quote by Orison Marden that says, "The waste of life occasioned by trying to do too many things at once is appalling." Obviously there's a lot I accomplish during the course of a year and all of that includes breaks and long vacations. People tend to assume I must work 24 hours a day based on my high level of production, but--if you've looked at my WIP page and read through all this--you know differently now, don't you? Writing in stages is more of a science than a phenomenon once you see how it works. I don't believe in trying to do too much. I've found a way to do all I can without becoming harried, overworked, or overwhelmed. Individual authors need to find ways to get maximum output without turning their creative soil into ash because they're so burned out.

An author who uses full-proof methods to create layered stories with strong CPR development and utilizes an outlines, allows for sufficient shelf time, and sets goals will never have to suffer from missed opportunities or deadlines let alone low-quality work. In fact, each book may get better than the last, and you may get far enough ahead that you can fit just-for-fun projects into your schedule or take longer breaks.

Finally, what I do and what you ultimately do will be completely different, and you want to find what works best for you. The point is to make progress. If you want to write quality stories for the long haul that are undeniably memorable to readers, there is no better way to get started.

Karen S. Wiesner is the author of CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships}

Volume 6 of the 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection 

http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html 

Happy writing!

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

2022 International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

This year's ICFA, our first live conference since 2019, had lower attendance than usual (down from the 500s to around 300), but the difference didn't appear obvious at a glance in most of the gatherings. The opening panel on Wednesday afternoon did look more sparsely attended than in previous years. On the other hand, there were, surprisingly, a lot of people attending the con for the first time. It was encouraging to see so many newcomers, especially considering the current situation.

The theme was "Fantastic Communities." The phrase could refer either to communities of creators, fans, and critics involved with the fantastic in all its media and genres or to the imaginary communities writers and filmmakers create in their works. Panels and papers enthusiastically embraced both approaches. The author guest of honor, Nisi Shawl (who uses "they" pronouns), delivered an engaging speech at the Thursday luncheon, "The Bird in the Bush: Semipermeable Selfhood," structured around the phases of their own life with focus on their various identities and the communities they identify with. Why is a bird in the hand worth more than two in the bush? Aren't two birds better than one, especially with a bush thrown in? Or does an object have value only if possessed and controlled? And how do we define the boundaries of the self? For instance, implanted artificial lenses become part of the subject's body. Are glasses a part of the self, too? Shawl entertained us by singing a risque folk song called "The Bird in the Bush." They concluded their talk by leading the audience in the song "What the World Needs Now Is Love, Sweet Love."

Scholar Guest of Honor Farah Mendlesohn, author of the groundbreaking RHETORICS OF FANTASY as well as many other important works of criticism including a book on the career and works of Robert Heinlein, spoke at the Friday luncheon about "Science Fiction Communities in the Rainbow Age." She surveyed the changes in the demographics of the speculative fiction field over recent decades in areas such as awards, contents of anthologies, etc., supplying lots of substantive data that I found fascinating. Diversity of representation in gender and ethnicity has evolved, of course, but it's still nowhere near equitable.

I participated in two events, a panel on vampire communities in fiction and a "Words and Worlds" session in which several writers read short excerpts from our works. There was lots of time for discussion in the latter. I read from my dark paranormal romance AGAINST THE DARK DEVOURER, which I think went well, and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the other panelists, two poets and a prose fiction author.

Afrofuturist fiction, BIPOC representation, and gender issues held a prominent place in this year's programming. I especially enjoyed a paper session on animation; shows discussed included one anime series, TERROR IN RESONANCE, with a focus on mental illness, and four Western cartoons, OWL HOUSE, STEVEN UNIVERSE, SHE-RA, and ADVENTURE TIME, analyzing nonbinary characters in those works. I attended several lively, informative discussion panels about the business of marketing fiction. At the Saturday banquet, the president of our vampire and revenant division, the Lord Ruthven Assembly, announced this year's awards: Fiction, THE NIGHT LIBRARY OF STERNENDACH: A VAMPIRE OPERA IN VERSE, by Jessica Levai. Nonfiction (tie), THE TRANSMEDIA VAMPIRE, by Simon Bacon, and THE VAMPIRE IN POPULAR CULTURE: LOVE AT FIRST BITE, by Violet Fenn. Other media, MIDNIGHT MASS (Netflix).

Food at the two lunches and the banquet was excellent, as usual, although the hotel (under new management) miscalculated and ran out of some items on Thursday. Meals in the hotel restaurant were good but astonishingly high-priced. Except that my return flight took off half an hour late, the plane trips went pretty smoothly. When I got home, daffodils had suddenly started blooming.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Here Be ... Trolls: No Folderol

As with many terms of opprobium, "troll" is rather over-used. Some so-called trolls are mere nusiances who lurk on comment sections, and repeatedly make the same arguments or pitches. Others belong in paranormal romances (or other fantasy tales, or nursery rhymes). Still others set very elaborate and expensive traps for internet users.

The latter are not at all funny No folerdol at all.

"Here Be... Trolls" is a wordplay on "Here Be Dragons", as written in warning on medieval nautical maps.

Legal blogger Darin M. Klemchuk of the law firm Klemchuk writes an amusing "How To" guide for those would-be trolls who plan to set up internet users to be the defendants in copyright infringement proceedings.  Early in the article, he states that his article is a parody.

Parody, of course, is an allowed exception to copyright infringement in most parts of the English-speaking world. 

Original link:

https://www.klemchuk.com/ideate/copyright-troll-step-by-step-guide

Lexology link:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=ecf67672-4a78-49c9-85dd-846a427145db

Darin M. Klemchuk appears to suggest how trolls make cynical use (my inference) of search engines, SEO tools, search engine optimizing services, indexing and more. 

Knowing how these trap-settingg trolls think and operate is very important for authors who plan to decorate their websites or their works with images that they found on the internet but did not license from the copyright owner.

There is no such thing as a free lunch on the internet.  Nothing is really free, but some things are truly less free than others... like the barnyard residents in George Orwell's "Animal Farm".

On the other hand, Fan Fiction has been accorded the legal status of "pastiche", which is a French way of saying that is could be some kind of transformative use or fair use, depending on the amount of originality in the unauthorized spin-off work.

Legal blogger Anna Kellner for the law firm SKW Schwarz Rechtsänwalte explains the niceties of fan fiction.

 

Original link:

https://www.skwschwarz.de/en/details/fan-fiction-im-buecherregal-pastiche-machts-moeglich
Although the title link in in German, the article is in excellent English.

Lexology Link:

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=f07e8f61-aabe-4634-ac45-2cfea99d020a

Quoting very small excerpts is fair use, another copyright exception, especially when for reportage or didactic purposes, so I quote Anna Kellner.

"As part of the copyright reform, Section 51a UrhG was introduced as a new legal regulation that now expressly declares so-called pastiches (French for "imitations") to be permissible. Fan fiction is also included under the term pastiche. Thus, it is generally permissible to use copyright-protected works of third parties as the basis for one's own creation."

By the way, for any author wishing to type umlauts, this site is a great resource.

https://howtotypeanything.com/umlaut-letters/


Another nice resource for authors who might be struggling with attractive villains:
https://authorspublish.com/how-to-write-a-bad-guy-readers-will-root-for/

Word association brings me back to copyright pirates. Ever since the DMCA, artists and creators have in theory had the power to protect their copyrights through the process of "Take Down Notices". It has never been satisfactory. Some sites will not accept a Notice unless the copyright owner joins their "club". Other sites give one quite the run around., other sites will take down one offending link, but allow the pirate to "re-up" the same copyrighted work using a new link.  If finding piracy and sending takedown notices was bad enough whack-a-mole, now the mole is a hydra with the arrival of NFTs. (That is, non fungible tokens.)

NFT piracy may force change, as legal bloggers P. Cramer and D. Munkittrick discuss on the Blockchain Law blog owned by Proskauer Rose LLP.

Original link:
https://www.blockchainandthelaw.com/2022/03/will-nft-piracy-compel-changes-to-the-digital-millennium-copyright-act/#page=1

Lexology link:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=4f3cc996-c4c7-4196-8580-f665d2a0f1b1

To quote in brief:

"Pirates can mint knockoff NFTs with nothing more than a digital file and some cryptocurrency, then sell those knockoffs to unsuspecting collectors...."

And,

"Amidst the resulting piracy boom, it falls to creators to protect both their fans and their IP by scanning platforms for infringing NFT sale listings and issue takedown requests. But even when they succeed in getting a sale listing removed, the knockoff NFT itself remains immutably on its blockchain and the infringing content usually remains elsewhere on the web."

If the copyright cavalry might be coming, it might pay creators to wait before dipping toes into the NFT waters.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™

http://www.spacesnark.com/  

http://www.rowenacherry.com

EPIC Award winner, Friend of ePublishing for Crazy Tuesday