1 Mundane Prose. We don’t need to hear the mundane parts of a character’s day, or hear his mundane speech.

Example: John ate breakfast. He wiped his mouth, then slurped down some coffee. He put on his fedora, then slipped on his galoshes. He opened the front door, shut it, then opened the car door, heading to work.

John ate a quick breakfast, then headed to work.

2 MRU problems. Motivation Reaction Units (See Techniques of the Selling Writer, by Dwight V. Swain for a full explanation.) Please read this article: http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/scene.php.

3 Lack of emotional depth. In novel writing, we need to see the depth of a character’s inner landscape, which includes his/her emotional state. A reader needs to relate to the character. Some ways to create emotional depth: Shove the reader into the character’s head in the midst of a highly emotional/painful/surprising scene; show the character’s reaction to a dilemma; or show the character physically react to some disheartening news.

4 Word Choice. Sometimes a word isn’t the right one. If I write WC in the margin, it means you need to rethink the word you chose.

5 Wrong Word. Other times, you simply use the incorrect word. Consider:

Affect (a verb meaning “to influence”)

Effect (a noun meaning “result”—used as a verb when you mean “bring about” or “accomplish”)

Example: Lisle wanted to effect a change on her college campus so she smiled at every person she passed.

Correct: The effect of her perfume affected me for hours in the form of a splitting headache.

6 Nouns in Apposition. If the person you reference is one of a kind, you separate with commas. (Apposition means placed beside. The noun in apposition, called an appositive, identifies or explains the noun or pronoun that precedes it.)

Examples:

Incorrect:

My wife Esther is the best cook on the planet. (Unless you live in biblical times or you’re a fugitive from Federal Agents, you have only one wife.)

Solved: My wife, Esther, is the best cook on the planet.

Correct: My friend Rebecca sent me a rather lengthy e-mail. (If Rebecca is one of many friends, this is correct. If she is the only friend, you need commas before /after her name.)

7 Avoid –ing. Overuse weighs down prose. When you finish a piece, search for “ing” and see how you’ve used—or misused—it.

Example:

Awkward and wordy: Families were purchasing . . .

Correct: Families purchased . . .

Book Recommendations:

• Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynn Truss
• Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight Swain
• The Complete Guide to Writing and Selling the Christian Novel by Penelope Stokes (the chapter on POV is worth it—the best way I’ve seen it presented.)
• The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman
• Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Brown and Dave King
• Scene and Structure by Jack M. Bickam
• The Novelist’s Essential Guide to Crafting Scenes by Raymond Obstfeld
• On Writing by Stephen King

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• The #1 mystery for all authors-to-be

I had one author come to me with a cardboard box. Everything he found on his subject was in that box, and he’d been collecting pieces of information for years. But you know what, I was able to help him make a book out of what was inside that cardboard box!

Another author recorded herself in an interview setting, another had recorded his sermons, another had actually typed it out on a computer, and another handed me a 12” stack of notes. In each case, we had a book in a few short months.

Have you figured out the #1 mystery?

The answer to the “How do I actually write my book?” dilemma is easier than it may seem. The secret to unraveling the #1 mystery of book creation … is to force yourself to do whatever works for you.

This two-part formula of Force + Whatever Works For You works flawlessly, but you have to make it happen yourself.

Example #1: Let’s say Betty is one of those people who loves to type and can think while she pecks at the keyboard. Obviously, the answer for her is to sit down and write her book directly into her computer. However, her natural tendency is to be busy with other things, to be tired or distracted, or to find something else more exciting to do. Betty needs to apply FORCE to her ability and she’ll be done in no time.

Example #2: John, on the other hand, hates to write, can’t spell, and has a constant case of writer’s block. He’s stuck … but he loves to talk. The answer for him is to get a recorder, or a friend who will listen and record him, and to talk it out. Make an outline of points to cover, and then FORCE himself to talk through each point. From there, his book is ready to be transcribed, edited, and he’ll have his book.

Example #3: Mike, a pastor I worked with recently, was too busy to write a book, but he had recorded a 7-CD sermon series. I took those CDs, transcribed them, edited his text, and fed him his book, chapter by chapter. Within weeks, he was seeing his book take shape, and in a couple of months, his book was done.

Whatever you like to do, whatever works for you, THAT is the answer. Do NOT for a second try to force yourself to do what you do not want to do. You’ll never finish your book that way. Stop!

Instead, choose the approach you like, apply Force through your own discipline or accountability with a friend, and your book will appear in front of you!

And in so doing you will have solved the #1 mystery of book creation.

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MINNEAPOLIS, Jan. 27 /Christian Newswire/ – A new book for moms unabashedly tackles the taboo topics of parenting and aims to unite women and change the way mothers look at themselves and each other.

MotherBear: The Raging Mom Within! addresses issues like rebellious kids, feeling judged, facing obsessive insecurities, and the difficult task of entrusting God with one’s children.

Author Heidi Daehlin, a pastor and artistic director of a production company, traveled domestically and abroad and saw the Church was missing environments that nurtured authenticity among mothers or gave a place to talk about their insecurities without being judged. She found competition among women in the Church and often petty and shallow relationships.

“When insecurity within us is not healed in our motherhood, we lose that God-given power and authority He reserves for mothers…we are like the animal mother bear, weary with watching our backs and ‘cubs’ from daily threats and attacks. We are always on the defense.”
– Heidi Daehlin, MotherBear: The Raging Mom Within!

Daehlin says God showed her a vision for women of unity and support, of enacting change, nurture, influence, and might over their surroundings. Women unite when they are healed in their souls so their identity and approval is found in God alone, she says, because when that is true, no threat remains.

“Women shouldn’t be jealous, competitive gossipers, but an army of unified sisters who have each others backs and are raising up history makers,” Daehlin says. “We need each other. We women are sometimes the only form of sister or mother that other women will ever know on this earth.”

She founded Mother Bear Ministries and wrote MotherBear to help build up women into a unified army, supporting each other in order to be “the hand that rocks the cradle and rules the world for Christ,” she says. She is also producing The Insecure MotherBear Manual – a handbook for the insecure issues of motherhood, including the problem of pornography addiction among husbands.

About the Author:
Heidi Daehlin is co-pastor of The Edge Church of God, Lakeville Minn.; artistic director of Transformation Productions, and founder of Mother Bear Ministries. She is married with three cubs of her own, Alissa, 18; Josiah, 8; and Faith, 6. See her promo video online.

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Chip MacGregor weighs in on the issue in his latest blog post entitled Let’s Talk Memoir:

There’s a difference between “memoir” and “autobiography.”

An autobiography is a straight retelling of one’s life — what happened, what were the events/decisions, what did those result in.

A memoir is a more personal narrative of the significant change points in one’s life. It doesn’t have to be linear, whereas an autobiography is almost always linear. And the focus can be more on the effects in your personal life — what you were feeling, what you learned, how you changed. The emphasis is almost always on a catharsis of some kind. So while the goal of autobiography is to get the facts straight, the goal of memoir is something more akin to “reveal myself and my story, in order to reveal principles that will help others live more effectively.” (This isn’t a dictionary definition; it’s a MacGregor Definition.)

Read the rest of the post for more tips on writing a great memoir.

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Read Do Authors Really Need to Promote Their Own Books? and let us know what you’re doing to promote your book in the comments below.

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1 Starting the story too late. When I wrote my first novel, it took me 90 pages to get to the inciting moment. I believed I needed to tell all the backstory first. Not true. When I rewrote the beginning, I cut the first 90 pages, rewrote the beginning to have the inciting moment first. Then, I shared both beginnings with a critique group and asked which one had more emotional impact. Everyone said the second one. Start your story when it starts.

2 Lack of passion. If you’re not wild about your subject, it shows. Write from your passion and your words will have punch.

3 Overuse of had. When recounting something in the past, use “had” once, then keep the rest in straight past tense. Otherwise, you’ll clutter up your prose, make it gunky.

4 Too many modifiers. Use a better noun instead of a weak one that needs an adjective. Use a stronger verb instead of one that leans on an adverb for help.

5 Misplaced modifier: An adjectival (modifies a noun) or adverbial (modifies a verb) placed in an awkward spot—usually far from the word or phrase it modifies.

Misplaced: I learned how to tie-dye t-shirts on the radio.

Correct: I heard on the radio how to tie-dye t-shirts.

6 Punctuation and Formatting Errors:

• Punctuation within quotes. This is a proper ellipses: . . . (dot space, dot space, dot space)
• Use an em dash in a sentence: Bob ran his business to the ground—right after he alienated his wife and children.

To create the elusive, continuous-line, em dash: Type as usual, but when you want to make the em dash, type two hyphens in a row and simply continue typing the next word. As soon as you hit the “space” key after you complete that next word, the computer automatically turns the two hyphens into the correctly formatted “em dash.” (The funny thing is, the computer can’t NOT do this action automatically.)

Incorrect (but the “old” method on a manual typewriter): I left my favorite baking dish–a wedding present from Aunt Jackie–at the church potluck dinner yesterday evening.

Incorrect (a symbol, actually an “en” dash): I left my favorite baking dish – a wedding present from Aunt Jackie – at the church potluck dinner yesterday evening.

Correct: I left my favorite baking dish—a wedding present from Aunt Jackie—at the church potluck dinner yesterday evening.

• Don’t use ALL CAPS.
• When writing a title, italicize it, don’t underline.
• Don’t hit enter twice when you start a new paragraph.
• It’s no longer five spaces when you indent; use the Tab key instead.
• 11 or 12 point font, preferably Times New Roman.
• One inch margins all around.
• Use exclamation points sparingly. You don’t want to be the writer who cried Wolf!

7 Pronoun/Antecedent Problems. Be sure your pronouns agree with the words they’re replacing. A writer makes a mistake when her pronouns don’t match.

8 No Parallel Structure. When listing things in a series, be sure the structure of the first words in each series are parallel.

Example: The cat dodged the ball, ate a mouse, and is sleeping now.

Correct: The cat dodged the ball, ate a mouse, then fell asleep.

9 Dangling Participles. When you have a participle (-ing word) followed by a comma as a phrase (dependent clause), the word following the comma should be the one the phrase modifies. Example: Crashing outside, I jumped when I heard the thunder. Crashing outside, the thunder made me jump.

10 Purple Speaker Tags. When you attribute dialog to someone, refrain from using purple speaker tags. Said works best most of the time. Or creating the dialog with beats (sentences of action) works better, too.

Example: “Herb, you irritate me!” she exclaimed vehemently.

Solved: She stomped her tiny feet. “Herb, you irritate me!”

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The “rules” are deceptively simple: In the midst of narration in present tense, simple past tense works flawlessly for actions, thoughts, dialogue, etc., that precede the present moment. The corollary is also simple to a fault: Not past-perfect but present-perfect corresponds to preceding actions that relate to the present.

As a writer, it’s nearly impossible to resist the temptation to fall back into the past-perfect form for past action. Others have dealt with why this temptation is so strong and have diverse, interesting theories. Many editors will also trip you up, “fixing” your flashback in simple past by transforming it into past perfect.

Let’s look at a sample passage:

Once on the bus, she lets her mind meander back over what she had done today. Of course there was the scene at the hotel. But what had that accomplished? She had to admit her action was merely symbolic. … What would these people remember? That some rude person tried to ruin their evening? That they’d seen an “environmental extremist” face to face? Would they merely have an exciting anecdote to tell their friends? How could she make these people feel what she feels? [The verb “had to admit” is the red flag: with it the writer slips completely out of present-tense narration.]

And now the way it should read:

Once on the bus, she lets her mind meander back over what she’s gotten done today. Of course there was the scene at the hotel. But what did that accomplish? She has to admit her action was merely symbolic. … What will these people remember? That some rude person tried to ruin their evening? That they saw an “environmental extremist” face to face? Will they merely have an exciting anecdote to tell their friends? How can she make these people feel what she feels?

The only way I know, as a writer or an editor, is to put myself in that bus, after being escorted out of the hotel, and relate my character’s thoughts to the person in the next seat. The verbs, naturally in first person, will come out right: “What have I gotten done today? … What did that accomplish? I wonder whether the action was a success even symbolically. What will those people remember?” etc. If you then need to shift it back into third person, that’s easy; leaving the verb tenses alone is the key. You might think about drafting a note to editors about this and including it with submissions, as both a preventive measure and a teaching tool.

For a brief but helpful technical treatment of this issue, I recommend Gary Lutz & Diane Stevenson, The Writer’s Digest Grammar Desk Reference (Writer’s Digest Books, 2005), pages 109-111.

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