Fiction Scribe

Thirteen of My Favorite Fairy Tales and Fables

1. The Golden Goose
2. The Ant and the Cricket
3. The Mouse and the Lion
4. Beauty and the Beast
5. Thumbellina
6. The Cobbler and his three Daughters
7. Tortoise and the Hare
8. Snow White
9. Sleeping Beauty
10. The Little Mermaid
11. Little Red Riding Hood
12. The Three Pigs
13. The Wolves, the Dogs, and the Sheep

Hello everyone! Welcome to out weekly Bird by Bird discussion. I hope you’ve been enjoying the book so far. It’s definitely given me a bit of a boost in my writing.

Today we’ll be discussing Dialogue and Set Design.

I love the way Dialogue starts because it gets right to the heart of the matter - dialogue can be a wonderful, wonderful thing, and it can also kill or nearly kill your story. It can be such a pleasure and a really big pain.

Lamott also touches on something I’ve mentioned before in a podcast (but has since blissed off from the 451 main page and disappeared): read your work out loud.

I can see the surprise on my students’ faces, because the dialogue looked Okay on paper, yet now it sounds as if it were poorly translated from their native Hindi. The problem is that the writer simply put it down word by word; read out loud, it has no flow, no sense of the character’s rhythm that in real life would have run through the words. - Dialogue, Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott

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The Bird by Bird book discussion will be continuing tomorrow, don’t forget!

Remember to have your copy of Bird by Bird and have read “Dialogueâ€? and “Set Design”.

Thank you to all who participate. Feel free to jump in at any time on the discussions.

omwtfbbq!!1! ur up n my chtng?!?111?!

Ahem.

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Yes, doing that broke at least three of my pet peeves, but sometimes a person has to do what’s necessary.

Everyone is in a hurry, but that gives you no right to inflict your primarily vowel-less, over-punctuated, I USE CAPITALS BECAUSE THEY’RE LOUD, dirty spanking of the English language on me.

Honestly, I’m guilty of a little bit of it too, but I was never like the above, and I had a specific reason other than pure laziness to do it. I also succumb to the occasional “LOL”, but that’s pure mimicry of people I chat with a lot.

And those are still not good enough excuses.

If you insist on not kicking your habit of over-punctuation when writing posts/emails/etc, don’t care to be consistent in all you do, and basically don’t respect other people enough to take those extra milliseconds to type out full words, then guess what…

I am in no way going to read your work.

If you ask me to read your work with “plz rd my stffz” instead of “please read my work” then tough luck to you because I won’t. You obviously don’t respect me or your other readers outside your work, so I don’t care about what’s going on in your work.

It’s as simple as that.

Okay, so Fiction Scribe isn’t technically a book site, but books are by writer’s who write…

You get the picture.

Kimbooktu is looking to set up the biggest book blog list, and I’ve decided I’d like to help. If you are a book blogger, go here for all the information you need to get on the list.

There’s also a nifty little button you can get for your blog, too, so others can check out the site.

Fiction Scribe likes.

[Full rights remain with the original author. I am fully willing to take down this post at the request of the author.]

Found at they must need bears

Find something you would like to create with. This can be with plasticine, papier mache, words, pipe cleaners and sequins, colored pencils, construction paper, popsicle sticks, or other media.

Sit down and fidget with your materials. Build a little hut out of words and popsicle sticks. Call it “Abraham Lincoln’s Log Cabin, No Trademark Infringement Intended.”

Put it on your desk and be proud. Feel refreshed. Show it to your friends.

Six months later, notice it collecting dust. Think, huh, that could be better.

Take it apart. Put it together. Fix the roofline. Use some plasticine for stickum this time. Give it a styrofoam chimney.

Put it back on your desk.

Six months later, add some pipe clearer smoke to the chimney, with the cool wooly pipe cleaners. Call it “Abraham Lincoln’s Log Cabin V. 2.0, No Trademark Infringement Intended.”

Take the pipe cleaner smoke off again. Call it “Abraham Lincoln’s Boyfriend’s Log Cabin, No Trademark Infringement Intended.”

Make bricks for the chimney out of sequins. Pin them on with straight pins.

Color the popsicle sticks in with magic marker. Decide you don’t like it. Start over with fresh popsicle sticks. Call it “Not Your Daddy’s Lincoln Log Cabin, No Trademark Infringement Intended.”

Decide you don’t like that either.

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I admit it; I’m cheating a bit in my posts today.

It’s only because I feel really yucky.

Submit your comfort yourself rituals and headache treatments by clicking on the comments link below.

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I say … and you think … ?

1. Rita ::
2. Comedy ::
3. Polar ::
4. Idiots ::
5. Perception ::
6. Infected ::
7. Fake ::
8. Relating ::
9. Distraction ::
10. Gamble ::

Courtesy of Luna Nina

Welcome to this week’s writing challenge.

I’m left wondering (again) if these challenges are helping people, or if I should use my time more constructively. Or perhaps they could merely be improved upon by providing some other motivating factor like a prize of some sort.

At this moment, I have no clue about you, but the challenges have been helping me.

Last week the challenge was simple - set a minimum daily word count of at least 100 words. I set mine at 200 words and am happy to report I have over 3,000 typed. While I didn’t sit down every day to write in it (which was a big part of it), I only didn’t because I’ve been ill, so I don’t feel bad.

I hope the challenge went well for you. What was your minimum? Did you make it every day or do like I did and make up for days lost?

This week’s challenge is inspired in something I read in Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird (discussion).

It takes a while to get to know your characters, and that’s something I often forget. What you need to get to know about them is what’s important - what’s at stake. It’s what’s at stake that makes the plot and keeps it moving.

So to help you get to know your characters, your challenge is to write a paragraph to a page from each character’s perspective. Have them talk about who they are as if someone has asked them to talk a bit about their lives, etc.

Find out what’s at stake in each character’s life. What’s meaningful, what would they fight for, and what would they learn to let go?

This can be a useful exercise even if you feel like you already know your characters. You never know what they might reveal.

Enjoy.

Courtesy of Inky Girl

Hello and welcome to another author interview. Today I’ll be posting an interview with the author of South Beach Chicas Catch Their Man. Caridad Pineiro. I hope you enjoy this very down-to-earth and straightforward interview.

Hello and welcome to Fiction Scribe. Tell us a little about yourself.

I’m Caridad Pineiro and I’m a writer, mom, wife and attorney. My seventeenth novel, SOUTH BEACH CHICAS CATCH THEIR MAN is currently available from Simon & Schuster’s Downtown Press.

Your love of writing began in the fifth grade. Would you mind telling us a little about that?

Our teacher, Miss Kreschenko, walked into class and announced that we would have to write a 20 page book that would be placed in a class lending library. The book wouldn’t get a grade, but you had to do it for her to pass you for the year. I went home, grabbed a pen and paper and started writing. A few weeks before it was due, my mom typed my book. It was 120 pages long and was quite a hit in the class lending library.

How did you get into the realm of writing romances?

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Thirteen of My Favorite Authors

1. David Eddings
2. Anne McCaffrey
3. Sara Douglass
4. Tamora Pierce
5. Piers Anthony
6. Robin McKinley
7. Catherine Coulter
8. Orson Scott Card
9. David Brin
10. Ursula Le Guin
11. John Peel
12. Jeff Smith
13. Larry Niven

Hello everyone! I hope you week is going fabulously so far. Mine has been interesting, that’s for sure.

This week we’ll be discussing “Character” and “Plot”, two sections I’ve been eager to read, as I’m still in the beginnings of my current work in progress.

Lamott starts out the Character section with an image that doesn’t quite work for me, but it is plain enough to understand what she is saying. We all have inside spaces all our own that we get to do with as we wish. Your task as an author is to find out what the spaces inside your characters are like because if anyone should know your characters inside and out, it should be you.

I think one of the most important things Lamott points about character is this: “As soon as you start protecting your characters from the ramifications of their less-than-lofty behavior, your story will start to feel flat and useless, just like in real life.”

Exactly right. I’ve seen this a lot, especially in younger writers. You have crafted this character you absolutely love. Perhaps he or she is the person you’d like to be someday. It’s natural to want to protect yourself and those you love from everything bad…and that makes for bad stories.

If a character gets the best by giving the worst, your readers are going to stop caring, stop reading, and move on.

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Yes, my friends, the time has come. We shall bravely venture into the confusing world of “lay vs. lie”.

Does this whole thing piss anyone else off as much as it does me? I mean, come on! Have one present tense for everything and one past tense for everything. Easy. I’ll even promise not to rant about lie also meaning something false. See? I’m willing to compromise.

Yuck.

So what is the final word on this little lovely? Well, I’d better get it right or else I’ll have a slew of emails along with a long and drawn out feeling of embarrassment to deal with.

“Lay” is a verb meaning ‘to put or place something somewhere’. Thus, you need an object to make it work.

Example: I lay the pillow on the bed gently, while I laid the blanket on the bed roughly. I’m now considering laying a few more blankets on the bed.

“Lie” is a verb meaning to recline. No object needed.

Example: I lie on the bed often, thinking of my fate. My husband asks my why I’m lying there when I’ve lain there for over an hour. I lay there and stare at him.

Ah ha! Brain pain - ‘lay’ works for both of them! Yes, that’s true, but always think of it in terms of an object. Is there an object involved or not?

If you’re not sure whether to use “lay” or “lie,” try substituting a form of the verb “place.” If it makes sense, use a form of “lay.”

Example: I lay the pillow on the bed gently. I place the pillow on the bed gently.

See? Not so horrible after all.

But you might want to bookmark this post anyway.

The Bird by Bird book discussion will be continuing tomorrow, don’t forget!

Remember to have your copy of Bird by Bird and have read “Characterâ€? and “Plot”.

Thank you to all who participate. Feel free to jump in at any time on the discussions.