A beautiful fairy tale. Literally.

I Am Ocilla by Diane M. Graham

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Diane Graham brings new life to an old genre, the fairy tale, with her vision of five kingdoms separated and oppressed by a cruel overlord. Her storyworld contains all the old favorites: dragons, fairies, talking animals, evil curses, and true love.

The first-person, present-tense voice takes some getting used to, but it totally works. Since Ocilla is an amnesiac, all she has at the outset is her "here and now." As the story progresses, she discovers her world and herself anew.

The story is an episodic quest, as Ocilla and her allies travel across the five kingdoms, breaking curses and preparing for the final showdown. It's all wrapped in lyrical, beautiful prose. Vivid sensory details put you right in the story.

Most of the story progresses through slow, lyrical periods of discovery alternating with moments of sheer terror. The first 80 or 90 percent of the story proceeds at a measured pace, but the ending comes in a rush -- almost too hurried, leaving some questions unanswered. But this is a quibble. Great story. Great characters. Happy ending. And it has what I've come to see as the essential element of great speculative fiction: a storyworld you'd like to go visit. Often.

View all my Goodreads reviews

You have to start somewhere

Fiction writers often tell this lie to one another: "Don't use words like started or began." I've even heard it referred to as "the start rule."

Photo by Robert Linder • www.sxc.hu

They don't realize they're lying, of course. But this not a rule. It's advice. The more accurate way to express it is to say, "If the character is going to 'start' doing something, make sure it's an activity that will continue awhile."

Not recommended:

Blayse started to take a bill from her wallet. "Can you change a twenty?"

Recommended:

Blayse pinched the bill in her wallet. "Can you change a twenty?"

The removal of a bill takes a second, so here "start" is inaccurate. She either takes it out or she doesn't. But some actions take longer. For example, here's an excerpt from my current work in progress:

Blayse started down the stairs. “Will you come to church with me?”

Slider followed. “Umm…no. Thanks."

“You went with Reuben and Marisol.”

“Marisol made me. You don’t think she wanted to leave me in her house alone, do you?”

“I think more likely she wanted to get you into the church.” She turned down the second-floor hallway and looked over her shoulder at him. “You liked the music.” What was she saying? She didn’t encourage people to attend worship for the music.

"Started" works there, letting the reader know the stair descending continues through the subsequent lines of dialog. If I blindly followed "the start rule," I'd have put "Blayse walked down the stairs," which would sound as if all of her subsequent dialog happened at the foot of the stairs.

Do you agree? Disagree? Feel free to edit me. I have thick skin.

What "rules" have you heard that seemed too absolute or far-reaching?

Sorting out the levels of editing

By Jennifer
Borton •
iStockphoto

Even those of us who edit for a living can have trouble figuring out what it entails. When do you cross the line from copy editing to line editing? It's even harder for the uninitiated to figure out. The lines are a bit blurry, but here’s a rough breakdown.

• Developmental editors look at the big picture, working with content and structure to ensure the work gives the readers what they need in an easily comprehensible format.
• Line editors correct grammar, streamline wordy prose, and ensure that what you say is what you meant. They smooth out rough patches and reduce redundancies. They make clunky sentences elegant.
• Copy editors make sure sentences are grammatical, and if they're not, that there’s a good reason for it. They often check facts and always ensure stylistic consistency.
• Proofreaders correct spelling errors, misplaced punctuation, and typographical inconsistencies.

Ideally, your manuscript will go through each of these steps before publication. There is some overlap among these roles, though. For example, the last three all include taking care of pesky details like ensuring plural possessives of surnames ending in S are formed correctly.

If you are self-publishing and looking to contain costs, you can combine line editing with either the developmental edit or the copy edit, if you find an editor who is trained in both disciplines. Under no circumstances skip proofreading. And don't try to do it yourself. No one can proofread their own work. Not even those of us who edit for a living.

A different way to think about character development

Photo illustration by Beniamin Pop

Os Hillman, writing at Marketplace Leaders, talks about three stages we go through in our Christian walk:

Stage One: “Bless me, Lord.” This is where we accept salvation. It is understanding that Jesus saves us.
Stage Two: “Help me, Lord.” Some of us reach this stage only when a crisis comes. It is understanding that we can do nothing in our own power.
Stage Three: “Have me, Lord." This is bowing to the complete lordship of Christ. it is understanding that we must yield our will to his.

Hillman asks, "Where are you today?" and this is a question we all need to answer.

But as a fiction writer, I also have to ask, "Where are my characters?" These stages are as applicable to the faith journey of a character in a novel as they are to the development of our own character. In any novel, the hero's inner journey -- in Christian fiction, his spiritual journey -- is as important as the outer journey described by the surface plot.

I recently completed the first draft of a novel in which the hero goes from agnosticism to Stage One. Meanwhile, the heroine progresses from Stage One to Stage Two. I hadn't realized it until I read Hillman's article, but that's what happens in that storyline. By keeping this in mind as I edit, I think I can bring these spiritual journeys into greater clarity.

Weight loss takes time

Recently a friend said, "Have you lost weight? I came up from behind you, and you don't look the same."

Well, I'm glad my behind looks different these days. I told her, "Yes, I've lost 35 pounds since May."

She asked how I did it.

"Ruthless calorie counting. I have an app for that."

Tap & Track HD may not be the best calorie-counting app, but it's working for me. I chose this app from among the many calorie-counting apps available because it doesn't require an Internet connection to access its calorie database, as others do. All the data is stored in the app.

When I say losing weight takes time, I don't only mean it requires months to lose in a healthful way. I mean several minutes at each meal need to be invested in calculating and recording one's intake. Weighing or measuring each portion takes time.

Tap & Track helps cut down on this time with its list of common foods and an extensive list of restaurants. I looks like pretty much every restaurant chain that publishes its nutritional information on the web is included. So, for example, I now know that my Chipotle chicken bowl contains 540 calories. That's almost 40 percent of my calorie allotment for a day, so I'm trying to discipline myself to eat only half the bowl. In fact, I've learned that at just about every restaurant, it's a good idea to take whatever meat and carbs they bring you and cut the portions in half.

The app is a little rough around the edges:

• It has a favorites list for things you eat often, but it doesn't handle nonpackaged foods like fruit and vegetables well. When you pick an item from the food list, you can measure in grams or cups, or in the case of fruit, "one medium," etc. But add it to the favorites list, and you're limited to fractions of a serving, which requires knowing what the original serving size was. It turns out to be more precise to just pick it from the master list every time and enter the portion size in grams, since I prefer to weigh. The favorites list does work well for packaged goods like cereal bars and bread, where the serving size is uniform.
• The recipes feature is useful, but would be better if it were possible to edit the quantities. For example, l started with a salad recipe that was half romaine and half spinach, but decided to use more romaine and less spinach. I couldn't just change the quantities. I had to delete and re-add the ingredients.
• l love that the help file is built-in instead of being online, but its grammar needs some help.
• There are some typos in the food list, e.g. diary instead of dairy, drak instead of dark. OK, that's a really picky nit. Sorry.

Enough complaining. Here's what I like:

• There's a list of previous items which keeps track of several days' worth of items, which is useful for creatures of habit like me who tend to eat the same things repeatedly. Things I eat every day, like apples and tangerines, I can just pick from the previous list instead of looking them up in the master list every time. Unlike the favorites list, the previous list remembers the unit of measurement I used last time, so if I had a 52-gram tangerine yesterday and today one that's 56 grams, I just have to change the number.
• The overview screen shows a breakdown by nutrient type, so l can see when I'm overdoing the carbs. Which is often.
• The history page lets me see how good -- or bad -- I've been during the week.
• The profile automatically calculates my daily calorie count based on my current size and sedentary job.
• The exercise list shows that I could burn more calories at yoga than t'ai chi, and informs me that 20 minutes of housecleaning burns 87 calories.

This may not be the best calorie tracker (My rating: 4 of 5 stars), but it's the best $5 I ever spent.

Behold the power of the outline

At a chamber fellowship meeting, I was asked to share my top editing tip. Didn't have to think long about it: outline.

I resisted outlining for many years, because it reeked of term papers and therefore seemed uncreative. Randy Ingermanson's Snowflake Pro software convinced me otherwise.

Once I realized the power of outlining to organize my novels, it became obvious that the same power could be harnessed for any writing task. And should be. I have seen repeatedly in journalism, in fiction, and in non-fiction that omitting an outline results in disorganized work.

Even if your outline is just five items on a Post-It note, or two items in your head, have one. The longer and more complex your work (hello, novelists), the more you need an outline.

Many fiction writers resist outlining. Ingermanson discussed with Larry Brooks how even writers who prefer to work by the seat of their pants can be helped by judicious use of structure.

An outline is not a constraint. It is a guideline and a set of goals. As for creativity? Goal-setting practically requires it.

Windrider II makes for a grand quest

The Windrider II: A Greater Strength by Rebecca P. Minor

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This volume continues the quest begun in book one. Here, the Windrider Squadron gains some new members, but Vinyanel and Majestrin are still, as far as I'm concerned, the stars of the show. Vinyanel's mentor/teammate Veranna has a key role to play, but some of the best bits are from Majestrin's point of view, showing that the dragon is a true partner with the elves.

For an experienced warrior, Vinyanel still has a lot to learn, and he grows a lot in the course of this story. We're often told every hero must have a flaw, but often our heroes are sort of blissfully unaware of their flaws until the bitter end. Not Vinyanel. His flaws were sharply revealed in book one, and in book two he learns to deal with them. We also see a heretofore unmentioned weakness for a woman. A whole new facet of his personality.

The woman, I think I can say without spoiling too much, is not Veranna. That the hero and heroine of this story are not also one another's romantic interests is one of the things I love about it. Veranna is enamored of another Windrider, and Vinyanel professes to be interested only in his weapons.

Other things I love about this story: the elves are like real flesh-and-blood beings with flaws and feelings, not just aloof, serene caricatures; there are words in it I have to look up; faith lessons are woven into the story without being plunked in awkwardly; and -- of course -- dragons.



View all my reviews