Rich storyworld with an intriguing culture

The Duke's Handmaid by Caprice Hokstad

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


At the outset it seems that Kee's choosing slavery over a life of freedom and poverty is based on a desire to live in the Duke's palatial home, with access to luxuries like hot running water and abundant food. But in truth, she is drawn to his house not by material things, but by her loyalty to him.

I may be reading into things a bit, but I see Kee's decision to willingly be the duke's slave as mirroring the church's "enslavement" to Christ. I asked Caprice about this:

I didn't really try to make everything fit a tight analogy, but I think I did create some parallels here and there, some conscious, some not. Some critics have said my books are anti-Christian, and to them I point out that St. Paul used "bondservant of the Lord" far more often than he called himself an apostle.

After some action-packed and unflinchingly violent opening chapters, the book settles into a slower pace, as farmgirl Kee is trained in etiquette and protocol so she can serve the duke as a slave. She learns about the brutal realities of slavery, but teaches others some lessons about submission and servanthood in the process.

The plot shifts into high hear for the second half, which is loaded with intrigue and chicanery, daring escape and noble sacrifice.

The author is occasionally a little too textbook-like in describing her speculative storyworld. Nevertheless, it is a rich setting, and her descriptions of it, though forced at times, are quite good. Although the duke’s culture is very different from our own, it is internally consistent -- a necessity for good fantasy.

The characters are well-rounded and engaging, and I enjoyed the story. I look forward to reading the sequel, Nor Iron Bars A Cage.


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Small changes, consistency, and big results

Guest Blogger: Terri Main

Photo by Kriss Szkurlatowski

I know many writers, myself included, often put ourselves down for small word counts at the end of a day. But those small numbers add up. Here are a few to think about.

• 100 words a day = 36,500 words in a year. That's half a novel or 10 short stories for writing less than half a page a day (double spaced).
• 200 words a day = 73,000 words in a year. That's a full novel or 20 short stories writing a little less than a page a day.
• 250 words a day = 91,250 words in a year. Writing just one page a day gives you a novel and a novella or close to two novels or 30 short stories.
• 500 words a day = 180,500 words in a year. That's close to three novels or 60 short stories or 6-7 novellas. That's two double spaced pages a day.
• 750 words a day = 271,750 words in a year. That's about four novels or 90 short stories or 10 novellas writing three pages a day.
• 1,000 words a day = 365,000 words in a year. That's 5-6 novels, 100 short stories or 12 novellas writing just four pages a day.

It doesn't take a lot of words per day, it just takes some consistency.

I knew a psychologist who had been a Navy commander. One day he showed me a map and marked New York City on one side and the west coast of England on the other.

"If I set course from New York to this place on the British Coast and change it by just one degree..." He paused and took out a protractor to measure off one degree and drew a line. "I end up in northern Africa. Small changes maintained over the long run make a huge difference."

The same goes for small increases in our writing output. Just because you can't write 2,000 words today doesn't mean you should forgo writing. Even a hundred words adds to your total.

Terri Main is the author of Creative Calisthenics: The Ultimate Workout for the Writers imagination. Visit her online: http://tinyurl.com/terrimainauthor, or follow @terrimain on Twitter, where she gives daily "minidevotions" and periodic writing tips.

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.

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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.