Writers On The Move

Would You Make a Good Reviewer?

There are so many reasons for becoming a reviewer, but for writers it's almost mandatory. While you probably won’t make a fortune writing reviews, you can earn reasonable money doing it, it is an excellent way to hone your writing skills, increase your understanding of what makes for good writing if you are that way inclined, it adds depth to your own pleasure to evaluate what you would be reading, listening to or using anyway, and you can get a whole raft of high quality review copies including autographed first editions, galleys, pre-publication releases, and promotional material. In addition, it is both enjoyable and valuable from a publicity point of view to have an impact on the choices other people make. In other words, if you’re a top reviewer, you will be the ‘go-to’ resource for information on what is and what isn’t worth buying, and therefore gain credibility and visibility for your other projects.

There are some qualities which differentiate a good reviewer from a not so good one. The following qualities are the key to being a good reviewer.

Do you have the ability to follow through? This is critical. If you agree to review something, or request a review copy, you have to produce through or you will rapidly lose credibility. Even if the book is awful, or virtually unreadable, or the product difficult to use, you must produce some form of review, or at least return the item with a polite note, clearly explaining why no review will be forthcoming. This doesn’t apply to items sent to you on spec. If you haven’t agreed, or requested an item, you aren’t obligated to review it, although a polite response is always appreciated.
Can you work quickly? Reviews generally need to be timely. In most cases, they relate to recently released items, and if a review isn’t produced shortly after release, or after a performance, etc, your readers may not be as interested and the value tends to diminish. No one wants to read old news. That said, there is always a call for reviews of classic or quality material.
Can you write well? Regardless of what you are reviewing, a review is a piece of writing in itself. It needs to be clear, concise, entertaining, informative, critical, and well written.
Are you critical? You have to be able to accurately assess the value of an item you are reviewing and that may include digging deeply into the work. If you are too nice to say anything critical, or reluctant to probe, your reviews won’t provide readers with the information they need to determine whether a work is for them.
Are you constructive? The ability to write with tact is important for a reviewer. A nasty review with no constructive comments or examples of where something can be improved is worse than a lukewarm review which is not critical. Immature vindictive does not make for a good review and isn’t helpful to either the author or the reader. A reviewer needs to be able to express both positive and negative aspects of a work in a professional, thoughtful, and specific way, without causing libel or being ungenerous.
Are you confident? Do you have the courage to make a clear judgment, and to back up that judgment with specific instances.
Are you knowledgeable about the particular subject you are reviewing? As a reviewer you will need to know a reasonable amount about the class of items you’re reviewing. For a book reviewer, that will mean having a reasonable awareness of literature and particularly the genre you’re reviewing in. For a reviewer of children’s items, you will need to know something about that age group and their capability. Music reviewers need a reasonably broad and extensive awareness of music. Without this general knowledge, your assessment won’t come with the weight of experience that makes your judgment so valuable to others.
Are you honest? Honesty is one of the most important qualities for a reviewer. You must be honest in your writing, in your judgments, in your criticisms. Honesty is a reviewer’s stock-in-trade – it’s the backbone of what you do when you look closely at something and begin exploring why it is of value.

If you have the above qualities, there's no reason no reason not to begin adding reviews to your websites, blogs, or even just on Amazon (with a link back to your own book of course).

The piece above has been excerpted from my newly revised (now in its second printing) book The Art of Assessment: How to Review Anything. Grab a copy now for the full kit on becoming a well-respected reviewer. I'll look forward to reading your reviews!

Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. She is the author of a number of books including Black Cow, Repulsion Thrust and Sleep Before Evening. Find out more at www.magdalenaball.com

More Plot Possibilities...

Writer’s block? Try one of these:

· Change of scenery: write a scene that takes place at: a park, the beach, the forest, the country fair, a theme park, the mountains, a relative’s house…

· A Big Contest/Big Game/Big Prize is announced. Your character wants to enter, or maybe is convinced to enter by someone else…

· Your character goes swimming.

· Your character is called into the boss’s office. (Or, if writing a children's book, the principal's office.)

· A stranger asks your character to do him/her a favor.

· Your character sees someone in trouble.

· Someone your character knows is in the news. Who? Why? What is your character’s reaction?

· A fire breaks out. Or an earthquake. Or a tornado.

· Your character sees a ghost.

· Someone has been reading your character’s private journal/diary.

· Someone breaks into your character’s house. Why? Do they steal anything?

· Your character gets caught red-handed.

· Your character does something he/she knows he/she’s not supposed to do.

· Your character tells a lie.

· What is the very worst thing that could happen to your character right now? Make that happen! How is your character going to get out of it??

Dallas Woodburn is the author of two award-winning collections of short stories and editor of Dancing With The Pen: a collection of today's best youth writing. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three years in a row and her nonfiction has appeared in a variety of national publications including Family Circle, Writer's Digest, The Writer, and The Los Angeles Times. She is the founder of Write On! For Literacy and Write On! Books Youth Publishing Company and is currently pursuing her Master's degree in Fiction Writing at Purdue University, where she teaches undergraduate writing courses and serves as Fiction Editor of Sycamore Review.

Why Your Submissions are Rejected

Here are the top fifteen reasons agents and publishers reject our submissions. Provided by Anne Mini, from the 2006 Surrey, B.C. writers conference. Check her blog for more reasons and explanations.

1. An opening image that did not work.

2.Opened with rhetorical question(s).

3. The first line is about setting, not about story.

4. The first line’s hook did not work, because it was not tied to the plot or the conflict of the opening scene.

5. The first line’s hook did not work, because it was an image, rather than something that was happening in the scene.

6. Took too long for anything to happen (a critique, incidentally, leveled several times at a submission after only the first paragraph had been read); the story taking time to warm up.

7. Not enough happens on page 1

8. The opening sounded like an ad for the book or a recap of the pitch, rather than getting the reader into the story.

9. The opening contained the phrases, “My name is…” and/or “My age is..."

10. The opening contained the phrase, “This can’t be happening.”

11. The opening contained the phrase or implication, “And then I woke up.”

12. The opening paragraph contained too much jargon

13. The opening contained one or more clichéd phrases.

14. The opening contained one or more clichéd pieces of material. (The most I counted in a single submission was 5.) Specifically singled out: a character’s long red or blonde hair.

15. The opening had a character do something that characters only do in books, not real life. Specifically singled out: a character who shakes her head to clear an image, “He shook his head to clear the cobwebs.”

Have any of you received anything similar or different reasons?

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A native Montanan, Heidi M. Thomas now lives in Northwest Washington. Her first novel, Cowgirl Dreams, is based on her grandmother, and the sequel, Follow the Dream, has recently won the national WILLA Award. Heidi has a degree in journalism, a certificate in fiction writing, and is a member of Northwest Independent Editors Guild. She teaches writing and edits, blogs, and is working on the next books in her “Dare to Dream” series.

Small Towns

One of my favorite things about the 4^th of July in the USA is small town parades. Everyone has a part, everyone has a chance to feel special, and everyone’s gifts are appreciated.

One year I went with a friend to a parade in her hometown. Old vehicles lead the way with mustangs, corvettes, model Ts, farm tractors and vintage fire trucks. There were mostly men driving and they smiled and waved and gunned their engines. The parade continued with school bands, VWF groups, Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, SPCA dogs, and truck drawn floats. Bringing up the rear of the parade was a horse contingency, which was a good place to put the horses. As I waved to the men riding the horses, I did a double take; they were the same men that were driving the cars at the beginning of the parade. I smiled and waved all the harder.

I learned some things that day: sometime in life we have more than one role to play and each role is important; in big events, it is the little people that make things happen; and when you smile and wave there is a good chance those around you will smile and wave back.

What do you enjoy about about your hometown? Can you fashion a story around it? Can it be your setting? The people your characters?

Martha Swirzinski, M. A.

www.MovementPlus.com

www.WholeChildPublishing.com

How Much is Too Much in YA Books

So who doesn’t swear or cuss on occasion? Right? It’s part of our current culture. Everyone does it—increasingly so and harsher as we go along. Swearing has increased in movies, television shows but especially books. When I was a teen reading Lord of the Rings or anything written by Ray Bradbury there wasn’t a single cuss word anywhere. Teens then were cussing up a storm when gathered in groups and such.

But it wasn’t in our literature nearly to the extent it is today.

This begs the question: Is all of that cussing really necessary?

Picture of Two Girls, Sisters, with Looks of Surprise or Shock on Their Faces

Sarah Coyne, professor of family life at Brigham Young University analyzed the use of profanity in forty young adult books on the best seller list. Thirty-five of them had at least one swear word. On the average there were thirty-eight instances of cussing, with one book containing nearly five hundred uses of foul language.

Is that really necessary to become a best seller with teens? The argument is the author is reaching for authenticity and grit. But there are plenty of books with grit and reality that don’t make us feel like we need a shower to rinse off the stench after reading them. Look at The Hunger Games Series. Could a story get any grittier or more realistic? How much cussing did you hear from Katniss or Peta? During the final battle with Lord Voldemort, did Harry Potter let loose a stream of expletives?

In my humble opinion, cussing is a cheap way out of finding a creative way to express oneself. And it cheapens the book as well.

Here's something interesting Professor Coyne discovered:

The characters doing the swearing tended to be of higher social status, better looking and have more money than their non-swearing counterparts.

So what does that say to the preteens who are forming their ideas of who they are and who they will become as adults? Everyone knows kids who read, tend to do so about three to five years above their age level. I’ve seen Fourth Graders reading the Twilight series. None of MY children would ever have read something like that at age nine, but I saw it when I was teaching. And the kids who were allowed to read material years ahead of their maturational level, refused to read age-appropriate, excellent literature, thereby missing out of a whole world of good books.

The problem with today’s young adult books is a reader doesn’t know what they’re getting into until they’re knee deep in the mire. This goes for swearing, sex and violence. Ever try to stop a teen from 'enjoying' something which contains sex, foul language or gore? Of course an allowance is made for the genre bridging the innocence of middle grade books and adult-level reading. But how much is too much? How do we protect the sanctity of innocence until a young adult is ready to become an adult if what they’re reading reveals all?

As an author of Picture Books up through Young Adult, I feel the need to protect my young readers from what they’re seeing in movies and television, hearing in the lyrics of their music and experiencing while playing their video games. Teens aren’t allowed to remain innocent and naiive anymore…and I think it’s a shame on our society.

Great Marketing, Networking, and The Gift of Surprise

This post is as much about giving as it is about writing. And, yes, I equate giving with great marketing. This review appeared in a Google Alert. I didn't send a review copy. There was no query involved. It just happened. Thus, it was a surprise and very heartwarming. Regardless of what you've been told in the past about networking and marketing, that's what it's really about. Making friends. From the heart.

A review of an author's book is about the best gift you can possibly give him or her. This review is my Kathryn M. Weiland and I hope you'll take her example and review a book you've read lately. Post it on your blog and on Amazon. And then let him or her know about it--just in case they haven't tuned into the magic of Google Alerts yet! (-:

Review of Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips for Writers by Kathryn M. Weiland

Carolyn Howard-Johnson is well known among writers for her helpful book The Frugal Book Promoter, and she continues to encourage and guide writers through her many other projects, including this fast read (56 pages), which she advertises as a supplement to her book The Frugal Book Editor. After opening with an intro, reminding authors of the importance of crossing our T’s and dotting our I’s in both our queries and our published works, she launches into the meat of the book: page after page of handy references for spotting and fixing tricky word pairs.

Organized alphabetically with word pairs separated by slashes (e.g., “bereft / bereaved”), the book makes it easy to look up definitions and identify which word should be used in specific circumstances. Although the book’s diminutive length prevents it from anywhere close to exhaustive, it’s a good starting place and can easily be backed up with the more complete list in The Frugal Book Editor.

Priced reasonably (especially the Kindle version) and packed with lots of writerly wit and humor, the book makes for both an enjoyable read and a worthwhile reference manual. To find it go to www.budurl.com/WordtrippersPB

~K.M. Weiland is the author of the historical western A Man Called Outlaw and the medieval epic Behold the Dawn. She enjoys mentoring other authors through her writing tips, her book Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success, and her instructional CD Conquering Writer’s Block and Summoning Inspiration.

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Fear of Formatting

I have a novel forthcoming from MuseItUp publishing, a science fiction novel for tweens/young adults, and as part of the novel, I created a poet and wrote thirty-one of his poems. Eight of the poems appear in the novel, and I wanted to publish the whole collection to go along with the book. I dragged my feet - first about obtaining permission to use the poems that appear in the book, and second, when I had permission, about putting the book together.

Fear of formatting held me back, but at last, with the deadline approaching, I jumped in.

I created the cover on the above using my image and a CreateSpace template.

Covers: This was my first sticking point. But fear not, designing one's own book cover is easy with CreateSpace, as they have cover templates and images you can use. Or you can use your own photo, or go to one of the many websites that offer photographs and buy one. I went to Bigshotphoto to purchase the image for the cover of "Sand in the Desert." It cost me $2.99 for the small size.

For the cover of SandInTheDesert, see Karen Cioffi's post: http://margaretfieland.com/blog1/2012/05/26/design-your-own-ebook-cover/

For the formatting, alas, there was no cure but to jump in. CreateSpace does have templates you can download and use for the various size finished documents. They have predefined layouts, page styles, and the like, and you fill in the blanks (or sometimes, generic text) with your own.

I downloaded and used one. And now, many hours later, I have just ordered my second proof copy - the first had problems with both formatting and content -- and I know a lot more about formats.

I use OpenOffice rather than Ms Word, so the menus will be slightly different, but here are some of the things I learned to watch out for:

Page setup options as to the distance from the top and bottom and from the sides.
Whether the format is MIRRORED or not.

Header and Footer: Do you have them? Do they have the same contents left and right?

What format follows this one? I got hung up on this because the LEFT page format had LEFT as the next format instead of the RIGHT page format. The RIGHT page format had the same problem - RIGHT was the next format instead of LEFT. This screwed up my page numbers.

Paragraph: Line spacing and distance between paragraphs.

Fonts: This one is pretty straightforward in your document, but CreateSpace wants the fonts embedded in the document. OpenOffice doesn't appear to have an option to put them in a .doc file, so I had to select "export to PDF" and check the option to include the fonts in the PDF.

Size of your finished book: The page formats include the page size, which will, of course, affect how much space you have for text. The CreateSpace templates will give you a guide as to how much space to leave for the margins - the INNER is the critical one, as you will need to leave enough room for the binding.

Proof Reading: There's no substitute for proof reading. Proof read for formatting, and again for content. I read through for the formatting, then again for the order of my poems, and once again for the poems' content.

My personal criteria for passing something out of a proof phase is that I read it through twice without finding any errors. Sad experience has shown me that I can overlook an error once through, but the chance I will overlook the same error on another reading is small. Yes, this is tedious. Yes, it's saved my ass more than once.

Here are some references:

For OpenOffice:

http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/office_guides/openoffice_3_writer_user_guide/openoffice_writer_Book_chapter_sequence.html

http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/ooo-help/r2.1/en-US/WIN/writer/guide/header_pagestyles

Here are some for MS Word:

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Microsoft-Word-1058/2009/6/Mirror-margins-headers.htm

http://www.ehow.com/how_4488436_lay-out-book-manuscript-microsoft.html

I just ordered my second proof copy. The first had both formatting and content issues, ones I didn't spot using the digital proof copy. I'll be examining this copy carefully, both for formatting and for content. For each, if I can go through it twice without finding any errors, then I'll declare it good to go.