The Book Designer Has the Answer

Self publishing is hard.  Not only do you have to write the dang book, you have to do everything else involved in getting it ready for public consumption. And then you have to navigate the labyrinths of marketing and distribution. Just figuring out where to begin can be daunting.  But being a self published author does not mean you have to figure it all on your own. There’s a website out there that can help.

Thebookdesigner.com was created by Joel Friedlander, who literally grew up in the world of printing and publishing. His knowledge on the subject is exhaustive. I first discovered his website when I was looking for Microsoft Word formatting tips and shortcuts. His blog turned me on to the versatility and power of the “find and replace” tool. Now thebookdesigner.com is my fist stop when I’m looking for advice on solving any sort of formatting issue. The only problem I’ve found with the site so far is that it’s so darned big and full of information that it kind of sucks you in. I’ve gone there looking for one piece of information, only to spend several hours wandering through its seemingly endless cache of knowledge.

But don’t worry, Friedlander has done an admirable job of organizing what could be an overwhelming amount of information. Check it out for yourself. Even if your not a self-publisher, I’m willing to bet you learn something useful.

In Defense of the Passive Voice

Here’s how my current favorite style manual, The Little, Brown Handbook, defines passive voice:

“The passive voice of the verb indicates that the subject receives the action of the verb. Create the passive voice with be, am, is, are, was,were, being, or been followed by the main verb’s participle.”

It gives this example: “Her latest book was completed in four months.”

The main point to take from that definition is that “the subject receives the action of the verb,” as opposed to the subject performing the action. To make the above example active, you would write it like this: “She completed her latest book in four months.”

Seems pretty straight forward, right?

Apparently not. I regularly run into writers who work from the assumption that any use of a “to be” verb constitutes the passive voice. This is not true! (See? That last sentence was active even though I used “is.”)

I offer this post in defense of the passive voice. Not only is it frequently misunderstood, it’s not always the wrong choice to make as a writer. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it should be your “go to” sentence structure. But sometimes it makes sense to use it.

For example, I once worked with a novelist who was revising a first person POV YA sci-fi thriller. He tended to overuse the passive voice, constantly describing things that happened to his hero until the manuscript read like a journal of events the narrator simply witnessed. We worked a long time on rooting out all that passive voice and making his hero into the prime mover of his novel. But he had a chapter where his protagonist fell into the clutches of an antagonist with mind control powers. So I encouraged the author to go crazy with the passive voice in that part. It made sense, because his hero had lost all agency. The passive voice captured his protagonist’s predicament perfectly because he had become, quite literally, the puppet of the antagonist.

So, don’t fear the passive voice. Just make sure you use it deliberately. Like any grammatical construct, it deserves its place in your writer’s toolbox. But, like any tool, it can be dangerous if you don’t understand what it is or how it works.

Training Your Brain to Self Edit

The brain is a funny thing. It’s brilliant when its creating, conjuring up amazing ideas and stories out of nothing. But sometimes the brain can be too brilliant.

When we write, our brains know what we’re trying to put down on paper faster than our fingers can keep up. This game of catch-up often leads to mistakes, typos, words missing letters, sentences missing words. Of course, spell check will help with these. But what about that pesky problem in the English language of words that sound the same but are spelled differently? Our brain is our best tool to catch those, but here’s where the too brilliant part comes in: Our brain corrects those mistakes without making us aware of it.

It’s like those games where you can read a sentence even if words are backward. The brain is looking for meaning, not grammar, and as long as it can get the meaning, it doesn’t worry about anything else. And if you wrote those words, with their mistakes, the brain already knows the meaning.

So, how to find and fix the problems? You need to trick your brain into seeing your words as if for the first time. There are lots of methods:

• Print out the pages and read on paper. Seeing the words in a different medium can jog your brain to concentrate more on the details.

• Change the font or color of the words on the screen. This can push your brain to think that what you’re reading is new.

• Read out loud. This is my personal favorite. By forcing your mouth to actually say every word on the page, you’re forcing your brain to read every word.

Next time you’re editing your own work, try these tricks to find and fix more errors.

Yellow Bird Editor Samantha Clark also blogs at SamanthaClark.wordpress.com.

Forget Everything You Thought You Knew About Strunk and White’s Elements of Style

If you’ve taken any sort of writing class or ever gotten any professional writing advice, there’s a good chance you’ve been referred to Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. Here’s a 2009 review of the classic that takes a decidedly different view:

“50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice.”

This article is a thorough vivisection of The Elements of Style. I just don’t know what to think anymore. One of the sacred icons of my little world has been desecrated!

Read this article if you’re a grammar geek. The author, linguist Geoffrey K. Pullum, is not afraid of getting too esoteric with his arguments. But you’ll also enjoy it if you’re not a grammar geek. Pullum mostly manages to subdue his grammar wonk urges. Generally, he just bashes the world’s most beloved pocket style manual. He cites example after example of Strunk and White breaking their own rules on the very same pages where they’ve stated them.

It’s both horrifying and immensely entertaining to follow along as he systematically shreds it. Don’t be ashamed to find this interesting. Embrace your inner writer geek and read 50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice by Geoffrey K. Pullum

Pixar’s Rules of Storytelling

It’s hard to argue the fact that the folks at Pixar know how to tell a good story. Here are some storytelling rules-of-thumb that they have been kind enough to share online:

Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling

Don’t worry if you’re not a screenwriter; there’s something here for every kind of storyteller. Our current favorite is number two:

“You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.”

Which one speaks to you? Post a comment with your favorite and a little explanation about why.