Tuesday Lunchbox Forum

Open Questions!

August 5, 2008

Mary Rosenblum       Hello, all!   Nice to be doing the Forums again!

Zave:  In showing the sense of taste, Mary, would the following line work   My mouth salivated as I anticipated diving into the double layer fudge cake.

  Mary Rosenblum:  Good example, Zave! It can work very well, since most readers have tasted chocolate cake. So that's a pretty universal taste.  But in this example, you are telling us about the taste.   Instead, let the readers share the taste. I forked up a big chunk of the cake. dripped thick, chocolate icing down my chin and I closed my eyes, savoring the rush of sweetness.  Here, your readers know you're tasting chocolate cake and they'll 'fill in' the taste for you.  If you're just anticipating biting into it, they're just going to anticipate with you.   The one real drawback with taste is that if the readers haven't tasted something, then it's darn difficult to describe it. You have to use similes. For example, I bet none of you have tasted Durien fruit right?      So how can I tell you what it tastes like?  

 I picked up a thick slice of the melon sized fruit. It smelled like a baby's dirty diapers. I wrinkled my nose.
"Try it," Chat said, grinning.
  I held my breath and took a bite. Blinked. Vanilla custard. A hint of sulfur, but over all, the taste of...well, the smell of orange blossoms. "Wow," I said. "I can't believe it. It's good."
  Does this help, Zave?

Zave : Yes it does . Mary, what is the most important thing to remember when attending a writing conference?

 

Mary Rosenblum:  Zave, read over the panels that are available at a conference and plan a schedule for yourself so that you get to as many as you can. Decide what you want to get from the conference and prioritize your panels. And NETWORK. Authors love to talk to you. Editors love to be asked what they do and do not want! Do not push your work on them. Not at a con.   

Speck:      Okay...I've been working on a first person piece. I finally got the voice down but what other things do I need to watch out for. I've never tried first person before.

 

Mary Rosenblum  So let's talk about first person here.  Speck, the hardest part about first person is description. You can only include what your POV notices and he/she is only going to notice things that are of interest to him/her, not to your readers. So if, for example, your POV hates gardening, he is not going to know the plants of plants in someone's lovely garden.

  Reece: you know what I do actually ... I    having a problem with tenses in my first person POV I tried for your prompt.  I wrote two senteces of internal thought that are present tense but I don't know if they should be put in past tense ... sound wrong but I don't know.

 Mary Rosenblum      Reece, what kind of tense trouble are you having?

 Reece    I wrote ... Those cigarettes she puffs reek! but not sure if it should be reeked or puffed instead.  Does it matter when it is internal dialogue?

Mary Rosenblum      Reece, you can do first person in either present or past tense.  If you're doing present tense it would be like this  
 

I'm sitting in the living room and of course Katie comes in. I can't leave...Jordan is gonna look for me here. But sheesh, those cigarettes she puffs on reek!

  Here's the past tense version.
  I was sitting in the living room when Katie wandered in. I wanted to leave, but couldn't. Jordan was gonna look for me here. But sheesh, those cigarettes she puffs on, reek. So I just opened the window, never mind it was below zero out there.

  Reece    So I can keep it the scene in either tense???

  Mary Rosenblum      Now that is in present tense because it's a general comment. Katie smokes cigarette all the time and our POV is referring to ALL those times. If the POV was referring to only THIS event it would be like this   ....when Katie wandered in, puffing on a cigarette. I wanted to leave, but couldn't Jordan was gonna look for me here. But sheesh, that cigarette she was smoking reeked.
Here, because she's talking about one cigarette, this one, it's in the s  e tense as the rest of the monologue.

  Reece      Thank you Mary that helped a lot

  Pook      I    working on my chapter one assignment for the novel course and It is almost complete but I have been stuck for months on trying to make backstory interesting and which facts to include. I need an incident to make it storylike.

 

Mary Rosenblum       Well, Pook, that's your job as a writer, after all.   ) You get to come up with that incident that adds dramatic interest. I do that a lot...realize that I'm doing too much backstory or what have you and I need more dramatic interest.      So I'll engineer something to make the scene interesting. BUT....it has to be integral to your main story line. You can't just make something happen that has nothing to do with the main plot, just to be interesting.

  Pook     It's that I have too many things  and yes they are related and have a purpose of getting across personality traits,  thanks.

  Mary Rosenblum       Well, Reece, if you have too many details and things happening...and that's pretty common since we like to include all that cool stuff we thought up...then you need to decide what the reader MUST see/hear in order for this scene to work. Save some of the cool stuff for later or simply leave it out.

  janecj333    Mary, What about dropping a dead body into the scene? Does it really work?

  Mary Rosenblum    Only if you can make it integral to the plot, Jane.   Or if you're writing humor or comedy, of course! if you drop that dead body, it's WORK. have to make that dead body integral to the plot from paragraph one.

 

janecj333     Mary, Comic relief is one of those difficult-to-arrange events in a dr  atic plot, for me, anyway. Are there some tips you can give us?

 

Mary Rosenblum      You can create a light moment, but there's no reason you should try to make your readers roll on the floor. A brief smile is fine!  It's NOT easy if humor doesn't come easy for you, Jane. And it doesn't come easy for me, either!

    Pook       I  am  doing a book review and have too high a word count. How much of the content of the book do I have to relate to the reader to orient him? It is nonfiction
 
  Mary Rosenblum   Not much, Pook. Enough so that the readers know the dr  atic arc of the story. That's all.

  Sally Franklin Christie       Okay, here goes. I submitted a novel MS to a contest. Paid the contest fee. Is it true that they do not have to tell the submitter, me, that they have made their choices, sorry, please try again? I had to go to the site to find out.

    Mary Rosenblum       Sally, it entirely depends on the contest rules. Some contests inform non-winners. Others do not. They should post it in their submission rules.  Remember, folks! ALWAYS read submission guidelines!

  Pook      But did she pay after the winners were chosen?

  Mary Rosenblum      Most contests...legitimate ones....close submissions BEFORE they pick the winners, Pook.

  Sally Franklin Christie      LOL, I did read them. They even had a log in page to check the status or your submission and it never ever changed. Then out of curiosity I checked the home page and saw the top three picks.

  Mary Rosenblum      Well, I'd say that's a poorly run contest, Sally.   Have you checked it on Preditors and Editors?  They list 'scam' contests. Although they disapprove of ALL contests that charge a fee, be aware.

        Speck:      The Harlequin contest didn't notify non-winners. You had to go to their website. I think it was too many entries to respond too though.

  Sally Franklin Christie        I saw the contest listed in a writer's digest email and assumed it was okay, should I mention it to them?

  Mary Rosenblum        A lot of contests...I will venture to say most contests....don't notify winners.  It's a lot of time and/or postage. I would always give feedback if you're not happy with the way something is done. Otherwise, the publisher or contest owner is not motivated to do things differently.

  Sally Franklin Christie      And risk getting on a nasty writer to work with list? I don't want to do that.

  Mary Rosenblum       Ah, but if I were you, I'd put them on my 'not a contest to submit to' list.   I am  much more tolerant of sloppily run contests if there is no fee involved.

  Sally Franklin Christie       Thank you. It was still about three months waste of time when I should have been marketing it.

  Mary Rosenblum       I was to pay an entry fee to enter, I expect a bit of service. As you say, that was time lost.

  Sally Franklin Christie     This was ten bucks, to cover the cost of keeping readers in the office or some such thing.

  Mary Rosenblum       You know, this is where blog and bulletin boards can be useful. Air your woes.   And ten bucks, multiplied by what? Several hundred entries? Thousand? Money enough to pay someone to update the website or email folk.

  Mary Rosenblum        Some contests use fees to pay winners and yes, pay readers who have to wade through a TON of entries. Other contests fund the contest owners....

    Sally Franklin Christie      These publishing places do not have to show me the 'books' like a 501   c 3 would, so I imagine I many never know.

  Mary Rosenblum       You can sort of guess, Sally. When you read contest descriptions, what do they offer?  If it's a 500  $, 250$,  100$ prize for first, second, third, and the winners are published, okay, I'd pay a small fee to pay readers.

 

  Sally Franklin Christie       It was 1K to the winner and publication of that MS. I forgot what second and third was. They are new and only do 2 or 3 books a year.

Mary Rosenblum       Well, that's not too bad, Sally, if the fee wasn't too high.  Ten dollars seems very reasonable!

  janecj333     Mary, not to change the subject, but the other day you gave some advice about action seen by the pov character. Now I'm noticing actions OF the pov character in my wip such as, "he looked at her intently". Is that a no-no?

  Mary Rosenblum       Those are action tags, Jane, and that one in particular reveals body langauge and suggests the person's emotion. However it's weak. I'd lose the adverb. He stared at her. He glared at her.

 

janecj333    I do always measure whether or not to use adverbs. It's one of very few. But it's the character having an action that he can't see that I'm wondering about now. What do you think?

 

  Mary Rosenblum        Jane, the trick there is to convey the POV character's awareness. That way it seems less 'told'.  If I stare at someone intently, I m very aware that I  am  doing that.

  rrmama      I have been curious about web sites like eHow and Helium. If you write an article for them, do they own it, or can you submit it elsewhere?

    Mary Rosenblum       That is a VERY good question, Mama. I  am  going to go to Helium and track that down. They SHOULD somewhere, specify the rights they are taking. They may take no rights at all.

        Speck:      I've looked at a lot of those places...and it's in their rights...in the fine print. Most that I've seen take all rights.

 

Mary Rosenblum       OUCH! Speck if you can find that page, could you send me a link? I'm going to post a little warning article in the next Newsletter.

  rrmama      Thanks Mary. I'll do the same. I've been curious, but not enough to read the small print because I have other irons in the fire, so to speak.

 

  Pook      Mary, are those rights just for six months?

  Mary Rosenblum       I wondered just how they were using writers to fund the site. That may answer my questions.  All rights are all rights. Means they own your words. Period.

 

CD:  Different subject   When you create races, creatures, or specific types of a creature, such as a mountain troll, crag cat, or rime giant, how do you know when it is an actual proper noun or just a common noun?
 

Mary Rosenblum       If it's a name, CD, it's a proper noun. If it's a 'type', a label, it is not. I called the nurse when I started to get breathless. I told Nurse Jenkins that I was breathless.

  Pook      Mary, are those rights just for six months?

  Mary Rosenblum       I wondered just how they were using writers to fund the site. That may answer my questions.  All rights are all rights. Means they own your words. Period.

  Pook      The new place you submit it has to know it was published, right?

  Mary Rosenblum       Yes, Pook. If a publisher wants First Rights, you can't offer them if the piece was published.  If you are selling second, (reprint) or anthology rights, the publisher needs to acknowledge the original publication. Or at least know where it was originally published.

  Pook      What does the first publisher have to do with it, if anything?

  Mary Rosenblum           Nothing, although the second publisher may want to cite it if it was a prestigious magazine.

 

  Pook      Can the first publisher make money off the screenplay?

  Mary Rosenblum          Depends on what rights you sold, Pook.  If you sold First Rights only, then that publisher only has the right to publish it once in the magazine or as a book. If that publisher purchased electronic, or screen rights, or foreign language rights, too, then he can publish it in other countries, online, or sell it as a screen play. You get only what he agreed to pay you (if anything) when he sold those rights

  Rae      I have a small story that is being published on a website. I retain all rights to it. When it goes out again, do I need to let them know it was seen on a website?       The website does not archive it.

  Mary Rosenblum       Yes, Rae. Even though you OWN all rights, you HAVE published it, so you cannot sell someone the right to publish it FIRST. Thus, no First Rights. Even though it's not archived there, stuff floats around on the web forever.   A google search would probably bring it up on some website somewhere.  If it was on a tiny website without much traffic, Rae, you could google the title of the piece and google your n  e and if it didn't pop up on any of the  100 or so pages Google will give you (!) you can probably call it 'unpublished'. That's a LOT of work

  Rae       that's really cool. Thanks.       Could I put that story on my own website now?

  Mary Rosenblum       Sure, Rae.

  rrmama       Going back to the Helium, eHow question, if I  am  trying to accumulate clips, can I use something that I submit to one of these sites? I    asking because it is sort of a Catch-22. You need clips to get published, but ...

  Mary Rosenblum        You own the story. But of course, it's published on your website, since the public can read it.      Of course use the piece as a clip, Mama. You can use anything you publish as a clip.

  rrmama      Wahoo!

 

Mary Rosenblum       5It may or may not help you depending on the publisher's opinion of Helium, eHow, or whatever site you're citing.
      
  Pook      Can you charge people to read your website?

  Mary Rosenblum        You can try, Pook.   J

 

End