Emoting for others. Not easy

Although I'd been told, twice, that my fiction continued to sound like a journalist wrote it, I could not figure out exactly what that meant. And if you can't identify a problem, it's near impossible to address it.

I'd heard: tell us what the character is feeling. and Ramp up Alexa's attitude.

But actually accomplishing that had remained elusive.

A girlfriend of mine from my years in New York City, a published author and illustrator (of children's books) visited with me and my husband last week.

Finally, from what she said, I got a clue. Cecile wrote some suggestions in the margins of a printout. I saw them, understood why she wrote this or that. However, that didn't mean I felt like I could replicate what she did on the rest of the manuscript.

I even said to her, "It's like a gray box where I need to put in the character's feelings. And I can't find the door, or figure out how to pry my way into it."

She's known me for 20 years. She said, "Yes you do. You have understood the subtleties of my feelings, and known how others are inside. I've heard you."

Just by someone I could trust telling me, yes, you can do this: That cracked open the gray box.

I think. I hope.

Now feel I'm working on the third draft, the prose is so different -- what with all that emotion flowing all over the place.

Thank you, Cecile!

By Laure Edwards Reminick

Marketing with a Book Trailer

I opened up iMovie on my MacBook Air for the first time on Tuesday, and six hours later had a passable first attempt at a 45-second book trailer (like a movie trailer, only for a book).

Using instructional videos from YouTube (you can find almost anything there), I found it pretty darn easy. By version 5, I had the words matching the themes of the music.

It's not that I'm really good at this sort of thing. Just persistent, and game to try.

I will post it on June 11, the day I was aiming to publish Seeking Sirius. Instead of publishing, since the manuscript still needs work, I will start marketing -- in my newbie fashion.

Once the trailer is posted on YouTube, I'll put a link to it in this blog post. And this blog will be attached to my new Author's Website.

Truly, if you want to do something, search on the web, and you'll almost for sure find instructions on how to do it.  I love technology. And the way people like to help other people.

By Laure Edwards Reminick

Will take the necessary time to get this right

My husband has a gift, probably from a previous lifetime, and honed, this lifetime, with thousands of hours of practice: he knows when the time is right for an action.

I was aiming at one of those moments, an auspicious time, to publish Seeking Sirius (self-publish, because I want to control that very moment of publishing). June 11. Way close.

Too close, I have decided. Auspicious or not.

Luckily, another time. About as good. Better in some ways. Is available. And the really good part, I get more time to make this story something you, and many other people, will hopefully be sorry is over, when you get to The End.

Now is the time for taking the prose to heights I hope to attain.

By Laure Edwards Reminick

Portal website is up: StorySilence.com

Besides my own fiction, I'd like to interact with readers and writers about what interests me the most: those moments of transcendence, the Aha! moments when all becomes clear.

That's really why I'm writing fiction.

The new site is live: www.storysilence.com

Quite basic. And probably will continue that way until I meet my self-imposed deadline for Seeking Sirius (lots of SS's)

On the StorySilence site (ssssss), I finally got up a way for people to share their favorite books or stories or movies or music, that include strong moments of silence.

By Laure Edwards Reminick

Integrate wisdom from the editor, and keep marching towards publish date

I received feedback from an editor (I paid him), who is a published author with a "shelf full of books." And the verdict is: a saleable novel.  (Wheeeeee!)

I asked for what would be necessary to take the story to its next level. And the gentleman provided me with basically, these suggestions:

Give the protagonist more attitude. so the reader can know what she's thinking and feeling

Also for the antagonist, (though in the 17 chapters I sent in, the REAL bad guy is not yet clear)

More description of the characters, then include periodically as markers along the way

At the beginning of each scene, give the reader more of a clue, where is the action and what's going on

Can do this, with more description -- include random but specific details (but not too much)

Use more of the senses (but not too much)


In a scene: first three paragraphs, establish the setting
then the meat of the scene, with minimal frills, except more experience through the senses


Dialogue: give the reader some anchor, especially in a long dialogue, by a note of how the speakers are interacting or reacting -- other than what they're saying.
IE: Run hand through the hair  
caress the stone column
gaze out over the ocean


I've been working like that irritating bunny in my garden, integrating all this. And no doubt, it makes the story come alive. Someday, I'll get to that bunny.

Still have a ridiculously close publishing date (to self-publish). But this is an "auspicious time." So, it's worth it to push.

By Laure Edwards Reminick

2nd Draft Completed: Publish this Puppy

It's been more than two months since I've published a post. Besides life, I've been working, working, writing, writing on completing the second draft of Seeking Sirius. Ta Daaaaa!  Done!

In the first half, about 85% of the scenes are brand new. That took three and a half months.

Second half, not one new scene. But everything had to be integrated with the new scenes and characters from the now vastly improved first half.

Overall, I'm happy with it.

The beta readers are happy with it.

Maybe tomorrow, or soon after, I'll find out if the freelance editor I hired for a review recommends A LOT of improvements. Or just a few.  I can't wait to see that input.

Anyway, June is a very good time to publish, according to my brilliant husband (expert at forecasting the future, we call him swamiji)

So, I'm working on the websites, designing a book cover, and hoping I can get the manuscript to the publisher I've chosen with enough time to get it all done for publishing on June 11.

I'm vibrating, like a sheltie dog on first sight of a new flock of sheep.

By Laure Edwards Reminick

Writing about Religion

I am drafting Chapter 13.

And appropriately, religion will be a subcontext in this chapter. Lucky or nonlucky for whom, I wonder.  Me, probably, one way or another.

I will not specify my target. That would be too easy, and probably throw the reader right out of the narrative.

I will endeavor to be fair.

And if I'm not in the first, second, third or fourth drafts.  Thank you, God, there will be the fifth and sixth drafts.

In the meantime, I'm having fun being mean.  And absolutely, positively, not religious. At all.

By Laure Edwards Reminick

Beats, Telling, and Point of View

Okay, my beta readers are sounding happy. No snoring from behind the screen, er, page.

But, I think I'm gonna have to do some changing.

Beats in dialogue: A beat in dialogue is that short or long pause that allows the reader's brain to keep up with the action. It avoids the machine-gun feeling of one line of dialogue after another, after another, after another.

Actually, I think I may generally get this into my dialogue.

Perhaps I learned about beats as a high school flute player. Keeping time with the tubas and the drums -- even when marching around on the football field in a too-big uniform -- may have stuck with me during the decades after. The ballet teacher in the loft at Broadway and 74th Street in NYC thought so. I was abysmal at doing the right steps at the right time. But I kept on the beat, every time, with SOME kind of step. The teacher's comment that I must have played an instrument (since I was hitting the beat) was small consolation for the looks of pity from the experienced dancers around me (since I was missing almost every type of step).

Anyway. Beats in dialogue: got it.


Telling vs. Showing: Now, I thought I was doing pretty well with this. But from reading "The First 50 Pages," by publisher Jeff Gerke, I'm thinking I'm gonna need to do some revising. Dang.

In particular, Gerke recommends absolutely no flashbacks in the first 50 pages. Agents and editors, supposedly, are likely to fling said manuscript across the room and then go over and jump up and down on it. And then, of course, reject it.

I'm guilty: The story has at least two flashbacks (Chapters 2 and 3), to a scene when the item that brings onto my heroine all the story's trouble is handed to her. Oy. Not sure what to do about this.


Point of View: In this second draft, I am introducing and fleshing out an important character much sooner. Essentially, the romance. This adds much-needed drama early on in the story.

I wrote the scene where the heroine meets the romance interest in alternating Points of View. I thought I got each part of the scene clearly separate. Actually, I was kind of proud of my cleverness.

But, supposedly the rule of thumb is: One Point of View per scene. All my pretty efforts, slashed and changed. Again, dang.

But this is the Writer's Way.

By Laure Edwards Reminick

Beta Readers; Learning from the pros

In searching around for how published authors run their websites and blogs, I came across a woman who invites most anybody to be a beta reader -- to read the first or second draft simply by signing up on her website (also a nifty manner for accumulating an email list).

I'm not that brave, yet. But I do, now, have a few trusted friends reading the chapters almost as I produce them. I am keeping a few chapters ahead.

I am working on the first story, "Seeking Sirius," which was badly in need of a rewrite in the first part, because of the risk of people dying of boredom.

The rewrite is moving along nicely, I think. No beta readers have perished.



Something I like about this whole fiction-writing experience is all the generous support of other writers available. Some free. Some paid. But all offered. Not hoarded, so that only their books get published.

I've learned a huge amount -- all the easier because I made the mistakes, so can recognize when an answer comes my way.

One example is a recent decision to move a scene. Actually, kind of turn it into a spoiler.

But by moving this one scene, from right after the climax, to comprising the whole of Chapter 1, I think -- I hope -- the tease will make readers want to read on, to find out HOW did that happen.

I learned about this technique from a book by James Scott Bell ("Revision and Self-Editing for Publication, 2nd ed").  And was prompted to use this particular technique, out of the many in his book, by my father, who read in 2012 about 300 novels. He's retired, and a speed reader. And he's also a pretty good judge of what works.

He will be a beta reader for me, at some point. We've agreed to be gentle about that, me being his daughter, and all that. But, Dad, I heard you, and I acted on one of your comments.

By Laure Edwards Reminick

Princess rises again, as an Antagonist

In my continuing efforts to cut the boring stuff, and turn around the first part of the first book into a FASCINATING read, I've come up with a role for a Princess: pain in the tuckus to Alexa.

This particular princess I didn't even have a clue about until about halfway through the second book, when one of the male protagonists mentioned a woman who helped him through rough times, "made" him who he became, so to speak.

This princess will be extremely jealous of all the attention going to Alexa.

And will come up with probably some very unprincess-like methods of making life difficult for the main protagonist.

JUST what the doctor ordered for a dragging story line.....

By Laure Edwards Reminick