A Note to My Readers

To My Readers,

My life, as so many times before, has taken an unexpected turn. At least this time it's for the better.

This new orientation forces me to make a decision as to what aspects of my life must be sacrificed to this interesting new direction. As my novel is a top priority in my life, I will not allow that to suffer. As with other parts of my life, my blog is one of my daily pursuits that will undergo a reduction in the amount of time I can dedicate to it. In that vein, I will continue to post, but on a regular versus a daily basis.

I do hope you understand and I thank you all for your past and continued support.

C. Patrick Schulze

Author of the emerging novel, "Born to be Brothers"

Does Your Novel Suffer From Flat Writing?

by C. Patrick Schulze

Listen to a PODCAST of this article.

One bane of the writer's existence is flat writing that comes off to your reader as dull or lacking impact. It slips into writers' work with little notice and will destroy a wonderful novel in no time at all.

How do you determine if your writing is flat? Allow people you don't know to read your work. They'll inform you in a hurry. However, the best way is to keep your eye open for how you respond to your reading. If it doesn't "wow" you, it's flat.

Here are some tips to overcome flat writing.

     1. Cut, Cut, Cut

     2. Choose Your Nouns and Verbs with Care

     3. Eliminate Passive Voice

     4. Play with Your Words

     5. Trust Your Muse

Let's now look at each of these in more detail.

Cut, Cut, Cut: If your writing sounds flat, it's often due to excessive words that don't add to the plot or even the meaning of your scene. To overcome this, review each word as to its necessity in your novel. Let's consider the following example.

     "Jason went to the store to pick up his weekly groceries."

If we review this sentence, we see much of it is unimportant. Right away, we can drop the phrase, "went to the store," as this action is obvious by the word, "groceries." We might also be able to cut "weekly," unless this time period is needed for the plot. Your final sentence might be:

     "Jason picked up his groceries."

Better, but still pretty dull, don't you think?

Choose Your Nouns and Verbs with Care: Let's consider the corrected sentence above for this example. If we just read the words, there's little interest even in our corrected sentence. After all, grocery shopping is about as mundane as life gets. So, let's pay attention to the NOUNS AND VERBS to see if we can't spice this puppy up. What if we rewrote that sentence as follows:

     "Jason raced to grab his groceries."

You can see by choosing more specific verbs, this sentence came alive. With the word, "raced," all of a sudden we've instilled the sense of speed or pace, and thus, more interest. The secret, of course, is to choose the correct verbs and nouns to fit the scene.

Eliminate Passive Voice: We've all heard about the inherent weakness of Passive Voice in fiction. It's sin is the way it makes it more difficult for a reader to tell who's doing what. And a slow read, is a boring read. There's more on PASSIVE VOICE here.

Play with Your Words: Sometimes writers get so caught up in the minutia of the craft of writing, we forget to write out of the box, so to speak. Go ahead and try something new and unusual. Write that simile the way it popped out of your head. Go on and use that odd description or that risky scene.

After you do this, set it aside for a while then review it to see if it still works for you. If it does, leave it in. If it doesn't, well, reread suggestion number one of this article.

Trust Your Muse: As with recommendation number four, set things aside then go back and reread your work. This allows you to forget the subtle nuisances of your thought process when you first wrote out whatever comes off as flat.

As you return to your work, if you're not sure if the words you've chosen enhance your novel, listen to that nagging voice from deep within you. That's your Muse and she's rarely wrong. Don't try to outthink her or rationalize away your rejection of her coaxing. Just trust the woman. She's your best friend in life, let alone in your writing.

If your writing is flat, disinteresting, dull, lifeless or any of those other synonyms, readers will put your book down. Worse than that, they'll create a negative buzz about your novel. Focus on the most compelling writing you can produce and things will fall in line for you.

Has your work ever suffered from flat writing? What did you do to overcome it?

Until we meet again, know I wish for you only best-sellers.

C. Patrick Schulze

Author of the emerging novel, "Born to be Brothers"

10 Top Novel Writing Mistakes

by C. Patrick Schulze

Listen to a PODCAST of this article.

I don't know about you, but I learned to write, and am still learning to write, the hard way. I made the novel writing mistakes and then figured out what I should have done. I'm certain it's the same for many, if not most, novel writers.

Regardless of how you learn, if you keep your eyes open for these top ten novel writing mistakes, your novel will have a stronger chance of acceptance.

Beyond the common errors in spelling, word use and punctuation, I feel the top ten novel writing mistakes are:

1. Weak Characterization

2. Ineffective Dialogue

3. Poor Plotting

4. Point of View Errors

5. Flat Writing

6. Too Much Backstory

7. Summarizing

8. Failing to Target Your Writing to Your Audience

9. Lists

10. Too Much Description

Let's look at each of these in a bit more detail, shall we?

Weak Characterization: It is imperative you serve your readers a healthy diet of characters with believable motivations, realistic actions and fully formed relationships. You reader needs to know why your major characters do what they do and why they feel the way they do. Read more about CHARACTERIZATION.

Ineffective Dialogue: Dialogue is one of the trickiest aspects to a novel. It must sound like people speaking to each other when, in fact, character conversations are nothing like conversations between people. Your novel's dialogue must be much more compact and plot focused, yet, you must retain the personal aspect of it. Read more about DIALOGUE.

Poor Plotting: Plot is the bread and butter of your novel, and a well structured plot is a blend of art, psychology and the craft of writing. An effective plot requires, pace, motivations, a believable storyline, character arcs and so much more. Read more about PLOT.

Point of View Errors: POV relates to which character sees the action that transpires within your plot. Irregular shifts in POV proves difficult to the reader, and maybe even worse, POV errors can creep into your novel with little trouble. The secret is to reserve each character's POV to a single chapter. Here's more on POV.

Flat Writing: Flat writing occurs when you input narrative or dialogue that has no meaning to the plot. It shows you've lost control over your story due to lack of a plan, lost interest or maybe something as simple as you're tired. When you find narrative or dialogue that doesn't move your story forward, it's time to edit it out.

Too Much Backstory: Backstory is anything that came before chapter one. It's history. The problem is backstory tends to stop the novel's momentum. More often than not, it's not necessary to the story and should be eliminated. If backstory is necessary, work it into your story in small nibbles rather than large bites of information and only after the major plot is developed. There's more on BACKSTORY here.

Summarization: This harkens back to the classic saw of "Show. Don't tell." In lieu of simply stating a fact in your narrative, develop this information by way of character actions and dialogue. For example, don't simply say your character is good at math. Have a scene where his math skills are put to the test and he excels. There's more on "SHOW, DON'T TELL," in this article.

Failing to Target Your Novel to Your Audience: Most writers, especially those new among us, often fail to come to grips with the fact your writing is a business venture. As a consequence, novels are often written without a focus on those who will eventually purchase your product. For example, if your story lends itself to the male market, you don't want too much emotional action. In contrast, if your market is the adult female, you'll not want too much in the way of blood and guts. Save that for your teenage male audience.

Lists: A common sign of a novice writer is his use of lists within their novel. A classic example of this is with the description of a meadow. The new writer will name all the flowers in the field. It's usually better to paint a verbal picture with only a few details and allow the reader's mind to fill in the blanks. In the example of a meadow, you might mention the wavering patches of red and violet as the wind sweeps over the ground in lieu of the list of flowers.

Too Much Description: In the same light as lists, the readers imagination is what makes your novel come to life. Too much description imposes your imagination upon the reader. With this in mind, don't tell him the cloud formation looks like an elephant, unless the elephant is necessary to the story. Instead, tell them the clouds created formations in the sky and allow them to "see" whatever they formations they wish. This will make the story much more personal, and thus enjoyable, to your reader.

Are there more common errors in novel writing? You bet. However, if you focus on these ten early in your writing career, you'll be well on your way to that elusive well-received novel.

Now, which of these errors do you commit and what have you done to fix them?

Until we meet again, know I wish for you only best-sellers.

C. Patrick Schulze

Author of the emerging novel, "Born to be Brothers"