Good morning, Ladies ~

I hope everyone had a wonderful Father’s Day weekend. Ours was filled with yard work and cabin remodeling, which left me so exhausted that I fell asleep on the couch last night before I posted this piece.

Who remembers this question from many years ago: “How many licks?”

I recently finished the sixth book in my Stoneybrook Mystery Series, “Fatal Falls.” When I begin a Stoneybrook novel, I’ve fleshed out the basics, such as what joys or challenges my heroine, Harley Harper, is facing. What crime was committed by my dark and twisty villain that Sheriff Wyatt Stone and his deputies will need to solve? What issues or romantic tidbits might make Wyatt and Harley’s relationship interesting? Of course, I also need to create entertaining situations for my supporting characters and animal actors, too.

Once I’m ten chapters in, I usually have all these plot points introduced, and then I’m off to the races, headed for the “The End” finish line.

When I write a book, I carry the storyline around in my head and love when a fabulous idea for a character pops into my mind. Generally, this plot point will be important to my character’s story arc. I write the scene in my mind, then add it to my list of plans for my characters.

And hence the question: How many licks? Except insert words for licks. The answer is so, so many! I mean, seriously, there are a lot of … the, this, that, is, was, said, he, she, them, they, who, what, when, where, etc. Even though I can’t wait to place the various scenes I’ve conjured up, I know I need to set up each scenario. Keep the reader engaged with other aspects of the story until they reach what I believe is a wonderful plot turn.

So, I plod along, one important word after another. When I reach the middle (or what I estimate to be the middle) of the book, I can tell the storyline is heading in the right direction. Excitement builds since I know I’m getting close to the places I want my previously developed ideas to go. Imagine my frustration when the story takes a slight detour from my intended path, changing where those fabulous ideas will go. Two of the four excellent plot points will now be near and at the end of the book.

I wanted to create a sense of separation in Harley and Wyatt’s romance. We find Harley dealing with a pregnant stray Lab, a blind horse, and her seeing-eye donkey, not to mention her bestie, Busy, is avoiding her. Wyatt is juggling a murdered family friend, a body in Broken River, a missing woman, and the search for hidden gold. And what love story doesn’t need a little strife to keep readers on their toes? In this plot point scene, we find Wyatt and Harley at a country honky tonk bar. When a woman from Wyatt’s past escorts him to the dance floor, Harley watches from the sidelines as he leads the mysterious female in a slow, sensual version of the country swing. How many words did it take to arrive at this scene? 68,044

Fast forward to 119,748 words, where we find Wyatt and Harley fishing as part of a plan to locate a killer Wyatt has been hunting for over a year. When the killer realizes he’s close to being captured, he puts his escape plan in motion, and in another 4,272 words, my villain finally meets the fitting ending I had planned for him from the very beginning of the book. It only took 124,020 words to get there. I breathe a sigh of relief when my villain meets his end, thinking I’m close to typing “The End.” Oh, silly me …

After I placed the first plot point at the halfway mark, I started to feel as if this book had a mind of its own and no intention of stopping at my initially planned word count. This becomes more obvious as I write my way toward the ending I’ve imagined from the very first words of “Fatal Falls.” But “The End” looms in the distance like a floating finish line. I take a deep breath and focus on ensuring all the story threads I’ve woven throughout the book are resolved.

Do Harley and Busy find their way back to their “bestie” status? Does Daisy, the blind mare and her seeing-eye donkey, Mo, find their forever home? And will Maggie, the Lab, survive a difficult puppy delivery?

So … finally, Chapter Ninety-Eight is ready to be written, and it only took 130,935 words to get to Harley and Wyatt’s closing scene, and the ever-elusive “The End” arrives at 132,185 words.

With this book, I’ve learned that my creative brain, along with my characters, plan to insert ideas about how a story will be told. It may have only taken three licks to get to the center of a tootsie pop, but I obviously have no idea how many words it takes to bring my stories to an end.

Happy Writing, Ladies ~

Have you heard the old saying, “I love him/her, flaws and all”? We all have flawed people in our lives that we love, right? Because we all have flaws. In order to write good stories, we need to make sure that our characters have flaws too.

Do my characters have flaws?

I had to stop and really think about that. When I made my character sketches, I don’t remember thinking about what their flaws were. Now I have to go back and do that because none of us want to read about perfect people.

In my Hood River Valley Mystery/Thriller series, Detective Liz Ellisen is the main character.  She is strong, courageous, smart, kind, friendly, did I mention smart? When I try and come up with flaws for her, the only thing I can think of off the top of my head is that she jumps into dangerous situations without thinking about the consequences. That makes her a good cop, but is it enough of a flaw to keep the reader reading? She’s also stubborn and won’t give up on an investigation until she solves the crime.

Spoiler alert here. If you don’t want to know, don’t read this paragraph! Liz has been through a lot. In the first book in the series, My Sister’s Keeper, her father and sister were both murdered, and she found out her husband was cheating on her with her best friend. Liz is strong. She mourned her family members, grieved for her marriage and friendship and moved on. There is a character in the series that Liz really, really doesn’t like. She often judges this character’s actions before she knows what’s going on. Liz is a great friend and she defends her friendships. She doesn’t, however, defend fools and there are a couple people in her life that fall into that category.

I recently read Mad Mabel. What a great bunch of characters. They were all flawed, even the 7-year-old girl. If you haven’t read it, it’s a great induction into flawed characters. But we can’t all write Mad Mabel. Someone has already written it, but we can learn from it and other stories with great characters.

I love writing about flawed characters. In my first book, The Truth Will Set You Free, a young woman is looking for her birth family. She traces her birth mother to a small town and a community that will do anything to protect their secrets and lies. This story has a dual timeline. It’s told through the daughter’s point of view, present day, and the mother’s point of view, thirty years earlier.

As much as I loved the main character, I loved writing about her mother even more. She was flawed, but she was a product of her upbringing and the way the town had treated her when she was a teenager.

In My Sister’s Keeper, I loved writing about cult leader, Jeremiah Swanson because he was bigger than life and extremely flawed.

And so it goes. Flawed characters are fun to write about and fun to read.

Did you watch the movie, The Blind Side? I loved Sandra Bullock’s character. She took in a young African American boy who didn’t have a home and gave him one. She did everything she could for that boy. And he came to love her, even calling her Mama. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend watching it if for nothing else, watch it for the character development.

One of my favorite books on building characters is Fiction is Folks by Robert Newton Peck. This book has been around for a while, but it’s great for understanding how to write compelling characters.

We’ve all read books where the characters are so well drawn that we feel we know them. We’ve also all read books, at least I have, where I get to the end of the story and realize it has a great story line, but the characters are interchangeable. This is especially true for crime fiction. Sometimes the author concentrates so hard on the plot that they forget to build strong characters. And you’re left feeling flat because the story didn’t touch your emotions.

The only way to write great stories is to write great characters. It doesn’t matter what genre you write, breath life into your characters. Your readers will thank you for it. They will read your book and come back for more.

by donalee Moulton

We’ve been talking about the editing process. We started at 30,000 feet looking at the big picture. Now we’re on terra firma.

In my book The Thong Principle: Saying What You Mean and Meaning What You Say, I discuss the various types of editing – and why they are all essential. For many of us, however, editing is synonymous with copyediting.

When you’ve finished the first draft of a book, a weight is lifted. Some writers do a dance of joy. But even as we celebrate an important milestone, we remind ourselves that there is more work to be done. The book needs to be read – line by line – for consistency, conciseness, and clarity. That is the heart of copyediting.

Copyediting is like minor surgery. The impact can be significant, but structural changes and in-depth revisions are not necessary (or have already been done).  This type of editing, the most common for most of what we write, involves editing a document for style, flow, and clarity. It also requires ensuring a consistent tone and pacing. Publishers often call it line editing.

Editors Canada offers the following overview for stylistic editing, or line editing. For many writers, this is what they’re doing when they are copyediting. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what we call it as long as we do it.

Stylistic Editing

Editing to clarify meaning, ensure coherence and flow, and refine the language. It includes:

• eliminating jargon, clichés, and euphemisms
• establishing or maintaining the language level appropriate for the intended audience, medium, and purpose
• adjusting the length and structure of sentences and paragraphs
• establishing or maintaining tone, mood, style, and authorial voice or level of formality

What’s a Copyeditor To Do

Here are six areas of focus to help ensure your writing resonates with your audience and achieves your purpose.  When you look closely at these elements, you sharpen the writing and the plot. Readers are more likely to be carried along by your words. There will be no head scratching and no rereading to make the meaning is clear.

Check for:

ONE: CLARITY
Look to see if you are using:

• Long sentences that could confuse readers
• Big words readers could stumble over
• Uncommon words that will furrow their brows
• A tone that distracts or conflicts with the content

Bottom line: Make sure the meaning of what you write can’t be misinterpreted.

TWO: TRANSITIONS

• Between sentences
• Between paragraphs
• Movement in time, place, subject

Transitions aren’t usually complex. They flow naturally moving readers through prose with short, everyday words like “however,” “so,” and “then.”

THREE: CONCRETENESS

• Facts and figures
• Specific language
• Action verbs
• Active voice

Readers want us to paint a picture for them – one they can see and one they can believe in.

FOUR: REPETITIVENESS

• Are specific ideas repeated unnecessarily?
• Are words used more than once in sentences? In paragraphs?

Tip: Avoid summarizing. Readers don’t require it, and it slows them down.

FIVE: COMPLETENESS

• Are the 5Ws and how answered?
• Are there any unanswered questions when there shouldn’t be?

Have you emphasized the most important question: Why?

SIX: FLOW

• Does the content make sense
• Do the words move smoothly

Find out for yourself.  Read your writing out loud.