Month: April 2017

The Dunning-Kruger Effect and Writing

~ Amber Foxx ~ 6 Comments

You may have heard of this phenomenon, but if you haven’t, here’s the short version: studies by Dunning and Kruger found that competence and confidence don’t always go together. Being a professor, I’ll give an academic example. Students who have the least knowledge of a subject often think they did best on the exam. They lack the foundation from which to question themselves and are amazed when they get Fs. Students who understand more of the material tend to be critical of their performance, in part because they assume others worked as hard as they did. Also, they know enough to know they aren’t perfect. Their sighs of relief when they get As and Bs are sincere. They had doubts. Confidence goes back up when students have real mastery, but not as high as the confidence of the truly ignorant.

What does this have to do with writing? I don’t know about you, but I had no idea how bad the first novel I wrote was at the time I finished it. The theme and the setting still speak to me, and the characters have potential. The writing, however, makes me cringe. I know enough to recognize its faults now and am glad I didn’t inflict it on anyone. Salvaging it would be more work than it’s worth.

Having reached competence but not genius, I’m now in the dip in the confidence curve. I’m stunned that my critique partners haven’t suggested major changes in my work in progress. They noticed places where I could improve it, of course, but I expected they would find problems in the plot, and they didn’t. They said the mystery works. Maybe it flowed well because it started with material I cut from an early draft of the book before it, Ghost Sickness, and because it deals with themes I care about: ethics, spirituality, health and illness, and the exploitation of desperate people.

Nonetheless, before sending it to the next set of readers, I’m going through it to see where it could tighten up further now that I’ve been away from it for a couple of months, drafting the book that follows. So far, I’ve kept myself from acting on the urges of the little demon in my head that’s telling me I should rearrange huge chunks and cut others. I can think of important scenes I almost cut from two other books, scenes which turned out to resonate deeply with readers, so I’m not giving in to the demon, but I wonder if I’ll be relieved or alarmed if the next set of critiques don’t tell me to tear it apart and start over.

Over the Easter weekend, I did my first ever book signing event. After ten years onstage acting and then twenty-odd years as a college professor, I didn’t have jitters about either the reading or the question-and-answer session. It was informal and enjoyable. I sold a few books and got feedback that I should narrate my own audio books, so I trust that my perception of success is not a Dunning-Kruger effect. I plan to try reading the WIP aloud after I complete the current round of revisions and see if it feels alive and ready for an audience. I’ve never done that as part of my self-editing process, but it may be exactly what I need. The actor in me may notice pacing and energy in ways the silent reader doesn’t. If I hear it and cringe as if it were that old first manuscript, I’ll know I have more work to do. If it plays, then it’s ready for the next beta readers, and I’m ready for whatever they tell me. The challenging thing about the Dunning-Kruger effect is that when it applies to us, we can’t tell. One of many reasons I can’t live without my betas.

Writing Can be Painful Sometimes

~ marilynm ~ 2 Comments

Many times I’ve written how wonderful it is to be a writer, to be in control of my imaginary world, to find out what is happening in the lives of the characters I’ve come to know and love.

However, there is another side to this whole process–one that can be agonizing. Right now I’m writing my next Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery. It has some similarities to an Agatha Christie novel in that it is about a group of people confined to a small space. Trying to keep the momentum up, with enough action, and scary developments isn’t easy.

Another painful part of writing is when a book you’ve nurtured along and feel like it’s one of your very best, doesn’t sell as well as you hoped. Then you wonder if maybe it wasn’t as good as you thought, or maybe you fell down on the job when it came to promoting.  There are times when I’ve even wondered why I keep on writing.

Okay, so if I’m not getting famous or rich from spending so much time on writing, why do I continue?

The simple answer is I am compelled to keep on writing. I’ve written my whole life–what would I do if I didn’t write? How could I ignore all those plots that keep popping into my head? The ideas that spring up just as I’m falling asleep.

How about you, fellow writers, do you ever feel the same?

This is my latest Rocky Bluff P.D. mystery, Unresolved, which I wrote as F. M. Meredith. As always, I hope readers will enjoy it.

Blurb:

Rocky Bluff P.D. is underpaid and understaffed and when two dead bodies turn up, the department is stretched to the limit. The mayor is the first body discovered, the second an older woman whose death is caused in a bizarre manner. Because no one liked the mayor, including his estranged wife and the members of the city council, the suspects are many, but each one has an alibi.

https://www.amazon.com/Unresolved-F-M-Meredith/dp/1938436245/

Marilyn

Unresolved

LETTING YOUR CHARACTERS TELL THE STORY

~ casojka123 ~ 2 Comments

Dialog: it’s the part of the story that makes the characters come alive on the page. When characters speak and how they speak create the atmosphere of the story.  Stories without dialog are told, not shown.

So, you, the writer, have to know your characters well enough so that when they speak, they sound like real people talking the way real people do.

What’s the purpose of dialogue, anyway. Is it to advance the story? Is it to reveal the characters? Is it just to break up the page?

I guess it’s all of those. Dialogue can be used to move the story along. But beware of the dialogue that is used to have one character tell another things that the second character already knows but that the reader doesn’t.

For example:

Smith said to Jones, “I’m glad you’re in on the Alpha Project, Jones. The Alpha Project is definitely the future of communication. You have the skills we need to capture the evil one.  I saw the way you managed that matter with the doctor, and I know you won’t have a problem with the evil one.. Our plan is to use you to scare him into letting himself be caught.”

It would certainly be much more interesting if we saw the way Jones managed the matter with the doctor and why he (or she) isn’t afraid of the evil one. In fact, all of what Smith said could be action, not dialogue. This kind of dialogue makes the reader yawn.

You need to be aware of who your characters are and how they talk. I’m not a fan of dialect and will usually bypass books where the characters obviously talk like people who live in Appalachia or Louisiana. I think the writer can convey the way the characters talk without resorting to dialect.  However, if you’re going to set a story in the deep South, for example, you may have to use some dialect. Just, for my sake, try to minimize it.

But you have to know your characters well enough so that they not only sound like real people but people who are different from one another. I have some difficulty with the male protagonist, Greg Lamont, in my Florida series. He’s a police detective and not a great talker, but I find myself having him talk more than he should.  He sometimes sounds like a woman, and I need to pare down his dialogue.

Andi Battaglia, Greg’s partner, talks more, probably because she’s female. She talks a lot when she’s nervous, kind of a character flaw. I need to keep that in mind when I’m writing.

There are differences of opinion among writers as to whether to use “he said,” or “she said,” to forget them entirely, or to always, or most of the time, indicate some action that identifies the speaker. I know I have read passages from writers, where there is not even a “he said” or “she said,” which means the reader must guess which of the characters said what. Sometimes that’s easy, sometimes it’s not, and sometimes the reader has to go back to check who was last identified as the speaker and count down.

Using something that indicates how the words were spoken or using an action to go with the dialogue is a good way to get the reader to follow. For example, “He said with a forced smile;” “She said as she picked up the cup of tea;” “He said, shifting in his chair.” But you can’t always do that, and sometimes I find myself so carried away with what the characters are saying that I don’t look at them as they’re talking.

You can reveal a lot of information about your characters simply by the way you have them speak.  I’m always learning new ways to use dialogue.  What are your thoughts about dialogue?

Writing Would Be Perfect If…

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 7 Comments

by Janis Patterson

I mean it. Writing would be so perfect if it weren’t for the readers.

I know, that is a very incendiary statement, but it’s true. We’re asked to live up to readers’ expectations without being given much of a hint as to what those expectations are. Or what they’re going to be in six months or a year, after some big unexpected blockbuster shows up and turns everything we thought we knew into a fruit salad.

Have you ever noticed how so many of those big unexpected blockbusters are usually done by people who have never published a book before? Without the need to cater to a pre-conceived notion of what readers (and publishers!) want, they write what they want. But I’ll bet there are many many more who write what they want and never get by the second reader at an agent’s or publisher’s office. It’s the one that gets through that messes everything up for us working professional mid-list writers. We’ve finally (we think!) worked out the reading habits of our demographic and adjusted our plotting/writing accordingly and some of us make a fairly decent living doing that.

Then – boom! Some off the wall writer hands in a new style of book and suddenly that’s what everyone is wanting. I’ll bet all those writers who hit the jackpot aren’t trying to make a living off their writing, that they have jobs to pay their rent and bills, but they don’t mind messing things up for the rest of us. Humph!

It has become a bad joke in the writing industry that publishers are eagerly seeking something like [insert name of current bestseller here] – something just the same, but different. I have known writers who start to growl menacingly when told this and publishers don’t seem to understand that such a statement is not really good corporate communication.

Sadly, though, it isn’t just publishers and agents. I have talked to readers about this phenomenon and am astonished at how easily the little darlings are led – of course, they are the same people who rush to buy a detergent that screams “NEW” and “DIFFERENT” when the only things new and different about the product are that the boxes are smaller and the price higher.

I have talked to readers (in both romance and mystery, as I write both) who are upset with the new fashion of genre bending. I recall one most decisive woman who hated the idea, saying “When I read a story I want this to happen, and then this, and then this.” She was not happy when I asked if she were so rigid in her reading desires why didn’t she just read the same book over and over again and save herself some money.

Her reply was fit for neither print nor pixels.

I guess you really can’t please everyone. Sigh.

Walk the Walk by Paty Jager

~ patyjag ~ 2 Comments

paty shadow (1)The whole reason I picked an amateur sleuth was to avoid having to be too technical with cop speak and legalese.

I’m working on Book 8, Fatal Fall, in the Shandra Higheagle Mystery series. Shandra has the flu and her boyfriend, Weippe County Detective Ryan Greer, has had more time in this book than in previous ones. I didn’t think this would be a problem. Usually Shandra is sleuthing, and Ryan is backing her up with his credentials. This book, he’s doing the investigating, and I find myself having to look up cop jargon and legal words.

My poor son-in-law who is in law enforcement has had more emails than he probably likes from his mother-in-law lately. 😉 I’ve also googled, and I remembered seeing a couple of blot posts on the crimescene yahoo group about cop speak.

I had a suspect who had been arrested before. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to say on felonies or misdemeanors. I googled and found a wonderful dictionary of legal terms that helped me out.

Misdemeanor

A lesser crime punishable by a fine and/or county jail time for up to one year. Misdemeanors are distinguished from felonies which can be punished by a state prison term. They are tried in the lowest local court such as municipal, police or justice courts. Typical misdemeanors include: petty theft, disturbing the peace, simple assault and battery, drunk driving without injury to others, drunkenness in public, various traffic violations, public nuisances, and some crimes which can be charged either as a felony or misdemeanor depending on the circumstances and the discretion of the District Attorney. “High crimes and misdemeanors” referred to in the U. S. Constitution are felonies.

Felony

A serious crime, characterized under federal law and many state statutes as any offense punishable by death or imprisonment in excess of one year. Under the early Common Law, felonies were crimes involving moral turpitude, those which violated the moral standards of a community. Later, however, crimes that did not involve moral turpitude became included in the definition of a felony. Presently many state statutes list various classes of felonies with penalties commensurate with the gravity of the offense. Crimes classified as felonies include, among others, Treason, Arson, murder, rape, Robbery, Burglary, Manslaughter, and Kidnapping.

I needed to know about warrants- I asked my son-in-law and Wikipedia.

Search warrant is a court order that a magistrate, judge or Supreme Court official issues to authorize law enforcement officers to conduct a search of a person, location, or vehicle for evidence of a crime and to confiscate any evidence they find.  Typically, a search warrant is required for searches police conduct in the course of a criminal investigation.

Since I am in the cop’s point of view so much, I needed to use words that I wouldn’t use for Shandra. This is where I remembered seeing, and I had thought I’d bookmarked, blogs that Lee Lofland had posted on the Crimescene and Sisters in Crime yahoo loops. I posted to the crimescene loop, and he sent me the URLs to the blog posts. Here they are for your viewing and perhaps writing pleasure.

http://www.leelofland.com/wordpress/cop-speak-wtf-did-he-say/

http://www.leelofland.com/wordpress/?s=cop+slang

All of this information will help to make my character, Detective Ryan Greer, sound as if he and I know what we’re talking about.

Have you ever come across a book where the character said or did something that didn’t jive with what you knew of their profession?

Paty

SH Mug Art