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Description in your fiction – let your readers use their imagination

When I’m reading fiction, and I come to a passage of description where the author goes into excruciating (to me) detail; describing every wrinkle in the fabric of a shirt, or every knot hole in a tree; I skip it. If I encounter a second such passage, I skip it. The third time, unless I’m reading the greatest story ever told (and, I’m still waiting to encounter that story), I stop reading. Long, overly-detailed passages of description, whether of character, setting, or . . . well, just about anything, stop the flow of the story, and leave you suspended in a kind of nether world outside the story, and for me, this is a complete buzz kill. I suspect that’s so for most readers.

Because I don’t like too much description, when I write, I try to avoid it as much as possible. This is not to say that there is no description in my stories—a certain amount is needed to set the scene for a reader. But, if you’re smart, you will allow the reader to use his or her imagination to fill in the details, which, in turn, pulls them deeper into the story.

Here’s an example. A character enters a house late at night. You wish to show that danger lurks in the shadows in every room. Following the principle of ‘show, not tell,’ you do not say ‘danger lurks in every room,’ but nor should you go overboard in trying to show that the character is entering a dangerous place. So, how, in a case like this, do you engage the reader’s imagination?

Let’s try something like this:

            “The door made a soft moaning sound as he eased it open. He stepped into the room, and the darkness seemed to reach out and grasp him by the throat, and press against his chest. The dust in the air felt like spiders crawling across his skin.”

Okay, let’s stop the description right there, and have our character do something, preferable something that evokes a sense of impending peril. If you like, you can insert short phrases later on to reinforce the sense of danger, just to keep the reader on his or her toes. Get the point? Did you get a few mental images of what lay ahead for this character? That’s how to do it.

Same thing goes for character descriptions. You don’t have to list every wart or wrinkle on a character. Paint it in broad strokes and let the reader fill in the rest, especially for supporting characters. I have a recurring character in my Al Pennyback mysteries, for example; Mom, the proprietor of the hero’s favorite restaurant. She’s known only as Mom, but some reader feedback tells me that some people think they know her. Here’s how I described her in one book in the series:  “Mom sat at her usual place at the end of the counter, near the cash register, looking out over her domain like some ancient Ethiopian queen. She wore a bright yellow, one-piece dress that, despite containing enough fabric to make a roomy two-man tent, barely contained her girth.”  Can you see Mom?  Bet you can.

That’s it for now. Keep writing.

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10 Things Beginning Writers do that Drive Readers and Editors Crazy

When you’re just starting out as a writer, it’s normal to make mistakes. Some of us are lucky, and we only have a few bloopers in our early manuscripts, while others struggle with loads of glitches. In my early years as a writer, I had more than my fair share.

I recently started doing assessing and proofreading of new manuscript submissions for a small publisher in New Zealand, and reading some of the work of first-time authors has reminded me of the things that one can do wrong when writing. So, for all you new writers out there, struggling to get that first novel in shape for submission to a publisher, or for indie publishing, following are the ten most frequently encountered, and most irritable problems I find in the work of beginning writers. They’re not in any particular order, such as frequency, seriousness, or degree of irritability, but I suppose that since I found them in this order in my notes from three recent jobs says something about the frequency with which they occur.  I hope you’ll find this useful as you prepare your own magnum opus.

  1. Too many characters. Life is full of people, but when you people your novel with too many named and identified characters it creates confusion. The reader is often left wondering who from the expansive list of characters is important, and who is just a walk-on, like ‘the security guard’ in the credits at the end of a film. It’s a good practice, in fact, to use this cinematic technique for characters who are included basically for filler to show that your imaginary world is populated. Another thing that crops up from time to time when there are too many characters is that some will have similar names, further adding to the confusion.
  2. Inconsistency in identifying characters. Have you ever read a story where a character was ‘Jonathan’ at the first introduction, but became ‘Mr. Jacobs,’ or ‘Jon’ later I the book? Not only have I found this, but in one manuscript I read, the main character was identified with three different names on the same page. My advice here; pick a name (for the narrative, because different other characters might refer to him or her by different names—although, I recommend even keeping this to a minimum) for your characters, and use it consistently throughout your manuscript.
  3. Too much detail. In most cases this is data dumping. The author has to tell us everything there is to know about every character, object, or place in the story. Don’t do it! When I’m reading for pleasure, and encounter this, I stop reading, and I’m pretty sure most readers do the same. As an editor, I’m often forced to endure it just to be able to evaluate the entire manuscript, but I can assure you that it does not endear me to that writer.
  4. Too much information. This is data dumping. In this case, the author has turned up tons of information about whatever, and feels compelled to share it with readers. Like overly detailed descriptions, please restrain yourself. This interrupts the flow of the story, and will turn the reader off, who is very likely to stop turning pages.
  5. Misuse of a thesaurus. Before you scream, pull out your hair, and stop reading, let me say that I basically have nothing against use of a thesaurus to improve and expand your vocabulary. As a matter of fact, on occasion, I will use it to find a word that better expresses the intent of a sentence than the one that first came to me. What some writers do, especially beginning writers, is use the thesaurus to change ‘common’ words to more ‘sophisticated’ ones in the mistaken belief that this makes their writing more ‘sophisticated.’ Their writing is peppered with pompous, grandiloquent terms that make it sound fake. Purple pose of the ilk, ‘He descended the stairs with magnificent importunity,’ instead of ‘he ran quickly down the stairs,’ will not impress most readers. Use the thesaurus sparingly, or even better, stop using it for a while.
  6. Head hopping. Have you ever read a story in which two or more characters are in a scene and you can never tell from which characters’ point of view the story is being told because the writer moves from one’s viewpoint to another? This is called head hopping. In fiction, you want your readers to identify with your character, preferably your main character, and get into your story. When you move from the thoughts or feelings of one character to another within the same scene, you evict the reader from the story in a state of confusion. Advice here: stick to one character’s viewpoint within a scene—actually, I prefer to give each character his or her own chapter—and have a clear demarcation when you wish to switch to another character. I’ve read manuscripts where the writer moved through the heads of three different characters on the same page, and in one really egregious case, between two characters in the same paragraph. Some writers do this and try to cover it by saying they’re writing in third person omniscient. But they use the character’s voices when they do it, rather than the omniscient god/narrator, knocking the pins from under that alibi right away.
  7. Verb aspect shifts. Some writers make changes in aspect without being aware of the subtle difference in meaning this can cause. For example, in unmotivated shifts between the simple past and past perfective forms of verbs, such as ‘I worked as a writer for twenty years,’ as compared to ‘I have worked as a writer for twenty years.’ Do you see the subtle difference in meaning between these two sentences? The first implies that you no longer work as a writer, while the second means that you’re still writing. If that’s what you mean to say, fine, but if the rest of your passage implies that you’re still writing, you will have lost your reader.
  8. Improper verb tense shifts. A problem that I’ve encountered in a number of manuscripts that I’ve reviewed is the tendency of many writers to begin a story or passage in past tense, and suddenly shift to present tense, as in ‘the building was on Sixth Street, the entrance, however, is on Fourth Street.’ This is a trite example, but if you read it carefully, you can see how this can jar a reader. Especially if it happens more than once, as I’ve often encountered. Here’s another example that is in a book I recommend to the participants in my professional writing workshop: ‘Last week I was walking along a street when this man walks up to me and says . . .’. I know that many people speak like this, but in writing it’s considered an error, unless it’s a character speaking.
  9. Noun modifier order. When describing a person, place, or thing and you wish to show more than one trait, it’s important to list them in a logical order. Here’s an example that I encountered in a manuscript: ‘The blond, German, tall man.’ This sounds silly, I know, but I’ve seen this and worse, especially when the writer stacks modifiers, that is, uses three or more nouns to describe an object, person or place. First, it’s a good idea to limit such modifiers, or adjectives, to no more than three, but if you feel it absolutely essential, the following order should be used:
    1. Determiners and post-determiners – articles, numerals and other limiters
    1. Observation/opinion – limiter adjectives such as perfect, interesting, etc.
    1. Size – adjectives depicting physical size (e.g. small, big)
    1. Age – adjectives denoting age (e.g. young, ten-year-old)
    1. Shape – adjectives such as round, swollen, shrunken.
    1. Color – self-evident. (e.g. black, tan, pale)
    1. Origin – source (e.g. German, extraterrestrial)
    1. Material – what something is made of (e.g. wool, metallic)
    1. Qualifier/Purpose – this is a final limiter which sometimes forms a compound noun, such as rocking chair or book cover

      Using the above list, the example sentence would then be correctly written, ‘the tall, blonde, German man.’ This one was easy, and I imagine most of you figured out the correct answer before even reading the list. Keep it in mind, though, as you write, and you can avoid this all too common glitch.

  1. Overuse of similes. This is one that really bugs me, both as an editor and a reader. Similes are a good way to liven up your writing. Take the following examples. She was happy as compared to She was like a cloud on a warm summer day. See the difference? Now, what do you think of the following? She was like a cloud on a warm summer day, flitting like a butterfly from flower to flower, her voice like the babbling of a crystal stream. Okay, I just made that up, but I think you get the picture. Too many similes make your writing seem contrived, and the two comparisons, each fine on its own, are a bit over the top. Curb the compulsion to make so many comparisons, and for heaven’s sake, don’t do it in one sentence.

These are not the only mistakes beginning writers make, but they’re the ones that drive me crazy. As an editor, I spend countless hours annotating them in manuscripts and searching for ways to convince the writer to delete them without bruising an ego or sounding too critical. As a reader, when I encounter them in a book, that book goes into my donation pile.

I hope this bit of advice from someone who has not only suffered them countless times, but who—a confession here—has committed them in my own early writing career, will help you to make your writing a joy to your editors and a source of endless entertainment for your readers.

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Some photos of the Washington, DC area’s second day of spring 2018

March 21, 2018, the second official day of spring, and here’s the view I have from my kitchen and family rooms in North Potomac, must outside Washington, DC. And, while it doesn’t show in the photos, the snow is still falling, and is forecast to continue to fall until late at night, putting most of the area on snow emergency lock-down.

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Spreading the word – selling books

For a couple of years now, I’ve being doing a monthly column for PnP Author Magazine, a creation of two ardent supporters of indie writers. The August issue of the magazine has an article I wrote on using speaking engagements as an opportunity to sell your books, or at a minimum, bring them to the attention of a wider audience.

Along with my article, you’ll find some other useful information for indie authors, so go on over and check it out at PnP Author Magazine.

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New Al Pennyback mystery, ‘Bad Girls Don’t Die,’ soon to be released

For fans of Al Pennyback, the DC-based PI will be back on the shelves soon in Bad Girls Don’t Die.  Here’s a look at the planned cover, and a sneak peek at the first two chapters.

Bad Girls Don't Die

Chapter 1

The first thing she noticed was the darkness. It wasn’t the dark, just able to make out vague shapes kind of darkness, but the stygian, can’t see your hand in front of your face kind of darkness. For a heartbeat, it frightened her, really, really frightened.
Was she dead, she wondered? Is this what death is; a great darkness, cut off from everything, a nothingness? If so, then hell, which is where she thought she surely was, was not the place of eternal fire as her grandfather had often threatened, but was, instead, a place of aloneness, a place of dark silence, which, she concluded rather quickly, was infinitely worse than being consigned to the fire along with all the other sinners—the bad people like her. At least, in the fiery pits, she could see others who were suffering the same fate. Here, alone in the darkness, she faced eternity the same way she had come into the world, alone and stripped bare.
All of this took place in a single heartbeat. Just enough time for her to know that she was not dead. At least, not yet.
And, after that single heartbeat, the oppressive darkness began to lift. As the irises of her eyes, which had for some reason contracted to pinpoints, began to open, the darkness was no longer so . . . dark. In fact, she began to be able to make out vague shapes. A light-grey rectangle high above her that might be a window of some sort, but it was either covered by a thin cloth, or painted over. Long, narrow rectangles that in time resolved themselves into wooden beams interlocked in a pattern of large squares above her head, and receding into the murky darkness in the distance. From this pattern, other beams ran straight down, ending at a grayish, dusty looking surface.
Piece by piece, her mind began to assemble what her eyes were seeing into a semblance of reality that she could comprehend. The beams were the supporting framework of a floor, with load-bearing beams, that indicated she was in a basement, and from her inability to see a far wall—she could feel the rasp of wallboard at her back—a rather large basement.
This was familiar. She’d spent a lot of time in basements in her life, or in what passed for a life since the untimely death of her parents when she was eleven years old. A basement was where she’d often been sent when she’d been ‘bad,’ which was most of the time.
She tried moving, and found that she couldn’t move her hands apart. She could, however, bend them, so she did. Holding them near her eyes, she could just make out the silvery color of duct tape, several layers of it wrapped tightly around her wrists, pinning them together. She tried moving her legs, and was rewarded with a clanking sound, and the rough scraping of something hard against her ankles.
Well now, this is new. Never before when she’d been sent to the basement had she been shackled. Sure, the door to the ground floor had been locked, but she’d had free run of the place.
Had she been really so bad this time? Had she done something to merit this extra punishment? In that heartbeat of time it had taken her brain to determine her location, it had not determined the why. A significant piece was missing.
Why am I here?
Then, as her vision became clearer, she realized that this was not the basement with which she was familiar. This was a place she’d never been before.
Where am I?
As her heart rate, which had been she now realized, as fast and loud as a kettle drum, slowed, and her breathing, which had been a rapid panting, returned to something approaching normal, her thoughts began to clear, and they weren’t comforting.
Is this where I’m supposed to die? Am I now to pay the price for the bad thing I did? What did I do?
She found that the thought of dying did not itself trouble her as much as dying alone in this dark place, to lie undiscovered for who knows how long. Would she be found some day, when she was nothing but a pile of yellowing bones, or would she be buried and forgotten, never to be found, when at some point in the future the structure above the basement collapsed into a pile of rubble, or was demolished and covered by some new construction. That thought bothered her.
I will not be forgotten. I will not die here.

 

 

Chapter 2

Buster and I were having a late lunch at Mom’s, a Friday tradition we’d recently established, but that we missed about every other week because one or the other of us was tied up with a case. I was having meat loaf with mashed potatoes and gravy, with four of Mom’s famous buttermilk biscuits on a saucer at the side of my plate, while he was attacking a pile of golden fried chicken, sweet corn, baked beans, and corn muffins. We were both drinking iced tea, mine unsweetened, his with so much sugar in it I could see the prisms of light refracted in the amber color.
Buster is Buster Mayweather, a detective lieutenant with the District of Columbia Metro Police, and one of my oldest friends, and Mom’s is . . . just Mom’s; a soul food diner that has been a presence on Sixteenth Street near U Street, in the renovated U Street corridor of Northwest DC, since Buster and I were still messing our diapers.
And, I am Al Pennyback, Albert Einstein Pennyback on my birth certificate, thanks to a mother who had a thing for the German scientist, and a dream that one day I would follow in his footsteps—I disappointed her by joining the army right after I graduated from high school—but, people who know me know better than to use my full name. To them, I’m just Al. To strangers, I’m Mr. Pennyback. I’m a private detective. I run a two-person shop on Fourth Street, just north of Fort Lesley J. McNair in the District’s Southwest section, where my partner, Heather Bunche, and I provide investigative services to people who can’t get help from the system, when we’re not serving papers or tracking down deadbeat clients on behalf of Holcombe, Stein and Chang, the law firm that has us on a ten thousand dollar per month retainer, thanks to the efforts of my other best friend, Quincy Chang, a colleague from my army days at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where I served in a special unit attached to Delta Force, and he was a Judge Advocate General officer serving in the JAG office at post headquarters.
When you add Sandra Winter, my girlfriend of long-standing, and Carlton ‘Blood’ Raine, an octogenarian former CIA field agent, you have the only five people on my list of friends—well, I guess you also have to add Buster’s wife, Alma, and his twins, Albert and Sandra, for whom Sandra and I are godparents. Not, mind you, that I’m an unfriendly person, but I have high standards, and they’re the only people who make the cut.
I have a few people who aren’t exactly friends, but are people I’m willing to talk to, so you can see I’m not a total recluse. In fact, I’m actually a quite nice person when you get to know me.
I watched Buster demolish several drumsticks, including biting off the knobby ends of the bones, chewing, and swallowing—to get at the marrow, he says. The amazing thing is, eating as much as fast as he does, he never seems to get indigestion. In fact, sometimes he seems like an alligator, swallowing his food whole rather than chewing it.
“What’s on your mind, bro?” he asked, snapping me out of my reverie.
I hadn’t realized that I was sitting there with my fork of meat loaf halfway to my mouth, looking through the plate glass window at the street beyond.
“Nothing,” I said, which was mostly true. It was nothing that needed to be the topic of conversation. “Just bored is all. Heather and I haven’t had a decent case for months, and I’m tired of sitting in my office looking at the cracks in the ceiling.”
It didn’t help that it was a Friday near the middle of September, and the weather was perfect. There are two times in the DC area when the weather is actually livable, mid-April to mid-May, and mid-September to mid-October. Except for the pollen, the spring is almost perfect, with bright flowers, moderate temperatures, and the beginning of short dresses on the Mall, while fall also has nice temperatures and the riot of autumn colors. With the area’s humidity, both summer and winter can be hell, with summer sweltering and winter biting cold. The good weather had apparently melted away the tendency to misbehave, because we’d had no cases come in over the transom since mid-July, and even Quincy’s law firm hadn’t sent us a case to work. Not that I mind taking their money for doing nothing, it’s just that I don’t like sitting around doing nothing. That’s the way my folks taught me, a day’s work for a day’s pay. The not liking being bored part is all mine.
“So, you’re bored, are you? Well, next case I get, I’ll let you tag along as an observer. Ain’t quite the same as actively investigating, but at least you won’t have to be sitting in your office staring at the walls.”
I’m not much of a passive bystander, but his offer was better than sitting in my office staring at the Potomac River and the Washington Ship Channel through the gaps in the trees surrounding the condos behind my office, or staring at my computer screen as the damn machine trounced me in yet another game of computer chess. Besides, Buster was working homicide now, so any case he got was likely to be interesting.
“Okay, you got yourself a deal,” I said.
Just at that very moment, his phone buzzed. He took it out.
“Mayweather,” he said, and then listened, nodding frequently. Finally, he said, “Okay, I’m rolling now. Tell the officer on scene I’ll be bringing a civilian observer with me.” He swiped the screen of his phone to turn it off and stuffed it back into his pocket. “How’s that for service, eh. You got something to do.”
“An interesting case?” I asked. It pretty much had to be, since he worked homicide. I just hoped it wasn’t a gang shooting or something, because they often left collateral damage in the form of innocent bystanders. I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies in my time, but kids still get to me.
“Just might be. We’ll know when we get there,” he said. “Drink your tea, and let’s roll. I’m parked around the corner, so follow me.”
I’d lucked out and found a spot almost directly in front of Mom’s plate glass window to park my bright green classic VW, which I affectionately call ‘The Bug,’ and for a change had actually arrived ahead of Buster.
“Okay, lunch is on me,” I said, draining my tea in one long gulp and heading for the counter where Mom, in all her 300-pound glory, wrapped in a lime-green one-piece made of enough material to make a four-man tent, waited near the register.
She smiled as I approached, holding out my credit card. Normally, she’d make a fuss if you didn’t eat all your food, and I’d left nearly half of mine on the plate, but she obviously had seen Buster on the phone, and knew the drill, so she just smiled and took my card.
“You enjoy yo lunch, hon?” she asked in that girlish voice of hers. I’ve never been able to figure out how such a tiny, beautiful voice comes out of such a large person.
“It was great, as usual,” I said. “Sorry we have to eat and run, though>”
“I know how it is,” she said, as she rang up the charges and ran my card. “That’s okay. Next time you two boys come in, I’m gon’ have somethin’ special fo you, okay?”
“I can hardly wait.” And, that was totally true. Mom’s food, prepared lovingly by her husband of a whole bunch of years, is probably putting Buster and me on the road to clogged arteries, but it brings back memories of my childhood, sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen while she fried chicken, vegetables, and bread—people in the part of Texas where I grew up fry just about everything—and, it tastes like what heaven must be like.
I grabbed the receipt from her, stuffed card and receipt in my pocket, and dashed out the door just as Buster came around the corner in his 2002 Electric Blue Buick Century. The engine growled, he’d had the factory V-6 swapped out for a V-8, as he tapped the gas pedal, and the damn thing seemed like it wanted to pounce on something. Despite the tricked-out engine, it was the most conservative looking car Buster had driven in a long time. In addition, it came of a Canadian assembly line, breaking his tradition of driving only American-made cars. “Besides,” he’d said, when I kidded him about it. “Canada is almost like America.”
I couldn’t rag him too much. I mean, how many six-foot, two hundred-pound ex-Special Ops guys do you know who drive a VW Beetle, and a bright green one at that?
I was slipping behind the wheel when he drove past, and even at a crawling speed, the Century’s power was apparent. It was a beast waiting to pounce.
And, I felt a bit the same.

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Hello world!

Welcome to my author site. I have an Amazon Author Page at  https://www.amazon.com/Charles-ray/e/B006WMLEZK and I encourage you to visit it when you have time. It has links to my two blogs and to all of my published books. My purpose here, though, is to communicate more fully and directly with readers, and enable you to have one place where you can not only find my musings, but directly purchase both paperback and e-Book versions of my works.

I also hope this will be a forum for dialogue with my readers, where I can learn what you like–or dislike–about my writing. This will, I know, help me become a better writer.

I look forward to the journey, and hope you do too.