Some agents say they can tell in the First Few Paragraphs if a manuscript is worth reading. They may read the entire first page, but if the writer hasn’t presented at least the first of the essential elements by then, off goes the manuscript with a rejection stamp.

Do you know what they’re looking for?

Have you included the 5 Essential Elements in your first chapter?

On Feb 11, 2012, I’ll be conducting a 1st Chapter Workshop at UCR Palm Desert. If you’re in the area and need work on your first chapter, bring the first two pages of your chapter and join us!

REGISTER NOW,  and learn how to apply the Essential Elements to your own first chapter. Learn how to take your chapter from dull to dynamic!

Saturday

February 11, 2012

10 am – 12:30 pm

UCR Palm Desert Graduate Center

75-080 Frank Sinatra Dr

Palm Desert, CA  92211

Sponsored by the Palm Spring Writers Guild

Click on Upcoming Events

Direct link:

See you there!

]]> http://brendahill.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/1st-chapter-workshop/feed/ 0 brendahill Pencils http://brendahill.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/with-full-malices-arc-arrived/ http://brendahill.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/with-full-malices-arc-arrived/#comments Tue, 20 Dec 2011 21:07:27 +0000 Brenda Hill http://brendahill.wordpress.com/?p=762 ]]> That magical day finally happened. My novel’s ARCs arrived!

ARCs – Advance Review Copy – the publisher sends to reviewers.

They send a few extra to the authors for reviews the authors may want to personally contact.

What an exciting day. I knew they were on their way and I watched the mail as if I were expecting a million-dollar check. When they finally arrived, I was so excited I nearly cried.

My publisher had previously sent the cover to me for approval, so I knew what it would look like, but when I opened the box and saw my novel in book form in all it’s glory, I hugged it to me and danced with glee.

Each one looks like a trade paperback, altho on the cover underneath my name and enclosed in a white oval are the words:

NOT FOR SALE. In smaller words, ‘Advance Uncorrected Proof.’

Also on the cover, my first review from NY Times bestselling author, Michael Prescott:

“A likeable heroine, a deadly conspiracy, a white-knuckle climax – Brenda Hill’s With Full Malice has it all!”

How thrilling is that?!

The novel will be released in April 2012 in hardcover edition.

Now, while I wait the official release date, I’m also waiting, eagerly, yet a bit apprehensively, to see what reviews come in. Oh, I hope they’re good ones. Will the reviewers like it? A lot? Sorta? Trash it? I never know how others will receive the stories I want to tell. I can only write them the best way I can, edit and revise, edit and revise again and again until they shine.

I’ll let everyone know – well, if they’re good ones.

Keep watching . . .

www.brendahill.com

Well.

Today I was told I should have my copy within the next thirty days! Hooray! I can’t wait.

I’ve been thinking about how to share it – after I’ve devoured it end to end, taken photos of hugging it and dancing around in glee. Perhaps holding a contest and giving it to the winner. Or doing something else to celebrate this exciting next step.

Any ideas?

Born in Liverpool, Victoria is a member of Romantic Novelists’ Association and currently resides in South Yorkshire, UK.

Manuscript Makeover – The inner critic

You’ve finally reached the end of your 120,000 word novel and typed the words ‘The End.’  What’s next?  Do you print it out, parcel it up and send it off to the first agent on your list, then immediately start researching another book?  Well, you could, but the fact is the manuscript you’ve slogged hard over and written to the best of your ability, still needs work.

Before you all start screaming at me, take a deep breath and relax. Ask any agent or publisher and they will tell you that first, second or even third drafts are rarely ready for publication let alone submission.  There’s always that little something that could be added or a sentence improved upon and that’s were careful revision or editing comes in.

So where do you begin and how do you make those improvements?

Different authors have different techniques.  Because your manuscript is your baby, it’s all too easy to be lulled by familiar words and phrases into thinking it is error free and perfect.  I suggest you put your manuscript aside for a week or two.  Focus on something else, and then return with a clear mind and fresh eyes.

Print a copy of your manuscript, as it’s easier to make notes in the margin and mark sections which require revising.  My first revision is always for content and here are a few points to consider:

• Does the story open with the main protagonist in conflict with the antagonist or someone else in the story?
• Can the reader easily identify who the main protagonist is?
• Have you described the initial conflict/event in such a way that it draws the reader in and makes them want to continue reading?
• Are your main characters realistic/strong/well-motivated?
• And the villan.  Is he or she a real person or just a device to push the plot along?
• Is your plot realistic or too far-fetched?
• Does the setting come alive for the reader?
• Do you write the stimulus before the response? Remember, for every action, there is a reaction, so don’t allow your characters to react before the reader knows what they are reacting to.
• Is there too much back story, resulting in poor pacing and long, boring narration?
• Does the middle of the story sag or does the conflict between the protagonist and antagonist escalate to the point where both are willing to sacrifice almost everything to achieve their goals?
• Has your protagonist grown emotionally during the story?
• Have you closed all the sub-plots before the climax?
• Is there sufficient suspense/mystery in your story?
• Is the ending emotionally satisfying for the reader?
• Is the dialogue realistic?  People rarely say, ‘I do not…’ but rather, ‘I don’t…’
• Do you remain in the correct point of view and is it clear to the reader who is speaking?
• Do you ‘head hop’ – switch POV from paragraph to paragraph?
• Have you fully explored your characters emotions and tactile sensations?
• Is your story written in the right tense?
• Have you withheld or repeated information which will annoy or bore your reader?

This list isn’t exhaustive, but it does give you a basis from which to work from.  The secret is to revise slowly, scene by scene, chapter by chapter.  Make notes in the margins or in a notebook.  When you’ve finished reading the whole manuscript, go back and revise any sections as necessary.  It’s never easy to discard your work and rewrite a scene or chapter, but more often than not, your manuscript will be better for doing so.

My second revision is always for grammar and typos. Read slowly and carefully, you’ll be surprised how many typos, missing periods or commas you’ll pick up.  Also read aloud – this will enable you to find jarring transitions, discordant dialogue and clunky sentences.   This is also the time when you revise for style.

• Are your sentences of equal length?
• Are they simple or compound?  Too many simple sentences and your work can sound amateurish.  Too many long sentences and the reader may become bored or lose track of what you are attempting to tell them.
• How times on a page do you start a sentence with the same word?
• Does your sentence have impact? Short, punchy sentences create pace. One-word sentences have power and act as a brake, making the reader it up and take notice.
• Does your manuscript include clichés? If so, remove them, and rephrase the sentence using one of your own making.
• Create and employ metaphors to increase imagery.
• Do you use strong nouns and verbs as opposed to adverbs (-ly words), which are weak? If so, re-write the sentence.

And don’t forget.  The same principles should be applied to your synopsis and query letter.

Victoria Howard

Be sure to check her website for book excerpts and ordering information:

Victoria Howard

How exciting!

The director said they’ll be designing a cover for the ARCs, Advanced Reading Copies. The publisher then sends the ARCs for reviews.

I can’t wait to see the cover. Will it be dramatic? Intriguing? Will it hint of murderous evil-doers?

What an exciting time for an author.

I’m still calm, though. But once the ARCs are debuted to the world – at least the reviewer’s world – I’m sure I’ll be a basket case. After all, my creation will be read and judged by the so-called authorities, the experts who are supposed to know a good book when they read it. They’ll read and mark it for the public – worth reading or not.

Of course I’ll be hoping for a good mark, but still, I can’t help but remember the age-old adage, ‘Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.’

If that’s true, doesn’t a good book lie in the mind of the reader?

I love Daisy. She came to me out of the blue one day, perhaps because I’d been trying to think of how to use Pasadena, California, in a book. After I moved to Roswell, NM, I became rather nostalgic about Pasadena. Then I visited my daughter there and decided once again that Pasadena as it is now isn’t the Pasadena as it was when I was a kid in it. If that makes any sense.

What I wanted to write about was the Pasadena of the Good Old Days (which probably weren’t any better than our days for the people who lived in them) when it was a haven for wealthy easterners who wintered there and Hollywood folks who wanted to get away from the hustle and bustle of work.

Of course, I know nothing about how rich people live, having been poor all my life, but I do know that rich folks need the rest of us to provide services for them. Then, all of a sudden, a hardworking phony spiritualist who has too many burdens to bear appeared as if by magic in my head, and Daisy was born! I’d recently met a woman here in Roswell, NM, whose last name is Majesty and she said she’d be glad to lend Daisy her last name. I gave her Gumm as a maiden name (don’t ask me how or why. These things just happen), an aunt who is possibly the best cook in the world, a supportive family (hey, authors always make things up) and a husband who’d been grievously wounded in the Great War, and I was set to go.

I had intended my “Spirits” books to be historical cozy mysteries, but that the Powers That Be at Kensington asked me to take out the dead bodies and add a subsidiary romance (since Daisy is already married to the love of her life, Billy). They marketed the first two books as romances, which they aren’t, so the series died unsung (actually, they weren’t entirely unsung. The few people who read them seemed to like them. Heck, the first book was a Romantic Times Top Pick and was nominated for a Reviewer’s Choice award). My favorite blurb of all time came from Booklist’s review of last year’s HUNGRY SPIRITS expresses my sentiments to a T: “This enjoyable series deserves to be much better known.” Couldn’t have said it better myself!

The books might have died easily, but their demise hurt me terribly, since I loved writing Daisy’s stories and Daisy is my very favorite character of those I’ve created. I was absolutely thrilled to death when Five Star, a publisher that primarily targets libraries, decided to pick up the series with HIGH SPIRITS.

And now it’s almost GENTEEL SPIRITS time! In GENTEEL SPIRITS, Daisy is hired to be the spiritual advisor to a spoiled-rotten silent-screen star named Lola de la Monica. Daisy’s bete noir (and her husband’s best friend), Sam Rotondo (a name lent me by a cousin, whose last name is Rotondo) is also on the set. He’s a Pasadena police detective and is pretty much always sure Daisy is up to something dire. Add some poison-pen letters and some folks with deep, dark secrets to protect, and Daisy’s really in the soup. It’s a good thing Daisy knows how to swim and doesn’t mind the heat.

I think it’s really funny that a penchant for spiritualism actually runs in my family (on my dad’s side). My late
brother Al told me he used to be dragged to séances all the time when he was a boy. I didn’t even know that until about a year ago. But I guess this spiritualist bent is in the genes.

If you’d like to read the first chapter of GENTEEL SPIRITS, click here. If you’d like to see Pasadena, California, in Daisy’s day, click here.

Also (happy thought) you can get the first three books in the series (STRONG SPIRITS, FINE SPIRITS, HIGH SPIRITS and HUNGRY) for your Kindle or your iPod, so you can read ‘em in order. If you’re interested in doing so, click here.

By the way, the cover art for GENTEEL SPIRITS is probably my favorite cover of the . . . um . . . let me count them. Well, of the 50-odd books I’ve had published. 50 books. And I’m poorer than your average church mouse. There’s definitely something wrong with this picture!

However, there’s nothing wrong with this picture! It’s the cover art I just got for ANCIENT SPIRITS, Daisy’s 6^th adventure, which will be published in January of 2012. I don’t like it quite as well as the cover for GENTEEL SPIRITS, mainly because the lady’s nose is a little . . . well, longish. Still, click here if you’d like to see it. I’m especially pleased with this cover, because I asked the Powers That Be to allow Daisy to be riding a camel on it, and they actually did it! How often does that happen? I can tell you: not often.

Please feel free to visit my web page at www.aliceduncan.net (where you can see a photograph of my grandson, Dai Oshita, who is an Army Medic, and who was just promoted to sergeant) or to write me at alice@aliceduncan.net

Beyond is the only one of my novels that includes sex scenes, so why did I write them? And why so detailed?

I’ve given it a lot of thought. I could delete them if I wished, but I’m reluctant to do so. And after further reflection, I’ve decided to let the novel stand as written.

What made me decide in favor of the sex? Am I a porno-loving woman? Did I merely want sensationalism?

I don’t think I’m either. I’m a mature, divorced woman who’s still discovering her own life. Lisa, my main character in Beyond, has, like me, has taken a journey to find her life, her ‘self’ and to follow her dreams.

But it’s taken her quite a while to do so, and even then, it was forced upon her after a series of traumatic events.

Isn’t that the way of most of us? Don’t we plod along day by day, following the rut we’ve carved out for ourselves? And doesn’t it take a major event for us to gather the courage to step out of it and try a new lifestyle?

I’m living a totally different life than the one I’d led for nearly most of adult life, one I thought I’d live until the end of my days. And I didn’t enter the new lifestyle by choice.

However, now I wouldn’t have it any other way.

But as a new widow, Lisa was also forced into another lifestyle – and she was sinking fast. She also had another problem, a major one. Outwardly, she’d been cold, remote, forced in childhood to hide her emotions. And to survive in her marriage, she’d had to continue in that deception. As a result, she was heartbreakingly estranged from her only child, her daughter.

As the writer who wanted to tell her story, what could I do to help her connect again with her daughter? I decided she needed to first connect with her feelings – to recognize and acknowledge them instead of hiding them. Only then could she set them free.

How to do that?

First, I wanted her to learn to love freely, emotionally and uninhibitedly, and be loved in return. And in the process, I wanted her to learn about her own body, to learn that passion and sex are not vile, but expressions of love shown in its ultimate form.

So I decided to have Lisa experience it in as much detail as I could provide.

Then the question was, how to write it for the readers? I could say she had sex and it was glorious, and she was awakened to every sensation imaginable.

But does that show the reader Lisa’s awakening?

And later, if I write in another intimate scene that Lisa finally emerges from her constricting emotional cocoon to freely show love to her partner, would that show how she finally gloried in her own body? I chose to write it out.

Then, by emerging from her repressed emotional cocoon, she could begin to repair the damage she’d done to her daughter. Finally she could show her all the love she’d always felt but didn’t know how to express.

There will still be readers who’ll disagree with me, and that’s understandable. I don’t agree with every writer, every story.

But this was my way of telling Lisa’s story. I hope you like it, but if you don’t, I hope I at least provided some entertainment and allowed you a look into another woman’s life.

And while the main characters in my new mystery/thriller, With Full Malice, also experience emotional problems, there is no sex – at least no detailed sex.

Beyond the Quiet:

Ten Times Guilty:

With Full Malice – my new mystery/thriller novel to be released in 2012:

And I’m thrilled. I’m going to take a screen shot so that no matter what happens from here, I’ll always remember the thrill I’m feeling right now.

I’ve received quite a few reviews in the past few days, some good and some pretty darn terrible. And that’s ok. I know not everyone will like my stories. I don’t like everything I read and I’m even disappointed at times by my favorite authors. When we make our work available to the public, we put ourselves at risk. Par for the course.

But most of the bad ones refer to the sex scenes and I’m surprised. I’ve seen graphic sex in some of the major publisher’s books, so I didn’t realize how many people were still offended by them. One said it was ‘gratuitous sex’ but on that point I have to disagree. I gave a lot of thought to those scenes and decided to go all the way – no pun intended. I wanted to show my character’s ‘flowering,’ in every way and that even a woman who has been married over twenty years can still be awakened by someone who loves her.

Maybe I’m a romantic at heart, maybe I still believe you can find true love while finding yourself. And this is the journey my character undertakes. Most of all, she’s on a journey to find herself.

I love this story, and no matter what I’ve written since or will write in the future, Beyond is still my favorite. Perhaps because, as a few readers have guessed, I put a lot of ‘me’ in the story.

I just haven’t found my Terry O’Neal yet, but Lisa’s story gives me hope.

But to have that wonderful novel published, if you’re not going to self-publish, you have to write one. Be warned, though. Trying to create a good one can cause nightmares. As writers, not only do we have to condense the entire story into three paragraphs, but we have to make it immediate and compelling.

Compelling.

Sure.

Just trying to get the story down to three paragraphs is enough to drive a teetotaler to drink, but then make the darn thing interesting and intriguing enough so an agent just has to read more?

And now, some agents are requesting a one-paragraph mini. Where’s the scotch???

Ok. It had to be done, so I faced the horrible task and looked up every reference I could find on how to write the darn thing. One wonderful thing about the internet – you can find references to most everything. So I read and read more, again and again.

Some say to open with why you’re querying that particular agent. Ok, I could do that. A little flattery can go a long way. Then, the experts say, include your three paragraphs and then your credits. If you have none, just close with the standard closing used on any business letter.

Others say to open with a hook similar to your manuscript and go from there, so I tried that, working again and again on my three paragraphs. No matter which way I wrote the thing, it was D-U-L-L. After pulling out a few gray hairs, I went from neutral iced tea to the hard stuff – Diet Coke, which I love, but had been trying to cut back on excess amounts. Now was not the time to cut back, I reasoned, so fortified after a few glasses of the bubbly, I finally came up with what I thought was the best I could do. I sent it off. The result for Beyond the Quiet is below:

Beyond the Quiet

ORIGINAL QUERY, where I tried to follow all the advice. It received nothing but rejections:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lisa Montgomery never learned how to show love. As a child, she was acceptable only if she were clean, composed, and quiet. For most of her forty-three years she survived by keeping her life and emotions tightly controlled. Then, after her husband succumbs to cancer, she discovers her control was only an illusion. His secret life has left her in debt and nearly penniless, and her daughter, instead of offering comfort and support, is judgmental and emotionally distant.

Bitter, Lisa returns to work and meets Gene O’Neal, a retired fire chief who pursues her with a passion that melts her icy façade. She falls in love and learns how glorious true lovemaking can be. Only her troubled relationship with her daughter dulls her new happiness, so Lisa prepares to make one more effort to talk to her, to offer the love she’d always felt but never knew how to express.

When her life changes again, she realizes pain and loss has made her stronger. As a woman who has learned to cherish each moment, she leaves her old life behind to follow her dream, welcoming each tomorrow as a new opportunity for adventure.

REVISED, and written from the heart. With this one, I landed an agent who sent the manuscript to a certain line with major publisher. My agent said the acquiring editor for that line was interested and would get back to  her. After weeks of nail-biting anxiety, my agent regretfully informed me that the publisher was discontinuing that line and all negotiations were off.

After picking my heart off the floor, my agent and I discussed the next step. She wanted me to revise the story to fit one of the publisher’s other lines, and after a period of intense self-examination, I decided to keep the story as originally written. My agent and I parted company.

Then I sent the query to a small, RWA recognized, indie publisher. I received a request for a full the next day. Within a week, they offered a contract:

Hello XXXXXXX,

When I lost my husband to divorce after nearly thirty years of marriage, I read everything I could, desperate to learn how other women coped and what they did to rebuild their lives. Beyond the Quiet, my mainstream novel of approximately 90,000 words, is my version of how one woman struggles though bitterness, loss, and betrayal, learning to cherish each moment and follow her long-buried dreams. It’s the story of how a quiet, passionless widow becomes spirited enough to climb onto her lover’s shoulders for a piggyback ride in the nude.

“To all of our years together,” Lisa Montgomery’s husband said one evening, raising his glass in a toast, “some of them good.” They laughed and clicked wine glasses. But after his death, Lisa discovers he hadn’t been teasing. When she discovers his secret post office box, she struggles to come to terms with his betrayal. Forced to examine her life as a wife, mother, and as a woman, she realizes her troubled childhood didn’t allow her to be anything but composed and quiet, and she’d never learned to show love.

A chance meeting with a retired fire chief leads to changes she’d never imagined, and she falls in love for the first time. She learns to open her heart, to let go of the sterile woman she’d become and passionately embrace the woman she wishes to be. Only her relationship with her estranged daughter dulls her new happiness, so Lisa prepares to make one more effort to talk to her, to offer the love she’d always felt but never knew how to express. But a jealous coworker watches, wanting to destroy what he can’t have.

Beyond is my second novel. Ten Times Guilty, the story of a struggling single mother learning her strength after a brutal attack, garnered a four-star review from Romantic Times BookClub Magazine, January, 2006. One of my stories in True Story Magazine was featured as a ‘Twelve-tissue tearjerker’ and another story, Am I Wife or Daughter, climbed to #3 with Amazon Shorts. My articles have been published in my local newspaper and I’m the restaurant reviewer.

With Full Malice

For my next novel, I went back to the one-hundred-word mini-synopsis I describe in my Writers’ Tips and snagged a larger publisher’s interest:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear xxxxxxx,

When a shortage of reporters forces traumatized restaurant reviewer, Madison Young, to cover an execution-style murder in her quiet California town below Big Bear, she has no idea her life is about to change. Reluctantly interviewing a witness, she jots down one word, one seemingly insignificant word that will link to a chain of murders across the country, and to a secret society, a vast and deadly organization that will stop at nothing to protect its secrets. She traces clues, shocked when they reveal a connection to the man who slaughtered her parents, horrified when the evidence leads to her own grandmother, the gentle woman who raised her after her parents were murdered.

Credits here.

I received a request for a full, then, after about four months of anxiety, 5 Star offered a contract.

Hooray!

I’m hoping that’ll be all I’ll have to do until the book’s further along in the production and it’s time to work on the cover. I’m eager to see what the cover artists will suggest. For now, I want to get back to my wip and catch up on emails, etc, and even say hello to my long-suffering family.

With Full Malice Excerpt: