Activr Writing

How do you keep your audience engaged in your writing?  Write in active voice.

Lately, I have read a lot of books by independent authors who have an interesting story line, but their writing is boring.  This is because many people write and speak in passive voice.  But if you read some of the bestselling books: The Hunger Games, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, or Dragon Riders of Pern you will note that they are written in active voice.

So what’s the difference?

Passive voice uses the words was, is, were, are, and anything ending ins ing.  Now, the ing words are difficult to avoid, but there is a way to use them while still making your writing active voice. 

Active voice uses action words.  For instance, instead of saying was jumping you say  jumped. 

This is where I sometimes put my readers off.  I tend to write very straight forward in active voice; a style many modern readers are not used to anymore.  Have you ever listened to one of your friends described their day?  Do they use the word was a lot?  Do you?  We are naturally geared toward passive voice.  But passive writing makes for laborious reading.

Consider these two passages taken from my novel Dystopia:

Armed men seized Lina and dragged her out of the room amidst the screams and shouts of the family.  Dana lunged for her sister.  One of the officers thrust her aside.  She banged her head on the table and collapsed to the floor unconscious, as her sister kicked and screamed.

or:

Armed men were seizing Lina and dragging her out of the room amidst the screams and shouts of the family.  Dana was lunging for her sister.  One of the officers was thrusting her aside.  She was banging her head on the table and collapsed to the floor unconscious, as her sister was kicking and screaming.

Which one is more engaging?  Which passage conveys the drama that is taking place?  The first one because it is written in active voice.

Now, this does not mean that you can never use the words was or  were.  Sometimes you will be forced to because there is no other way to convey your thoughts.  Just keep the passive voice to a minimum.  You want your writing to engage your audience. 

It doesn’t matter if you are writing a novel or a report for work; you should use active voice.  Speak in active voice.  It will make your conversations more engaging.  You may even become known as a good storyteller among your friends.  And if you ever think that someone’s writing is too blunt, ask yourself this: would you rather that it be chocked full of the words was and were.

Powerful Descriptions

How do you write a god descriptive paragraph?  That is a question many authors must answer.  When you decide to write a book, you have to do more than tell a story.  You have to show the story.  The only way to do this is through good descriptive verse.

Consider your favorite books.  Read through them and study how they write.  How do they show the story?  How do they draw you in?

Consider the next two paragraphs

One:

The ship on the ocean moved about in the waves. Wind blew around it.  Lighting flashed.  More waves  hit the great ship covering it in water.

Two:

Lightning streaked the night sky.  Tumultuous waves tossed the splintered ship as though it were a mere toy.  Foaming water crashed onto the deck drenching any unfortunate enough to be on it.  More lightning flashed followed by roars of thunder.  The ship lurched violently as humungous waves attacked it relentlessly forcing it to dip below the water before shooting back up to the surface once more. 

Which one draws you in?  Which paragraph makes you envision what is happening?  That is what you have to do as an author.  Use descriptive verbs.  You may need a thesaurus to help you out, but that’s okay because it will become your next best friend.

Try this:

Jenna touched the burner and it burned her hand.

Good start, but it doesn’t show much.  But you could write it like this:

Jenna small hand brushed the coiled burner of the stove.  Instantly, searing heat struck her forcing her to jerk her hand back.

Better right?  The words “searing heat” indicate what made her pull back and what she felt.  These two sentences tell you that Jenna’s hand is small and that she jerked her hand back when she burned it on the stove that was still on.

You want your audience to be able to see, hear, and fell the world in your books.  You do not need to have page length descriptions for this.  By simply adding a few words in your sentences, you can show your world without overloading people with long descriptions.  However, many people already know what mountains, forests, or even oceans are like thanks to television and movies.  You can use this to show your world with your touch, without writing a long description.

Consider this:

High up in the mountains the rag tag group of soldiers and exiles crept single file along the narrow ledge.  Pebbles clattered as they rolled down the cliff face.  Fierce winds howled around them chilling them to the bone despite the warm sun that shone upon them.  The thin atmosphere made the trek difficult as many struggled to breathe from the exertion.  Wheezing, they carried onward hoping that the elf knew his way through the mountains and eager for even a small amount of relief.  Men carried small children on their backs.  Others supported the elderly that had difficulty even walking. 

A whistle broke their concentration.  Everyone halted.  Dismayed, Tesnayr looked out at the gorge below.  The path had ended on the escarpment they were all on leading straight to the empty air ahead of him.  Five crevices stood silhouetted against the abyss forming a straight line to the other side.  If it’s not one thing; it’s another.  Tesnayr bit his tongue to prevent himself from screaming in frustration.  These people trusted him to lead them to safety, to deliver on his promise.  He had led them to their death.

You can see and fell the plight of the people.  And with the help of television many already can picture the mountains so the author didn’t have to do a lot of work.  She was also able to describe the scene in two paragraphs instead of two pages.  You don’t want your descriptions overly long because that will slow down your story and your reader will lose interest.

Adding descriptions can be as simple as sticking in one or two words.  Consider the case of Jenna’s hand.  By inserting the word small, I just told you the size of her hand without lengthening the sentence. 

So play around with your sentences and descriptions.  Can you see and feel the world in your stories?

How Chick Lit Transformed a Book Club…and Its Members

By: Ann and Bryn Bauer

With Literary Fiction being all the rage, I have found that the Chick Lit sub-genre has now become an object of scorn.  Titles are now whispered behind hands, listed FB as guilty pleasures and hidden behind other books on the shelf when guests come over.  A few years ago, I would have done the same.  That is, until my book club started reading exclusively in this genre.  Through this change, we found our conversations ease, sharing of perspectives flow and our friendships solidify.  And it all happened because one our members threw Tuesdays with Morrie out of her car window.

Our book club had been meeting for five months and we chose the normal Literary Fiction selections.  You know, the kind of stuff you hear about on NPR, or see on Oprah’s book list.  But, I wasn’t feeling connected with these women.  Making friends was the reason I joined a book club in the first place.  When we met, the first part was fun, eating, drinking wine and chatting.  But when we got to the book discussion everyone seemed a little too measured in their opinions.  Not walking on eggshells exactly but the discussion felt like English class.  I wasn’t learning anything about my new friends, just some vague opinions prompted by library developed questions.  In the beginning I thought “Well, it’s early and we don’t know each other that well.”  By the fifth month I was just about ready to give up the group.  Luckily, on our sixth book club meeting our group got a wakeup call.

After our usual wine and food session, we all sat in Sarah’s living room.  She sat down and said, “I don’t really want to discuss this book.” We had been reading Tuesday’s with Morrie.  Someone asked why and with a slap of her knee she shouted, “Because I threw the God dammed thing out of the car window three days ago! I hate that book!  Why can’t we read something happy?”  Everyone looked stunned and I could tell Sarah was incredibly embarrassed so I opened up and said, “I hated it too.”  I did.  Sarah said that it reminded her way too much of what she had gone through with her father and she couldn’t go through it again.  I said that I had felt the same about another book regarding child abduction as I had been a victim as a child.  Then, the most miraculous thing happened.  Around the circle each woman said how much she had disliked the experience of reading and discussing particular books because it dredged up some past pain.  We had enough drama in our individual lives to spend our precious free time reading about other peoples’ drama.  So, we decided to read things that were fun and reflected our life goals and/or dreams.  I mean, who doesn’t want to dream about living on a yacht or having some high power career with gobs of money?  So, that’s what we did.

Over the next six months we selected books exclusively from the Chick Lit category.  Each time the conversation was smooth and authentic.  Our first meeting, the tone became instantly lighter.  We would of course talk about the plot and characters but then we would inevitably shoot off into tangent conversations about our lives, hopes, dreams and goals.  Our selections gave us the ability and the platform to talk about those topics easily.  Now, I know more about these amazing women than I ever would have if we kept on with “real literature”.  I now attribute my new friends and my feeling of escape to our change in direction.  I attribute it to the positive effects of Chick Lit. 

Author Bio:

Ann and Bryn are sisters who share their voracious appetite for reading, traveling and living life.  Their novel Cuban Sun was born after one sister's struggle with cancer prompted the realization that life is too short to hold off on your dreams.  Both sisters live with their families in North Carolina.

Links:

Blog: www.annandbrynbauer.blogspot.com

Goodreads:    http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7073213.Bryn_Bauer

Get Galdin the final book in the Legends Lost Trilogy

The Golden Age of the Cowboy

THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE COWBOY

by: Andrea Downing 

 

     A short ride down the road from me in Montauk, New York is Deep Hollow Ranch. At 350 years old, it is the oldest ranch in the country and the purported birthplace of the American cowboy.  But we rarely think of cowboys as creatures of the east.  Say ‘cowboy’ to someone and they invariably envisage the heroic male kitted out with Stetson, chaps and Colt, riding across the plains.  Strange to think, then, that the cowboy whom that picture presents did not truly come into existence until after the end of the Civil War.

When the war ended in 1865, thousands of men were returning to homes destroyed, land ravaged and family and friends dead or gone.  There was little prospect of making a living, especially in the war-torn south.  West in Texas, meanwhile, longhorn cattle had been driven to markets in Missouri and Louisiana to try to feed the Confederate Army.  But as these routes had been closed, a surplus of cattle ensued while new markets in the east and California opened.  The Homestead Act was signed into being in 1862 and a transcontinental railway was being built.  The life of a cowboy out in the newly opened west showed promise.

Cattle drives started from Texas to MO and KS railheads in order to get the beef to Chicago where Armour’s meat packing plant opened in 1865.  As the railways expanded, cow towns sprang up in Kansas and later in Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana.  At the same time, investors saw the chance to take advantage of the open range and start huge ranches as beef prices increased.  To give you an idea of how the industry was expanding and numbers of cowboys increasing, up in Wyoming in 1874 the round-up only required two divisions.  A division is how the range is partitioned for the sake of branding so that each ranch may cut out its own cattle.  Reps will go from one division to another to get their own strays.  By 1884, however, Wyoming required thirty-one divisions.  In a single division two hundred cowboys with approximately two thousand horses worked four hundred thousand head of cattle over a period of six weeks.  Down in Colorado in 1885 over 12,000 brands were registered.  So what ended this prospering business, this ‘golden age?’  Well, the answer is several things converged on the industry at once. 

First of all, in the summer of 1885, President Cleveland gave notice that all stock must be removed from Indian Reservations in Indian Territory.  This took over nine million acres out of use, and threw about nine hundred thousand head of cattle onto already overcrowded northern ranges. And those ranges were constantly depleting.  The Homestead Act and land sales by the railways were inviting increasing numbers of emigrants.  Where once cowboys had signed up for homesteads and then signed over their land to their ranches, parcels going to farmers and others were taking chunks out of the open range, reducing it and causing problems such as the Johnson County War.

 Beef prices in 1885 were already low due to overproduction so some ranchers were  keeping cattle over winter in the hope prices would go up.  Unfortunately, added to this was a plague of grasshoppers, lower than normal rainfall and a number of range fires, all reducing winter forage.   Finally, total disaster struck.  In late 1885, the winter came early and particularly harsh.  Losses were great.  But that winter was nothing compared to the winter of  ‘86/’87, which plays a pivotal role in my book, Loveland. That year, temperatures dropped as low as -47 in some parts of the high plains.  With losses at 60-75% of their stock, many ranches went under and the ‘golden age’ of the cowboy came to an end.

About Andrea Downing 

Andrea Downing likes to say that, when she decided to leave New York, the city of her birth, she made a wrong turn and went east instead of west.   She ended up spending most of her life in the UK where she received an M.A. from the University of Keele in Staffordshire.  She married and raised a beautiful daughter and  stayed on to teach and write, living in the Derbyshire Peak District, the English Lake District, Wales and the Chiltern Hills before finally moving into London. During this time, family vacations were often on guest ranches in the American West, where she and her daughter have clocked up some 17 ranches to date. In addition, she has traveled widely throughout Europe, South America, and Africa, living briefly in Nigeria. In 2008 she returned to the city of her birth, NYC, but frequently exchanges the canyons of city streets for the wide open spaces of the West.  Her love of horses, ranches, rodeo and just about anything else western is reflected in her writing.  Loveland, a western historical romance published by The Wild Rose Press, was her first book and is a finalist for the RONE Award of Best American Historical to be announced in August, 2013.  Lawless Love, a story, comes out as part of The Wild Rose Press Lawmen and Outlaws’ series on Sept. 4.  Andrea is a member of Romance Writers of America and Women Writing the West.

From her book Loveland

 

When Lady Alexandra Calthorpe returns to the Loveland, Colorado, ranch owned by her father, the Duke, she has little idea of how the experience will alter her future. Headstrong and willful, Alex tries to overcome a disastrous marriage in England and be free of the strictures of Victorian society --and become independent of men. That is, until Jesse Makepeace saunters back into her life...

Hot-tempered and hot-blooded cowpuncher Jesse Makepeace can’t seem to accept that the child he once knew is now the ravishing yet determined woman before him. Fighting rustlers proves a whole lot easier than fighting Alex when he’s got to keep more than his temper under control.

Arguments abound as Alex pursues her career as an artist and Jesse faces the prejudice of the English social order. The question is, will Loveland live up to its name?

From the back cover:

The two men looked over at Jesse who was leading his own horse into the stable, anger etched in every muscle of his face. Joe nodded toward the chuck house and they followed the others in to leave Alex alone when Jesse came out.

She was starting back to the main house when Jesse grabbed her arm and turned her around. “You ever do that again,” he said in a voice she had never heard, intense in its anger, rage just below its surface, “I swear to God, Alex, I’ll...I’ll take you over my knee and give you a lickin’ once and for all.”

“How dare you!” She shook him off. “How dare you talk to me like that! How dare you! Who the hell do you think you are?”

Jesse jabbed his finger at her to emphasize he meant what he was saying. “Who do I think I am?”he snarled back. “Who do I think I am? You ever, ever take a gun off me again and point it at someone, you’ll find out who the hell I think I am. You know that coulda gone off? You know you coulda killed someone? I told you—out there yonder—I told you, you never point that thing at anyone less’n you mean bus’ness.”

“I did bloody well mean business! They were destroying that horse. Furthermore, I knew, and you knew, and they both knew, there wasn’t a shot under the hammer. You taught me that, didn’t you? So there was no chance of an accident!”

“That don’t matter none. You coulda pulled the hammer back twice. Way you was, you were nothin’ better’n a loose cannon, Alex. You ever do a thing like that again—”

“You’ll what?” She shook with her rage as tears pooled against her will. “I apologized to them both and they accepted my apologies. It’s none of your concern—”

“None of my concern! You pulled my gun! You ever do that again— Don’t you walk away when I’m talkin’ to you!”

She turned back to him after a few steps. “You’ll what? You’ll what, Jesse? What will you do? I want to hear it! Say it again. What will you do?” And she stood there in the evening darkness, facing him down, wearing him out like she’d faced down the stallion.

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