Posts Tagged ‘Sense’

Now I know there’s a name for a condition or a person who can almost sense and feel others emotions. Like you can tell when they’re upset just by being around them. It’s not like empathy or some science fiction sixth sense. But like a really psychological term.

Your story, be it novel, short story or novelette, is finished. Or is it? Before you send it to a publisher, check firstly that your story makes sense!

Maybe you read my article about The Final Draft. Well, before you reach that stage there’s this one to go through. It can be hard and you need to be tough with yourself, castings an editor’s eye – not that of a writer – over your work. So what is there to look for when editing and how do you go about it?

The first thing to do is to print your story out onto paper. Don’t ask me why but editing just doesn’t seem to work the same if you do it on your computer or word-processor. Then read your story. You might think this a waste of time – after all, you wrote it! – but I assure you that you’ll find mistakes, typos and a host of other little mistakes.

They’re easy to correct. Mark them in pencil as you go along. When you have finished your read through it’s time to begin editing in earnest. You will have almost certainly noticed plotting errors and the usual howlers present in every first draft (I speak from experience!) but here’s a rundown of vital points to check off during the editing process.

1. Do your characters behave as they should? Remember that, in fiction, people seldom if ever act ‘out of character’ – if your character has changed, this needs attention.

2. Do your characters react to each other as they should? Events in your story may well change the feelings and emotions your characters display towards each other. Do they mention events that have happened to them within the story? Real people would – your characters should follow suit.

3. Will it be obvious to the reader what the characters are doing – and why they are doing it? This needs to be made clear to the reader otherwise the ‘thread’ of the story may be lost altogether, your reader will become confused – and the story, for them, is over.

4. Do your characters react believably to circumstances? Again, this goes back to character action – don’t have a character brush off a situation if their character sheet says they would go berserk with rage at a given event – if this is evident, your plotting needs to be looked at. Don’t change your character’s reactions to paper over cracks in the plot!

5. Does your story timeline run true? It’s very easy to have someone in two places at once if you’re not in control of this critical thread. If you have a sub-plot, or, worse still, several sub-plots running, this can rapidly spiral out of control. Use a timeline record to help you control event timing, i.e. ‘10 pm Monday – Jake and Sally at Harry’s bar. Big Mike robbing bank.’ This ensures that Jake and Big Mike don’t ‘meet up’ somewhere at that hour!

Checking the above points will take time, effort and dedication. However, if you do not ensure that your story makes sense according to the points above, the only time you waste will be your own. Why? Simple. Editors today do not expect – and indeed will not tolerate – stories that simply don’t ‘hang together’. The days of droves of sub-editors making good your sloppy work are well and truly gone.

So – edit and re-edit. Be brutal. Be honest with yourself and your work and you will be streets ahead of those who do not take the time and effort that you do. Writing fiction is hard work – it’s up to you to make certain your work is the best it can be. I look forward to seeing you in print!

There is no shortage for the information and knowledge resources in this modern world. Among these resources, however only some of the resources are giving the correct information to people. In these, there is no better and perfect choice than books as they are maintaining their consistency in providing accurate information to their readers from the past many centuries.

To feel good and to improve high language skills, there is no better option than reading books. Several types of books are available in present day market to the people and they can select the best one that suits to their needs. Among these, the fiction books are playing an eminent in providing excitement and thrill to their readers. These books contain wonderful stories that come with strange characters and plots. While writing these books, the writers used their creativity and imagination skills to provide great interest to their readers. These books attract all ages of readers like children, youngsters and old people. The most amazing feature of these books is maintaining suspense up to end of the story that provides ultimate experience of reading suspense stories to book lovers. Besides these topics, the fiction books also deal with tragedy and melodrama stories which are filled with variety of emotions and expressions in them.

Among these fiction books, the science fiction and romantic fiction books gathered the attention of the readers all over the world. The romantic fictions deal with beautiful expression of love and affection among the youngsters as the science novels are very useful for all as they describe the good and bad characters in the society in an extra-ordinary manner. While describing the real life incidents in these books, the writers added some fantasy to create interest to the readers. Some of the fiction books are dealing with social morals that help the users to follow the right values in the society. Some of the most popular fiction books are “Gone with the wind”, “Glasses and Garters”, “God’s Spy”, Harry Potter and Jules Verne collection.

So many sources are available in the present day market to buy the fiction books like book shops and online book stores. If you want to buy books through online stores, just you can visit the related website on the Internet to get the complete details of these books like price, about the author and you can read the reviews on your selected book to know whether that book suits to your needs or not. To attract the book lovers, the online book stores are offering attractive discounts on purchasing books. This is very beneficial to the readers to get the most informative books at low prices.