Answers to Your First Batch of Questions

Posted on | September 18, 2009 | No Comments

We recently sent out a note to our subscribers asking for questions about writing. (You can still ask more questions. Just go here: http://www.TipsOnWriting.net/question.html )

We also asked for any other type of questions, but didn’t promise any accuracy in those answers. We really don’t know who put the bop in the bop she bop she bop. We wish we did. We have suspicions about who put the rang in the rang a lang a ding dang, though.

We were quite pleased with the response to our request. Some of the questions we were asked were nothing like what we expected. Here are some of them, and our answers, such as they are:

Question:
Do you do any editing long distance without being face to face and if so, how do you let the other person know what you changed?

Personally, my partner and I have a code. Red means “I’m changing your words.” Blue means, “here’s my question or observation about a scene.” Highlighting a sentence in yellow means, “this needs to be deleted.” and so on and so forth, etcetera, etcetera…

Kate

Hi, Kate!

Since we write sitting next to each other, we don’t need that code, but we do collaborate with other writers on occasion, such as the fellow who produces and directs Poor Paul, the web series we write. When working with him, we use “revision” modes where his revisions are in red and ours are in blue. We often don’t note what has been deleted, although we’d often very much like to. Your system sounds good.

Question:
So, how do you label your chapters after you edit them so you know which one is most current?

Again, because we sit right there, we don’t worry too much about editing the wrong file. HOWEVER, while working on a screenplay a while back, we’d gotten notes on a draft from a producer and started making corrections in the wrong version. This can also happen when we go back and forth between the office and Geoff’s home to work (where we often write “after hours”.) Our solution is to put the date in the file name on the computer for each full revision.

(Be careful not to use slashes – the computer thinks they mean something quite different and your file will do odd things.) Also, when we’re working with a producer who edits a draft rather then sending notes, we use initials.

It’s good to put the year first (as long as everyone understands that’s what you’re doing) so they sort correctly in your file manager. Otherwise, files from February 08 will be AFTER files from January 09.

Example – first draft: best_story_in_the_world.doc
Second draft: best_story_in_the_world-08-6-15.doc
Director’s version: best_story_in_the_world_SMB_08-6-22.doc

Of course, we’d probably simply call this story “best.doc” for convenience sake, but you get the idea.

We don’t tend to put chapters (or acts, if it’s a script) into different files, but a lot of writers do. In which case, we’d recommend a subdirectory with the book title as it’s name and each chapter file numbered thus:
/BestStoryInTheWorld/chapter1_08-6-15.doc

Question:
Have you heard of a program out there that allows you access to the same information in real time so that each one can see what is going on at the same time?

There are several. They are called “collaboration tools”. We haven’t personally used them.

Question:
Are there any programs out there for writing that you might recommend? Or do you do it the down and dirty way, using Word?

We actually use WordPerfect for all our writing except scripts and Final Draft for all our scripts. I have also used OpenOffice.org on occasion (a free office suite with a word processor much like Microsoft Word.) We have MS Word on our machines because most of the people we work with use it, but we both HATE it.

Question:
Are there references/rules somewhere for basic sentence flow on the page, including dialog? I don’t know where to break for a new paragraph, where line breaks s/be or if dialog between the characters s/be on their own lines.

Thanks ~
Barb

Hi, Barb,

There are different styles and ideas, but generally, when a new person speaks, it’s a new paragraph. In terms of how long a paragraph should be, that’s changing with the Internet.

Originally (and in most print writing) the paragraph is one complete idea. When a new idea is started, it’s a new paragraph. On the Internet, because it is more difficult to read on a screen, paragraphs tend to be shorter, so they are often broken up more than in print. These paragraphs are a good example. Writing for print, we’d put at least the first two together as one.

Also, it depends on what you’re writing. Business or instructional writing is different from fiction. The rules in fiction can be (and often are) bent for the sake of story. We love a good, bent rule. A short, one word paragraph can be quite effective, but something you’d never do in a business article. (And something you should use sparingly in fiction – we’re just mentioning it as an example.)

There are many books on basic grammatical structure, but often (once you know the basic rules) it comes down to personal style.

Question:
My problem seems to be a lack of focus, coupled with an inability to write about anything that I don’t have personal knowledge of.

There are two things we’d recommend for you. One is to start Journaling. You will find after a few days of five or ten minutes a day that ideas appear from nowhere. Also, because there is no demand to be creative in Journaling, it will help you focus on writing rather than on writing something good. The “something good” will usually take care of itself.

The second thing is to daydream. We also only write about what we have personal experience of, but because of daydreaming, Geoff has personal experience of a space craft that has been drifting through space for several hundred years, that is inhabited by a people who have evolved into a very organic society. (That’s only one small part of one of his novels, “The Guardian Mosaic; From a Dizzying Height”). Steve has personal experience of baseball.

We also do a lot of research and then daydream ourselves into the facts of that research until they become a sort of reality rather then just facts on Wikipedia or How Things Work.

Question:
Hi Geoff and Steve,

The problem that I have with writing is making a boring subject sound interesting. Any ideas? I already know about throwing in a bit of humor, but that doesn’t work very well with my subject matter.

–Ed

Hi, Ed,

The only way to make a subject sound interesting that we know of is to have passion for it. Yes, often, you must write about something that you don’t have passion for, which is why you call it a boring subject. We say find that love for the subject. Find that passion for it. It will be there. Once you have that, it isn’t hard to make it interesting.

Also, notice the stories you tell friends and families. You will notice that, when telling them something that happened in your life (and you have the passion for those things automatically) you will always include most of the five senses: Touch, Taste, Sight, Hearing and Smell. (And the “sixth” sense, emotions.) In your writing include as many of the senses as you can when describing something. It will elicit a visceral response in your reader. That which you can feel is never boring.

Question:
I really like the thought of learning to write killer copy. I see the ‘programs’ that are supposed to write great copy after you plug in some data and I have to laugh.

What really interests me is reading the stuff some of these great article writers do. Maybe I could approach that and stay in a style I could consider mine. Not to ‘copy’ the writing they do. I guess I have to manipulate keywords, ad nauseam, also.

Very good question. (Questions, actually.)

Although ad copy writing is a bit out of the purview of what we teach, some of the same things do apply. Yes, you must use keyword density and all that – but that doesn’t make the copy good, it just makes it stand out for the search engines. (And any mechanical “creation” product is anathema to good writing as far as we’m concerned. Yes, it can often be fascinating, but it will, by definition, lack soul.)

To learn all the things about good copy writing read Dan Kennedy or Joe Vitale.

Okay, that being said, good copy writing also falls into the guide-lines of good writing in general. Good copy, just like good fiction, will often consist of story telling. Engage your reader’s emotions. To do that, use as many of the five senses as possible when describing something, Touch, Taste, Sight, Hearing and Smell. (And the “sixth” sense, emotions.) It will elicit a visceral response in your reader. When your reader is viscerally involved, you’ve got ‘em, as they say.

You say, “What really interests me is reading the stuff some of these great article writers do. Maybe I could approach that and stay in a style I could consider mine. Not to ‘copy’ the writing they do.” Yes! This is true no matter what you are writing. Read the greats, digest what they do and how they do it, then let it inform your own style, but it must be your own style.

Question:
If you expand the free book, will there be homework assignments at times? Should there be, or is the project better off when you are together whenever ideas or verbiage are documented? Maybe a chapter on ‘why the heck do you guys write together’: when is writing alone preferred (blogging about your deepest, most personal secrets, such as your recepie for beer-cheese stew); what are the advantages and disadvantages of writing with a single partner, versus writing as a group of three or more. At what number of participants does it stop being writing as a team, and becomes merely a brainstorming exercise for the benefit of a one or two writers?

By the way, if the cardinal rule is ‘unless we both love something, it does not go it’, but the effective rule is ‘if the other does not really mind, it goes in’, does the effective rule become the cardinal rule, and the cardinal rule becomes the idealized rule?

The “Cardinal Rule” was actually passed down to us from the late, great Cardinal Sheen (or was that Bishop Sheen? Afro Sheen?), so it really has nothing to do with effectiveness or idealization, only communion wafers, genuflecting and cool hats. The late, great Cardinal told us that the rule, in layman’s terms, er, sorry, layperson’s terms, is actually a “Rule of Thumb”, unless you don’t have any hands, then it’s a “Rule of Claw”. He really said that! He was such a Card. Since we usually write at Geoff’s place, we’ve just shortened it to “House Rule” since “Slide Rule” and “French Curve” were already taken. The late, great Cardinal said that’s fine (before he became late and great) as long as we keep an autographed picture of Bob Gibson within site while typing. Unless you have a claw, then all bets are off. Another “House Rule”, the idealized, effective one.

Question:
Why doesn’t anyone put a couple of spaces after a period, instead of just one space? It is, to me, just easier to read. I know, most of the time some don’t put more than 3 sentences together in a paragraph. (You can’t tell me they’re conserving computer memory across the internet, what with all the one sentence paragraphs I see.)

We personally use double spaces at the ends of sentences in our writing, as we think it “proper” and we must, at all times, be proper. (Well, sometimes. Well, when we want to be. Okay, usually not even then, but still…) However, there are several reasons why not:

Double spacing at the end of a sentence started with typewriters, where the type was “mono-spaced”or each letter was the same width and the same space from the next as the last. It made such a sentence easier to read, especially when that small period was the same space away from that final “i” as it was from the final “m”. To get technical, once type was kerned (with em and en spacing) it was often considered no longer necessary, and now even most print media does not use the double space.

Then came the Internet. In html, only the first space is recognized (this is for a myriad of very valid reasons that we won’t go in to here). You can have one hundred spaces, and it will only show one. So this is more and more the norm and more and more what is expected and excepted. As long as you’re not using courier font (which, again, is a mono-spaced font) it seems, there is no need for the second space.

We still want one there, also, so you’re not alone.

Question:
I’m from Rome Italy. I’m a music composer who has lived for 9 years in the States and graduated from Boston’s Berklee College of Music.

I would like to write a book about music creation, and how to get inspired to compose music. I do not want to write the book from a technical point of view, instead I want to give it a more spiritual/inspirational angle, something that even non-musicians can find interesting and apply the concepts to their own lives and occupations.

I would really love your opinion, as I found very interesting your book!

We think your idea of a music creation book written from the perspective of the spiritual/ inspirational angle is a brilliant idea. Everyone loves music, but most are not interested in the technical aspects of its creation. A book such as you describe would be very powerful and could be quite popular.

As we say, remember to include all the senses, not just sound, in your descriptions: Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight and Sound. (And, of course, emotions.) This will pull the reader into the experience you are providing for them.

Question:
I get hundreds of business ideas with several being quite good every day. My mind won’t shut up. My question is are there ways for a guy like me to make a living selling ideas and concepts and how in the heck do I go about it. Copyrighting every one is impossible.

You sound a lot like Steve. Many people get lots of ideas and they just end up on Post-its and pieces of paper. We say, don’t shut your mind up, let it talk, but you have to focus on one to start with, one of the simpler ones first. Don’t get distracted by the other ideas, follow that one to completion. Then move on to the next one. Before you know it, you’ll be in the habit of turning ideas into reality.

We also suggest you study with one of the many marketing “guru”s out there, such as Pat O’Bryan or Armand Morin.

Okay, that’s it for the questions so far. You can ask more via email, in the comments here, or at the question form at http://www.TipsOnWriting.net/questions.html.

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