There is nothing like a beautiful sunny day at the beach. The warm rays caress your skin as your feet glide through the soft, silky sand. Out in the water, surfers and wind-sailors gingerly balance on the tips of rolling waves without a fear. Could there be a better way to spend a weekend than relaxing at the beach?

As you walk along the water's edge, the waves lap at your toes. Glancing over your shoulder, you notice the waves have removed all evidence of your existence, washing away your footprints as if you were never there. Walking past the last of a huddled crowd of sun worshippers, you notice the serene, but vacant, end of the beach bordered by a large rocky seawall. Curious as to why no one would desire to be situated at such a secluded spot, you continue to walk.

The crashing waves grow bigger and darker as they reach farther up the sand in their attempts to capture your feet. The air has become heavy with a salty mist and breathing becomes more difficult, yet the rocky walls beckon you to keep coming. The noise of the crowd fades to a faint tone as the mounding waves slap at the seawall, attempting to drag it back into the sea, rock by rock. The hair on your neck bristles as the immense size of the rocky seawall looms in front of you, and you realize that you are truly alone.

Looking out to the water you watch a small one-man sailboat leap wildly out of the waves then vanish under the surface. Muffled screams for help shooting across the surface force you to enter the churning water. The waves are angry and cold as they quickly swell around you, clenching you tight. Without warning the water has surrounded you, twisting and pulling your body out to the deep and murky unknown. Waves attempt to dash your hope for survival, pushing and pulling in all directions.

Panic-stricken, you thrash about with flailing arms and legs as your heart bangs wildly against your chest. Water flows into your nose, seeking the path to your lungs and certain death. An empty sailboat, helplessly carried by a thousand watery hands, brushes by you before it is unmercifully thrown into the rocky seawall. Your screams are suffocated by a constant flow of water.

Somehow you escape the tentacles of the deep that have been clawing at your legs, dragging you down into their light-forsaken home. Your feet beat rapidly against the hard wet sand as you run as fast as you can. The waves howl at your heels for you to return, but you have felt the cold, slimy touch of the beast, reaching out from the deep waters, just waiting to devour you.

The loud music is a relief as the crowd grows near. Only then can you glance, fearfully, over your shoulder, at the peaceful end of the beach bordered by the rocky seawall. But now you know what the others know. There is an invisible beast, quietly beckoning you to come back to the lovely serene end of the beach, quietly waiting for you to enter its home in the deep water.

Will you be the writer brave enough to confront this beast—and its story—in the pages of a novel?

Brian Douglas Coyle, a graduate of Kent State University in Ohio, has over 30 years of experience in the banking industry. He is currently the Community Development Investment Manager at BB&T, the eleventh largest bank in the country. Brian is the author of Soul Riders and the 2008 release The Devil’s Sanctuary.

Tyler, Vanessa and Tara Oaks.

When I was in Maui for a book signing, I bought myself a plain black magnet with an Eleanor Roosevelt quote on it. Hers is advice I seem to follow unwittingly:
“Do one thing every day that scares you.”

While signing books in a bookstore in Maui certainly does not qualify as scary, I wanted the words on my refrigerator to remind me that I had taken one step that scared me after another to get to that place. Plus, I do need that daily prompt since I have a lot more scary steps to take in life…though perhaps not as scary as they could be.

With my twin daughters now seven, long gone are the days of child-proofing our home. Still, I had no idea magnets should come with warning labels. When my grandmother came over for a visit, Vanessa and Tara led her into the kitchen to show her all our magnets bought on travels. My grandmother read the Eleanor Roosevelt magnet aloud and was quiet afterward, as most of the family was after reading the quotes I choose to adorn my world. Vanessa and Tara, however, were ecstatic. My grandmother asked them if they knew what the magnet meant.

“It means doing something scary, like sticking a pencil in your eye,” Vanessa explained. “Or climbing way up high on a ladder and jumping off!” Tara added. Oops. With all the different combinations of words around the house, I realize I need to be a bit more thorough in my explanations. Still, children have a way of bringing everything into perspective. Scary step after scary step, that next phone call, presentation or introduction won’t seem so bad. At least I won’t be standing at the top of a ladder with a pencil in my eye.

Tyler Oaks earned her Bachelor of Arts in Spanish from California State University, Stanislaus and her Master of Arts in Spanish from California State University, Sacramento. Tyler lives in California's Napa Valley with her husband and twin daughters. Tyler is presently at work on her next novel.

As an agent, I receive many promising manuscripts that are in dire need of professional editing. First-time writers should never send a first draft, either to an agent or directly to a publisher. It is important that the proposed manuscript is the writer’s best effort, something that he has worked through a number of times. Spelling, punctuation and grammar must be checked meticulously. Having inexcusable typos and mistakes is the easiest way to get a manuscript thrown in the trash.

I often reject manuscripts, listing several obvious mistakes found in the first few pages of the writer’s work. I explain that the manuscript is not marketable in its current condition, and advise the writer to have his work professionally edited. Some will argue with my request, stating it is the responsibility of the publisher to edit his manuscript. My response is, “Think again.”

Editors are horribly overworked and under constant stress. They must be able to successfully negotiate author contracts, keeping financial exposure/risk to a minimum. They study sales records, estimate the manufacturing and editorial costs, and prepare budgets for the advertising and promotion of each book. The editor is responsible for presenting projects to the editorial board and tracking deadlines, ensuring that projects are on schedule and stay within budget. They must also have the ability to guide each author through the publishing process, and work closely with members of the marketing department to develop promotional strategies and materials.

It’s not an editor’s job to be fair to writers. An editor’s top priority is to make a profit for the publisher by acquiring saleable books. Writing professionally is a business, and the author is on the selling end in a buyer’s market. A writer who foolishly believes it is acceptable to submit a manuscript with known grammatical errors to an editor because it is “her job” to fix it, is kidding himself. There is an abundance of good work out there, and if a writer doesn’t show an editor respect and instead wastes her time with inferior work, the manuscript will end up where it belongs—in the recycle bin.

Lisa Martin owns Martin-McLean Literary Associates LLC. She represents established authors as well as new writers.

University textbooks are far from interesting because their purpose is to inform and communicate a body of knowledge rather than entertain or inspire. Not only is the purpose different from writing for the general public the procedure for getting published is different.

Many students, after completing a course at a college or university, believe they could write a better text than the one assigned, and they probably could. But the text wasn’t written for the student; it was written for the professor to use as an aid to their instruction. The first and major difference in writing a university text is determining the audience. No student buys a text unless it is required. When writing a text, the author must please the instructor. Here is the rub: If the text is too good, the professor isn’t needed, and if it is too weak, the professor has to work too hard. The secret is for the author to find that delicate balance.

Assuming the author can find that delicate balance, how does one get published? To begin, the textbook author does not need a literary agent. The initial contact is best made with a representative of a publisher that visits colleges and universities to persuade professors to select their products. Another avenue is to submit a proposal directly to the publishing editor assigned to the desired discipline. The advantages of dealing with the publisher’s rep are eye-to-eye contact and give-and-take discussion. Reps can become an advocate, and they are direct conduits to the publisher. They can and will tell you what the publisher is looking for and what the publisher will invest in.

Publishers of texts are primarily interested in publishing books for existing courses. They are not interested in publishing a text for a non-existent course or for a course that is unique to an individual professor or an individual institution. So don’t get creative. Publishers of texts want texts that capture market share and turn a profit. The proposal should contain ideas that will penetrate the market, that is, get professors to adopt the text. Reasons for adopting a text might include: test banks, video clips, creative and useful teaching manuals, subject matter interfaced with an accrediting agency’s standards, and/or Power Point aids to lectures. Preparing the teaching manual and supporting teaching aids usually take as long if not longer to prepare than it does to write the text. Why would anyone go to the trouble to write a boring text with supplementary materials? There is money in it, that’s why. If you happen to penetrate the market, college texts are not sold one at a time like books for the general public. They are sold a class at a time and many classes have multiple sections.

So when writing a university text, contact the book rep personally and create ideas that will make the professor look good, smart and current. Keep in mind that a professor’s teaching evaluations are important for job security and merit pay. You can bank on it… and so can they.

Dr. James Payne, a nationally-recognized scholar, educator and speaker, is a professor of Special Education at the University of Mississippi and a Fulbright recipient. He is the developer of the PeopleWise Event Management System and the PeopleWise Profile System.

By M. Graae

We recently discussed the elements of fiction writing. These are the basic concepts, such as characterization, plot and setting, which allow a writer to form and create the “big picture” of a novel. If you master nothing else about fiction writing but the elements, you could be able to write a novel, but you will probably run into difficulties in terms of execution. The conventions of fiction writing provide techniques for handling the elements and crafting them into a novel.

It is a simple fact that certain writing techniques are very helpful in the development of specific elements of the novel, and many writers have put these techniques to good use. The skillful use of these techniques—the conventions – allows writers to eliminate trite or derivative approaches to fiction and make their writing more accessible and engaging to their readers.

If you are hopelessly lost, consider this: The conventions of fiction are to elements as training is to a beautiful young horse. The horse has a great deal of potential for becoming a wonderful source of pleasure and pride, but without training, you cannot ride it, drive it, show it, jump it, or even transport it. Just as training allows you to get the maximum from a horse, conventions allow you to make the most of the elements.

Again, the conventions of fiction writing are:
Point of View (POV)
Plotting techniques (pressure, suspense, drama, parallel structure)
Scenes and transitions
Dialogue and narrative
Gingerbread (frames, flashbacks, prologues, epilogues and similar techniques)
Imagery

By far and away the most perplexing, confusing, and bewildering convention of the lot is point of view. (If learning to write is a journey, then POV is the necessary but frustrating roadmap.) Some students of writing catch on to POV immediately after it is explained; these writers don’t get what the big hue and cry about POV is all about. Others never quite understand what POV entails or how it is used in crafting a novel. Handling POV well does not ensure a successful novel; however, if point of view is not consistent in your writing, or even worse, if it is ignored entirely, chances are that nothing else in your novel will function well, and at best it will be hard to read.

So…what is this magic, elusive Pretty Odd Varmint? POV means what its name says: a viewpoint, or a specific perspective or angle of observation. Since a novel is basically a story, then it stands to reason that someone must be observing and reacting to the characters and action in the story. This observing character is the POV character, and is often the main character.

Events – in life or fiction – take on different meanings to the different people
involved in them. Each person will have different feelings and reactions to the event, and therefore a different perspective on it. This is the basic idea behind the concept of POV. Imagine a scene in which an attractive female employee and her male boss are in his office, discussing some facet of their work. In rushes the boss’s jealous wife, accusing them -- erroneously, it turns out -- of having an affair. All three people will have vastly different perspectives on this event. The employee is likely to be embarrassed, but perhaps also shocked and even angry. The wife is exhibiting one or more of various stages of fury. She may be out of control, or she may be sarcastic and accusatory. She may even, after a few moments, realize that she is mistaken, but is too proud to give in to the obvious. The boss may be calmer; he’s probably fielded this situation before and may be intent on reassuring or placating his wife so he can get on with his job…which indeed may be more important to him than her dramatics.

Every day we see things from different people’s perspectives. We feel sorry for the child being scolded in public by his mother…but we can certainly appreciate a parent’s frustration. We can view events from many different angles, and each view produces a different interpretation, a new “side of the story.”

A fiction writer takes advantage of this common experience by writing a story or novel from the point of view of a specific character, or several characters, or even an omniscient narrator who often isn’t even part of the story. Point of view is often used to develop a character, but can also be used to enhance setting and develop the plot. It is also a magic mirror that reveals the point of view character’s thoughts, emotions, hopes, dreams, fears, and much, much more. An effective point of view allows the writer to examine the innermost workings of a character’s mind. If you wish to reveal a character’s thoughts, and you are not using a consistent, constructive POV, then you’ll find yourself intruding in your own novel, telling the reader what your character thinks. This is a flaw called “authorial intrusion” or “author intrusion.”

Here are some questions to ask yourself as you think about point of view and how it can be used to investigate the inner workings of the mind:

•What motivates your characters? Sex? Love? Revenge? Survival? Are your characters’ actions rising naturally from their motivations?

•How do your characters react to events? Are they impetuous…or deliberate? What is the level of their self-esteem?

•Are your characters’ feelings and reactions appropriate to events? How would they react if they were under maximum stress from, say, the news that their best friend had just died?

•Are your characters reflective? Do they frequently remember people and events from their childhood? Do certain topics or people rouse certain feelings in them?

•How do they express strong emotions? Do they punch a hole in a wall…or do they keep their feelings at bay?

(Whew! See? There’s a lot to this whole “POV” thing!)
The Writer’s Journey will continue next time with more explorations into point of view and an examination of the three basic narrative formats.

Agree? Disagree? Tell us at editor@writersnewsweekly.com or join the discussion on facebook.com.

If you were to graph the plot of a conventional novel, it would appear as an upside-down check mark, rising gradually, peaking, then falling off abruptly. As the plot progresses, the action rises due to increased pressure on the character. This creates tension and suspense for the reader. This pressure builds to a point (the “peak” in the check mark) where the protagonist confronts the central conflict in the story and resolves it (or, in some cases, fails to resolve it.)

The sequence of events plays an important role in the structure of a plot. If the sequence does not give an impression of rising action and increasing suspense or danger, the plot will appear to be disjointed and illogical or, in other words, graphed like an upside-down question mark.

Benito Cereno, a novel by Herman Melville, is an excellent example of the classic use of rising action, also called “building action.” In the book, a British sea captain encounters a disabled ship populated chiefly by African slaves who claim that the crew was decimated by typhus. As the captain explores the ship and talks with the terrified skipper, Benito Cereno, he notices that all is not as it spears to be. Disturbing clues cause the captain (and the reader) to doubt the slaves’ story: Cereno is terrified of one of the slaves; a white sailor is wearing the remnants of an elegant shirt; some of the slaves start suddenly when the captain makes a sudden move; the figurehead is covered with a tarp. (We later learn that the figurehead has been replaced by a human skeleton, a victim of cannibalism.)

As the pressure mounts and the captain becomes more and more puzzled, the story reaches a climax when the captain at last realizes the truth: The ship has been overrun by the slaves. A skirmish ensues and the slaves are overpowered. A brief denouement describes the subsequent trial and Cereno’s death.

While the characters of the captain, the head slave and Benito Cereno are well drawn and compelling, the suspenseful plot line is at least as important as the yare to the effect of his story. The battle and denouement are almost afterthoughts, because the conflict has been resolved the moment the captain understands the situration.

It is important for the beginning writer to realize that a novel is dynamic and must rise in action, that is, increase in suspense. A static novel, where nothing of great conflict happens, or an episodic novel, in which incidents happen one after another in no particular order, will quickly fail to hold a readers interest. Events must build upon one another, step upon step, until you reach the “peak” of the action, and the pressure is so great that the conflict must be resolved.

The following exercise has been designed to help you find ways to construct your plot so that the action rises in the story.

Plot Exercise Three
Objective: To show how sequencing events affects conflict, suspense and the rise of action.

Part One
Below are the key events in the plot of a simple, conventional western story featuring a hero named Josh and his nemesis, Archer. As they appear here, the events are severely out of order. They do not make sense, are not chronological and do not logically build suspense. Rearrange these events so that they create a conflict, build suspense and rise in action.

1. Someone fires at Josh from a house but he escapes.
2. Josh shoots Archer, disabling him.
3. Josh discovers that Archer, whom he sent to jail years ago for robbing a stagecoach, has been released from jail.
4. Through a clever trick, Josh leads the sheriff and a deputy, who are pursuing him, to Archer’s hideout.
5. A guard is found murdered and the money he was guarding is gone.
6. Archer threatens the sheriff and deputy.
7. Incriminating evidence is found linking Josh to the guard’s murder.
8. Josh rides into Sundance, a town he has not visited in years.
9. The sheriff discovers large amounts of money hidden in Archer’s house.
10. Josh flees Sundance.

Part Two
Once the events are in order, choose two of the first five events and write each up in a short scene, no more than two pages for each event. Do the same for two of the last five events on your list. The purpose of this exercise is to show how action rises from one scene to the next. Note that Josh does not appear in all of these scenes.

Part Three
Archer is not seriously wounded at his hideout and manages to escape. List some ways in which he might seek to take revenge on Josh, thus increasing the conflict in the plot.

Part Four
Now take your own novel idea. List some ways in which you can increase the conflict. Put them in a logical order so that you build suspense.
If you are not working on a novel of your own, use the story hooks you created in Plot Exercise Two and see if you can come up with a list of events that build upon your initial conflict. Make sure you order your events in a logical manner that causes the action to rise.

Check back next week, when we explore “Conflict and Resolution,” from Writing Aerobics I. For more helpful tips and exercises, visit www.sterlinghouse-bookstore.com and check out:
Writing Aerobics I by C. Sterling and M. Davidson

Agree? Disagree? Tell us at editor@writersnewsweekly.com or join the discussion on facebook.com.