My second draft is (sort of) done.
Critting is up to Chapter 13, so there will be more changes when (if) I get feedback on what needs changing. (There will be more edits, I’m not perfect lol)

However, I was going to query Dorchester and for that, the novel can’t be more than 90k.
I’d intended to cut about 8k, since I finished at 98.5k words.
And what do I do????

I ADDED another 2k, so now the darn thing is over 100k long.

Yeah.

That.

Synopsis, here I come.

So I got a little narked today.

I tend to stop by DWT (Daily Writing Tips) every now and then, and I got caught up with my blog reading a bit today.

I read the "Speak of the Devil" article and… it irked me.

You won’t understand why that post irked me, but my title for this post might give you a clue.

I write Paranormal Romance. (Or, as my Crit partners coined it "Hot & Heavenly Romance")

I do a lot of research on demons, devils, angels (fallen and otherwise) and other monsters. A LOT.

So when I see Lucifer and Beelzebub listed as "Another name for the Devil", then I get a little pissed.

Let me enlighten you. (Pardon the pun. You’ll understand the pun when you read on.)

The Devil’s name is Satan, not Lucifer, not Beelzebub.
Lucifer never was, and never will be, the Devil.
Neither is Beelzebub.
That title belongs to another fallen angel: Ha-satan. (That’s what he was called before.)
Ha-satan was Chief of the Seraphim, Head of the Order of Virtues.
Then he got a bit cocky and got into a fight.
He didn’t actually fall, as such. He jumped. Head first. And with pride.
That’s when he became Satan. The Adversary. The Devil.

Lucifer (Light Giver) however, owes his mistaken identity to a misreading of Isaiah 14:12.
He is one of the four Crown Princes of Hell, but the deeper you dig, the more you will come to realize that he also didn’t exactly "fall".
He got pushed.
He isn’t listed in the Seraphim, or Cherubim, or Thrones, or any other rank of angels, but Satan is.
Lucifer is equated with the Morning or Evening Star (Venus)
Compared to Ha-satan, he’s small fry.

Then we have Beelzebub.
Beelzebub (God of Flies / Lord of Flies) is originally a Syrian God.
Yup, Beelzebub isn’t even a fallen angel.
The one who equated Beelzebub with Satan was Dante, not any scripture.

Right.

Are we all clear now?
They are 3 separate entities, not one and the same.

So yeah, the Devil really is in the details.

I’m not the praying type.
Really, I am not.
But right now, I am pleading with whatever deity will listen to… well actually, I don’t know.

Vezien is out of the door. I’ve sent my baby to strangers and I’m worried about him.
I’ve entered two contests, and I’m expecting a kick in the teeth. Anything else is a bonus.

Yes, my crit partners like him, like the story, assure me it’s good… but it’s my baby, you know? I still feel like I am not good enough, that I write tripe and no one will like it. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way, but these are the first contests I’ve entered in 15 years, and I’m expecting the worst.

All I can hope for is that the judges love Vez and Sab as much as I do.

I shall report how it goes, when I hear back. (That won’t be for a few months.)

Fingers crossed!

I deliberately didn’t call this post Show vs. Tell, by the way. I have my reasons and I’ll elaborate a little later.

Ally Carter posted a really good piece on her blog about show vs tell. I think it’s worth reading, so please do. And check out her other posts as well while you’re there. You won’t regret it. There is some great advice there.

I realize most of the time writers are told "Show, don’t tell!" and it can get pretty tedious to hear it all the time. The little word "was" is condemned and pretty much has a "Kill on Sight" order against it. Poor little thing. What did it ever do so wrong?

There are times when showing gets tedious for the reader. There are times when you need to tell, rather than show. Sparingly, mind you. Just don’t think you have to eradicate every single instance of "was", because it’s telling.

For instance, I sometimes use it to show progress in a characters internal conflict.

He was going to tell her this time. She needed to know the truth. All this subterfuge had to end, no matter how much she’d hate him for being honest with her. He’d lose her, he knew it in his gut and almost changed his mind. No. He would tell her. Consequences be damned.

I was aiming to show character growth here. "He was going to tell her." hopefully tells you he’s still uncertain, that he planned to tell her a few times and kept quiet. He wants to, but his mind is not completely made up. He’s disecting the reasons for and against, struggling with the decision, until he finally makes up his mind. "He would tell her."
He made progress from uncertainty, to certainty. Sure, I could have used "He would tell her." both times, but to my mind, ending in "would" shows a resolve "was going to" doesn’t.

So the above was really a "Show vs. Tell".
That’s not what this post is about. Not at all.

Painting pictures for your reader is great, and you should aim to do this throughout. But having every single scene filled with minute description… *groans* Come on. Sometimes the reader needs a bit of a break, or they get lost in description and will be bored to tears. I’ve read books that told all the way through — and I threw them at the wall. It’s annoying. I’ve also read books that didn’t tell, ever, and I threw them at the wall too, because my brain went numb with all the tedious avoidance of "was" and "had been" and "going to". This resulted in flowery (and unnecessary) descriptions I could have done without, or sentence structures so convaluted, I had to read them four times to understand what they were trying to tell me.
They actually both failed at the very thing I’m trying to explain here.

The first one told me everything. It’s boring and kills all suspense.
The second told me nothing, but showed me every speck of dust on top of the TV. I got bored and dumped the book.

They both forgot to tell me the story they were trying to write. One by not paying attention to detail, the other by paying too much attention to detail.

No, I am not a published writer. I write mainly for fun, because I enjoy it. I have several stories finished and yeah, when I’m happy with the one I’m working on right now, the second draft of Vezien, it will be going out and I’ll try to find a home for it. Not just for that one, but for the entire series.
So why should you listen to me? What do I know?
Maybe nothing. I’m sure a great many wonderful writers will disagree with me. And some might not.
I still look at a story from a reader point of view. Is it interesting? Do I want to read it? Does it hold my attention? Or does it make me jump through hoops, trying to figure out what the hell a brocade drape on granny’s window has to do with a murder in a highrise apartment? And did I really need to know granny has a doily on top of the TV, with a porcellain swan on it, when we only get to see her once in the entire book?
Writing is storytelling on paper. Don’t forget that, while you eradicate those poor "was’es", and instead find a happy medium that works for you.

We all get so bogged down in rules sometimes, we forget to tell a story. We still write, but there is a difference between writing and storytelling. You need to do both, not one or the other. Bend the rules, ignore them sometimes when it fits the story. Don’t write and question every sentence you put down, analyse every word and phrase to death, rearrange every comma and semicolon just so it agrees with the do’s and don’ts, because while you do that, you’re not telling a story. You’re just arranging words according to a rule book and you will eventually lose the soul, the voice, the heart of your story and come to hate it.

That’s when you get stuck. That’s when your reader gets stuck and throws the book at the wall and never picks it up again.

So… let’s not get stuck, hm? Write and tell the story.

Show and Tell.

Now go and tell me a story, and stop worrying so much about "doing it right".

I had a story knocking around on my drive for oh… a long while.
Every now and then, I’d pull it up, read, make notes, scribble a bit — and put it back.

And then, all of a sudden… BLAM. I had an epiphany! I don’t think I’ve stopped typing since Thursday lol.

Rawr!

Now if you’ll excuse me — I must run (and type!)

One of my fellow Critters, Jennifer Shirk, has made the news!

For all the right reasons, I might add.

Her friends threw her a book release party and the local newspaper reported on it.

Three cheers for Jennifer! 

I only wish I coulda been there.

"What’s his number?" Rosie’s index finger hovered above the dialpad.
"555-0139" I replied.

You’ve seen it in the movies. Or on TV.  You might have read it in a book.
What’s that "555" code all about? Should you care?
A 555 number in the US is a number set aside by the phone companies (both the area code 555, and the local prefix 555) for their own purposes. Those numbers were never given out to customers. Hence they tend to be relatively safe for fictional use. (I say relatively safe, because the phone companies use them for their own internal stuff, so if you call one, you might end up calling the phone company.)

The reason people use 555 is because there’s always some person who will call a number cited in a movie, or in a song, or in a book — making life hell if you give out someone’s real number, and they get all the calls. (And they aren’t likely to forgive you for it.)

When I did a bit of research on this, I found out that 555-0100 – 555-0199 are kinda set aside for fictional use.

Real 555 numbers do exist, some have been given out, but they are very rare.

So while I’m all for keeping it real, I wouldn’t want to subject someone to phone harassment. I’d use a 555 prefix/area code instead. Yes, it can ruin the reality of the story, but is it worth putting in a number that might be real? I don’t think so.

The same goes for addresses. If you must use a real road, in a real town… at least give the house a number that doesn’t exist. If you don’t, and some person thinks your villain really lives at Number 12, Crescent Drive — they might go there and wait for him. God help anyone looking the way you described the antagonist in the book. Let’s just not risk that scenario, okay?

So yeah, make it up. Use something that looks real, but isn’t. Whether it’s a phone number, a postal address, or a registration plate of a car. (Though the latter is less likely to cause uproar.)

April over at Romantic Inks made a good post about Critique Groups and Partners.
I chimed in, but it kind of got me to thinking… how do you / did you find your crit partner / group?

I found it pretty tricky to do, when I looked around.
We all want specific things from a group, and the groups want specific things from us, the writers who apply / join.
But how do you find one that fits you?
How do you know whether they are any good?

It’s a conundrum.

So the other day, we were messing around on Critters, talking about our genres and I said I write paranormal romance.

One of my fellow critters chimed in and said "You write hot & heavenly romance".

Dayum!

That’s IT!

Thank you, Cyn!

So yeah. That’s what I write.  Hot & Heavenly Romance lol. (With a bunch of demons, vampires, werewolves and other stuff that goes bump in the night thrown in for good measure.)

Oh and while I’m at it… she has a book coming out. So check out her blog, Real Writers Don’t Vaccum.
(And I resemble that title. )

A Nixle emma Bixle ond a goldigs Wartaweile (Patience)

I miss speaking Swabian sometimes. It’s a great dialect, but it’s dying out. Of course, any German who isn’t from around where I’m from, will have no clue what I’m saying — and we do so love to confuse those "Reigschmeckte" (Foreigners).

Every area in the world has its own slang and dialect. You either love it or you hate it. Most of the time you won’t understand it, even if it’s the same language. If I exclaimed "I don’t Adam and Eve it! Some Tea Leaf half inched my dog and bone!" — would you know what I mean?
I don’t think so.
It’s Cockney Rhyming Slang. It’s old and a lot of it dates back to a time when the East End still had working docks.

So, should you use it in your historical novel? It’s tempting, isn’t it? It would add flavor, it would add something uniquely London to the setting.
But will your reader understand if you have your dockworker hero tell his fellow worker "I’ll have to talk to the trouble and strife before she drags me in front of the garden gate and I’ll have to get the ol’ whistle and flute out." Or when he sits at the breakfast table and goes "Pass the Lady, Dear."
Probably not. At least not without a translation.
Just because you are comfortable with a slang, doesn’t mean anyone else is. Yes, it adds flavor, but that flavor needs to be kept up throughout the book. If you use something like Cockney Rhyming Slang, you’ll have to provide the reader with a dictionary. It gets tedious, and if they have to look up every other phrase, they will throw the book at the wall pretty soon and never pick up another by that author.

I can’t tell you how many books I’ve read where the author tried to convey the hero as Scottish. Some managed to keep me reading despite the mutilation of their speech patterns, but most of them… I toss on a pile for the charity shop.
There are only so many "Dinna ken?" "Ne’er!" "Ach, he’s nae guid." I can take. You know the type. The ones where every word they say is written as dialect, or with a ton of slang words.
I dare you to read "Trainspotting" and tell me that’s easy to read. If, indeed, you understand it.

So should you not use it at all?
No. That’s not what I’m saying.
Just don’t overdo it. If you can, you could use a familiar word and sprinkle that in. (and by that I mean a word people recognize as a specific region, i.e. y’all — which is associated with the Deep South) There are many books I’ve read where the author thought something was one region — but it was actually another. I recognize the mistake, so will others. Unless you are a native speaker of the slang you are trying to portray, it’s going to be neigh impossible to keep it up consistently – and accurately – throughout the novel.
Also, be very aware that using slang dates your book. What is cool today, may be completely lost on another generation. Today, who still knows what "Square" means?

So be careful what you have your characters say and even more careful of how they say it. Doublecheck that you’re not overdoing it.
Or, as the ones familiar with rhyming slang would say "Use your loaf and take another butchers."
Use your head (loaf of bread) and take another look (butcher’s hook).

Now… I’ll put you out of your misery.

Dog and Bone = Telephone.
Tea leaf = Thief.
Half Inched = Pinched. (Stole)
Trouble and Strife = Wife.
Garden Gate = Magistrate
Lady (in Silk) = Milk
Adam and Eve = Believe
Whistle and Flute = Suit
Loaf (of Bread) = Head
Butchers (hook) = look
 

There will be a test next week.