The Sea Calls

The Sea calls to me

Like a lover in the night

Forever the moth

Chasing the fiery light

New adventure

Forcing me to roam

Pulling and tugging

Taking me from home

The whipping wind

And rolling wave

Tossing and moving

Inches from a watery grave

Across the horizon

A new land does await

Seeking my salvation

Thru the pearly gate

The Sea calls to me

With her lonely arms

Taking us young men

From our barren farms

She is a witch tonight

Beckoning anew

She’ll take one in ten tonight

For her frothy stew

Yet still I yearn

Seeking that blue light

Ever onward

Scrambling thru the night

The Sea calls to me

Like a lover in the night

Forever the moth

Chasing the fiery light

A Writer's Voice

I have been wrestling with this concept of a writer’s voice. What is it and how do I get one. Everyone seems to differ on the exact definition, and even more so on how to do it. I was hoping to find some easy instructions to follow. You know, do this, add that, stop doing this. But no one seems to have an easy formula to follow.
I have come up with three examples of voice. These are sentences that cannot be improved. They capture and move the audience more in a few words than I could with an entire book.   
“The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.” (Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address 1863)

Or

“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few,” (Winston Churchill, 1940)

Or

“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.” (Declaration of Independence. 1776)

A couple of observations

-          Lincoln’s phrases go from 6 syllables to 5 syllables, then down to 4 syllables. I am sure this was intentional and lends to a sense of building tension.

-          The rule of three repeatedly shows up. Lincolns starts with 3 phrases, both Churchill and Jefferson end with 3 phrases.

-          Churchill uses 3 words in each phrase

-          Jefferson’s ends his passage with phrases starting short and ending  long, 1sylable, 3 Syllables, 6 syllables. Building to and ending. Opposite of Lincoln’s starting long and ending short.

-          All three use BOLD declarative statements (World can never forget), (Never in the field of human conflict), (Truths to be self evident). Each statement is surrounded by 3 bold phrases.

-          Try rearranging the words, even if the meaning is the same, the strength and art is lost. EX: “Among these are pursuing happiness, life, and liberty.”  

I have come to believe that the ‘voice’ part of writing is the real art. It’s like telling Picasso how to shape a curve when painting a face. You either have it or you don’t. Training and practice can greatly improve it, but talent will take it to the next level.

What a book needs

A good stroy compells you to read because of one of the following; Voice, Plot, or idea. preferably all three. The voice or language and word choice needs to draw you along. Make it easy to fall into the rabbit hole and get lost in the new world. The plot needs to create tension and drama. Make you have to keep reading to find out what happens next. The idea has to be new and interesting. It could be a character, event, place, or situation that the reader has to learn more about. The trick is to get them down the rabbit hole, keep them interested, and expose them to new wonders. Simple right? A good book will usually meet two of the the three. A great book, a grand slam will have all three in abudance.

Lessons learned about writing

After almost eighteen months of this writing thing, I wanted to talk about the things I have learned.

1.       Commas, they’re important. They go before the quotation mark. The next word is not capitalized unless it is a proper noun.

2.       If you make the character too snarky, it reduces the tension. Things can’t be that bad if they’re making jokes all the time.

3.       Not enough internal dialog makes things sound like a list. He did this, and then he did that, followed by him doing the other thing. The story comes across as flat.

4.       I focus too much on getting information to the reader and not enough on creating the emotions in the reader. This is a holdover from twenty three years as a radioman. Being trained to be precise and emotionless in my communications.

5.       The main characters names should not start with the same letter. It confuses the reader. Every time they have to think it makes it harder to get down the rabbit hole.

6.       If the scene is not critical to the story then remove it. Will the reader’s knowledge or emotion be impacted by the scene, if not remove it.

7.       If you show a gun in the first act, someone needs to shoot it in the third act.

8.       Don’t head hop. Pick a POV and stick with it for the entire scene. It will tighten things up. No more than five POV’s per novel. The more POV’s the farther away the reader gets from the characters.

9.       The POV impacts the story, Star Wars told from Han Solo’s POV is a totally different movie.

10.   Rewriting/Editing is hard. Wait awhile before going back and rewriting you story.

11.   Don’t use clichés. Simile’s and Metaphors should be original. Readers will skim over trite saying. Too much skimming and they stop reading.

12.   It is critical to get readers down the rabbit hole. That place where they are in the story, in characters head. Being amazed, amused, frightened about what is going to happen. Once you are there you can stretch reality, push the unbelievable stuff. But if you are not there, the reader will stop reading and usually end up throwing the book against the wall.

13.   Not all readers are the same. What one finds as great, another will think of as boring. And vice versa. Write your story, do the best you can and let the chips fall where they may.

14.    Conflict drives every story. It is the difference between a novel and an instruction manual.

15.   If the characters don’t grow and change, then nothing important happened in their lives.

Dystopia Novel vs. Dystopia

Why do Young adults or as I like to call them, Old Teens, like dystopian novels so much. Simple really, High School is the most dystopian world you will ever find. It is made up of unwritten rules and experienced by newbie’s who must navigate their way through a maze of trials and monsters. All of it designed to weed out the weak and ruthlessly promote the powerful. The world was so much better in the olden days (Elementary school) where there was a benevolent authority that provided a solution for most problems. In high school and most dystopian worlds you have had to rely upon your own wits, you have to find your inner strength. Most of all you have to grow and become someone else.

Young adults like dystopian novels because they live it everyday.

Test works

The test worked. I typed the word into google 24 hours after creating on this blog. today I did a search and it came up nr1. How great is that.

Epiistes

This is a  test of the google search engine. I am using the new word I invented "Epiistes".