by Annette Lyon

Several years ago I sat at a general session of a writing conference during a Q&A. I was surprised at the kinds of questions asked, things that were, I thought, obvious.

Then it dawned on me that four years prior, I hadn’t known the answers to those very same questions. Of course not; I had to learn them just like everyone else. I had really learned a lot over the last few years.

In the same vein, I’ve been surprised recently at some manuscripts that have crossed my editing desk, or rather, I’ve been surprised at the format of some of them. They’ve had some really basic problems, and I finally clued in why:
The writers just hadn’t learned yet. It’s not like there’s a writer fairy that bestows knowledge about things like formatting the moment you declare you’re a writer.

So in light of that, I thought I’d do a refresher on some basics about manuscript formatting. It’s something I think we often overlook, focusing instead on craft. But really, how your work looks will be the first thing the agent or editor ever sees.
If it’s wrong, you’ll look like an amateur, and that’s not the best way to make a good impression.

While publishers and specific types of manuscripts vary (screenplays, etc. are very different), in your average novel, you’re pretty safe using all of the following:

• One-inch margins. That means all around: top, bottom, left, and right. A bigger margin (say 1.25 inches—1.5 at the most) is fine, but never go smaller than one inch.
• Twelve-point font. Don’t go bigger, and don’t go smaller in an attempt to fit stuff onto the page.
• A standard font, like Courier or Times New Roman. In the past, Courier was the standard, but that was in the days of typewriters, when editors needed a good way to estimate word counts. Courier was good for that, since every letter takes up the exact same amount of space, whether it’s an I or an M. Nowadays, Courier is still fine, but Times New Roman is also popular and accepted—and for some editors and agents, preferred, since it’s a bit easier on the eyes. Just don’t use some funky script or cutesy font.
• A header at the top of each and every page. On the left side, it needs to have your title (or an abbreviated version of it) and your last name, such as: SPIRES OF STONE/Lyon. This way, if manuscript pages get separated from the whole, the editor will still know which work—and which author—it belongs to.
• Page numbers, beginning with 1, on every single page, preferably top right.
• Basic contact information on the first page, top left. Including your name, address, phone number, and e-mail address. You can also include a fax number. Single space this part.
• Approximate word count. Either immediately under your contact information or flush right at the top of the first page.
• Indent the first line of every paragraph by tabbing over once. Never, ever use the space bar to indent a paragraph.
• Create a new page for the beginning of each chapter. That doesn’t mean hitting “enter” sixteen times until you reach a new page. It means using control-enter to create a hard-page break.
• Use italics instead of underlining, which is another fossil from the typewriter age.
• Don’t use all caps or bold. Leave those for blogs, e-mail, and non-fiction.
• Do ellipses properly. Always be sure there are only 3 dots, and each one has a space before and after it, like this . . . (Sometimes Word will try to smash them all together. Undo it.) The one exception is if the ellipses land after a full sentence. Then you’ll have four dots, because the first one (with no space before it) is acting as a period.
• Know how to create an em dash, and use it properly. Don’t use a hyphen (or two hyphens) in its place. In Word, use control+alt+the minus key or type two hyphens, the next word, and a space. The hyphens should turn into an em dash.
• Use plain white paper.
• Print on one side.
• Put ONE space after a period. Two spaces is another hold-over from typewriters. Today publishers expect just one.
• Double space throughout (except for your contact information on the first page).
• Don’t include a copyright notice. That makes you look paranoid and unprofessional. Editors and agents know the copyright laws and that the moment you set your work into a tangible form, it’s already under protection by law.

You want the editor to notice your story, not your formatting. If you follow these basic guidelines, the formatting becomes invisible, and you’ll look polished and professional for that very first impression.

Annette Lyon is Utah’s 2007 Best of State medalist for fiction and 2007 Whitney Award finalist. Her sixth novel, Tower of Strength, will be released March 2009. She edits for Precision Editing Group and blogs at The Lyon’s Tale.

by J. Scott Savage

I have three tools of the trade I use a lot. In Stephen King’s great book, On Writing, he describes a toolbox every good writer should carry. You may not need every tool every time you write, but it’s great to have them when you need them. Some tools you use more than others. For me, my Phillips screwdriver, pliers, and hammer are isolation, disorientation, and misdirection.

These are the tools I break out when I want to raise the tension in one of my novels. They are often the key components of a thriller, but as you’ll see, they are just as important in other genres as well.

First of all, let’s take a look at how these tools fit into the toolbox as a whole. In any story with a plot (so really anything other than hardcore literary fiction, which according to Orson Scott Card is just another genre) your main character must have a goal. Preferably a noble goal, so the readers will root for them, but that is not a hard and fast requirement. Second, your reader must care about your protagonist. Third, there must be some kind of negative consequence if the protagonist does not accomplish their goal.

Pretty basic stuff, right? In order to save the townspeople, Sir Coughalot must duel the dragon, find the cup, and return it to the palace before the plague of bad breath is complete. I’m not sure how much we’d like a hero named Sir Coughalot. And his quest seems a little boring. But it’ll work for an example.

The problem is, Sir Coughalot is a knight, and we all know knights slay dragons every day. Also, he probably has a squire and bunch of friends with swords and shields. So we lay down the book with a yawn and say, “Ho hum. Maybe there’s something good on TV.” That is an author’s nightmare. I can’t have you laying down my book to run off and see who makes it to the next round of American Idol. Even if the cute kid with the weird hair sings just like Freddie Mercury.

In order to keep you hooked, I need to raise the stakes a little. I need to pull you into my web of fiction. (Wow. That sounded kind of cool. We need an author superhero who catches guys in his web of fiction. “Stand back, evil nemesis. I have a historical romance and I know how to use it.”)

Anyway, back to raising the stakes. One of the easiest ways to make you care about my character is by taking away his or her supports. In our story about Sir Coughalot, I need to get him away from his co-knights, and maybe even his squire. Isolation is used a ton, but there is a reason so many fantasy novels start with an orphaned child. What is more vulnerable than a baby left on a doorstep? Of course it works even better if the baby is left on the doorstep of a family that is mean to him and makes him sleep under the stairs while his mean older cousin gets two rooms to himself.

There are books which do not use this tool. For example, my friend James Dashner has a novel called The 13th Reality in which the boy goes on his adventure with his father. But even then, James uses the tool of isolation. He makes sure the dad is more like a big kid. Dad does not step in and save the day at every turn. So what we really have is more like a sidekick than a true parent figure. In Lord of the Rings, Samwise stays with Frodo, but the rest of the fellowship cannot come. It’s handled very skillfully, but in truth it’s just a tool to further isolate the protagonist. (Of course, the first isolation is when Gandalf leaves.)

Okay, so in our story, we could have everyone else be afraid of the dragon. But that’s pretty cliché (like the rest of the story isn’t, right?), so instead let’s say that the cup is rumored to turn anyone who sees it into a stick of gum. That should scare away all the other knights. The squire stays on, but he’s never been all that bright. And besides, he likes gum. We have now used isolation to up the ante.

Our next tool is disorientation. Let’s go back to our hypothetical misfit living under the stairs with a mean family and a bully cousin. His life is pretty miserable, and he certainly doesn’t have any friends, but at least he is used to it. In order to really create some interest on the part of the reader, we need to raise the stakes again. We need our readers to not only like our protagonist, but to actually begin the process of putting themselves in his place. A cool way to do that is to put the protagonist into a world he is unfamiliar with. And so much the better if the reader is unfamiliar with the world as well.

I write fantasy novels, but let me point out that when I say world, I am not specifically referring to another planet. It could be the world of high finance. It could be the country mouse going to the city. It could be that 99.9% of everyone on Earth dies. All a new “world” requires is that the protagonist finds herself in a place that throws her off balance. This is why Harry Potter goes to Hogwarts. It’s why Frodo leaves the Shire. It’s why Prince Raoden is thrown into Elantris. It’s why Luke Skywalker ends up in a swamp with a little green Muppet.

Let me use another example from a movie my younger readers may not be as familiar with. In the movie Jaws, the protagonist must stop a great white shark from munching its way through an entire town of tourists. We isolate him by turning the townspeople against him. Then we disorient him but making him afraid of what? Water, of course! Then we put him out on a boat with a crazy captain.

The other great thing about putting our protagonist into a new world is that we, the readers, get to discover the world right along with him, wondering over the flying brooms and laughing at the missing stair riser. Of course when they get to their new world, they might start making friends again, lessening the isolation. But there are plenty of ways to turn the people in the new world against them as well, right? So let’s send our knight to a land where dragons live in peaceful villages and knights are the ones that attack and terrify. And just for fun, let’s make the dragons people-size and the bad knights huge, terrifying creatures. That puts our little knight right in the thick of it.

Last but not least is misdirection. Going back to Harry—I mean, our hypothetical misfit—how do we make sure the reader doesn’t guess who Voldemort is? This is a slight problem because the obvious choice would be the new teacher, right? Okay, so we need the reader to completely discount Professor Quirrell. How do we pull it off? Misdirection. Get the reader to make an assumption which will keep them looking the wrong way.

In this case, JK Rowling introduces Professor Quirrell early in the story as a nervous little man who is overcome with wonder at meeting the great Harry Potter. This does two things. First, it makes the reader create a mental image of Quirrell as someone so non-threatening we can’t even consider him as a suspect. Second, she makes the introduction just as we are entering the world of magic. She distracts us with all the cool other things so we don’t have time to consider why she took all that time to introduce a character of such little importance so completely.

Of course the second part of misdirection is giving the reader an alternate target to focus on. If only JK Rowling could have come up with a slimy, mean, back-stabbing type of character who skulks around the school. Someone who surely has it in for Harry. Oh wait. She did! Snape was the target she wanted us to focus on while Quirrell worked quietly in the background. Of course it turns out that Snape was even more misdirection for future novels.

To wrap up our story of Sir Coughalot, we could have the squire actually be a bad guy all along. He could be just waiting for his chance to turn our poor knight into a package of Hubba Bubba and steal the cup for himself.

So there you have it. Isolation, disorientation, and misdirection. Fun tools. Powerful tools. But use them carefully. You wouldn’t want to put an eye out.

J. Scott Savage is the author of five novels, including his most recent, Farworld, the first in a fantasy series for young readers. Visit him at www.readfarworld.com

A great story stands on three legs: character development, plot, and setting. You should tailor the strength of these elements to the length of the story. Longer works need more development then shorter works. Each of these three elements should be equally strong otherwise your story will wobble on uneven legs.

The setting of a story consists of the time, place, circumstances the characters encounter, and small details of their environment. If you under develop your setting your story will appear generic and be very dull to read.

When initially developing the setting start by focusing on these four areas:

• The opening of your story should reveal the when and where the story takes place. ‘When’ would include the date or approximate date of the story.  ‘Where’ includes which city the story is set in. The plot should be affected and partially driven by the setting. A story set in during the winter in London should be different than one set in Jerusalem during the summer, even if the plot is similar in both works.
• Characters should be engaged in simultaneous things. This can include things like work, child care, falling in love, grocery shopping, or dance classes. This helps to complete the setting by providing the character with a believable and well round world to interact with. The activities the characters engage in, how well they perform, and how they react should reveal facets about the characters personalities to the readers.
• Change something about your characters setting so that is it fundamentally different from the world your readers live in. You can do this by either having your character live a different life than your reader or by changing something in your reader’s world such as melted polar icecaps, a nuclear holocaust, the collapse of world governments, or ban everyone from reading books.
• Suggest details of the setting rather than trying to explain details. For example, try saying it is winter by saying “he had to carefully navigate the icy snow covered roads.”  Suggesting is more powerful than explaining because it allows your reader to paint the setting in their minds eye based on their experiences. This creates a much more vivid setting for the reader than any author can create by trying to describe all of the details.

Would you like to know how well you have developed your setting? Submit your story to Review Fuse and let our writing community critique your work.

Jacob

What makes you keep reading a story? I keep reading a story if I am waiting for a conflict to be resolved, a mystery to be solved, or to see the fairytale ending. Without a clear well defined plot you cannot hook your readers and keep them reading. I have recently reviewed several works that did not have clear plots. These stories had a lot of adventure and conflict but at the end of the story I couldn’t identify what the plot was. Some of these works had 3 or 4 mini plots but not an overarching goal linking them together.

The plot is all the events in a story related to the achievements of the protagonist, primarily consisting of the conflicts the main character faces in opposition to the antagonist. The plot should have a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end. The beginning should give readers a chance to learn about the characters, the setting, and the problems/conflict that needs to resolve. The middle should contain the majority of the action and reveal why the problem cannot be easily solved. The end is where the protagonist finally resolves the problems or conflict.

You can start developing a great plot by developing a believable character with a problem that has to be solved by the character’s bravery and cleverness. Truly engaging works often have the main character try and fail several times before solving the problem or resolving the conflict.

Would you like to know how well you have developed your plot? Submit your story to Review Fuse and let our writing community critique your plot.

Jacob

Here is a list of free online writing courses. I have not completed any of these courses yet so please let me know what you think of these courses. Writing is not easy. Any new writer should start by taking time to really understand his/her craft. While you are here, feel free to join Review Fuse and submit your stories for peer critique.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Introduction to Fiction
• Writing and Reading Short Stories
• Advanced Essay Workshop

Open University

• Fiction Writing Course
• Descriptive Writing Course
• Essay Writing Course

University of Utah

• Introduction to Shakespeare
• Introduction to Creative Writing
  

Western Governors University

• Rhetorical and Critical Writing
• Language and Communications
• Literature Course - Parts I and II

Purdue University

• Proofreading Your Writing
• Conquering the Comma

E-Zine University

• Writing Clearly and Effectively
• Conquering Confusing Words
• Quick Ways to Clean Up Your Writing

Wikiversity

• Narrative Dialog Editing

Enjoy the classes,

Jacob

Villains come in many forms such as monsters, people, aliens, mental disorders, ghosts, and relatives. Villains provide the conflict a story needs to be entertaining and interesting. Here are the top 10 ways to create a truly vile villain.

1. Perform the introduction and follow up interviews with the villain. In order to develop villains that are credible, believable, and logical, you must know them as well as you know your hero.
2. Thoroughly explain throughout your story the villain’s motives and why he feels his actions are justified and rational.
3. Explain your villain physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Make him a three-dimensional and complete person.
4. Show your readers that the villain has the power and resources to destroy the hero. Make the villain very threatening.
5. Do not allow the villain to see himself as evil, insane, stupid, or whiny. People don’t typically view themselves this way, and it will destroy the villain’s credibility if he views himself this way.
6. Keep the plot uncertain. Never make it look like either side is definitely going to win. Suspense intensifies a story and pulls the reader in more effectively than any other tool.
7. Use the villain to showcase the hero’s qualities. The perceived power of the hero is strongly correlated to the villainy demonstrated by the villain.
8. Strengthen the villain by giving him a chance to present his case while demonstrating his intelligence, logic, and adaptability.
9. Give the villain traits most people hate or loathe about themselves or society at large. This allows the reader to understand and relate to the villain’s motives.
10. Give the villain normal or even likable traits that are demonstrated by average people. Doing so will strengthen the plot and the characters by creating an inner conflict within the reader who despises what the villain is doing, while at the same time relating to and possibly even liking him.

Do you want to know how vile your villains are? Join Review Fuse and let our community critique your work.

Jacob

Bad dialog plagues most beginning writers. The following top 10 list will help you write good dialog.

1. Start a new paragraph every time the speaker changes. Never have two people speak in the same paragraph.
2. Make sure the reader knows who is speaking.
3. Make the speech sound like normal conversation.
4. Be concise; cut out words that do not serve the conversation’s purpose.
5. Break up the dialog with action, as readers can be overloaded with too much dialog.
6. Avoid profanity, slang, and stereotypes. Each of these types of speech will date your writing and help it quickly go out of style.
7. Use correct punctuation and mechanics.
8. Use quotation marks to indicate words which are spoken by characters.
9. Read good and bad dialog to determine what works and what doesn’t.
10. Reveal new facets about your character through the dialog.

Are you curious about well you have developed your dialog? Upload your story and let the Review Fuse community critique your work.

Jacob

Developing characters is difficult. Here are the top 10 things you have to get right in order to develop great characters.

1. Characters must act naturally within the context of the story and setting.
2. Readers must be able to identify with and admire the characters.
3. The protagonist must be heroic, logical, have common sense, face complicated problems, and have worthy goals.
4. Characters need to struggle to overcome conflict. Characters that sometimes fail are easy to identify with. Conflict is the backbone of a story, so make your characters really struggle.
5. Characters should be well rounded physically, emotionally, and spiritually. If any of these three dimensions are missing the characters will feel either hollow or forced.
6. Possess universal traits such as love, hate, fear, guilt, grief, and embarrassment. Everyone possesses these traits which makes it easy to relate with and understand characters with these traits.
7. A character needs flaws. Always doing the right thing for the right reason is boring and predictable. Perfect people are easy to resent and hard to love.
8. The protagonist’s greatest weakness needs to be hammered on throughout the story. This creates both internal and external conflict and establishes the plot.
9. Never let the hero back down. Despite their weaknesses heroes always find a way to face their fears.
10. Make each character a truly unique individual. Give them quirks and provide details that give us insights into who the characters really are.

If you wonder how well you have developed your characters please join our writing community and let us critique your work.

Jacob

In order to learn enough about your protagonist to effectively write about him you need to conduct a follow up interview that focuses on details you need to develop the story. This follow up may interview look short, but should take longer than the initial interview. The two questions you need to answer are:

• What major weakness undermines your protagonist’s strong personality traits?
  • The protagonist needs to be likable so avoid weaknesses that will make people permanently loathe him.
• What monstrous problem does the protagonist have to overcome?
  • The problem should prey on the weakness. The final struggle to overcome the weakness should be part of the victory of the story.
  • Remember to never let the protagonist know he is going to succeed in overcoming this weakness. Let him face a complex set of problems that require his strong personality traits to overcome the issues. Ultimately the sacrifice of his weakness should be required for him to triumph.

Your secondary characters should only have one fundamental problem to solve. Do not try to get to know your secondary characters as well as your protagonist. If you do you will be tempted to develop too many complex characters which will result in a convoluted plot.

Feel free to sign up with or upload your story to Review Fuse, our community will tell you how well your characters have been developed and give you great ideas about how to further improve your story.

Jacob

In order to understand your characters, you need to dive into their minds and pasts. I recommend mentally sitting down with your characters one at a time in order to find out the following information about each of them. Listen to your characters’ answers and watch their reactions to the questions, as reactions can often be more telling than answers.

• Name
• Age
• Hair color
• Eye color
• Height
• Favorite color
• Worst and best physical feature
• Glasses, contacts, or have perfect vision
• Hobbies and interests
• Collections
• Neat or sloppy
• Talents
• Most embarrassing moment
• Heroes
• Relationship with parents
• Vices
• Strong personality traits
• The major goal for the character in your story and why is it important
• Events from the character’s past make this goal so significant
• What your character’s life is like right now, including family situation, motivations, job, etc…

Everything about your character is worth writing down. Unusual details from character interviews have a strange way of showing up in stories, so take time to get to know your characters before you try to write an epic adventure about them.

Jacob