Yesterday we had a visit from a friend whose son is currently doing his second tour of duty in Afghanistan. Harry mentioned that they can send a two kilo parcel over to the troops for free. His wife was making Anzac Biscuits to put in a care package that will contain all sorts of other treats as well.  Apparently Anzac Biscuits keep really well and the troops love them – still!

It got me thinking about the origins of the humble snack so I did some research on the web. They date back to World War 1 when wives, mothers, girlfriends and organisations like the Country Women’s Association baked food to send to the troops. Since the average sea voyage from Australia to Europe took upwards of two months, the food needed to last. It seems a basic Scottish recipe was adapted and the humble Anzac Biscuits was born.

Below is a recipe I’ve copied from the Australian War Memorial site. Hope you enjoy it.

And while you’re eating them, remember the men and women still serving our country who find a small slice of Australia in the ragged shape of an Anzac Biscuit!

Popular ANZAC biscuit recipe

The popular ANZAC biscuit is a traditional, eggless sweet biscuit.

The following is a original recipe provided by Bob Lawson, an ANZAC present at the Gallipoli landing.

Ingredients

• 1 cup each of plain flour, sugar, rolled oats, and coconut
• 4 oz butter
• 1 tbls treacle (golden syrup)
• 2 tbls boiling water
• 1 tsp bicarbonate soda (add a little more water if mixture is too dry)

Method

1. Grease biscuit tray and pre-heat oven to 180°C.
2. Combine dry ingredients.
3. Melt together butter and golden syrup. Combine water and bicarbonate soda, and add to butter mixture.
4. Mix butter mixture and dry ingredients.
5. Drop teaspoons of mixture onto tray, allowing room for spreading.
6. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until golden. Allow to cool on tray for a few minutes before transferring to cooling racks.

Source

Recipes taken from Robin McLachlan, Anthea Bundock, Marie Wood, Discovering Gallipoli: research guide (Bathurst, NSW: Times Past Productions for the Australian War Memorial, 1990)

Ok, ok, so I’ve always been obsessed with water and swimming. I think it has something to do with being tossed in a swimming pool when I was six months old

A friend sent me these photos of the latest resort to open in Singapore. Gives new meaning to a ‘wet edge’ pool!

Now I’m going to have to scheme a side trip just to see ‘Sky Park,’ in the Marina Bay Sands development, for myself. Anyone got any stories or photos to top this one???

Welcome to Tracey O’Hara. She writes Dark Urban Fantasy with fast paced plots.  Her debut novel ‘NIGHT’S COLD KISS’ was released in 2009 to great reviews. DEATH’S SWEET EMBRACE is due for release January 25, 2011. They are part of her Dark Brethren series.

Tracey and I met when we were finalists in both the RWA 2007 Emerald Awards and then the 2008 Golden Heart awards.  We had a lot of fun in America at the conference with the rest of the 2008 Pixie Chicks.

Thanks Helene – and didn’t we have such fun in San Francisco.

Tracey, Night’s Cold Kiss is set in a fantasy world that’s richly imagined and well constructed. What are the difficulties in building such a complex world? How do you go about doing that?

When writing historical – you have to stay within the bounds of history, when writing contemporary you have the laws of today. I’m not just talking about the cultural aspects either. Things like the law of gravity, nature and physics must be obey. But we know these. Or we can research them.

When writing fantasy people have the misconception when that it’s your world – you can do what you like. Well, that is true to a certain extent. However, you must turn around and make up your own rules and then make sure you stick to them, keep them consistent throughout the book or series. For example – if were creatures are intolerant of silver, you wouldn’t want to give them a silver belt buckle for their belt.

The biggest difficulty can be keeping track of all the rules. Developing a detailed glossary of terms and organizations helped with me this. But really, the way it works for me is that the world already exists fully formed and I am like an explorer discovering and uncovering its richness as I go along. Still I have to play within the boundaries I have set.

Your work is described as Dark Urban Fantasy. For the uninitiated, what does that mean?

These days Urban fantasy is a term that used to describe a range of genres. But what is common is that it in a fantastic story in a city setting be it contemporary, alternate history, futuristic or other worldly setting as long as it is in an urban environment. Usually these stories are rather dark and gritty. Some television series that would fit the mould would be BEING HUMAN, SUPERNATURAL and TRUE BLOOD based on Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire series.

Most UF these days have a heavy paranormal, supernatural or fantasy element to the story. Quite a few have a female protagonist and quite often told in first person. Sometimes UF and Paranormal Romance are mixed up as the crossover can be quite blurred—the difference is an often debated topic. There are also UF series out there with male protagonists – some example of these are the DRESDAN FILES based on the wizard PI, Harry Dresdan, by Jim Butcher and SANDMAN SLIM – the hard boiled hitman from hell by Richard Kadrey.

What novels, movies or writers have inspired you?

Wow – so many. Too many. Writers – inspiration –Stephen King; Raymond E Fiest; Anne McAffrey and George RR Martin. Presently Vicki Pettersson; Brom; Jocelynn Drake and Pamela Palmer. On DVD I’m enjoying TRUE BLOOD and BEING HUMAN and ZOMBIELAND. Movies – I loved AVATAR even with its simple story, Loved THE LOSERS and so many more i can’t pick favorites, but I’m definitely an action movie kinda girl.

Tell us about you second book DEATH’S SWEET EMBRACE.

This is the second Dark Brethren novel and follows a new heroine Kitt Jordan, a snow leopard shape shifter who has recently had her entire world turned upside down. Her brother was recently murdered, she quit her job as the chief medical examiner, her estranged family has found the children she gave up at birth and her ex-lover has just shown up. And while all this is going on, a sadistic killer is slaughtering young parahumans.

We do still get to follow some of the characters from the first Dark Brethren novel like Antoinette and Oberon, but this is essentially Kitt’s story.

I love your prequel short story for NIGHT’S COLD KISS. Have you got plans to do that with future books?

Thank you very much, and yes – I’m intending to release a short story from my website one or two months before the release of DEATH’S SWEET EMBRACE.

What’s next in line for your writing? A third Dark Brethren story?

I’m currently working on SIN’S DARK CARESS, the third Dark Brethren novel. I must say I am enjoying this book. I can’t say too much about it as yet, and again I am hoping to release a short pre-story for it comes out.

You’ve recently joined The Supernatural Underground which looks like a fascinating group of writers. How hard is it maintaining an on-line presence while juggling writing and a full time career?

The Supernatural Underground is a fantastic group of friendly and talented woman and I have had a great time being part of it.

But sometimes it can be pretty difficult juggling everything. Not only is there the day job and writing, there is also promotion work and more importantly time for my family. At the moment I am trying to come up with a schedule to balance all these elements. My husband works week nights k– so I am trying to do all my writing while he’s at work so we are able to do things together on the weekends. My children are old enough to lead their own lives, but I still want to spend time with them too. So it is a matter setting priorities.

What tips do you have for aspiring writers?

Keep writing, keep learning and keep submitting.

Good advice, Tracey! I’ll be cheering you on at the conference when they announce this year’s winner of the Ruby Award. Being nominated is such wonderful recognition of your talent!!

Thanks so much for visiting and I’m looking forward to Death’s Sweet embrace

Tracey O’Hara

I was born in Australia – Launceston, Tasmania to be precise, but actually grew up in North and Far North Queensland. My family is very supportive of my writing. They encourage me to keep writing and pursuing my dream.

I discovered a passion for writing in March 2004. It started after doing some research into my family history. A story came into my head, screaming to get out, about an Irish girl who works for an English captain as a governess/nanny for his children while their mother is very ill. Set in Australia in the early 1820s.

But as I started to plot the story, another one emerged, which was much stronger. It involved the sister of the girl in the first story, who gets raped on the voyage out to Australia and falls pregnant. I wrote 120k in about 4 months – the story flowed out like molasses on a hot day.

This was before I learnt anything about writing, and I followed every bad writing practice known, making every writing mistake. But everyone loved the story – even if it was badly written. So I figured that I am more a story teller than a writer – so now I must learn to write. Now I am writing Dark stories, Dark Urban Fantasy to be precise.

In August 2004 I joined RWA and started to get involved with the Canberra group meetings. I haven’t looked back. I joined RWA America early 2005

Come and join us and have some fun with Fast Fiction

Use no more than 55 precise words to write a story and go into the running to win one of three books. Some fabulous entries have already been posted!

Today I welcome Lindy Cameron to the blog.  She’s written across the full gambit of Crime from edge-of-your-seat thrillers like REDBACK, to her Kit O’Malley PI series set in Melbourne, to True Crime novels. Her latest release is WOMEN WHO KILL, which she co-authored with Ruth Wykes.

I was privileged to meet Lindy at a Sisters In Crime night in Melbourne when she chaired a panel discussion between Felicity Young and myself. It was a very funny evening and may well have lulled me into believing all panels are easy and entertaining…

Lindy’s also embarking on an ambitious project which I hope she’ll tell us about later!

Lindy, firstly congratulations on WOMEN WHO KILL. It’s a fascinating, if at times uncomfortable, read. How did you go about researching and selecting the women in the book?

Thanks, Helene. And thank you for inviviting me along to your blog.

Uncomfortable is an understatement, I think, when it comes to the stories – or rather the subjects of Women who Kill.

My co-author, Ruth Wykes, and I first decided to concentrate only on women who had killed because they wanted to – not because they’d finally snapped after years of abuse, or were suffering in some other way.

Next we wanted to ‘select’ female killers who hadn’t already been done to death (sorry about that) in other true crime collections.

At the same time, putting together a collection with this title meant there were some murderers that simply had to be included in our book no matter how many times they’d been written about before.

Kath Knight (possible Australia’s most depraved killer) is one example; as was Valmae Beck, and Catherine Birnie.

In the case of the West Australian serial killer, however, we had a ‘point of view’ that no other writer had had. Ruth had actually met Catherine Birnie; had spent time with her in jail – when Ruth visited Bandyup Prison to conduct workshops. Her insight into this unrepentant serial killer is chilling indeed.

While researching my story on Tania Herman,  the killer of Maria Korp (forever known as the ‘Woman in the Boot’ – and recently played by Rebecca Gibney in a telemovie that played a little loosely with the facts), I was lucky enough to speak to two people involved in the case. The psychologist who had been counselling Maria herself, in the few months before the attack that ultimately led to her death, gave me a glimpse into the world of a desperately unhappy woman who just wanted to hold on to the man she loved – despite his cheating and constant lies. And the account by one of the police officers who was on the scene when Maria was found, days after she’d been strangled and left to die in the boot of her own car, was heartwrenching.

It was never our intent to give a voice to the killers themselves, (with the exception of the happenstance that was Ruth’s connection to Birnie), but rather to provide accounts of their crimes; and where possible how they impacted on the lives of those left behind or involved in the investigation. Much of our research therefore was done through court transcripts and by talking to investigators whose first-hand knowledge of the cases told the story for us.

The case of ‘just how’ Irene Maslin managed to talk a group of friends into killing another one-time friend, for instance, still baffles the detective who helped solve the murder of Paul Snabel.

The stories are certainly chilling… This is the second book you’ve co-authored. Can you give us some insights into how that process works?

It’s actually a great way to write true crime – or non-fiction. I have friends who do it with fiction – and quite seamlessly. You cannot tell who has written what parts. Not sure I could do that. With true crime though it’s quite easy – in the sense that my co-authors and I decided which stories we wanted to have in the collection; and then put dibs on the ones we each particularly wanted to write, and just worked the rest from there.

My first co-writing gig was the book Killer in the Family which I wrote with my sister Fin J. Ross. And no – it wasn’t our family. That collection was about domestic homicides – which sadly make up the majority of murders.

Relieved to hear you weren’t writing about your own family, Lindy!! You’re the Internet Gatekeeper for Clan Destine (I keep picturing Xena ,Warrior Princess, with that title…). Tell us about the group and how you came together.

Love the Xena reference! The Clan Destine Book & Author Portal grew out of a writers’ group that fellow crime writer Vikki Petraitis and I started back in 2008. We were both about to embark on new projects, that were also new genres – to us.

Vikki is well known for her true crime (The Frankston Murders, The Phillip Island Murder, Salvation) and was about to embark on her first ‘comic’ crime novel. I was about to throw myself into the Young Adult urban fantasy pond. We figured we needed feedback from writers other than ourselves. We now have 12 members writing in a variety of genres, and we meet once a month to talk writing, give each other feedback and eat ourselves silly.

Out of that group I decided to set up a website for (some of) our members; any other published authors who wanted to increase their online presence; and for some emerging writers to whom we all wanted to provide encouragement.

Working together with other writers is such an amazingly uplifting experience. Clan Destine sounds like a great example of that. Your book REDBACK, published by Mira, is an international thriller with a lead character, Bryn Gideon, who has potential for many more adventures.  Is there a sequel planned and if so, how’s it going?

The sequel is in the works – along with other works in the works. I’m hoping the second in the series will be ready sometime next year. In the meantime I have the rights back from MIRA (after they sold out), so I am now republishing Redback through Clan Destine Press.

You’ve written three very different styles of book.  Do you have a preference for any one subgenre in particular? If so why?

I MUCH prefer to make things up. So crime and thrillers are my thing. Although as I said my latest project is a little different: a YA urban fantasy time-travelling adventure.

Sisters in Crime is clearly close to your heart. How did you become involved and what exactly does SINC get up to?

I joined Sisters in Crime the day it was official launched at the Feminist Book Fair in Melbourne in 1991. A year or so later I put my hand up to take over the newsletter – which I am still doing nearly 20 years later (although now it’s a flash glossy magazine). I became a convenor (one of nine to 13, depending on the year) a little after that… and have not looked back. We have 500+ members Australia-wide, though most are in Melbourne where we are based. Most of those members are readers/fans of writing writing, rather than authors – but most Aussie crime writers are also members.

SinC is the best fun you can have while having the best fun. Seriously. I’ve had the priveledge of working with some of the most amazing women over the years. We have organised eight to ten public (open to all comers) ‘crime’ functions every year for 19.5 years; we produce a slightly irregular but fabulous magazine; we’ve presented nearly every female Australian crime writer (when we started there was only about five ‘working’ crime writers in the country – and we now have closer to 40); we’ve hosted nearly every international female crime writer who’s visited Australia; we have in-conversations with authors; panels with writers and/or real-life crime fighting professionals (cops, forensic pathologists, lawyers, magistrates, judges); we launch books, we have triva nights; we hold the annual Scarlet Stiletto short story competition (prizes now valued at over $4000) and now in its 18^th year; and since 2001 have been presenting the Davitt Awards for the best published women’s crime.

In 2001 we held the World’s first ever women’s crime convention and Australia’s first ever crime convention of any kind. The SheKilda Convention was a weekend celebration to mark our 10^th anniversary.

SheKilda Again in 2011 will mark 20 years of Sisters in Crime Australia and will be an even bigger, grander and more awesome celebration of all things to do with Aussie womens’ crime.

Publishing in Australia is usually seen as hard graft, but you’ve chosen to roll up your sleeves and take on that challenge. Tell us about your latest project and where you see it heading.

My sleeves are well-and-truly up and out of the way, as I am about to launch my own publishing company: Clan Destine Press. (The website will be up and running shortly so drop back in August )

I am either ambitious or mad – or both; but I am certainly having a great time.

Apart from the many books I’ve had published as an author, I am also a book editor; and before turning to full-time writing 13 years ago I worked in-house and freelance for a variety of publishing companies.

So I know a thing or two about a thing or two. Hence the ambitious/mad thing. Because on one hand no one in their right mind would start their own publishing house; and on the other, madly-waving hand, I’ve decided it’s the only way to go.

It’s not actually hard – if you have the skills, and/or know the people who do; or even as costly as the big publishers make out.

As long as you secure a distributor then you have a good chance of making it work. Start small and build from there.

My idea of starting small (and I rarely take my own advice) is to launch Clan Destine Press next month – August 2010 – with three books. Yes, three books.

The book I am most honoured to be publishing, most excited to be the publisher of, and most thrilled to be the person who will send it out into the world – to you the readers –  is the lastest historical novel by the incredible Kerry Greenwood.

For those of you who may have been holidaying under a mushroom in Outer Mongolia for the last 20 years, Kerry is the author of 18 (and counting) Phryne Fisher mysteries; five Corinna Chapman mysteries; and a host of other historical, adult and YA fiction.

Clan Destine Press will publish Out of the Black Land – a story of love and political intrigue, set in Ancient Egypt during the reign of the mad king Akhnaten and his beautiful wife Nefertiti.

As I said I am also republishing my own adventure thriller Redback. The third of the first Clan Destine Press books is: Dougal’s Diary, the delightful journal of a very special cat, by David Greagg.

Clan Destine Press will specialise in genre fiction – of all kinds; oh, and cats! I have several projects already on the burner for 2011 and around the middle of the year will start looking for submissions.

Wow! I’m exhausted trying to keep up with you, Lindy!! Thank you so much for sharing your energy and your passion for writing. I’m sure Clan Destine Publishing will be a tremendous success

Lindy Cameron writes both crime fact and fiction. She is author of Redback, the first in a new espionage thriller series featuring Commander Bryn Gideon and a crack team of Australian retrieval agents. She has also published four crime novels: Golden Relic (now an eBook); and the Kit O’Malley PI series Blood Guilt, Bleeding Hearts and Thicker than Water.

Lindy is co-author, with her sister Fin J. Ross, of the true crime book, Killer in the Family; and co-author, with her friend Ruth Wykes, of Women Who Kill. She is contributing editor of the true crime anthologies Meaner than Fiction, and Outside the Law 2; and editor of Outside the Law 3.

A national co-convenor of Sisters in Crime Australia, Lindy is also editor of the mystery fiction anthology Scarlet Stiletto the first cut.

Her publishing house Clan Destine Press specialises in genre fiction and its first titles will be: Out of the Black Land by Kerry Greenwood; Redback by Lindy Cameron; and Dougal’s Diary by David Greagg.

Last weekend, business was brisk in Brissie so I had to take what I was given. I should have realised there was something odd about the car when the girl leant across the counter and, in a husky voice whispered, ‘It’s the silver SV6  on bay 8.’

‘Huh?’

I smiled politely wondering if I’d made a mistake on my booking and was about to be driving a removalist van. No such luck. Parked proudly in Bay 8, silver paint shimmering in competition with the shiny chrome wheels, was a ‘muscle’ car. Its nose dipped low to the ground, colour-matched skirting flared round the doors like aerodynamic wings. Tinted windows screamed ‘look at me.’  The spoiler (or do they call that thing a damper?) completed the image of a bank heist getaway car.

I must have stood still too long, looking dumbfounded, because the nice man doing the checks asked if everything was alright.

‘Yep,’ I replied. ‘I guess I’m about to find out what it’s like to go from 0-100 in 10 seconds.’

He snorted as he walked away. ‘More like 6 and look out for the revheads at lights.’

Four hours later I brought it back with a smile a mile wide. I’d had more fun than I believed possible getting to 60 k/hm from a standing start. Who knew I’d enjoy leaving the boys in the hotted up Lancers in my shiny dust

It’s been an interesting week and I’ve loved reading other people’s take on the process. A huge thank you to Robb for giving so generously of his time and wisdom!

3-D Writing, Part 3

3-D writing is the art of surrounding readers with your story, pulling them in and making them a part of it rather than just a reader. Dialog, Description and Despair are three key facets: the three Ds of 3-D writing. The last key:

Despair

No, I’m not referring to what the writer feels as she struggles to get the dialog and description perfect or when yet another agent rejection letter appears by e-mail.

I’m talking about the characters’ emotions coming off the page and surrounding the reader in 3-D. Whether it’s despair, anger, anxiety, love, fear, euphoria, or murderous rage, getting the reader to internalize the character’s emotion is critical. Great dialog and perfect description is bland and boring without emotion. Telling the reader how the character feels doesn’t do the job.

Thousands of articles, books and blog posts have expounded on the standard writing advice of ‘show, don’t tell.’ It’s more than good advice. It’s what makes a story come off the page. It’s also often misinterpreted and repeated by some like a mantra without ever explaining what it means and when or how to use it.

Let’s visit Laurie in the pub again. Here are the two of the same examples used in the previous article on description.

Version 1: Laurie sat at the bar, depressed. She glanced occasionally toward the door. Then he walked in. He was tall, handsome and well-dressed, and caught her eye immediately.

Forget the description. Look for the emotions. They’re all there in black and white. She’s depressed. She’s expecting or anticipating something or someone, but she’s not very excited about it. When he walks in, her mood changes to interest. How do we know all this? It’s obvious: the writer told us so.

Version 2: Laurie hunched over her martini and played with the olive. She didn’t know why she bothered; no one interesting ever came in this pub. Yet each time the door opened, her eyes flicked toward the entrance. When he walked in, ducking slightly to clear the door, she sat up a little straighter. She’d never seen him around before. His perfectly tailored suit accentuated the broad shoulders and trim waist underneath. Laurie turned slightly, keeping her eyes in his general direction but trying not to be obvious. His sun-bleached hair contrasted with his surfer’s tan. A yacht. Maybe he owns a yacht. “That’s the life for me,” Laurie thought as she met his gaze full on.

Here we know she’s depressed, hoping for something but not excited, and then her mood lifts considerably. But the writer didn’t tell us that. So how do we know? The writer surrounded us with her actions, very minor ones, and her thoughts. Her mood comes off the page, especially when it subtly changes to interest.

Once more, with feeling.

1. Laurie sat at the bar, depressed.

Or:

2. Laurie hunched over her martini and played with the olive.

In the first example, the writer tells the reader she is sitting at the bar (action) and that she is depressed (emotion). In the second, the writer does not tell us this, but merely shows Laurie to us. We can see her. We can see what she’s doing. We can read her mood. We’re in the bar with her. I think I’ll have a beer and watch her a little longer. She’s kinda cute.

1. She glanced occasionally at the door.

Or:

2. No one interesting ever came in this pub, so she didn’t know why she bothered. Yet each time the door opened, her eyes flicked toward the entrance.

The writer can tell us what she is doing (glancing at the door occasionally), or he can keep us in the bar, sipping on our beer, watching Laurie as she flicks her eyes toward the entrance when someone walks in. But not only are we in the bar watching her, now we are in her head, hearing her thoughts in our minds. Neighborhood pub, the usual crowd of people we find dull and uninteresting. Wait. Laurie finds them dull and uninteresting; we’re just reading a story, remember? Too late. We’re in the scene and inside her skin.

1. He caught her eye immediately.

Or:

2. Laurie turned slightly, keeping her eyes in his general direction but trying not to be obvious.

In the first example, after the writer told us the man was tall, handsome and well-dressed, the writer proceeds to tell us the effect he had on Laurie. In the revised example, we are still in the bar watching her, and inside her head intuitively understanding what she is thinking and feeling. 3-D.

All of the second examples surround the reader with Laurie’s emotions by conveying her thoughts, her feelings, and her state of mind. They stay in Laurie’s POV rather than stopping the story to have a narrator describe what the man looks like. They pull the reader much more closely into Laurie’s POV, so close it almost feels like first person, but it remains in third person the entire time.

The second versions set the reader down at the bar next to Laurie, or pull the reader into Laurie’s head. The reader not only sees what Laurie sees, hears what Laurie thinks, but feels what Laurie feels. The writer doesn’t have to tell us. We see it, feel it, experience it first-hand.

When the man walks in, we are carried along with Laurie’s emotional swing from despair to a high state of interest. We even get a clue of her motivation. Does Laurie seem bored with her life, looking for some excitement, maybe a bit of a gold digger?

Wrapping up

Use the three Ds to make your writing 3-D. Capture the right balance in dialog, description and despair (and all the other emotions your characters experience), and you’ll surround your readers with a few hours of entertainment.

Instead of flinging their Kindles across the room, they’ll keep coming back for more.

Robb Grindstaff is the managing editor of an international English-language daily newspaper, currently living in the Washington, D.C., area. He is a thirty-year veteran of the daily newspaper business. His newspaper career has taken him from Arizona to North Carolina, Texas to D.C., with a five-year stint in Tokyo.

He fell in love with Australia on dive trip to North Queensland a few years back, and has vowed to return. So be forewarned.

With a career in writing, editing and marketing journalism, he has turned his experience toward fiction, and writes commercial and literary novels and short stories. Sample chapters of two of his novels are available at http://tiny.cc/CarryMeAway and http://tiny.cc/HannahsVoice. He also does free lance fiction editing. You can find him wasting time on Facebook at http://artist.to/robb.grindstaff.writer.

3-D writing is the art of surrounding readers with your story, pulling them in and making them a part of it rather than just a reader. Dialog, Description and Despair are three key facets: the three Ds of 3-D writing.

Description

Much like dialog, there is a perfect amount of description your story should have. Unfortunately, there is no formula to calculate it. Too little, and the reader can’t visualize the scene, picture herself in it, or know what the characters look like. Too much, and the reader’s senses overload with minutiae. Too much actually makes it more difficult for a reader to grasp the images.

Are some characters ciphers? A generic human male-shape with no face and no distinguishing features? Even for a secondary or minor character, there needs to be something that helps the reader picture the person in the scene.

Have you read (or written) a story where every time a new character walks in, the writer stops the story cold to describe the person in a pointless level of detail?

Consider these three examples:

Laurie sat at the bar, depressed. She glanced occasionally toward the door. Then he walked in. He was tall, handsome and well-dressed, and caught her eye immediately.

Okay, he’s tall. How tall? Six-foot one-inch, or seven-five? Handsome? What does handsome look like? Might not every woman have a slightly different definition of the term (within some range, at least)? Well-dressed? In a suit and tie, or casual? Expensive or just neat? On weekends, I consider myself well-dressed if I have on a pair of jeans with only one knee worn through.

Let’s try again.

Laurie sat at the bar, depressed. She stared blankly toward the door. Then he walked in, all six-foot-four, 210 lbs. of him. He had an athletic physique even though he had to be at least 47 years old. He wore an Italian-cut navy blue pinstripe suit with a red power tie, white Oxford shirt with button-down collar and black Ferragamo loafers. His blond hair, cut neatly around the ears but with a slight flip of curl that grazed his collar, contrasted with his deep bronze tan. His cheeks were smooth except for the crow’s feet that crinkled at the corner of his eyes. His eyes were light green, the color of polished jade. He caught her eye immediately.

I don’t know about you, but I nearly fell asleep writing that. The reader spends so much time absorbing all the details and piecing them all together into a visual that the story is lost. Most readers can’t retain all those details. Later in the story, when his blond hair is mentioned again, some readers will think, “Oh, I thought his hair was black.”

Once more.

Laurie hunched over her martini and played with the olive. She didn’t know why she bothered; no one interesting ever came in this pub. Yet each time the door opened, her eyes flicked toward the entrance. When he walked in, ducking slightly to clear the door, she sat up a little straighter. She’d never seen him around before. His perfectly tailored suit accentuated the broad shoulders and trim waist underneath. Laurie turned slightly, keeping her eyes in his general direction but trying not to be obvious. His sun-bleached hair contrasted with his surfer’s tan. A yacht. Maybe he owns a yacht. “That’s the life for me,” Laurie thought as she met his gaze full on.

Okay, maybe not award-winning stuff yet, but there’s something going on here that’s missing from the first two versions. There’s action, reaction, a little bit of tension and suspense, an emotional change, a hint at her motivation, at least something mildly interesting.

We know enough about what he looks like. More than just saying tall and handsome, less than a witness description on a police report. We’re getting a physical image of him, not just through description, but through actions. We know he’s tall because he had to duck when he walked in. We know Laurie considers him handsome because she can’t take her eyes off of him, his athletic build, blond hair and nice tan. We know he’s well-dressed in a suit. We don’t know the color of his tie or brand of his shoes. Does it matter? Not in this case. Her thought that he might own a yacht provides the image of money and status better than the brand-name description of his wardrobe.

We don’t know how old he is or the color of his eyes. Yet.

Don’t dump all the description in at once. Let the initial image settle in the reader’s mind. Later, when he sits down at the bar next to her, she may notice the crow’s feet around his eyes when he smiles at her. Maybe those little wrinkles are her clue that he’s a little older than her, but not so old that it’s creepy. Later still, his eyes might remind her of the polished jade she bought in Bangkok, right before he closes them and leans in for their first kiss.

Writer-friend Phillipa Fioretti (The Book of Love) goes into considerable detail on her lead character’s vintage clothes. As a guy, I’m less enamored of these details. But as a guy, I’m not Phillipa’s target audience. The vintage clothes are a key element of her character’s personality and style, and it’s a tremendous draw to her readers. It’s done brilliantly, so that even I, a guy, could visualize exactly what the character is wearing. It conveys a vivid image of the character – not just what she wore or what she looked like, but her personality. The reader very quickly comes to know the character as a real person, in large part due to this quirky wardrobe.

Other writers, other genres, different stories, can use more or less description and still have the right amount. I used to alternate reading Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Their styles were so completely opposite, especially in description, from spare to intricate, yet each conveyed exactly the right amount of description. It was a great exercise to see the wide latitude available to writers, yet how there is also a very fine point of ‘just enough at just the right time.’

While I’ve focused on character description, the same techniques apply to describing anything from the kitchen to the landscape to the weather.

Next: Despair

Robb Grindstaff is the managing editor of an international English-language daily newspaper, currently living in the Washington, D.C., area. He is a thirty-year veteran of the daily newspaper business. His newspaper career has taken him from Arizona to North Carolina, Texas to D.C., with a five-year stint in Tokyo.

He fell in love with Australia on dive trip to North Queensland a few years back, and has vowed to return. So be forewarned.

With a career in writing, editing and marketing journalism, he has turned his experience toward fiction, and writes commercial and literary novels and short stories. Sample chapters of two of his novels are available at http://tiny.cc/CarryMeAway and http://tiny.cc/HannahsVoice. He also does free lance fiction editing. You can find him wasting time on Facebook at http://artist.to/robb.grindstaff.writer.

I’ve met some lovely people via blogs and Robb is one of those. Anyone who’s a regular visitor to my site would remember when PHILLIPA FIORETTI visited for a chat about her new release, THE BOOK OF LOVE. The blog went mad. Food became the hot topic and Sala, a friend of mine whose a talented creative foodie, kindly donated three jars of homemade chutney as prizes.

Robb was one of the lucky winners. Chutney probably doesn’t feature high on the American list of culinary delights, but after the USA detection dogs cleared the jar of unnamed substance Robb nibble his way through it and professed to enjoy it. The least I could do was ask him back to the blog.

As it turns out, he’s got some wonderful succinct insights into writing to share with us. His post came through the day I was tidying up Beyond the Borders before I sent it off to the publishers. I wished I’d read it early…

So without further ado here’s the first instalment.

3-D Writing

A couple months ago, my wife and I went to see the movie Avatar in 3-D. I hadn’t seen a 3-D movie since I was a kid in some distant century. 3-D technology has come a long way, even though we still had to wear those silly glasses.

It was amazing. The characters, the scenery, tiny alien creatures seemed to float out of the screen and surround me. I felt as if I were a part of the movie rather than apart from it, merely watching on a screen. It added a sense of realism and believability to a movie set in the future, on a distant planet with very different life forms.

Afterwards, I wondered what it is that makes some writing feel flat, two-dimensional, like watching it on a screen, while other writing surrounds me and pulls me into the story and the characters, makes them more real and believable. What makes words on a page become 3-D?

When Helene graciously invited me to sit in as a guest blogger, I joked that I’d discuss the three Ds of writing: Dialog, Description and Despair.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized the best writers are those who can nail all three of these facets. The key in all cases is not too much or too little, but just enough so the reader forgets it’s fiction and lives inside your story for a few hours.

How much is just enough will be different for every writer and for every story. Each genre, style, and voice has different demands. There is no formula here – just some general observations. Learning to apply them takes practice. First up:

Dialog

Have you ever read a book with too much dialog? Or even a scene or chapter within an otherwise good book where the dialog goes on a bit too long? It feels like reading a screenplay with no stage direction. Talking heads, back and forth, and soon all you have are disembodied voices floating in space. Nothing is grounded in reality.

These passages are like when a child is playing with dolls. Holding a doll in each hand, the child provides the voices and the dialog. Ken and Barbie stand there, or are suspended in mid-air, talking back and forth. For hours.

You’re writing a scene with two people at a kitchen table, a restaurant or driving in a car. Your characters are talking and you, the writer, get wound up in the conversation. Nothing external happens for three pages. Yawn. Make your dolls do something.

How do the characters sound when they’re talking? What are they doing that’s interesting? Where are they? What’s going on around them? What are their facial expressions? And who the heck is talking? Have you ever lost track because of too much dialog, too few dialog tags, and no differentiation in the voices? Did you have to go back up and count down to keep track? ‘This is Bill, this is Susie, this is Bill, this is Susie.’

Too many dialog tags can be even worse, especially if the writer tried to get creative.

“This pail of water is too heavy,” Jill whined.

“You’re never happy,” Jack snapped.

“I hope you fall and break your crown,” Jill blurted out.

“Aaaahhh!” Jack screamed.

A page of that and I’d fling the book across the room. Good thing I don’t have a Kindle yet.

Do your characters have unique voices? Can the reader tell from the line of dialog who is speaking? If so, use as few dialog tags as you can reasonably get away with. And ‘said’ is still the most useful and invisible tag there is. If the reader can’t tell from the words in the dialog and the action beats how something was said, change the dialog or add some action that conveys the tone of voice and manner of speaking. Going for a cheesy dialog tag is the easy way out and doesn’t help the reader hear the voice.

If your characters’ voices are indistinguishable, go back and get inside each character’s head a little deeper. How she sound? What words would he use if he’s an attorney or a plumber? Real people don’t sound exactly alike even if they’re from the same geographic location and have similar backgrounds. Let their personalities come through in their voices.

Read the dialog out loud. Have a friend read it with you to get the sound of two people having a conversation. Read it like a script – no dialog tags or action. See where it falters, bogs down, sounds too similar, gets boring, or doesn’t sound realistic. Are you using dialog to dump info or back story? Don’t. Tighten it up by trimming the realistic but unnecessary bits of conversation, and pare it down to the essentials of what is needed for the story.

On the other hand, have you ever read a book with too little dialog? The narrator describes what is going on. There might even be some action, maybe a spoken line thrown in here and there – the disembodied line. Who was she speaking to? Page after page of narrative, even well written, with no people speaking will drive a reader to fling a book across the room and find something else to do.

There is no formula that says for every 150 words of narrative, you should have 75 words of dialog. Or for every six lines of dialog, you should have one dialog tag.

Each genre, each book, each writer’s style has different requirements and expectations. You will have to find the right balance for your story and your characters. How do you know when you’ve got it right? Your readers will let you know.

Next on Wednesday 7th July: DESCRIPTION

Robb Grindstaff is the managing editor of an international English-language daily newspaper, currently living in the Washington, D.C., area. He is a thirty-year veteran of the daily newspaper business. His newspaper career has taken him from Arizona to North Carolina, Texas to D.C., with a five-year stint in Tokyo.

He fell in love with Australia on dive trip to North Queensland a few years back, and has vowed to return. So be forewarned.

With a career in writing, editing and marketing journalism, he has turned his experience toward fiction, and writes commercial and literary novels and short stories. Sample chapters of two of his novels are available at http://tiny.cc/CarryMeAway and http://tiny.cc/HannahsVoice. He also does free lance fiction editing. You can find him wasting time on Facebook at http://artist.to/robb.grindstaff.writer.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

The ABC is reporting this morning that Wonder Woman’s had a make-over. She’s been getting around in the same weird blue pants and shape-shifting bustier for 69 years, so she does indeed deserves a little fashion moment of her own.

Complete with dark leggings and a sexy leather jacket, she looks more like a vampire-slaying avenger than the all-American sweetheart super-hero she was in 1941. Ok, I think the spurs on her heel may be surplus to requirements, but what would I know.  At least she’s finally been given a top that’s a touch more practical…

Along with the make-over she’s being given more intellect, more resolve, more depth. (She’s going to need them for the current crop of high tech villains!) So I say ‘yay’ to the makeover. Heroines in today’s books aren’t just pretty sidekicks to their alpha male counterparts.  They’re every bit as lethal and more than capable of saving the world in their own right.

Go kick some arse with those black boots, girl!!