Charlotte Rains Dixon

How to Ferret Out Strong Verbs and Other Good Words, Part Two

Big Word Hunting, Part Two: The Thesaurus as Roget Intended It 

(This series began yesterday with a post on Strong Verbs)

Since I have become a big game verb hunter, I have remembered how much I adore my thesaurus.  It is Roget's International Thesaurus, with a copyright of 1977, and I have no idea where I got it.  I do know it would be one of the first things I'd grab in a fire, (except that I once did escape a house on fire and believe me, the only thing you think about saving is things that are alive--kids and pets, so nix that).

The "How To Use This Book" note in front of the thesaurus says that this particular version is a "theme" thesaurus.    Short version, this means its not arranged in traditional dictionary form.  Rather, the words are grouped in categories, according to themes, with an index in the back.  This is the thesaurus as Roget intended it.

This is the only type of thesaurus a writer should have.  Why?  Because a word-loving writer could get lost in the pages of this kind of thesaurus.  A writer could glean all the ideas she ever needed from perusing the pages of the International Thesaurus.  A writer, given that he had overcome laziness, and fear of not being able to find good verbs, can find a cool word for every thought he's ever had in this book.

For instance, randomly open the index section and spy the word, "burning."  Beneath it are all the possible permutations of that word, starting with nouns such as capital punishment, combustion, cremation, heat, pain.  We've not even gotten into the verbs yet, which include angry, colorful, eloquent, excited, feverish, flashing, and more.  AND, we've not even turned to the actual thesaurus section yet--this is just the index.  Choose, say, flashing, and you're directed to section 335.34, from which you can glean a whole paragraph of synonyms, such as flashy, blazing, flaming, flaring...and so on.  In case none of these suit you, the mother section 335 consists of 42 segments having to do with light.  

Oh, the glory of it all: words tumble over each to attract your attention on the page!  But now what to do with them?  How to remember the perfect verb when it is midnight and you labor to finish your chapter or the article that is due in the morning? 

That, my friends, is the subject of Part Three of our series on Verbs.

How to Ferret Out Strong Verbs and Other Good Words

Big Word Hunting, Part One: What is a Strong Verb?

Have you ever read a novel and been impressed with the originality of the author's use of verbs?  One of the hallmarks of good fiction is the use of strong, original verbs.  Yet how does one go about finding these verbs when our daily lives are most often assaulted with weak variations of "to be" from every angle?  When I read a novel full of good verbs I sigh heavily and lament that I am not a good verb finder.

But of late I have deduced that my inability to find good verbs is a result of laziness.  I hate when that happens and I discover that something I thought was a congenital trait is actually because I am slothful.

Why laziness?  Because it takes more effort to pull out the thesaurus and look up a word then it does to hit Shift F7 and use the lame Word synonym finder.  And because it takes consistent exertion to look for verbs in your daily travels and readings, and most important, when you find them, write them down.  It takes energy to drag yourself out of the rut of using plain, ordinary words and passive verbs.

Perhaps at this point you might be asking, what, exactly is a strong verb?  Let us take a look:

• All variants of the verb to be are weak verbs.  (Sorry, to be it is a harsh judgment, but it must be said.)  Poor old to be is so over-used that it does not pull up any fresh imagery (or any image at all).  To be is the work horse of the verb world, and work horses age early and get tired and sick and feeble. So send your to bes out to pasture and find some young fresh fillies, or colts if you prefer.

• Verbs with an ing ending are weak verbs.  Yes, I know, the justification for using the ing ending is that it indicates time passing.  Such as "I was reading while I waited for the train."  However, a simple ed ending accomplishes the same thing in a crisper fashion:  "I read while I waited for the train."  I have a tragic propensity to fall in love with ing endings and so once in awhile, I must whip myself soundly and rid my manuscript of as many of them as possible.  Put those ing endings out in the back 40 with the workhorse to bes, where they can have AARP parties together.
• Verbs based on nouns are strong verbs.  A fun verb exercise is to sit in a room, look around and start naming every noun you see.  What you'll discover is that many of our most beloved verbs are based on nouns. And in the process of turning nouns into verbs, you might stretch your mind a bit to discover some hot new verbs. 
• Strong verbs stand alone, on their own two feet.  They don't need helpers like had, or would, or any other words that exist mostly to suck up to the handsome strong verbs.  For instance, "The policeman had run so fast he was out of breath."  How about "The policeman ran so fast he was out of breath," instead?  You get the gist.  Banish the helper verbs.  They can rent the room next to the AARP verbs and hold a wake for themselves.

In part two of this diatribe series on verbs, coming tomorrow, God and goddess willing, we will discuss the wonders of the thesaurus.  Until then, have a look at your current writing project.  What kinds of verbs do you see?

Another Way to Get Publicity

Publicity for me, that is.  Here's the deal.  Drumroll please....Wordstrumpet is now an Alltop blog!

What is Alltop, you ask?  They call themselves a "digital magazine rack" and since I am a magazine harlot as well as a Wordstrumpet, I like that description.   What this means is that they gather up a bunch of sites for your reading pleasure.  Or, as they so eloquently put it, "in other words our goal is the 'cessation of internet stagnation' by providing 'aggregation without aggravation.'" 

And since the folks at Alltop are "highly subjective and judgmental" (their words, not mine) about who they include, I am thrilled, thrilled, thrilled to be a part of it. 

How does it work?  Head on over to the writing page at Alltop and you'll see several feeds listed, including mine, down there at the bottom.  Also listed are the headlines of the five most recent posts, which you can then run your cursor over to get an instant preview to see if you want to read it.  Cool, huh?

I'm heading over to get one of their kick-ass badges to put up, but first I need to thank Frank Marafiote, who got me going on Alltop in the first place.  Thanks, Frank!

Lasagne for Lewis, Pineapple-Upside Down Cake for Emma Jean

I've just finished making a pan of lasagne for my son's birthday dinner tomorrow.  (Brief aside: on Twitter, the spell check wanted me to spell it lasagne, which I thought was correct.  Here on Typepad, the spelling gods insist it is lasagna.  But I sticking to my e ending.  I like e endings.)

I'm sort of famous for my dislike of cooking, but lately I've been trying out new recipes (cooked pineapple and cheese--thank you, Candace), making old favorites I'd forgotten about (apple, celery, and walnut salad), and creating new dishes (brown rice, black beans, burger, onion garlic, other interesting things I can't remember.  My Mom would call this Icebox Cleanup.)  Fall is in the air and it makes me want to cook.

I've always seen cooking as one more thing that is taking me away from writing, one more thing to rush through so I can get back to what I'm working on.  I've been known to set a pan of some slapped-together concoction on the stovetop and wander away to get back to my work--only to return to find the food a burned mess.

Ah, the writing gods are harsh masters, demanding such fealty that we scribes have time for nothing else.  Certainly not for cooking, or any other hobbies.  Alright, I do knit--but it is a rare occasion when I actually finish something.  Writing always beckons before I have a chance.  And then there's the fact that it is difficult to knit or cook while reading, and let's face it, reading is a critical aspect of writing.

But I'm starting to think I've been missing out.  People always yammer on about how grounding and relaxing cooking is and I roll my eyes and tell them cooking bores me, implying, of course, that I have way better and more important things to do.  And the thing is I admire people who cook.  Deeply admire them.  I think that people who cook are very likeable.  They cook to feed others, to please others, to make others happy, right?  So most cooks are very good people, except those snotty ones who will only use a certain kind of cheese from France and the finest olive oil and all that crappery.

My point in all of this is a confession of sorts.  Part of the reason I've started cooking is that the heroine of my novel is cooking.  Emma Jean has recently informed me that she loves to bake (pineapple-upside down cake and cookies to present at her readings) and cook (I don't know what yet).  I'm happy that Emma Jean has told me this because she is a kick-ass, larger than life character, and kick-ass, larger than life characters are sometimes difficult to write in a sympathetic manner.  But because Emma Jean loves to cook, particularly for others, this will make her more likeable.  Right?  Right? 

And so I have some catching up to do in the cooking department.  Hence the lasagne--everything from scratch--for Lewis.  Try as I might, however, I could not convince him that he needed to choose pineapple-upside down cake for his birthday dessert.  I'll just have to bake it another time, seeing as how it is Emma Jean's specialty.

Photo of Pineapple-upside down cake by Mark Pellegrini, used under Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.5 license.

When Art Gives Up its Secrets

Yesterday, I wrote about the fabulous workshop that Darnell Arnoult gave for the Loft and talked about how she presented an exercise called "Finding Fiction in a Photo," wherein we looked at pictures (amazingly enough) for a full five minutes and then wrote about them.

I can't express how important this kind of deep connection with an image or piece of writing can be to your work.  I started my free-lance writing career writing about art.  Wrote a few facile articles that got published and then had the great good luck to get assigned to a very hard-ass editor.  One of the first pieces I wrote for her she rejected, and told me to go back to the gallery and start over.  She insisted that I go back to the gallery and look at the paintings until they gave up their secrets and I knew enough about those secrets to write about them.

(By the way, that assignment resulted in one of my all-time favorite lines I've ever written in an article:  "Watercolors, like earth girls, are easy."  Yes, this was a very long time ago, a couple years ago after the release of the Geena Davis movie, Earth Girls Are Easy.  There are probably some of you reading this who haven't ever heard of it.  Lord, there might be some of you reading this who were not yet born when that movie came out.  But no matter how old you are, you must admit--best line ever.)

And so I learned to deconstruct art by looking at it--truly looking at it.  Anybody who has ever taken art history will be familiar with the process.  I'd taken a year of art history in college, one of the best things I ever did, and so once I allowed myself to sink into the paintings I had to write about, I remembered studying art history slides and doing the same thing.  And soon I recalled how much I had gleaned from all those late nights of leafing through Jansen's,  History of Art and memorizing the details.  (I still have that book--it is smoke damaged and water stained from having lived through a fire but I couldn't bear to give it up.)

When I began my MFA program, years later, and needed to learn to deconstruct pieces of writing in order to write about them these experiences served me well.  My dear friend Cate McGowan, who had majored in art history, and I agreed that a firm grounding in the field is actually a very fine training ground for writing.   One cornerstone of a good MFA program is writing critical essays about literature, the theory being that one of the best ways to learn about writing is to read it, and my art history and writing about art background gave me a way into to do this.  I was accustomed to staring at paintings and sculpture and now I could transfer those skills and stare at literature until it, too, gave up its secrets.

So if you're stuck or blocked, don't overlook the idea of finding a photo or image to write about.  One great source for this is the Google image search.  You can find all kinds of cool photos on that.  Choose one, stare at it until it gives up its secrets (which may be quite awhile) and then start writing about it.

The Writing Loft Recap

I promised a run-down of the recent orientation weekend my partner Terry Price and I put together for the Writer's Loft, at MTSU in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.  Terry and I took over the program last March, (geez, it seems much longer ago than that) and so this was the first orientation on our watch.  We were delirious with excitement over how it turned out, mostly because of our wonderful presenters.

The event started on Friday morning with a three-hour workshop given by Darnell Arnoult.  People who live in Nashville, North Carolina, and really anywhere across the south are familiar with Darnell's workshops which are so full of information and inspiration I could sit through day after day of them, even if she said the same thing over and over again.

In her workshop, "Writing Out of Chaos, OR How to Write a Better Story than You Know," Darnell presented the specifics of her system for writing a novel.  She believes avidly, as I do, that story comes from character, and that the first draft is a learning draft.  Where Darnell departs from common creative writing wisdom is in her insistence that one can write a novel without knowing much about the plot or having to tackle it chronologically.    She advocates getting to know your characters by setting them in motion through exercises that she suggests.  And one thing I love about Darnell is that she is adamant that you can get a lot of writing done in 15 minute chunks.  You can complete a character exercise in that amount of time, or write the beginnings of a scene.

Darnell also has an exercise that she does called "Finding Fiction in a Photo," which is a very useful idea generator.  She passes out photos and asks you to choose one and then she has you literally stare at the photo for five full minutes.  Just sit there in silence and stare at it, taking in every detail you possibly can.  Then she has a whole list of questions that you can answer about the photo.  Things like List five observations about the scene in the image, List five physical characteristics of the person you've chosen in the photograph, what is the person's full name? and so on, through over fifty questions.  (of course, we only got through the first few questions in the workshop.)

The total of all of this was that I came away re-energized to work on my novel, and I've been working on it, to the detriment of all my other writing projects ever since.

I'll have more info about the other Loft lectures and workshops in the coming days.  Meanwhile, enrollment in the Loft is not just for people who live in Nashville.  We videotape the entire weekend, and since the heart of the program is one-on-one mentored writing, you can do it from wherever you live.  Check our website for more info, or email me at the address listed at the top of this page.

I Confess

I cannot tell a lie, because you have no doubt noticed, but I am a blogging slacker.

Two weeks ago I headed to Nashville for the Writer's Loft fall orientation.   This was a big to-do because it was the first actual orientation that my partner Terry and I planned since we took over the program.  And, I am happy to report, it was a rip-roaring success.

So much so that I got completely re-inspired to work on my novel again.  Not just working on it, but working working on it, if you know what I mean--keeping the file open on my computer, working on it every spare moment, obsessing about it all the other moments, stealing time from paying work.  That kind of working on it, which I love because its been too long since I've been in this space.

To my credit, there has been guilt.  Lots of it.  So much that it finally drove me to cautiously log onto my Typepad account.  So here I am.  I've not gone anywhere, just deeply into the novel.

Here's the good news--I took copious notes while sitting in the workshops and lectures that inspired me so much and my plan is to write blog posts about what I learned.  Um, never mind that that has been my plan for the past week, since I returned home.  I'm going to do it.  I wrote this post, didn't I? 

I also have a pile of reviews to post on my companion site, Bookstrumpet.  So stayed tuned, there is much more to come.  Really.  Trust me.  I promise.

And now excuse while I go look at what I wrote this afternoon on my novel.

Oh, one more thing--I was having some computer issues last week.  Like big ones.  Like my beloved Vaio melting down type problems.  Its okay for the moment, but I'm in the market for a new one.   I'm so tempted by the Macbook.  So very, very tempted.  I've resisted the whole Apple cult for years and now I feel it ensnaring me.  Help me, PC users! Not a big fan of Dells, but I've loved my Vaio.  I would like it to be less than astronomically expensive.  So if anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear it.  Has to be a laptop--it goes with me wherever I go.

Link Round-Up

By the time you read this, I'll be in Nashville. And even though I have learned how to send a post to this site from my Centro, just in case the giant Centro God in the sky deems that feature unavailable this week, I've collected a few of my favorite Wordstrumpet links for your reading pleasure.

No, they aren't from other blogs, they are from this one.  You think I really want you wandered away from here?  No, I need more traffic and lots of it.  So don't wander away, spend time on posts you may not have had the opportunity to read.

And sign up for my newsletter while you are at it.  (Its that cute box to the right.  At least I think it is to the right.  I have to stop and think about it every time.)

So here goes, a selection of posts for your reading pleasure, in no particular order:

A reminder of my obsession about David Cook.  How quickly we move on to other things.  But no doubt I will buy his CD when it comes out in the Fall.

Springtime in Oregon.  Nothing better.  Except for maybe fall in Oregon, days so beautiful they make your heart hurt.

Ah, LA.  You gotta love it.

I don't know, I'm silly that way, I just love to write.

And finally, lest we forget, why I'm in Nashville.  C'mon and join me, y'all.

One more thing--if you're bored, Bookstrumpet, my sister site has all kinds of great reviews on it.  I've got a great staff of contributors who write about all kinds of interesting books.  Check it out. 

Story

What's the difference between a novel and a story?

A story is shorter.

Funny joke.  I know, I know, don't quit my day job as a writer to to become a comedian, right? 

The truth of the matter is, a short story is a lot shorter than a novel, and that makes all the difference.  For starters, every word and every sentence must count in a story.  That doesn't mean that you novelists get to slack and not worry about words and sentences, it just means that stories are more like poems in that every word must count.

A story also has to reach a pinnacle of some sorts.  Of course, a novel must also, but the novelist has 300 or so odd pages to accomplish this while the short story writer might have 20 if she is lucky.  In a story, either the character changes, or he reaches the "last chance to change" as the famous editor Rust Hills called it, and decides not to change.  Something happens over the course of the story (or else there wouldn't be a story) and your character either changes because of that, or decides not to change, consciously, or more likely, unconsciously.

Why am I pondering the elements of a short story?  Because I've actually been working on one, for the first time in quite awhile.  My friend and colleague Linda Parker is putting together an anthology of Christmas stories and essays, and I'm adapting a chapter from my first novel for it. 

Story is a topic that endlessly fascinates me, and because of this, I'm going to devote a feature article on my first newsletter to it.  That will be coming out next week, after I return to Nashville, and if you want to get on the newsletter mailing list, just sign up on the handy little box to the right.

Writer's Loft Orientation Next Weekend

Yesterday I cleverly wrote a post on my new Centro phone and sent it to be published on Typepad from my backyard.  I know this is old news for those of you who have had Blackberries and Iphones for ever, but it is a major step forward for me.  I'm on the road to LA and Nashville a lot, and now, should I find myself without and internet connection, or stuck in an airport, I can check email, work on documents and even write a blog post. 

Another way to feed my internet addiction, just what I've needed.

I've been working on figuring out this phone because I'm heading off to Nashville on Tuesday.  Next weekend is the two-day orientation for the Writer's Loft, the program I co-direct with Terry Price.

The Writer's Loft is a certificate writing program that features one-on-one writing instruction that is based at Middle Tennessee State University.   Students write original work and critical essays based on their reading, and their mentors critique this work in a structured, supportive atmosphere.  You can read a lot more about it on my page about the program here.

This fall, we're doing something a little different and that is opening up the Friday portion of the orientation to non-students for the low cost of $50.  That morning, novelist Darnell Arnoult will be lecturing on, "Writing Out of Chaos, Or, How To Write a Better Story Than You Know," and in the afternoon poet Bill Brown will be presenting a workshop called, "Finding Your Pivotal Moments, Real and Imagined." 

Anyone who lives in the Nashville area and is interested in writing ought to seriously consider checking it out.  You can register directly on the website and read all about the program there, too.

I'm hoping to bring you live reports from the scene, as they say, or at least check in after the events of the day are over to bring you nuggets of writing information.  Stay tuned.

Testing

This is a test. No, not of the emergency broadcast system, but my phone, to see if I can post directly from it. Since I'm hitting the road on Tuesday, I thought it would be cool to figure out. The last test failed, here goes this one. Update: It worked! I sent the previous paragraph from my Centro. Pretty cool, huh? Now I can send posts from airports or wherever I happen to find myself. I know, I know, you're beside yourself with excitement. I'll also be trying to remember to send tweats for my Twitter feed which you can see on the lower left column. My only problem with that is I haven't figured out how to do it tactfully--ie, sitting in a lecture, pecking away at my phone might not go over so well.

Observations on a Not-So-Good Novel

I'm reading a novel published by a smaller press.  Sometimes the reason why novels don't get picked up by a big publishing house (or picked up at all) is a mystery. But in this particular case I have some thoughts.  Its really a very good novel in many ways--compelling subject, lots of conflict, interesting situation.  Yet there are a few things that jump out at me, and in this, I'm realizing, it is as instructive to read a not-so-good novel as a top of the line one.  So here goes.

Cardboard characters.  This is not always true all the time, but in too many instances the author isn't able to create fully rounded characters.  What makes a fully rounded character, you ask?  Excellent question.  Too bad there's not an easy answer.  But in this novel, the characters tend to be all bad or all good.  A couple of them seem like stand-ins for idyllic causes.  Also, at times they don't act credibly.

Unbelievable actions and responses.  Sometimes the characters in this novel don't act believably.  Their actions seem to be devised for the sake of the author to move them around or to create more conflict, but its not conflict that is organic to the story and thus doesn't ring true.

Superficial viewpoint.  No glaring viewpoint violations, but the viewpoint lapses at times, nonetheless, because the author hasn't thought through exactly what the character would see or know.  Sometimes a viewpoint character describes things about the location that, given the fact she just moved there, she wouldn't know. 

Meandering scenes.  The scenes aren't well thought out.  They don't spike, or drop.  Often they start with one emotional tone and end on the same one.  There's no movement. In addition, sometimes there's a monotony to the the order of the scenes.  They are like the same size pearls strung on a necklace, when they'd have more spice if the necklace featured all different size beads.  Just as a scene must have rising or falling action within, so to must the order of the scenes.

And yet, I'm still reading the book.  Why?  I think the main reason is that the author does manage to create a compelling viewpoint character most of the time.  And the conflict that the character faces is well presented. 

So if you find yourself reading a "bad" novel or even a not-so-good one, see if you can define what it is that makes it bad.  You might learn a lot about your own writing in the process.

Blogger in Need

You may have noticed the appearance of the above button on my sidebar. 
In case you are wondering what it is, I will tell you.  A beautiful young woman and her husband were in a terrible plane crash earlier this month.  The crash left a third passenger on the plane dead, and Stephanie Nielson and her husband Christian in critical condition.  Stephanie, or Nie, has burns over 80% of her body.  Both she and her husband are in chemically induced comas while doctors treat their burns.  The Nielsons have four children, who are being cared for by Nie's siblings.

I don't know Nie and I wasn't even familiar with her blog before I read about the crash on The Crafty Chica, but I've been fascinated by her story since.  Her blog is full of photos and entries about her beautiful kids and her love for them and for being a Mom.  She also clearly adores her husband.  The saddest post was reading about her excitement at Christian getting his pilot's license. 

Nie's blog exemplifies one of the things that blogging does best--give us a glimpse into the heart and life and very soul of another human being.  After you have donated money, you can check out blogs by Nie or related to her recovery:

Nie Recovery  (this blog seems to encompass her personal blog, The Nienie Dialogues)
CJane  Her sister's blog, with health update

Reachel Andrew Nie Recovery

Guest Post: Writing About Music

Today's guest post comes from my Welsh friend Derek Ayre, hypnotherapist, musician, and writer extraordinaire.  Visit his music site here.   (My spell checker goes nuts over his British spelling, but I like it so I've left it in.)

Writing About Music

by Derek Ayre

Music is one of the great loves of my life and I have been playing pianos and digital keyboards since the age of about 5. But love piano playing as I may, I had this feeling that it was going to be one of the most difficult subjects to write about. This is probably because throughout my life, whenever anybody has asked me what my piano playing was like, I could simply sit down at the piano and literally show and not tell by playing the music. If a picture paints a thousand words, then so does a piano – when it is being played of course!

And so it came about that one day, I was looking for a suitable subject to blog about and I was considering a piece of advice I had so often heard in my writing classes. “Write what you know”, and I had this idea about writing all about music and piano keyboards, so I opened a new blog called The Clavinova Piano and Keyboard Blog.

Writing my first entry was easier said than done and the first thing I did was to look back through all my old music books I had used when I was a kid for some inspiration. It took quite a lot of brainstorming to come up with a post that was going to be interesting to non-musicians and those who were merely toying with the idea, about learning to play. Even my music teacher had a prop in the form of a Steinway grand piano! And after she had taught me how to name notes and recognise their value and pitch she merely said, “OK, now you play it”. And then when I made a mistake, she would either take my finger and place it on the correct note, or say no more than “start from the top again”. Words were rarely uttered during a music lesson and the written word came in the form of red writing on my music copies with terse statements such as, “watch your timing!” or “take care” and then there were crude sketches of a pair of eyes, to save her having to write “watch your timing” or “take care”. A person of few words, written or spoken, but words or no words, she was a good teacher, I must admit. But I digress…

After scratching my head for a day or two and searching around the Internet for inspiration, I came up with the idea of creating for my first blog post and titled it, Clavinova Piano, explaining what a clavinova piano was and what it would do. I suppose I was fortunate having one of these instruments, because had they not been invented, it would have been a pretty lame post that would be entitled, What is a Piano?   Everybody knows what a piano is.  And my idea was to introduce to my readers what could be done with a digital piano and why it was worth purchasing one and learning to play it. I could then see what interest the blog generated and decide whether or not to continue with the subject.

Once the blog went live, and I had got it recognised by Google as actually existent, I was surprised at the interest it generated and I even had some comments left in the first few days. Not bad, I thought, for a brand new blog that I never thought I would ever find anything to write about. However, I made a dreadful mistake on the control panel of the blog and deleted the post!  All the comments went with it, and I hadn’t even responded to them or taken note of who they were from. But it wasn’t quite back to square one, I had saved my work in my word processor, so it was just a matter of cutting and pasting it back into the blog.   Now, less than a month later, I am becoming more and more aware and inspired about things to write about in the world of music playing and will never again pay heed to my sceptical mind saying, “I don’t know what to write about!”

http://clavinovapiano.muxgo.com/