How to Write a Great Sentence  Joe Moran, The Guardian

Every writer, of school age and older, is in the sentences game. The sentence is our writing commons, the shared ground where all writers walk. A poet writes in sentences, and so does the unsung author who came up with “Items trapped in doors cause delays”. The sentence is the Ur-unit, the core material, the granular element that must be got right or nothing will be right. For James Baldwin, the only goal was “to write a sentence as clean as a bone”.


An Edited Page from Flaubert's manuscript for Madame Bovary

Three Acts: Three "Things' That Can Increase the Coherence of Your Conflict

 Try this exercise if you're afraid your conflict is lagging!

This uses the 3-act Structure to organize your plot events into setup, rising conflict, resolution, and that structure provides propulsion and the progression of events within the story arc. Willy-nilly eventing won't build up the dramatic power that intensifies the emotion.  In fact, effective plotting is all about cause and effect. Events matter because they cause something else to happen and something to change and the characters to feel. The accumulation of events is what propels the reader to read on, and organizing this cause/effect sequence into acts will help you build tension and cause change.

Three Acts:
Act 1 -- Set up conflict.
Act 2 -- Make conflict rise.
Act 3 -- Make conflict explode, and then resolve it.

Try breaking these acts into 3 big events of ascending emotional risk: Examples-
3 times she needed help
3 times he got stuck
3 attempts to deal with the conflict
3 attempts to reach the goal
3 heartbreaks
3 secrets
3 lies
3 failures
3 betrayals
3 times she didn't ask for help

Just try it-- ascending risk, remember!
Then consider: What are the risks he/she is afraid of?
Why is this a risk?
What might this risk cause, and what might be caused by their trying to AVOID the risk?

THREE ACTS. THREE SECRETS.
For example, let's take one that is just full of emotion-- secrets. Three secrets.
Kept or revealed? Or both? Maybe the attempt to keep a secret leads to revelation.
Let's think of ascending risk --
Act 1: This sets up the first secret. She's an FBI agent, and she's sent undercover into a small town. So the first secret is that she's secretly an FBI agent.
There's not a lot of emotional risk in this secret because it's her job. But it sets in motion all the rest of the risks.
What does this cause? It causes her to be placed in this small town to investigate the local bank, and it causes her to have to take on a disguise—she's pretending to be a bank teller.

Act 2: The next secret comes when she meets and is drawn to the son of the bank president. This is just the sort of guy she despised when she was growing up, rich and polished and educated. But she's supposed to investigate his father, and she's supposed to be a bank teller who would be flattered by his intentions, so she has to keep the secret from him about who she is... and the secret from her boss that she's falling in love with one of the "targets".
What does this cause? She's getting deeper entrenched into deception. It's going to be far, far worse now when her secret is revealed. She's also becoming alienated from her job, from her old self, from the FBI, as she's not reporting her contact with Junior. Maybe she's even started lying to her boss, withholding information that could get Junior in trouble.

Act 3: What's the final secret? It's probably her real identity, not just FBI, but her former identity. Maybe she's never told anyone that she grew up as "trailer trash," the daughter of a small-town prostitute or drug dealer. Her final secret is her shame, which has caused her all along to hide her past and her true self, to cut herself off from her old friends and her family, maybe even to make up a more generic and acceptable past.
(The big task would be—and I'm too brain-dead now to come up with an idea!—make the revelation of that secret in the start of Act 3 happen and affect the plot.)
REMEMBER TO TRY AND ASSEMBLE THIS IN "ASCENDING ORDER OF EMOTIONAL RISK." THE RISK OF THE LAST SHOULD BE THE GREATEST RISK TO THE CHARACTER'S EMOTIONAL SECURITY. SO IN THIS CASE, WE'RE SEEING THAT THE BIGGEST SECRET IS HER PAST, AND THE GREATEST DANGER IS SHAME.

Let's try another "Three Acts, Three Somethings."
Remember the film Casablanca? Rick is a symbol of the United States before Pearl Harbor, isolated, uninvolved, as the world crashes around him.
This is a tightly plotted story, and there are several "3 things", but the one I like to focus on is "Three Times Rick Refuses To Help." (Tip: To determine “ascending risk,” you want to ask after each of the 3 things: What is the risk? What does this cause?)

Act 1: Ugarte asks Rick for 2 things—to hold the letters of transit for the evening (he agrees), and later to help him escape from the police (Rick refuses this time).

What is the risk? There's some emotional risk from refusing to help—a few hours later, he drunkenly refers to it—but he can shrug it off as kind of a cost of doing business—sometimes, to run a successful saloon, you have to sacrifice a friend.

What does this cause? It's very important externally because with Ugarte dead, Rick is now stuck with these letters of transit, and as he says drily, "As long as I have them, I'll never be lonely." (I tell you, this film is SO well-written, because in fact, he is alone, and his loneliness is ended only because he has those damned letters of transit!)
--

Act 2: The news of his having the letters spreads, and he's approached by Victor Laszlo, a Resistance leader who will be arrested by the Gestapo if he can't get out of Casablanca. When L offers to buy the letters (which will get him and his wife to safety—do NOT ask why! Because, that's why. These are magic letters :), Rick refuses, and when asked why, says bitterly, "Ask your wife."

Much more emotional risk here! In refusing to help, he is acknowledging that the wife (Ilsa) hurt him earlier, and he's using this as a means of revenge. His hard-won isolationist wall is beginning to crumble. Also, weirdly, he's sort of letting himself hope that Laszlo will find out about the earlier affair and cast Ilsa out so that she will come to Rick again.

What does this cause? Well, one effect is, paradoxically, to reconcile Laszlo and Ilsa. She's been keeping the secret of the former affair (she'd thought L was dead), and this actually lets Laszlo understand what happened and gently indicate that he doesn't blame her. (This becomes a huge part of her conflict, actually, as she realizes she still loves both of them.)
For Rick, this causes him to get more and more involved in Ilsa's dire situation and make it that much clearer that he's still in love with her.
--

Act 3: Ilsa herself comes to him and asks for—no, demands—the letters of transit to save Laszlo so he can continue to fight the Nazis. She is so determined that she pulls a gun on him, and he is so determined to refuse to help her, that he invites her to shoot him. Rather than help her, he will commit suicide! Talk about emotional risk. Helping her would be worse than dying?
(She as always ends up acting with love, putting the gun down and confessing that she still loves him, and he ends up embracing her—this is one of the greatest scenes in the history of film.)
What is the risk? That he will fall in love with her again (as he does), that he will lose all his defenses, that he will be hurt again, that he will lose her. This ALL happens. (That is, sometimes the greatest emotional risk should explode.)

What does this cause? Rick’s refusal causes her to confess her love, and that leads to their tacit decision to use the letters of transit. But here's the amazing thing. Ilsa says to him, "You'll decide what's right? For all of us?" That is, she is telling him that whatever he decides to do, he has to help Laszlo to safety. (She assumes that he will give Laszlo one letter of transit, and she and Rick will escape together some other way. And you know what happens, or if you don't, go watch the film!!!!!)
The real result is Rick's return to the family of man, actually. He accepts responsibility for other people, and joins the war effort. He gives up his isolation and accepts the power of love.

Notice that a powerful place to put 'the thing' is close to the end of the act, so that its repercussions propel into the next act.

So look at your own story, and see if you can identify "Three Things", or invent them, and center each act upon this thing.
1. What is the "thing" in "Three Things" in your story? If you'd like to speculate about what this means, how it relates to a deep internal issue or theme (like Rick's refusal to help is an aspect of his fear of getting too involved again and getting hurt), have at it.

2. Where can you put some manifestation of "this thing" in each act?
For each occurrence, ask:
    a. What is the emotional risk here (and remember to assemble these three in ascending risk)?
    b. What does this thing cause to happen?

3. How can this thing near the end of the story (maybe the dark moment?) cause a great emotional change?

Try that. It might mean a bit of re-arranging or intensifying events you already have.

Any examples?  Questions? Ideas?

Alicia  Writing articles

Wait! You mean a smaller plate WON'T make me eat fewer calories? Picking and choosing information (we fiction-writers get to do that).

Interesting article here about a researcher in "food psychology" who has several of his studies withdrawn. (This was the result of an injudicious blog post he made where he accidentally mentioned that he was getting his grad students to massage data or something. Blogging is DANGEROUS!)

His studies were widely popularized ("Don't shop hungry, you'll spend more!" Remember that? You know, it's common sense!).

The application to writing is different for academic non-fiction and fiction.

If you are writing up a research report, do not pick and choose data!

But if you are writing fiction, figure out what among an array of details and options will most impress your reader. Be selective. Pick and choose!

With fiction, it's usually good for the creator to have some vision of the end effect-- you know, "I want the readers to be mystified and annoyed when they finish the book." (Have you ever read one of those books where you can't figure out what happens in the end? Or which ends abruptly without resolving the conflicts? I suspect those authors wanted to annoy us. :)
or "My ending is going to show the precariousness of life when you depend too much on other people."

So as story-writers draft or revise their scenes, it can be effective to select details and events and options that will guide the readers towards that end effect. If "precariousness" is important, I might emphasize unpredicted dangers, like broken glass on the floor, or a co-worker going home with a headache and then getting taken to the hospital with meningitis.  None of these details might be all that important to the plot, but they would work subliminally on the readers to create a tone of menace and risk.

Fiction-writers get to make things up, and they also get to pick and choose.
This is probably the only profession that encourages such sins!

Alicia

Starting this up again!

New resolution! I want to blog more about writing and editing. So here I go...

Well, today I got nothing. Bad start!

I have been listening to the John McWhorter podcast Lexicon Valley.  He's got a new episode up about "habitual past" (I used to blog a lot). He points out that we also now use "would" to indicate a past action that recurred habitually- I would blog a lot.

His podcast is always fun. He has a thing for Broadway musicals, so he will have clips from Ethel Merman and Shirley Booth singing some long-forgotten ditty that explicates something about language.

So... any writing questions or topics I can address? I respond well to requests. :)

Can’t Start a Fire without a Spark…. Creating that Spark when You Think You're Burnt Out

Can’t Start a Fire without a Spark…. Creating that Spark when You Think You're Burnt Out

by Alicia Rasley

You can decide what to love. You can spark the fire.

Enthusiasm doesn’t always arrive fully blown. Sometimes you have to take a little spark and turn it into a flame.

For example, Sam was hauling the Christmas tree off to the mulch pile in the city park when he heard a bird warbling. Its insistent song- weeuh weeuh weeuh—really stood out in the snowy winter day, when most of what Sam could hear was traffic and the cracking of iced-up tree branches above him. He stopped in the middle of the park, forgetting his errand, forgetting the little dead tree in his hands, and wondered, “What sort of bird hangs out all winter in the city?”

He’d never been interested in birds before, and to tell the truth, he wasn’t all that interested now. He was just momentarily intrigued, and made a mental note of it, and – he’s a software guy, so he’s always thinking of things like this—wondered if anyone had ever designed a phone app to record and identify bird songs. (Duh, of course.) But when he’d tossed the tree on the pile and got his phone set to record, the bird was gone, or at least, the song had changed to a long intricate trill of different notes. It was as if the shower-singer had given way to the opera singer.

When he got home, he sat down at the computer and (natch) googled to identify the birds. What he found really intrigued him. He hadn’t heard two birds, each singing their songs, but one bird singing two songs. He started reading about the northern mockingbird, which somehow can imitate other birds’ songs and repeat them back note-perfect.

Now Sam wasn’t any kind of actor or con-man (he was in software development), but he’d always had a secret envy for people who could do impressions of famous voices. So he started reading more about the mockingbird, and the next morning, same time, he went back to the park. This time it wasn’t on a Christmas-shutdown errand, but just to pursue this momentary interest. When he caught sight of the chubby gray-and-white bird, he had his phone handy and was able to snap a picture.

He’d never been into birding, and he’d always thought of it as a pursuit for less-macho people. But he was at loose ends since the divorce and the kids leaving home, and work wasn’t challenging anymore. And he’d been at his company so long, he was up to five weeks vacation a year.  So after a few weeks of going to the park and trying to find the mockingbird and its fellows, he thought he might as well take a few days’ birding trip to somewhere warm.

By the time he got back, well, he wasn’t precisely obsessed with birding. But he realized he’d had fun on the trip. The other birders were interesting people, rather like software developers in their temperament (focused and thoughtful) if not their conversation. There were even a couple women he thought could become friends. He decided to emulate the mockingbird a bit and “act as if”—act as if birding was interesting. And what do you know— just sticking with it, and fanning that tiny flame, Sam found himself a new hobby. He never got as passionate about birds as some of his new friends, but he enjoyed being outdoors, and enjoyed the quiet during the hikes and the lively conversation afterwards. Most of all, he liked his new community. A year later, he marvels at how the accident of hearing that little bird in the park led to – well, not a life-change, but a life-opening.

You might remember that great time in your childhood, when you skipped from one fleeting interest to another, and your poor parents shelled out for a drumkit and then a skateboard and then all those watercolors and…. You had all the time in the world to sample potential obsessions, and if you were lucky, one stuck, and you ended up in the city symphony or at least playing Auld Lang Sine on the piano late at night on New Year’s Eve.

But you know what? We don’t have time to skip around anymore. We don’t have time to sample. And we know whatever we do isn’t likely to end up as the route to a PhD or fame and fortune. There’s no purpose to new hobbies in the last-chance decade—except to have fun and meet people and maybe do a little good and join or start a community.

Trouble is, without the energy and openness of youth, and with all the usual distractions of everyday, it’s hard to get excited about anything new. It might not be worth all the fuss.

Well, make it worth it. You have more discipline and focus than you did when you were young. You can actually make yourself more interested, now that you know how to move beyond the mere activity into creating a whole situation: That is, you won’t just DO this, you can research it and converse about it and join a group and take trips. You have resources now to make this minor interest into a major part of your life. (And you know if it starts to bore, you can quit it without regret, as it’s only your own money that bought that drumkit or invested in that birding app!)

Some tips to fan a flicker into a flame:

1. Consider what, overall, you ought to do, that you’re already thinking you should get going on.

“I really need to get out from behind the computer.”

“I need to get more fit.”

“I need some new friends.”

“I should get more involved with the community again now that the kids are gone.”

“I’ve been so self-absorbed since the break-up.”

“I’m bored. I need to do something fun.”

“I have to exercise my brain more.”

“If I’m going to take that trip to Italy, maybe I should learn some Italian.”

If you can link this existing need to a new hobby, you’ll feel more motivated. Birding will get you outdoors and away from the computer. Volunteering at the city music festival will get you involved with the community. Hiking in the woods will help you get more fit.

2. Think beyond broad categories of activities you used to enjoy, like “nature” and “socializing” and “music.” Try to pinpoint what you really liked about that, like, “I didn’t care much about all those nature walks, but I sure liked camping in a tent,” or “I thought I was going to be a movie star, but that never worked out. Looking back, what I really liked about acting was the cast parties after first night,” or “I wasn’t much good at the flute, but I still remember how my teacher would accompany us on the piano. I kind of liked the piano, but my parents could only afford a flute.” Once you get into what was the really fun part (camping, cast parties), you can more effectively design a new hobby to create that experience without all the more boring stuff.

3. Look for existing interest groups where you can join at low cost and low commitment. “Meetup” groups are great for this. You can just show up at the assigned place and play a few games of Scrabble or go to a film or take a hike in the woods with the group. No one will bug you to buy a year’s subscription or run for group president. You can just do the activity in the company of other people who enjoy it.

4. Stick with it for awhile. Of course, if you have a rotten experience—you break your ankle hiking, or the Scrabble players are all PhD linguists who scoff at your words—you might try another group or a related but less intense activity. But if the experience is okay or better, try it again on the next possible occasion. This doesn’t have to end up as a lifelong, life-changing obsession. You just want to have some fun. So don’t require a huge conflagration of passion the first experience. Just remember, a flicker can become a flame if you don’t douse it too quickly.

5. When you find some hobby you like, ritualize it. To make it a hobby, it has to be more than a habit. Alas, one of the lessons we learn as we get older is—a good habit is easy to break. These days, there are just too many distractions, too many other things to do. If it’s not the TV in every room, it’s the web on your computer and phone that can give you momentary if empty entertainment. Nothing becomes really meaningful, however, unless you repeat it—make a date of it, make an occasion. “Thursday night is film noir Meetup night!” “Every March, I’m going to London!”

6. Make it more. Enhance the experience. Make it your own. Add something to it. If you meet up every Thursday at a friend’s home to watch the film noir, start bringing popcorn (or, if you’re also trying to get fit, some crunchy veggies and hummus). Make it more fun—a different type of popcorn every week, or a new kind of punch.

Make it more. If you’re in a book group, maybe do a half hour of research beforehand and give a mini-report on the author or the early (and misinformed) reviews of the book. Before the Italian lesson, go out to an Italian restaurant, or experiment with making a new kind of pasta. If you’ve started birding, buy a bird book or borrow a new pair of binoculars.

And let’s face it. Nothing makes an occasion more memorable than taking a couple photos and posting them on Facebook or Instagram. You’ll have the pleasure of other people commenting, “Oh, I always wanted to do that!” And in a year, Facebook will repost the photo so you can remember it.

7. If this turns out to be more than just fun—if you find yourself getting passionate—ride that wave! Expand your experience. If you’ve been teaching yourself guitar chords by watching Youtube videos, maybe now you might spend a little money and employ some impoverished music student or old grunge bandmember to tutor you. If you’ve been volunteering at your old school, consider joining a committee or even running for school board.

Remember your limitations, however. You don’t want to overload your life and start fretting about what used to be fun. For example, I wanted to help more with kids in my sons’ old school, but when I talked to a tutoring organization, I realized that while I was still working and traveling so much, I really couldn’t commit to weekly sessions. So I put that desire aside for later, for when I’m retired. I’ve done enough of the tutoring to know I really want to do it, and I can keep that flame alive until I can really make it more of a passion.

8. Most important, stick with it long enough to know if it will be meaningful in your life. Many of us have gotten so competent at our jobs, we might get impatient at being beginners again. But if we can get past the awkwardness of being around much younger but more knowledgeable film fans, and if we can persist with the Italian lessons even if we can tell our accent is horrendous, then we will get past that uncomfortable newbie experience and be ready for more easy enjoyment. We really do know how to learn and grow efficiently and effectively, and we’ll probably get better at this pretty fast, if we just… you know… stick with it.

9. But… but really, if it’s not right, if it’s getting less not more fun, try something else. We don’t have endless time to devote ourselves to a pursuit that agonizes us rather than interests us. We know we have a limited store of patience, so why waste it on a group of people who make us anxious and unhappy? If after a few months, it’s still no fun, let it go and try something else. It might help to analyze what you liked and didn’t like (“I liked going on the ski trips, but I didn’t like whole competitive vibe of the group, like you were a loser if you didn’t want to risk your life”) so that you can find a better experience without the negatives.

10. Most of all, open yourself to enjoyment. Put away that hard-earned cynicism (“Everyone can tell we’re amateurs”) and skepticism (“Kids like this will never learn”). Give into the experience. Don’t be self-conscious about your age or the sound of your laugh. Don’t obsess about others’ possible perception of you (“Everyone thinks I’m stupid that I never learned to read music”).  You’re grown now. You know that “everyone” isn’t thinking about you, and even if they are, and they’re not thinking positively, their thoughts aren’t worth your time.

You might even have to force it a little, to “act as if.” You don’t want to do that for long—if the “as if” doesn’t become real in a few weeks, this probably isn’t right for you. But sometimes, yeah, you have to fake it till you make it.  

Remind yourself—this is just for fun. You’ve been working all your life. You deserve some fun. Audition the experience.

 It doesn’t have to be life-changing as long as it’s life-opening… but you won’t get either if you don’t try it out for awhile.

Here's an article based on an exercise I led in Active vs. Passive Writing course

https://novelrocket.com/2018/02/inhabiting-the-prose.html/

FEBRUARY 5, 2018 BY NOVELROCKET

Inhabiting the Prose

by Patricia Bradley, @PTBradley1

Do writers ever stop learning the craft of writing? I don’t think so. Or maybe I’m just a professional student. But at any rate, this month I took a class from Outreach International RWA (oirwa.com) with Alicia Rasley on Active VS Passive Writing. It’s been a fascinating class, and as always she gives her students little nuggets beyond the scope of the lessons.

On the very day I was stuck in a scene, Alicia talked about inhabiting the prose, and how to make your prose sound like your character rather than just flat, unemotional words. She gave us a free-writing exercise to do, and the exercise (adapted from Les Edgerton’s Finding Your Voice) helped me to connect the emotion of the character and scene to the physical action I wanted that character to perform.

When You Have Too Many Words....

I was just asked for a few tips on cutting big bunches of words. You know, you were aiming for a nice 75K novel, only this ended up at 95K words.  And from your perspective, it works! But it's too long for the line or the editor or the type of story, right? So how can you trim words without deleting meaning? 

It's hard. It can be done. I had to cut 35K from one of my books once, and it was hard, but I don't think afterwards the reader could tell what was missing. (Okay, okay. Theresa did most of the cutting. I did most of the whining and whimpering.)

While the plan here is not to go back, it can really help to think that nothing you're doing is permanent, that if you realize you cut something important, you can restore it. So be sure to 

 save the original version first, then save the version-to-be-cut under another filename. Just in case you want to UNcut later!

But here are some tips if you want to cut 20K words:

1) The first option is to cut a whole scene. That's a broadsword rather than a scalpel approach, but let's say you wrote this book in a white heat during Nanowrimo. There are probably scenes you wrote or started to write which ended up as unimportant or irrelevant, or you later did a better version and both versions are still in there. 

A whole scene might well be 5,000 words. That's a pretty good cut! And cutting it might make for a stronger, tighter plot. Then again, you might accidentally cut out something essential like a clue, or an important step on your character's journey, or the satisfying "reunion" scene the reader has been waiting for. 

To do this, however, you have to look at scenes not as groups of words but as part of the action of the plot. So try this: Outline the book as you have it. Yep, a scene outline. List -- in order they occur, every chapter, and every scene or scenelet or passage (complete or not) within each chapter. 

Then you can evaluate if there are scenes that can be deleted without causing plot/emotion problems.  

2. Look also for adjacent scenes that can be combined.  That will let you delete some of the set up and transition between scenes. Be watching for "single-purpose" scenes, especially several in a row-- a scene where he argues with his brother, and then a scene were he discovers a clue to the mystery, and then a scene where he travels to where the robbery took place. You could combine those into one scene where he argues with his brother, leaves and discovers the clue, and ends with him deciding to go to the robbery site. Really, once you start looking at what happens from scene to scene, you might find several which can be combined.

3.  If you can't cut a whole scene, look for passages (especially at the beginning) which are mostly set-up. That's where I found the most opportunities to trim, at the start of scenes, where I might have spent a couple pages describing the setting and establishing what the characters are doing there. 

Here are some other "cutting" options:

4) Look for mini-scenes (I call them "scenelets"-- 1-2 page bridges usually from one important event to the next) that don't much matter. Often these involve a main character interacting with a minor character or a "walk-ons" like a waiter who will never be seen again in the book. An example might be a cab ride to the convention hotel. There might be good character interplay with the cabdriver and give a good sense of the main character's mood, but if you want to cut, that's an example of a good 'non-essential' scenelet. Usually these aren't full scenes but intros to more important scene passages. You can always argue how this bit is important or clever or enlightening, but you know, you have to trim something, and a scene without an event to change the plot is usually trimmable.

5) Try the Jane Austen tactic-- in dialogue, if there's no conflict, do narrative summary. (They reminisced for a few minutes, then she remembered, and said insultingly, " ". :) There are going to be parts of scenes the reader needs that might have no conflict (like a moment of grace where two characters share a cigarette), but those are best kept fairly short and fairly rare. 

6) Look for those passages where there's nothing-dialogue-- often when there's some movement from one setting to another. ("Let's go into the den and watch TV/What do you want to watch?/ I thought this season of The Voice was starting. Did you record that?/No, the last one was so annoying, I didn't bother. But we can probably get it on-demand." :) No, I never actually wrote that passage, but that's the sort of "transition conversation" that's usually easy to cut away.

7) Also look for long passages of introspection where a character is thinking. Sometimes these are important, and the way they think is important to show, but the deeper we get into the story, the less long introspection is needed. (The reader knows more about the character by the middle of the book, and probably just needs a hint of what they're thinking, or only introspection when something unexpected is felt and needs explanation.)

8) Try my ruthless technique: Decide on a page goal, like "cut 50 words out of this page". This takes awhile, but it's usually easy to find at least 20 words to cut. Or "cut one sentence or sentence part out of each paragraph". Or "trim two sentences and combine them into one shorter sentence". This is actually my favorite thing. :)

9) Even more ruthless: If you know there are words you over-use (for me, it's "then" and "just"), do a "find" for them and for each one, decide whether it's needed. Delete if not. A friend of mine cut two pages out just by getting rid of justs. :)

Because all this is so "voice-centric," it's probably best to do it yourself first and see how much you can cut. That way you'll still have control of the scenes and the interactions between characters and how that's presented. 

Then again, an outsider might be able to be more objective, as Theresa was with my over-long book.

I can tell you from experience, trimming is hard to get started, and painful, but after awhile, it's easier to see where something can be discarded, or  how scenes or sentences can be combined.

Broadsword/scalpel experiences you can share? 

Alicia

The Oxford Comma, Robert Frost, and Comma Suicide

This will start out boring for non-punctuation-lovers, but then I'll quote Robert Frost, which is always a great benefit to society. So slog through the boring part to get to the poetry and my explanation of how Frost shows how important it is to "know the rules, then break them."

Oxford Comma

Here's a minor comma fix, and it's more "discretionary than obligatory:" The Oxford comma.

For some reason, the final comma in a series (before the "and") is called the Oxford comma, but it's also called the "serial comma". The rule is, when you have a series of three or more items in a row, with "and" before the last one, you put a comma before the "and" so that there's a comma after each item. So: The US flag is red, white, and blue.

This is done differently in journalism, where they used to have to save space and ink and so eliminated as many comma rules as they could. J So you'll see the "and" without a comma before in magazine and newspapers and often on news websites too.

Academic writing, however, follows the rules of book publishing, and the "Oxford comma" is the convention there. Just a minor change, and as I said, this is a rule in academic and book writing, so you'll often see series without that comma in the popular press.

More about the "Oxford comma"

See Commas, Commas, and More Commas.

What About Robert Frost, You Ask?

The great American poet Robert Frost surely knew the rules. No one made better use of the conventions of the language and grammar than he did in creating his deceptively simple and lovely poems. He's a great example of how understanding the convention (and how the reader would conventionally read something) in order to subvert it for a greater or deeper meaning-- punctuation becomes subtext.

Now as I said above, the general rule followed by book editors and publishers is that when there is a series of three or more like items (like three adjectives), you place a comma before the "and" or the last item in the series, indicating that these are all basically similar and yet separate from each other.

So with Frost's poem in manuscript, the book editor (or, as the Frost myth goes, the typesetter of the book, cleaning up after the editor ) saw this line with this series:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep

Well, of course the punctilious editor/typesetter made haste to add that Oxford comma-- the RULE.

And usually, that would have been exactly correct.

However, again according to myth, Frost saw the proofs and quickly "stetted" or insisted that the original be maintained.

Why? Was Frost being stupid? Did he not know the rule?

He knew the rule. He knew what effect abiding by the rule would create for the reader. And he knew he wanted another effect, one that could be achieved by subverting the rule.

Let's look at the two meanings-- comma in or comma out.

Here's the entire stanza. This is the final verse of that achingly beautiful poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening".  (You can read the whole poem, and you really should, here at the Poetry Foundation.)

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep

So this was what Frost ended up with-- what he started with, what he wanted-- comma out.

Why did he insist on that change, or rather, the change back? The defiance of convention? 

Let's look at the meaning conveyed by each option.  

Comma in:

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.

With that comma in, the three adjectives are "equal in weight". That is:

The woods are lovely, the woods are dark, and the woods are deep.

They each modify or describe "the woods".

Now take the comma out, and see what happens:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

With the comma out, the "dark and deep" now modify "lovely":

The woods are lovely, because they are dark and deep.

See the difference?

The first is a placid and unremarkable (though perfect in its scansion :) description of the woods.

The second is a subtextual confession of the longing for "darkness and depth".

Here is a man who has stopped by a snowy woods on a winter evening, a man weary of his responsibilities, his "promises to keep", and momentarily transfixed by the "loveliness" of the woods. And what is lovely about them to him? The darkness and depth. The death. (This is poetry, so it won't be transparent. This is Frost, so we must always search beneath the extraordinary "prettiness" of his prose to find the deep meaning he always embeds.)

He looks at the woods. He finds the darkness and depth "lovely". He thinks of... well. No. He can't do that. He has promises to keep, and miles to go before he sleeps.

We have just witnessed a man choosing life. 

Those final lines (repeated just to make you ponder this):

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep

Those would have little resonance if all that had just happened was the man stopped and saw the pretty woods and commented on how they are "lovely, dark, and deep."

Coming after that line with the missing comma, however?

They mean he's made a choice. He will not succumb to the "lovely dark and depth." He will keep those promises and trudge those miles and then sink into a temporary (not permanent) sleep.

He knew the rules. He chose to break them-- for a very specific effect. That effect could happen only if he could trust that most readers would know how it "should" be punctuated, and stop and wonder why the comma was left out.

This is one of the great techniques we have when we craft and refine our own voice. We can know the conventional rules and the conventional and usually appropriate effects they will have.

And then we can choose to subvert the rules to achieve a different effect. 

It's not just breaking the rules to be defiant or because we're ignorant... but accepting the rules, knowing that they create a conventional meaning, knowing that now the reader-- trained in the conventions-- will be surprised and thoughtful in discovering this new meaning.

We are in control of our own voice. But we need to take control. We need to know more about the language and how it can be manipulated-- and most important, we need to know how the reader will interpret our choices.

Well, heck, time to go read that whole poem. I encountered this first in 5th grade at St. Aidan's School in Boston. Interestingly, the nun (nuns weren't known then for cross-curricular pedagogical innovations) Sister Hugh had us put this poem to music, and I could still sing our ballad if you want. (You don't.) I thought it was the most beautiful poem in the world then. (I'm still pretty in love with it.)

Contranyms: Words that mean two opposites

I asked for examples of "contranyms"-- a word with two opposite meanings. 

Here are some friends contributed:

 Fast= quick to get away/ Fast like "he was held fast by the giant lobster claw."

Bolt= to run away, but you also bold two things together.

Oversight - looking over something carefully -- or overlooking something entirely.
Sanction -- to approve of an action, or to punish an action. 
Weather -- to withstand the effects of weather ("the house weathered the storm"),  or to *show* the effects of weather ('the stone statue was badly weathered")

Cave, as a noun, a big hole in the ground. As a verb, the collapsing of a hole.

Can you think of any others? And why does this happen? One friend reminded me when flammable things were labeled "inflammable" (meaning, uh, flammable-- don't set these on fire). Why do that?