It’s writing advice day. Recently, I made a video in an over the shoulder-style way to help you use the white space of your paragraph structure to create emotional effect in the rhythm of a reader’s experience. Want to see what I mean? Check it out:
DBRADELYEXPLORES on YouTube
You see, too many words on a single page, or in one paragraph, can muddle a readers experience. That’s one of the reasons why on blogs like this you see so much white space.
It’s easier to read when you have lots of paragraphs with white space in between them.
Did you see what I just did there?
I’m using white space to slow down your reading and help you comprehend what I’m writing.
When you have a moment where you want to highlight something, particularly for emotional effect, you can do so by putting that moment inside it’s own white space frame, or in other words, it’s own paragraph. For example.
I couldn’t believe my eyes, it was right there the whole time. All my days searching leading up to this and at last I’d found it.
In my hands I held the lost rolls of Poopydom.
That’s a silly block, but you get the idea.
After you watch the video, try this out in your own writing. See if you can change the emotional experience of your writing, not by telling emotions, but drawing them out by altering the rhythm of the page. I think you’ll like what it does for you.
Check out another article/video I just made, and let me know if these are working for you.
Let me tell you about a book, but first let me tell you about why I’m reading it.
I write, do you?
I write a lot of science fiction. Am I published? Sort of, I have a story on Amazon’s Kindle Vella and a nonfiction dog training book that’s out there as both an ebook and audiobook, but that’s just the start of an avalanche of words I’m spilling out everyday for a novel that I really want to put out in the traditional publishing world. I’m sure it would be fine if I self-published, but I believe in this book like it were my ivy-league-bound child. I’ve often heard of stories being compared to children. This child of mine is a star athlete on the soccer pitch of sci-fi ideas.
Great right? But now that the book is almost grown, I have to start thinking about how I’m going to publish it. Since you’ve found this article, maybe you’re someone in a similar boat. You’ve had ideas, you’ve written them down, maybe you’re like me and you’re almost done, but now what?
Let me know about your projects in the comments, I’d love to hear.
Dealing with an Oversaturated Market
With the up-rise of self publishing in the book market, especially science fiction, my market, and the consolidation of big publishers, I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed. That’s why I bought this book that I promised to tell you about. Here it is: Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, and Literary Agents. I apologize for how that link looks, those of us who use Amazon affiliate links have the burden of using what we’re given.
Anyway, of everything I’ve read so far from blogs, etc. this book has the most concise, easy-to-read, no nonsense answers to how to break into the world of publishing. Jeff says that about 1 in 1,000 books submitted to publishers will get published. That’s why you have to play the game more aggressively than you might think. Jeff says:
“As a writer with an unpublished manuscript, your destination is blocked by a cabal of trolls generally referred to as editors and agents. First, you must get them to read your work. This is done by pitching them, which means you must convince them to actually look at your work without summarily assigning it to the abyss.”
Jeff Herman
Herman gives the magic number of 10 for the number of agents to pitch to at a time. To be honest, I would never have guessed that, so I’m glad I’ve read his book.
Up to Date Information
Herman’s book is up to date and full of a fantastic directory of agents and publishing editors to start pitching. I haven’t begun that part of my journey yet, but I will soon. It’s exciting and thoroughly daunting all at the same time. I think I felt less intimidated meeting my drill sergeants for the first time.
Never mind, that’s a lie.
But the list is more than names. Each agent introduces themselves and what they’re looking for, saving you a lot of time. I’ve already got a few that I’m planning to reach out to here soon.
The up to date information combined with Herman’s years of expertise makes for a very interesting read. He talks about starting out back in the days of everything snail mail. Oddly enough, he says that snail mail is still a good way to go because it can help you stand out from the hundreds of email submissions that your work might otherwise have to climb out of. However, I’m sure every agent is different.
Saving Time and Effort
Researching publishers and their submission requirements can be time-consuming and frustrating. Jeff Herman’s Guide streamlines this process, putting all the essential information in one place. By investing in this guide, you can save countless hours of research and focus your energy on perfecting your manuscript and submissions. That’s what it seems like. I’ll let you know once I’m published in ten years. Just kidding, sort of.
But I feel like that with this access to insider knowledge, detailed profiles, and expert advice, I’ll be better equipped to make informed decisions.
Showing My Work
If you’ve followed the progress of my blog, you know that I’ve written on multiple topics. I want this website to be mainly where I show my work, where my creative journey can be documented with a sense of community. So, on that note. Have you read this book? Do you have any others you would recommend for authors looking to “break out.”
He’s an adopted Border Collie from the county animal shelter. I rescued him in 2019 on National Dog Day when he was 10 months old. I didn’t know it was National Dog Day, but the coincidence was convenient because the shelter waived a whole bunch of fees and I could actually afford him. Let me tell you, don’t be fooled by what you read online, Border Collies like Arthur make the best family dogs.
Not all dogs are the same, even within a breed, so you should evaluate each dog you meet individually. I’ll just tell you about Arthur.
Great with kids
I don’t know if you knew it, but raised properly Border Collies can be fantastic, protective, and loyal to children. They’ve even been known to want to heard them together like sheep in their care. When he was first adopted, Arthur would get nervous when kids would touch him, but after playing fetch with my nephews, he learned that kids were even more fun than adults because they’d play fetch for as long as he wanted to, or even longer, which is insane if you know the endurance of Border Collies.
Built for Adventure
Border Collies are made for the outdoor lifestyle. They love open fields and long hiking trails. Being very obedient dogs, you can take them with you off-leash (where it’s allowed, of course.) They’ll love to go with you almost any place you can imagine. Go ahead and read my article about off-leash hiking for more information. In addition, as herding dogs, they’ll likely see children as sheep they need to keep together, so they’ll help make sure the family stays accounted for on long expeditions.
Well Behaved in the House
As natural working dogs, many people have the misconception that Border Collies are bad house/apartment dogs. My dog Arthur had a hard time settling down at first indoors, but he’s since learned to be very comfortable. We’ve lived in both houses and apartments together, and he knows how to behave. I would recommend crate training, at least for young Border Collies at first because they tend to get extra bored when you’re not around. They’re little smart escape artists and food finders.
Border Collies are extremely attached to their families, so they want to be wherever you are. If you are in the house, they want to be in the house. If they want to be outside, they’ll want you outside with them.
They Love to Cuddle
The heading speaks for itself, doesn’t it?
Photo by Undine Tackmann on Unsplash
Get Down to the Shelter and Adopt
Of course raising a dog from puppy on up is a wonderful experience, but remember to consider adopting from your local shelter. Border Collies are often left in rescues by their owners who don’t understand what kind of amazing companions they can become. Adopting Arthur was the best decision I ever made. So, if you’re on the fence, head down to the shelter and take a Border Collie mix into the playroom. I bet you’ll like what you find.
You stand in front of a blank canvas, and quite often you have no idea what you’re going to create with it. You have some paints, they’re in a cardboard shoe box you keep in the cupboard with some tattered brushes and sponges, a paper plate is your pallet and it’s been working hard for longer than its intended shelf life. Dip dip, splash, you start painting something.
Now have you ever written? You sit in front of a blank page, a blinking cursor or lines in a notebook. Your brain is the pallet, your fingers the brushes. Dip dip, splash, you start an opening line.
“It was a dark and stormy night…”
Nope, start again.
Both writing and painting are done in strokes. You add color in layers, mixing them just right, sometimes wet so it blends, sometimes dry so the color pops like the center of a star. When someone looks at your art, their brain fills in the colors, the microscopic spaces between, and creates a representation of the reality depicted. In a way, the emotion a person experiences from your creativity belongs entirely to them, a construct inside their mind from brushstrokes of imaginative color.
How is painting like writing?
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but it’s also true that a few words paint a picture. Let’s look at the opening line of Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.
“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”
Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis
Do you see the painting? It isn’t perfectly realistic in your head. You see a man in a bed transformed into a giant insect. The author hasn’t told you what kind, but your mind is already starting to figure that out. I bet it looks different than my insect in my head. Like brushstrokes on a canvas, Kafka created a representation of reality, and your mind is initiating the response, emotion and color all painted into a fuzzy picture you can keep working on as the story continues.
Bob Ross and Quick Strokes
Bob Ross “Island in the Wilderness”
Check out this video, you can skim around, just pay attention to the swiftness of his strokes. When he paints the trees, it doesn’t look like he’s creating photorealistic trees. He just creates something your mind can quickly interpret. You don’t see the print of the brush, you see a beautiful landscape. The same should go for your writing. Sometimes, the quicker the stroke, the more concisely packed the information, the better the broader image.
For reference, let’s look at another example by our pal George Orwell in his novel 1984
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
Are you getting the picture? You can feel the cool air where the sun doesn’t quite warm your skin, and a clock tower shows thirteen, and it makes you uncomfortable. But you can see other things can’t you? I can see an old fashioned street with warm April colors shining on dew over drab government buildings. He didn’t write any of that, but from the painted emotion of the first sentence, my mind goes to that street on its own.
Why should we think about writing like painting?
By Lucasz Szmigiel on Unsplash
Here’s one example of how thinking about writing as painting could help. When you paint a road, you have to know where the lines are going. Even though the intersecting sides of the road will never touch in the painting, the correct angle means you as the artist need to know at what point they will touch on the horizon. When you’re writing a story, there’s so much exposition you have to know as an author to make something believable. A character may only enter the story for a moment, but do you know the angle of their road? A line of dialogue may go unsaid, but do you know what the characters are thinking? Remember that the reader’s mind is continuing the images you started with your words. Even if some exposition only makes it to the white space resting between printed ink, the emotional direction of your story will benefit from your work on the angles. Your reader will arrive at the conclusions they should.
In a nutshell
I think about the concept that my writing is a moving portrait in the mind of my readers. Each brushstroke has to add, but not detract from my story. If something is suspenseful, my word-strokes are quick. If time slows down, my descriptions flow with the speed of perception in eternal moments. I also remember that if I cut something out of the writing, the lines of the road will better intersect, just like a painting.
How do you see your writing? Does it feel like painting, or something else? Let me know, this is a discussion I’ve been wanting to have.
What a man, right? Israeli actor Chaim Topol once estimated that he played the role of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof more than 3,500 times. As the face of Tevye in the movie, many of us claim Topol as our Tevye, the one that got us to fall in love with the story, the face of the simple milkman that people of all cultures can relate to as a parent and person of faith.
Topol’s recent passing has me thinking a lot about the meaning of the story. Currently, I’m in a local production of Fiddler on the Roof. I’m a semi-professional actor. That basically means that I work a day job but my evenings are all spent on paid and unpaid stages. I’m especially drawn to classic musicals that celebrate times and cultures gone by. Fiddler has been especially meaningful.
I grew up in a culture of faith, not as strict and orthodox as the faith of Tevye, but similar in how central our traditions are to our identity as children of progenitors who sacrificed more than everything. We talk to God in prayer and perform our sacraments in ways that make us unique as a people.
So, I really like Tevye. I like the way he talks and laughs with God, how he complains and then reconciles. I laugh at how he flirts with the idea of vanity, that if being rich is a curse, “then may God smite me with it! That I may never recover!” On the other hand (see what I did there) I tear up when he laments for his daughter Chava, “If I bend that far I will break.” He’s a wonderful character.
Topol’s baritone voice is the quintessential Tevye, the one that sticks to my head whenever I quote “Tradition!” on the regular. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what makes him so iconic, but in the light of his death I got to thinking about where Topol comes from. His father was from Russia, born a generation after the Pogroms. Topol was born not long after the Holocaust. Surely he must have carried the generational pride and trauma with him as he played out the scenes, carrying the cart and mourning his lame horse. I don’t think I can even begin to pick up all the symbolism in his performance.
We’re lucky to have Topol’s performance as Tevye frozen in time in the movie. He’s our Tevye, and though he may be gone, I’m sure the character he helped bring to life for millions of us will live on forever.
