Archive for October, 2007

My 13-year-old nephew emailed me a story he has been writing and asked for my feedback last week. I was very touched that he asked me and I wanted to give him pointers that were going to be practical and useful.

The thing is, though, I have no idea what standard one should expect from a teenager as I have only ever considered writing by adults. I didn’t want to patronise him in the way that adults can patronise teens so I decided that I would give him advice as one writer to another, regardless of his age.

I was looking over my email to him just now and it struck me that some of the tips I gave could actually be helpful to any aspiring writer so I thought I’d share some of them here:

1. Show not tell. This is what all writers must learn to do. Show us the scene and the surroundings so we can infer what is happening and you don’t have to tell us. For example*, “Dan waited outside the maternity ward. His palms were sweaty and he couldn’t stop fiddling with the lighter. He kept looking up expecting to see the doctor come through the surgery doors. What was taking so long?” We know he is anxious and impatient by seeing his actions. We can infer that his wife is through those doors undergoing surgery - probably because there is a problem with the pregnancy. That is “showing”.

Compare “Dan waited anxiously and impatiently outside the surgery doors of the maternity ward where he had brought his wife an hour ago because there was a problem with the pregnancy”. That is “telling” - it gives you all the information but it’s not as exciting. You’re not in there with Dan.

Look through your manuscript and see where you can change “telling” to “showing”.

2. Minimise the use of adverbs. This is what my editor at Hodder & Stoughton told me. If you are showing not telling, then you don’t need adverbs because your reader will know if your character is angry or timid and you don’t have to say “angrily” or “timidly”. Go through your story and strike out 95% of the adverbs. Keep only a handful and they will be even more powerful.

3. Minimise subordinate clauses. Subordinate clauses can work to give explanations or provide additional information. But they can also distract from the main action. For an action story especially, what you want to convey is a sense of immediacy.

For example*, “Some might have considered Anna a timid girl but on this dark night, for the sun had set some hours before, as she strolled slowly home from work, feeling tired, for it had been a long and difficult day in the office, when Anna was suddenly and brutally attacked, she felt it within her heart that now was the time to be strong and fight back with all her might.” This gives you a lot of information about Anna and her day at work and what her friends think of her. But it loses immediacy because we are not there with her in the attack.

Compare: “Anna was tired. It had been a long and difficult day at the office. On her usual route back from work, she walked more slowly that usual even though it was already dark. Suddenly, someone grabbed her from behind. …..” And then you can describe the scene where she fights back. We do not need to know yet that her friends think her timid. You can always include that later, perhaps in a scene with her friends talking about how brave she was and how that was unexpected for them. The main point in this particular scene is the attack and her fighting back.

Go through your story and see where you can cut out subordinate clauses that are not relevant for that scene right now.

So, whatever age you may be, if you’re working to improve your writing, I hope these few pointers help you, too.

If you have any tips that you’d like to share with other writers, please do add them as a comment or email me, using the Contact link above.

*These examples are NOT taken from my nephew’s story - they are invented by me as illustrations.

Photo: thanks to this is your brain on… on flickr.com

I find these days that there is often nothing to watch on terrestrial TV if you’re not into football, Big Brother or Pop Idol. So I’ve been taking refuge on the internet - and becoming more and more addicted to Blip.tv. That was the site that had the Lacross TV channel that I featured a few weeks back.

I’m a great fan of the Goodnight Burbank sitcom on Blip.tv, set behind the scenes of a TV news channel - you see the bits in between the news when the news presenters chat to each other and it’s very funny. Each episode is only a few minutes long but packs a lot in.

Their blurb says: “Sex. Drugs. Booze. News. A comedy about the people who bring us the news - while they’re actually bringing it. USA Today calls us “better than 99% of the stuff on TV”. The LA Times says “a wicked satire”. And TV Guide says “Best of the Web”.”

Here is Episode 34:

I’ve subscribed to the show in iTunes and got it on my video iPod to watch when I’m waiting for my train or siitting on the bus or stuck on the tube - London public transport is great for catching up on all your portable media since we have to spend so long in the system while trying to get anywhere!

UPDATE: Later the same day…. I got this email from Hayden Black via the Contact link:

“Hi!
This is Hayden, the producer/writer of Goodnight Burbank and just wanted to
thank you for mentioning the show! Glad you like it.
Not sure if you know but I launched a brand new comedy series last week at
www.abigailsteendiary.com. Love to hear what you think of that :)
cheers,
Hayden”

It’s really worth checking out his new show - I laughed out loud!

Listening to the BBC World Service the other day, I was reminded how much our perception of beauty is formed by our culture.

The BBC radio programme was about the global obesity crisis and the first episode explored how this major health problem was affecting South Africa. It surprised me that South Africa had this problem - when I switched on the radio at the start of the episode, I was expecting the programme to be talking about fat Americans in Texas or overweight teens in the UK. But the programme reported that not only are South Africans facing early mortality from gun crime, violence, traffic accidents and developing world diseases as well as HIV/ AIDS, they are also now having to deal with the disease of affluent nations: obesity.

What struck me was an experiment that some health experts ran. They showed photographs of a range of people of different shapes and sizes - from the very skinny to the extremely fat - and asked participants to identify which shape represented someone in the bloom of perfect health. The majority pointed to pictures of people who in clinical health terms would be considered obese or overweight. For South Africans, a big, round woman is one who is healthy and prosperous. “The same for men”, one of the interviewees laughed.

And the tragic truth emerges. For them, someone who is slim or skinny is someone who has HIV or AIDS. In today’s world, being thin is associated with the disease that is devastating their country. I imagine that in the past, before AIDS, being thin would have been associated with mal-nourishment, famine and want.

In the West, being beautiful is generally equated with being slim - to the extent that at the extreme end of beautiful in Hollywood movies and TV series, the women are skinny, gaunt and sometimes on the verge of anorexia. Sometimes, when I watch a series like O.C. I find myself wondering how the actresses have the energy to move around as they look like they eat nothing but celery sticks. The most extreme was that period of “heroin chic” when glossy magazines were plastered with pictures of emaciated young women made to look deliberately as if they were ill from drugs.

In other parts of the world, like Africa and Asia, rounder, fleshier women are considered more attractive, with pudginess being associated with health and prosperity. Meeting someone who has gained weight, especially if they have progressed well in their career, it’s quite a compliment to say, “Aah, you’re looking prosperous” - I’ve said that in London to people I haven’t seen for awhile (Westerners): interestingly, they’ve all understood the subtext of that comment but, to my embarrassment, they have been slightly offended by it. I’m switching to “Aah, you’re looking very well”, which has the advantage of being neutral!

The trouble with being bigger than you need to be is that you’re then in the front line for getting diabetes, heart problems and other nasty diseases. It also makes you more prone to side-effects when under medication and it’s more difficult to recover from trauma like operations.

For me, I’m lucky enough to have a reasonably good metabolism so that I’ve never had to struggle to keep my weight within the appropriate parameters for my height. However, as I’m getting a bit older these days, I find that I do have to watch what I eat and be more diligent about exercising. The alarm trigger I use to warn me when I’m getting tubby is the moment when my stomach can feel itself when I sit down - you know, because of the crease that appears when you’ve got more stomachs than you really need… My theory is that if I can keep away from that crease, I’ll be keeping away from the slippery slope of weight gain. So, I’m off for a jog now the moment I finish this post….

Additional resources

Listen to Part 1 of the BBC series “Globesity” or download it as an mp3.

Go to the BBC’s website on Globesity

News item: “South Africans as fat as Americans”

Photo: from the BBC Globesity website

This is cross-post from my social media blog ZenGuide.

I received an email in my Inbox a moment ago from the Online Journalism Review reporting that a German website is calling on the world to declare today, 04 Oct, “Free Burma Day”. The article explains:

“The state-controlled media in Myanmar has been tight-lipped, to say the least. Communication with international news organizations has been spotty, and soldiers continue to turn reporters away at the borders. The message has been clear: “Nothing to see here.”

But armed with cell phones, cameras and laptops, common citizens and protesters stepped in to expose the conflict in real time. Some ran blogs of their own. Many dispatched pictures and videos of police violence to off-shore bloggers and news sites. Either way, they loosened the government’s chokehold on communication.

Now, with the ebb and flow of information from within at a standstill, the offshore sites are left to sustain awareness. A brand-new site out of Germany, Free-Burma.org, calls on bloggers around the world to post a “Free Burma” awareness graphic on any posts today, Oct. 4. Organizer Philipp Hausser talked to us about “International Bloggers’ Day For Burma” and the impact of Myanmar’s citizen-journalist phenomenon.”

You can read the full article Bloggers organize international day of support for Burmese freedom

I’ve been watching the escalation of the tension in Burma through the blogs and online news. Here are some links:

Burma Digest - disturbing photos, videos and reports from right there in the demonstrations.

YouTube channel of niknayman - including footage of a dead monk floating in a river

The Democratic Voice of Burma

The Times article on bloggers who risked all

Del.icio.us tags for “Burma” - these show items bookmarked by web users around the world who have found articles and videos on Burma and tagged them in their bookmarking account at del.icio.us. (There’ll be those related to non-political events as well)

To find out how you can take action, spread the word, do your bit, go to the Free Burma website.

Following from my post on SlushPileReader.com, where readers can vote for unpublished manuscripts to get a publishing contract, Amazon.com and Borders are also getting in on the act with their own versions of the democratic publishing ideal.

See the January magazine article Looking for a New Publishing Paradigm

These business models all rely on one of the characteristics of social media - user-participation. On the bookmarking site, Digg.com, you can bookmark on online article that you like and it will appear in a public page on Digg. Other readers who then follow the link to read the article you bookmarked can then vote for that item - the more votes it has, the higher the ranking on the Digg page and more readers will see it. Wikipedia is dependent on users making and editing entries.

In general, experts take the view that only 10% of visitors on a site participate in any active way eg leaving comments or other action that contributes to the site or enterprise offered by the site. Digg is very technology and sports biased. I expect that the people who populate Wikipedia are serious fans of whatever topic they are writing about and enjoy the kudos of being an expert. Many other user-generated site I’ve come across has a strong bias towards the interests of young guys with a tecchy, gadget-, sports-, or auto-focused interest. While there are many book lovers who are young guys, I have a sense that the majority are women who love books, the physical things, and may not have such a passion for reading their novels online - and have less of a fervour about being an expert. I would be very interested to watch how these publishing business models pan out and whether there’s going to be a bias towards sci-fi, fantasy and male-readership genres.

I also note that these ventures are all US based. America is notoriously self-focused when it comes to book publishing and it is hugely difficult to get your book published if you’re not American - even if, as a non-native, you write about a US setting with American characters, it’s very difficult to get it past the US literary sniffer dogs. I wonder if these ventures will let in more non-American manuscripts or if we will still find only US books getting through. (I don’t know if there’s a condition of entry that rules out non-US manuscripts - does anyone know?)

Am I portraying gender stereotypes here? What do you think? Please add a comment.

Pic: thanks to art.com

As I munched on my lunch the other day, I scrolled through my blog aggregator and found myself reading a couple of eery and spooky blog posts that just seemed to pop up randomly in an eery and spooky way.

The first was a post from my associate Silvia Cambie, writing about an afternoon by the lake a long time ago. It reads like a Stephen King or like one of those creepy movies like “What Lies Beneath”. Here’s an extract:

“I could feel its skeletal fingers between mine…Its glacial breath down my neck.

A surreal fog was rising between me and my friend, like thick incense smoke in a dark, forsaken temple.

I don’t remember how I left the house. “

Eeeeek!

The next post that popped up on my screen was from the blog of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, telling ghost stories set in the haunted libraries of the US. Here is the entry for a library in Arkansas:

“Benton, Saline County Library. The library’s home from 1967 to 2003 was a converted theater building that frequently featured phenomena that made librarians suspect a ghost was afoot: phantom footsteps, paperback carousels rotating by themselves, books falling from the shelves, a self-operating photocopier, and a slamming book-return door. Once, late at night, Director Julie Hart heard the distinctive sound of a manual typewriter—but the library had long ago discarded theirs.”

The hairs are standing up on the back of my neck!

I love a good ghost story bu I’m completely hopeless when it comes to hearing strange noises in the night - I’m no plucky heroine, going off to investigate and instead, preferring to cower in my bed after I’ve turned all the lights ablaze and turned up the radio full blast.

Picture: thanks to gaileymcguire on flickr.com

This is a cross-post from my social media blog ZenGuide

You might like to come along to a discussion panel at the City Womens Network (CWN) on “Social Media: Online Communities” on 18 October ( 18.30 - 20.30pm). I’m one of the speakers along with a number of other web, digital marketing and business PR experts.

Here’s the blurb:

Using social media to build an online community around your business can be an effective way to retain clients, bring in new ones and raise the profile of your enterprise. In this panel discussion, we explore practical steps you can take to create and manage an online community relevant for your business.
We are proud to have selected a panel of speakers:

Yang-May Ooi, founder of social media consultancy ZenGuide and experienced blogger, will talk about strategies to keep your visitors coming back to your site and to develop your brand’s presence online.

Giles Colborne, President of the UK Usability Professionals’ Association and Managing Director of cxpartners, will guide you through the roles and responsibilities in managing online communities.

Kristen Berg, marketing strategist, looks at some examples of how brands have used communities, the strategic role they play and the potential value to the company.

Silvia Cambié, Director of Chanda Communications and Chair of CWN’s Membership Committee, will be moderating the session.

Organised by the Membership Committee. For more information, contact the organiser, Silvia Cambié, on silvia[at]chandacom.com.

Venue information:
Hosted by CO3 Limited
First Floor, Downstream Building No. 1, London Bridge,
SE1 9BG London, GB
nearest tube is London Bridge.

Time: 18.30pm
Date: 18 October 2007

Members: £20
Non-members: £25 (men welcome as guests)

It would be great to see you there. If you’re coming, email me and I’ll let the organisers know.

OK, Monday is film day on Fusion View and this is not a film but I just have to share it with you. It’s a simple online game where you have to manouvre a rectangular block so that it falls through the hole in the floor - but without falling over the edge. Easy, you think?

I’ve managed to get up to Stage 7 and then got stuck. If you can work out how to go beyond that, let me know!

Click on the picture to be taken to the game.

You can click on “Toggle Sound” - or mute your speakers - if the background music is distracting…