Beta Readers Needed

I am working with an author who is almost ready to have their book read by beta readers. We are currently looking for 10 to 15 readers who will be available to read in October. The book is young adult fiction/fantasy, with magic as a theme. The target market for the book is high school aged youth, but the readers can be any age.

The book is in the editing stage, and will possibly be available by the middle to end of October. We would like to have the book back from the beta readers by mid-November. Beta reading will require a detailed assessment of the book. An assessment sheet will be provided so that we will get consistent responses.

If you would be interested in beta reading this book, please email me at sarah@scribeshelper.com with the subject “Beta Reader.”

Drafting a Novel in 15 Minutes a Day

Written by guest blogger Peter Mach II.

Roger Zelazny, author of the Amber series, launched his career a day at a time while working fulltime at the Social Security Administration. When I heard him speak, I was still in college, still thinking that I needed big blocks of time to write anything important. But I learned that focus, commitment, and discipline matter more than two weeks in the mountains communing with my Muse. 

In fact, I make a point of demonstrating this to my students. My classes typically begin with the students taking 15 timed minutes to write about themselves and why they are taking the class. They typically get 300 words (high 690, low 180 so far). This is without using any of my tips, and I point out that even 200 words a day adds up to 73,000 words a year.

How do they do it? All of them have set aside time, know who they are, understand the context (a class) and have some sense of the audience. In other words, they have committed to the work, know what they want to say, and how they should say it. These are the essential keys to productive writing. Want more detail? Try this:

• Know your stuff – A writer needs to know story structure, grammar, point of view, and dozens of other elements of clear, engaging writing. This doesn’t just happen. It usually requires study and practice. Zelazny honed his craft by writing short stories. After scores of failures, he sold one, analyzed why that one sold and rewrote the more promising stories. Then he moved on to novels.
• Commit – Like my students, you need to set aside the 15 minutes every day, and you need to protect that time from everything else in your life. Write down why you must write, and keep the list in front of you.
• Prepare – Know what you are going to write before you begin your 15 minutes. I recommend choosing the project and thinking about the scene the day before.
• Get away from distractions – Close doors. Turn off email. Abandon spouses and children. Asimov papered over his million-dollar view of Central Park so he could keep his attention on his work.
• Kill your internal editor – You’ll need that fractious fellow later, but not in the drafting stage.
• Go! – Don’t sit and think. Write immediately. This is a sprint! It may help to have a half sentence or an incomplete scene left over from the day before.
• Celebrate – Count your words. Add up the total. Your novel is getting done. This is a lot more fun than wishing you could get some writing done, isn’t it?

Of course, drafting a novel is not the same as completing a novel. Zelazny dedicated his weekends to rewriting, which is where promising work becomes something glorious. But, as Nora Roberts said, you can’t edit a blank page. So give yourself the gift of fifteen minutes a day and fulfill your dreams of being a novelist.

Peter Mach II is a productive writer of speeches, articles, scripts, short stories, radio, and books. Teacher, author of How to Write Fast. Website http://howtowritefast.webs.com/ Twitter @howtowritefast Email howtowritefast@gmail.com

Feistres Crew Cabins

I read a great blog post today about how drawing maps of your fictional land can help develop story lines. I found this out when I was writing the opening scene of Chapter 1 of the first book (yes, I have gotten that far). I needed to know where everyone's cabins were, so I mapped it out. Since I removed some characters from my story, I have more room to add them later as cameo guests if I choose to use them. Anyway, I thought you would like to see what I have so far. It is a bit square for a ship of any kind, but it is a work in progress. Every time I try to see the outside of the ship in my head, all I can picture is a giant metallic chicken-shaped monstrosity. Stop laughing. I am serious, although I really wish I was not. Since that is definitely not an ideal spaceship shape, I'll wait until I can see it more clearly. If it were going to be a silly sci-fi book like "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," a chicken-shaped spaceship would be perfect. That's not really the vision I have for Feistres. Until I determine the final hull shape, I'll work with a square. Here is my first attempt at the cabins.

As you can see, it needed some work. I changed things around until they were more accommodating, but it was still not complete and was jumbled. Below is the cleaned-up version.

Here's the "final" with all names (except for Captain Lafayette Rhys), and everyone assigned a room. This is final only in that it gives me something to work with and is not on the drawing paper I got for the purpose of mapping everything out. The small squares are the shared bathrooms. Everyone shares except the Captain and the married couple. The cabins are pretty spacious without the need for the ship to be chicken-shaped. :)

Killing Off Characters Before They Ever Were

Recently I had to remove people from my plane of existence. Well, not my plane exactly, but one I am currently creating, and their universe is rather near and dear to my heart. I like them well enough to endure them, but not well enough to make them the stars of their own novellas, short stories, or (let's be honest) their own character descriptions.

I started with a list of possible starship crew positions and tried to cut it down to the bare minimum. I had about twenty positions. I combined a few, and still had  fifteen crew members. I decided this was workable enough, although I had read warnings that a ship requiring that many crew members would be pretty large, but I justified it as necessary for shift changes to work. Then I tried writing character descriptions.  Yikes.

I had a few ideas about several different characters, and they were relatively easy descriptions to write. Then it got harder...much harder. Some had huge holes in their stories. I added a character because the concept  was more interesting than any of my existing characters. At this point, I took some time and watched a few episodes of one of my favorite "creative compost" sources. I definitely had way too many characters. I looked at my character list and cut out everyone who did not have a good story line, moved some jobs around, and combined story lines that would work together.

Now I have 10 characters. It's still too many, but it means everyone gets a bigger cabin.

**On Wednesday, August 15th, blogger Peter Andrews of "How To Write Fast" fame will be here as a guest blogger!**

Busy As A Bee

They are there, I promise! (Photo is mine.)

On my way to work yesterday morning, I arrived at a stoplight just after it turned red. Sighing morosely, I leaned my head against the driver side window and stared in great despair at the median next to me. It took a few seconds for my brain to process the movement, but once I noticed it, I instantly perked up. There are blue flowers growing in the median, and this morning they had been discovered by a hive of honeybees.


I was raised with an acute appreciation for honey bees. My dad used them as pollinators for crops when I was in high school and college, and I remember getting swarmed when I got too close to a hive on summer break. I stood very still while my poor dad picked honey bees out of my long, curly hair. Neither one of us got stung once. Honey bees are  the only stinging insects that get a kind and gentle escort out of my house. Everything else gets sprayed or smashed. I understand that everything serves a purpose, but not in my house. Anyway, back to my despair.

Photo Courtesy of Jari Leivo

I was so morose and despairing because I was facing deadlines that I knew I could not meet. Both my day job and Scribe's Helper have been moving at a frenetic pace lately, and due to several factors, I require a certain amount of sleep and mental rest in order to function more like a human and less like a zombie. I have been a bit frustrated because, while I am busy, I do not feel necessarily fulfilled. Then I looked at those bees, happily zipping and zooming from blossom to blossom, stuffing their little cargo-pant-like legs with pollen to take back to their hive, and suddenly I was immensely grateful. I am admittedly an information junkie, and while I do not focus much attention on breadmakers, plastic surgeons, or termites in Austrialia (although the last topic is close enough to my actual interests to be entertaining) I am also getting paid to read about online marketing strategies, software ideas and developing a customer base.

Every day those little bees wake up, faced with another day spent flying all over the countryside, braving traffic to find medians of flowers so they can begin their leg-stuffing all over again. They do their zig-zag dances, stretch their wings, and fly - directly to the best sources of pollen. Their pace is frenetic, their job a means of survival, but they get to see some really pretty flowers along the way. Although my current pace is crazy fast, it will not always be this way, but while it is, I will look for things to enjoy. Hopefully today I will be close enough to the median to visit with the bees again.

How To Ghostwrite - Confidentially

Today I am thrilled to share a guest blog post from Karen Cole, Executive Director of Ghost Writer, Inc. 

When Karen and I were discussing topics, instead of asking for a "how-to" blog post, I asked her about her motivations for ghostwriting.

"I have always wondered why writers would choose to ghostwrite for someone else, the benefits of ghostwriting, and how (if ever) a ghostwriter can build a resume without breaking confidentiality." 

Her response has given me quite a bit to consider. As a writer, this is always a good thing.

How to Ghostwrite - Confidentially

By Karen Cole

I chose to be a freelance professional ghostwriter for a lot of different reasons. But mostly, the money is good, the clients aren’t overly demanding, and I get to learn something new from each new writing or editing project I undertake. Each client has fresh new ideas, and these cover a wide variety of subjects. I enjoy writing for someone else, because it can be hard to come up with your own writing ideas, and this way I have a readymade set of someone else’s ideas from which to work. It makes it fairly easy to sketch out a framework of strictly pure writing, and to fill it in with the client’s main plot and idea structures – with my own professional twists on them.

The benefits of ghostwriting are many, including the ones I mentioned above. A lot of people mention the money. In the field of freelance writing, ghostwriting is probably the most lucrative form of a steady living of writing; most long-term professional ghostwriters make over 100K per year, usually by taking on only two or three writing projects over a year. I myself like to work with new writers, who typically have lower budgets, and I also mainly do copy editing lately, being semi-retired. I have other writing income, so I don’t have to worry too much about money, but in ghostwriting it is good enough to make a steady career out of it.

Any ghostwriter can build a resume simply by taking on some writing work where they are allowed to mention their name, such as writing articles and getting these published online, contributing to literary arts magazines, writing journalism news and entertainment or “op-ed” pieces, etc. You can always list those on your resume, but if you need to list ghost writing pieces to show these to your incoming clientele, the best method is to get permission from your ghostwriting clients to at least mention their projects in general terms, with no names traceable to the clients. Also, you can ask some of your clients to list you on their book covers. There are ways to do this, such as using the infamous “As told to…” method. You can also ask to be a coauthor with your clients, and get listed as one of the actual authors this way.

Finally, you can even field out some of the ghost writing work you get to other people. I recommend arranging for a website to advertise your services, and if you do this, you will probably find more work coming in than you can handle by yourself. This happened to me when I first started having a website; over time I have amassed a huge team of ghostwriters and editors, plus marketing and promotions personnel, to handle all of the incoming work. It helps supplement my writing and editing income, and I feel like I’ve gained a lot in management skills by fielding out so much work to other writers and editors. And I can always take on the “choice” projects myself, too.

Ghost Writer, Inc. has your ghostwriter! GWI features affordable ghost writing for you, including book, memoir, script and screenplay marketing, promotions, sales, and publishing or optioning assistance, all for some very reasonable, inexpensive prices.

I Finished My First Draft...Now What?

As an editor who is also working on a first draft, I am well aware that writing the first draft is by far the hardest part of the process. Once the first draft is finished, an author sometimes feels like they should go ahead and send it to an editor to "clean up" for them. Don't do this. I repeat, DO NOT DO THIS - DO NOT SEND ANYONE YOUR FIRST DRAFT. Often, an author is hurredly trying to write their ideas down before they are lost forever. The resulting "first draft" is usually a jumbled mess of ideas, misspelled words, and fragmentary sentences. Occasionally two character names are the same, or very similar; sometimes locations change unexpectedly. Blond-haired beauties toss their raven locks dramatically. This is bad, especially if you are paying someone unfamiliar with your story to try to sort it all out. What should an author do at this point? 


1. Reread your manuscript. This will take a bit of time, since you will invariably need to make changes. Go ahead and make them.

2. You probably typed the manuscript into a word processor. Use the built-in tools to your advantage. Run a spelling and grammar check. If you are using Word, Microsoft provides the Readability Statistics for your document once the spelling and grammar check is complete. The report gives you counts for words, characters, paragraphs, and sentences. It give you averages: sentences per paragraph, words per sentence, and characters per word. Most importantly, it gives you the readability information: percentage of passive sentences, Flesch Reading Ease, and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. This information is very important, especially if your writing is age-specific. The higher the Flesch Reading Ease score and lower Flesch-Kincaid Grade Levels, the easier a document is to read. Lower Flesch Reading Ease and Higher Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level scores indicate more complex text. 


3. Have someone that you trust to give you brutally honest feedback read the manuscript. Make sure you are clear about what you want when requesting this read-through. Some things to have them look for are consistency, clarity of ideas, and logical flow. If your subject deals with technical details not familiar to the general public, make sure to clarify terms and concepts. I discovered the importance of this when I sent out copies of "The Fear Below" to my beta readers, all of whom were science fiction or horror fans, but two of them were non-scuba divers. They pointed out that I had used scuba-specific acronyms and ideas that were completely unfamiliar to the general public. Remember, the readers that seem harsh and critical are often going to give you the best advice. If it is too painful to your ego to dwell on their criticism (it always is for me) skim through their response (assuming it is written), then don't look at it for a few days. When you look at it again, you will be more prepared to hear what they are saying.


4. Make all of these cumulative changes before you ever even consider sending your manuscript to an editor. 


If you follow these steps, what you will be turning over to your editor will in actuality be a second or third draft free of typos and glaring errors. Your editor will thank you. 

Free Online Writing Courses!

Clients occasionally ask me for tips on how to improve their writing, and I usually respond by sending them to one of the following sites. These are either full or partial university courses provided for free, with no grading, no deadlines, and no final exams! They are perfect for tweaking a specific problem area, or for broadening a writer's skill set. These are the main university websites where the classes are listed, instead of a listing of each individual course.

Please leave me a comment if you have used one of these courses in the past. What did you think of the experience? I took the Open University's course Start Writing Fiction (A174_1) and I loved it! This is the class that inspired the Feistres series I am currently writing.

MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) Writing & Humanistic Studies
The Open University Arts & Humanities
Utah State University
UMass Boston Open CourseWare (OCW) Critical Reading & Writing

Other sites:
Freelance Folder (Links)
Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)
Steven Barnes' Screenwriting Class

The Story of Scribe's Helper

Often our most enjoyable "work" is born out of an activity we love. I grew up surrounded by books. Both of my parents and my grandparents were bookworms. I can still recite the entirety of my favorite children's book, The House That Jack Built by J.P. Miller, but the book that truly captured my imagination and kindled a love of reading was Little House In The Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I must have been around seven or eight at the time, and what started out as a bad night turned into an amazing voyage. As punishment for a misdeed that I have long forgotten, I was sent to my room. I didn't have to turn out the light, but I had to stay in bed. I picked up a copy of the book that my parents happened to have, and that began a journey I am still on today. I have read many books on many subjects, from Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austin to Stephen Hawking's The Universe In A Nutshell & A Brief History of Time.

Everyone I know who reads as much as I do is also a writer in some fashion or form. Whether it be the occasional blog for enjoyment, freelance writing assignments, journaling, or hatching plans for that great novel or autobiography, readers often become writers. I started looking for online writing classes just to fill some extra time in my schedule, but discovered that I enjoyed the assignments much more than I expected. I am currently working on a serial based on one of the characters I developed as part of one of my writing classes.

It was about this time in my journey that I realized that perhaps it was time for me to find a new career. I like my job, and it's very easy most of the time, but I have done about as much as I can in this company. As I was studying the process for publishing books online, I realized that there was a need for inexpensive editors and proofreaders. This was a service I could provide. Out of this realization, Scribe's Helper was born.

I am still building my professional proofreading and editing resume. To facilitate this, I am currently offering to proofread and edit 10-30 pages of any work-in-progress for free, in exchange for adding the author and their book to my resume. This is a great deal, and provides first time authors with a glimpse into the editing process.

If you would like me to proof your work-in-progress, email me at sarah@scribeshelper.com.

Good luck out there!