Under the Influence

Yesterday, a “J. K. Rowling” Google search (it’s her birthday tomorrow and I was feeling nostalgic, okay?), led me to a pretty cool web site. It’s called infloox™.com, and, in a nutshell, it’s a search engine for “influential people’s influential books.” Among its many features, this innovative site allows you to search for an author’s favorite books or authors, along with the author’s most famous readers and a list of books that his or her books inspired.

So, in honor of her upcoming birthday (which also happens to be Harry Potter’s birthday—he’s turning the big 2-9, believe it or not), I performed a search for Ms. Rowling. What did I find? Among other things, that Jane Austen’s Emma is “the most skillfully managed mystery” that she’s ever read, that she enjoyed reading the backs of cereal boxes as a child, and that the scene in Book Four where Harry saves Cedric’s body was inspired by Homer’s The Iliad. With one more click of the mouse, I discovered that Alexander the Great often kept a copy of The Iliad under his pillow while he slept. It’s kind of like six degrees of separation, literary style.

While the site is still a work in progress, it’s definitely worth checking out. Without it, I—and, by extension, you—probably never would have known that Britney Spears is a Hemingway fan.

What to DO about UNECESSARY Capitalization.

For the fourth of July, I ate Hot Dogs, HamBurgers, and Ice cream. Everything was DELICIOUS!!!*

As an editor, I often notice unnecessarily capitalized words, both in manuscripts and in daily life (restaurant menus are a big culprit). Often, there's no rhyme or reason to the capitalization. Some words are capitalized, some are not. Check out this example of excessive capitalization, courtesy of an Austin car rental company.

Sometimes, though, the mistake is understandable, like when a word is capitalized in certain instances, but not in others. An excellent example of this? Professional titles. When directly preceding a proper name, they're capitalized.

Senator Shaheen

However, when used to identify or describe someone's job (they usually follow the person's name in this case), the first letter of the professional title is lowercased.

Jeanne Shaheen, the senator from New Hampshire

In general, The Chicago Manual of Style--the editor's and writer's bible--prefers a "down style," meaning a sparing use of capitals. Unless it's a proper noun, the first word in a sentence, or part of a title or heading, it probably shouldn't be capitalized. That means no School Buses, Pencils, Policemen, or Carrot Cake in the middle of a sentence. If you're ever unsure of whether or not a word should be capitalized, check a style manual or a dictionary (Merriam-Webster Online is a great resource and provides an easy way to check whether a word is capitalized, or even hyphenated).

Here are a few more general tips for when to capitalize words (keep in mind, this list is by no means exhaustive):

• The names of ethnic and national groups are capitalized, as are the adjectives associated with them.
  

Inuit; Inuit sculptures

• The names of religions, denominations, communions, and sects are capitalized, along with their adherents and the adjectives derived from them.

Judaism; Jew; Jewry; Jewish

• Titles of armies, navies, air forces, fleets, and so on, are capitalized, as are well-known, though unofficial, names, like the Rough Riders. Words such as "navy" and "army" are lowercased when standing alone, used in the plural, or not part of an official title.

Army Corps of Engineers; the corps

• The names of academic degrees and fellowships are lowercased when referred to generically.

a master's degree; a doctorate; a master of business administration

• When naming an academic degree (using its abbreviation, with no periods) and the majors associated with it, the major is not capitalized, unless it's a language.
  

MA in art history; PhD in molecular biology and English

Writers will often also unnecessarily capitalize the first letter of a word, an entire word, or multiple sentences, in a futile attempt to convey the importance of an idea. It's best to avoid this. Rather than emphasizing an idea, you could instead leave readers feeling confused, or worse, scolded.

I arrived at seven. WHY weren't YOU there?

Unless you're trying to use capital words for an ironic effect, avoid using them for emphasis. Instead, try a variety of other typographic devices, like italics or boldface. Be sure not to overuse any of these tools, though. Any writing device will lose its potency if used too often. This, of course, is the opposite effect you're hoping to have on your writing.

Have you ever been guilty of extraneous capitalization? Have a great example like this one? Leave it in the comments.

*A topic for another post: the overuse of exclamation points.

Art Imitating Art

by Robert Rich, Editing Assistant

So, you’re watching a movie, and you’re fully immersed in the story. It’s dramatic, it’s spiritual, it’s one of those life-changing cinematic events that you can’t wait to tell your friends about. The main character is sitting outside, chatting with one of the secondary characters, a lit cigarette in her hand. The dialogue is fantastic, the acting superb, and the cinematography beautiful.

The camera cuts back to the main character, except this time the cigarette, still in her hand, is no longer lit. Another cut, and the cigarette is lying on the table, still unlit. Suddenly, you can’t focus on the dialogue anymore; you’re too worried about that cigarette. Your life-changing moment is gone.

Continuity problems are some of the most common errors in films, and can easily detract from the experience. Guess what? The same thing is true for books. Many of the issues that happen most frequently in films are also problems in books, and can make that next great American novel you wrote end up like Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal. Never read it? Exactly.

So, to make sure we don’t all end up repeating The Donald’s mistakes, let’s take a look at some of the biggest movie blunders and how to make sure you don’t recreate them in your books.

Continuity: Like I said above, this is the biggest mistake made in film, and it happens in the best. In The Godfather, when Tom Hagen is having dinner with Woltz, the waiter fills his glass twice in a span of seconds, a very unlikely occurrence. In your writing, make sure to watch out for this. If you end a chapter with a character being helped to his feet by someone else, don’t come back to the storyline a few chapters later with that same character standing up on his own. If someone drives a green car and you make a decision to turn it red, find every instance in the manuscript where the color is mentioned and be sure you change it. Nothing turns a reader off more than an author who didn’t read through his or her book carefully enough.

Bad Dialogue: The ridiculous giant-bugs-in-outer-space movie Starship Troopers (based on the Robert A. Heinlein novel) contains some of the most laughably awful dialogue in movie history. For example:

“You’re some sort of big, fat, smart-bug, aren’t you?”

and

“You trying to be a hero, Watkins?”
“Just trying to kill some bugs, sir.”

Don’t let your book get hurt by the same cheesy dialogue. We’ve discussed dialogue before on this blog, and you can check out our advice here.

Horrible Acting: Saw is one of the better horror movies to come out in some time, but Cary Elwes’s portrayal of Dr. Lawrence Gordon is often hard to watch. He talks to his kidnapped daughter on the phone, and bursts into the worst bout of fake crying you’ll ever see. He moans, he groans, and it’s entirely unbelievable. Don’t let this happen to you, too. Make sure your narrative is tight, employs active voice, and that characters behave in a normal fashion. Unless you’re writing about a character having a mental breakdown, she won’t sob uncontrollably over a spilled cup of coffee. Starbucks isn’t that good.

Factual Errors: Do your research! In M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs, one of the main characters is an officer of the Bucks County Police Department. However, counties don’t have police departments; they have sheriff’s departments. Some people won’t catch errors like this in your books, but for those who do, it’s a slap in the face and can take them out of the story quicker than you can say “Twilight.” Check your facts, check them again, and check them once more just to be safe.

Movies and books are obviously two completely different media, but we can look to the mistakes of one in order to prevent them in the other. So don’t feel bad the next time you’re watching a movie instead of working on your novel. Just tell yourself you’re doing research for when you get back to that book.

Best Worst Review

Being a published author has a lot of advantages (chief among them, I would imagine, is the ability to start sentences with, “Well, as a published author…”). But the downside to being a published author? Your book—your pride and joy—is out there, open to criticism from the world (and a particularly judgmental subpopulation known as Amazon.com customer reviewers). And that means the inevitable bad review.

Sure, a bad review can hurt, but take heart—it’s probably not as bad as you think. Don’t believe me? Check out The Worst Review Ever. This blog features the worst of the worst, sent in by the disparaged (and good-natured) authors themselves, along with their answers to questions like, “How long did it take you to get over the pain and humiliation of the review (assuming you got over it)?”

Here are some of my favorites (presented in all their unedited glory):

Gem #1: “If you hate Western Civilization, Moveable Type and The English language...Then you'll love 'Venus Envy’!”

Gem #2: “this book has perhaps crossed a line. maybe a book as shallow has been invented, you havent read it, cause it doesnt exist. it was as sluggish and definetly [sic] not straight. full of stereo types [sic], this book fades into dust”

Gem #3: “Holy Creative Writing No-No 101! Here's a clue that something is amiss in a book: when reading, if you find yourself wondering things like, ‘I wonder if Axl Rose realizes he looks dumb with corn rows’ or ‘Maybe I just haven't given cauliflower a fighting chance’ or ‘Gee, I wonder how many interstitial [sic] hairs are on my index finger’, then there is something very wrong with the book.”

So don’t despair, authors. Until a reviewer calls for you to be “drawn and quartered” for your writing (a wee bit harsh, no?), you're in pretty good shape.

A Few Good Statistics

They’re everywhere. They could be your best friend, your mom, your neighbor, even your neighbor’s kids. Pretty soon, you’re seeing them at the grocery store, the gym, work, and your child’s soccer game. But how do you know for sure? Should you just ask directly? Or try and start a conversation and hope it comes up? What to do?

Who am I talking about? Readers, of course. Writers, authors, and members of the publishing industry are constantly trying to locate these readers and get them to, well, read. These readers, they are elusive, their tastes are varied, and one success with them is not necessarily a predictor of another.

Statistics aren’t really the publishing industry’s strong point, but fortunately we have Bowker PubTrack to provide us with some guidance. R.R. Bowker is the world’s leading source for bibliographic information, and PubTrack is the publishing industry’s premier resource for understanding consumer book buying behavior. We recently received a 2008 report on the U.S. book-buying consumer, so I thought I’d share a few interesting tidbits with you.

• 45% of Americans ages 13+ read books

That’s less than half of the adolescent and adult population. Kind of sad, really.

• Average age of a reader is 44

• 58% of READERS are female, and 57% of book BUYERS are female
  
  
• Top 5 fiction genres: mystery/detective, juvenile, romance, sci-fi, espionage/thriller
  
  
• 62% of books purchased are paperback

• 23% of books purchased are through internet retailers; 22% through large chains; 5% through independent bookstores

This means that half of all books purchased are bought through other outlets, such as book clubs, warehouse retailers, supermarkets, and other specialty stores. In other words, if you put all your eggs (er, books) in one basket, you’re missing out on sales opportunities. Also: buy local/independent when possible!

• 31% of books purchased are impulse buys

A good chunk of people buy books because of the author’s name, or because they saw a book in a special display in a store (I know I’m guilty of that). But you must realize that publishers pay hefty fees for the privilege of being in those store displays!

Statistics like these can be useful, but I think the most important thing you can do as a writer or author is to really think about who your readers might be and find ways to connect with them. There are no secret formulas or magic numbers for publishing success, and your book will probably require a strategy that’s different from someone else’s. So take some time to consider your goals, keep your expectations in check, and be on the lookout for those sneaky readers…