Writers And Readers Of Distinctive Fiction

Destiny Of The Divas - Book Trailer

Destiny Of The Divas II - Angel Of Mercy

So You Think English Is Easy?

As writers, and some of us authors, we use the English language to serve our writing needs. I saw this cute but intrusive use of the English language and thought it worth sharing.

You think English is easy???

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row ...

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?


Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France . Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices?

Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.

In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

PS. - Why doesn't 'Buick' rhyme with 'quick' ?

Lovers of the English language might enjoy this: There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is'UP.'

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP ? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report ? We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.

And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP,you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP . When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP... When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP. When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so........it is time to shut UP!

Oh . . . one more thing: What is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at night?
U P...!

CHARACTERIZATION - Believable Characters

I thought I'd post an article about characters, where characters play an integral part of any story, short or book length.

CHARACTERIZATION Every story has characters, whether they are human, animal, or alien, as in sci-fi stories.
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What are the key factors in creating your characters? I’ll go to the extremes. You would not put a three hundred and fifty-pound man on a pair of skis, skiing down the Swiss Alps slopes, unless you’re writing a comedy.
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Create real characters for the situation or situations you’re writing about. The four REALS of a story – Real Story – Real Scenes – Real Situations - & Real Characters.
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Make your characters believable. Each story has two types of characters – The Protagonist (your MAIN CHARACTER) and the Antagonist (The VILLAIN.) I’ll expand on these two for now:
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The Protagonist – Your main character. He or She is the soul of your story. They are, for most parts, loved by the majority of the readers who’ll read your story. In a romance story, he’s the knight in shining armor who saves the damsel in distress. In a mystery, he or she’s the detective who hunts down the bad guy until they are caught. Thusly you get the idea who the protagonist is. In every story there is ONE key character who’s the protagonist. Often times there are supporting characters, who play just as much a role as your main character, but their role is just that, a supporting role.
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The Antagonist – He or she, depending on the story, is the one who tries to foil the efforts of the protagonist. In a romance novel, it’s the ex-husband or wife who does not want to see their ex happy. In a mystery, it’s the one who tries to foil the efforts to have that mystery solved. So on and so forth. In some cases there are more than one antagonist.
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In my book – Destiny of the Divas there are a total of seven in three major scenes, and yet the protagonist remains consistent throughout the story.
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Creating characters are as important as having a good plot. Characters have to have their own, distinct, personality – their individual self. There are several ways to accomplish this.
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(MANNERISMS) (SPEECH) (ABILITIES) (CHARACTER) are just a few of them.
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Try having One main character – four supporting characters – all female – all within a years age of each other, and give each one their own identity. For most parts, they work side by side with each other in a band, on one hand, and side by side as super heroines on the other. That’s what I had to overcome in Destiny of the Divas, and one of them was a spirit, or better known as a ghost.
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Remember this – A character without his/her own identity is like a hamburger without French fries – or corned beef without cabbage. It can be done, but something is missing.
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Through trial and error – you, the author, have to crawl into the shoes of every character you create. You have to eat, sleep, and breathe life into your characters with your written (typed) words. You want your reader to see what they see and feel what they feel. You’ll want your reader to want to reach out and hug them, or reach out and strangle them, depending on the circumstances. Okay, so now you have a story you want to write. You have a female protagonist (the main character) who’s almost thirty years old.
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How do you give this character her own identity?
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How do you make this character seem real to the reader?
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These are only ideas to throw your way, so they are not etched in stone: Is she a make-up freak? Does she frown on the use of make-up? Does she wear dresses or jeans on a regular basis? Does she wear sneakers, loafers, sandals, flip-flops, or does she prefer being bare-foot? Does she smoke? Does she dance? You are starting to get the idea. From the few things I’ve mentioned you could have a total of about fifty different women.
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Where your character lives can depend on how you want to portray your protagonist or antagonist. Are they upper crust (the rich or famous) or are they living in the projects (the poverty level citizen)? Is your character snooty – or do they show compassion? And so on and so on. Only YOU can tell what your character is going to be like. You don’t do it any other way than through the words you write. Every writer develops their own way of creating their character’s (SELF IDENTITY).
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What I did, through the use of a spirit or ghost, was let her bring out the character within the protagonist and her supporting characters. Through Destiny – she developed Danielle, the protagonist, and Dana, Lisa, and Wendy, the supporting characters. Yes I gave these girls their bodies, hair styles, figures, etc, but it was Destiny who gave them their own character, their own individual selves. What does it take to create successful characters? Every writer is different, but the end result is when YOU are satisfied with the way the character acts, their mannerisms, their speech patterns, and so on. When you are happy with the character you developed, that’s when you draw the line. Do not leave your reader guessing about your characters. If you lose a reader, you’ll surely lose an agent or publisher.
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Give your characters life. In the real world, the world we live in, you have literally thousands of personalities around you. You can see these people every day. You’ve probably even guessed at what some of these people are like.
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Don’t give every detail about your characters all at once. That’s what’s called an info dump. Yes it’s information you want the reader to know, but spread it out a little at a time. Here’s an example, I’ll use about one of my own characters.
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Danielle Dee – she’s seventeen – five-foot four – shoulder length red hair. The fact she’s seventeen – you want the reader to know early on. Her weight unless you have a specific reason for doing so, should be brought in gradually or not at all. Her height and shoulder length red hair, if done properly can be put into one sentence, which is what I did with Destiny of the Divas.
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Now you’ve introduced the reader to a character.
It’s at this point you really need to let your reader find out what role this character is going to play. Again, don’t give them all the information early on. Let them guess. The more you keep them guessing, the more they’ll want to read the book. In Destiny of the Divas, it took me until page 71 for the readers to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that Danielle was going to be the main character, or protagonist, but there was a specific reason for this. Destiny had to acquire her band, one member at a time, and yes Danielle was the first of them she acquired, but it wasn't until later on that they knew she would be their leader.
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Creating your character, the right way, means your readers will react to what you’re showing them through the eyes of your characters. Showing vs. Telling is another lesson, but if you want your reader to cry, then your reader has to have compassion for your character. They have to feel the depth of pain you’re trying to convey, be it emotional, physical, or mental. Your readers are your bread and butter, so whether we want to admit it or not, what the readers feel IS important to us as writers. When readers like our books they tell others about it, hence getting another sale. Where we, as authors, get an advance, some of us anyways, that advance, for newcomers to this profession is small, so we have to rely on royalties, what publishers offer us up and above the advance, per sale of our work.
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Getting back to characters, just like you have to almost literally crawl into the shoes of your characters, that’s what you want your reader to do. Specially the protagonist, or your main character. Your readers want to think like your protagonist, so they want to crawl into your main character’s mind to figure out what move they are going to make next. Often times they are wrong, which is where we come in.
We don’t want our characters to become so (Stick Figure Like) that they are predictable. I’ll give you an example from my book Destiny of the Divas.
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Four teenaged girls, put into super-heroine roles, with one main purpose, to find kidnapped kids. They have supernatural powers that go above human comprehension. They have musical instruments that do things that they aren’t supposed to do, plus they have, through the use of their eyes, they can either hypnotize people, read minds, erase people’s memories, or see through walls. With that type of arsenal, you’d never expect these young ladies to need the services of a police officer, as I did in all three cases in Destiny of the Divas, or an FBI agent, as I had them do in Destiny of the Divas II. I kept the reader on their toes, and I threw curves at them so they could not figure out the ending of either story. This is what you need to do, to be a successful writer in the twenty-first century, is have your characters unpredictable. If you want to be a romance novelist, or short story writer, you have to find new and exciting ways for your characters to fall in love. Use the mind God gave you. Be creative, because that’s what this is all about.
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Now you’re probably asking yourself “How do I create my characters?”
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First thing is to think about the story you’re about to write. Think about the Main character (Your Protagonist) whether it’s a man or woman makes no difference. On a separate piece of paper write the names of your characters, then give them a body (height-weight- hair – etc.) Only for your reference. This is the paper you’ll fall back on when you have that golden opportunity to feed your reader some of that info.
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I’ll use an example from Destiny of the Divas. The four girls who comprise the band D & D are seventeen, with the exception of Wendy, who’s eighteen. No one knows what she looks like until somewhere around a third of the way through, that she’s pleasantly plump. I mentioned early on that she was full-figured, but most readers would not pick that up right away. I make it prominent, when they’re getting ready to order outfits for the band, when through the use of dialogue, she states she hasn’t the figure for “belly huggers” for a top. That was a more prominent way to explain her figure without it being an info dump.
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When describing your characters, in the book, unless it’s a comedy, never insult your characters for being fat. Those readers who pick up on that will be offended, if they are full-figured themselves. Use tact when describing people who are fat, skinny, have handicaps, etc. – Be especially tactful when you are talking about the retarded people. Always call them mentally challenged. In closing, don’t make your characters alike, at least not the key characters.
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I can give you an example from Lord of the Rings. The Orcs, as they are called, an army of thousands, were all alike except one. That one stood out above the rest in size and physical features. Yes he was the protagonist, one of the many throughout the story.
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You, as the author, hold the key to your own successes or failures, in that you are the creator of your characters. Whatever the genre of book you’re writing, make them fit the story you’re writing.

SO YOU WANT TO BE AN AUTHOR

If that title don't grab you, nothing will.

Every once in a while you'll hear someone say "Hell I can write a book. There's nothing to it."

DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT.....!

Anyone who thinks there's nothing to it, better read this story, from someone who's been there, done that.

Here's a story about me, Ernie Johnson, a nobody with an electric typewriter and a friend's manuscript that had been handwritten to the tune of 750 pages. Mind you, this was not written normally. Normal people will write from left to right. This friend wrote from right to left.

I knew nothing about writing books, but I said I'd try. I started by transposing his words, verbatum, until I had it all typed out - double-spaced 12 point Times New Roman. Then my fun began. I sat down and read it over to see where it needed tweaking, or to put it bluntly, what needed to be added to make it worth publishing.

When you stop to figure, I worked the midnight shift, with my friend, and by the time I got home, I needed to get some sleep, by the time I got to work on his book I only had about three hours a day, during the week with which to work on it. I won't drag this out, but it took me five years to complete, to what I believed was a good story. By then I'd left the company and was working elsewhere, and hadn't kept in touch with my friend. I went looking for him, and he'd fallen off the face of the earth. In fact, even the Police didn't know where he was.

It was during the writing of my friend's manuscript that I decided I wanted to write for myself, so by 1988 I started with an outline and a subject I knew something about, and began OVERTURNED.

By 1990 I'd received an old computer, and when I say old, it was a relic, but it served the purpose for the time being. I transposed everything from Overturned, and was able to see it on screen. I got involved with a writing group, on line, and it was there that I got humiliated by writers who critiqued my work. That may have been the best advice I was ever given. I wrote the way I talked, and, to be very honest, my use of the English language was not the best. I was, back then, an adverb junkie. Really, and truthfully, I was totally an adverb-a-holic, and it showed dramatically in my writing. That was an example of how I talked, and also the way I wrote. Those critiques, as humiliating as they were, was what I needed to be a better writer.

I went through my entire manuscript and corrected all the needless adverbs. I read and reread my manuscript, each time making necessary changes, like missing commas, etc., until I had that mss as fine-tuned as an Indy Racecar. Now the next step to publishing stardom, is finding a publisher to publuish the mss. Now don't get me wrong, the old addage "PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE" comes to play here really bigtime, for if you don't have the patience, this is the wrong profession for you to be in. Submissions after submissions came back rejections after rejections. In between all the rejections, I'd written Mountain of Love and Mountain of Love II - Return to Manhadden.

By late 1993 I'd given up hope of my work every being published. I didn't have the patience to wait forever. I was so depressed with the process, I gave up writing altogether. I said to heck with it.

In the fall of 2001 I went out with a group of friends who did the karaoke thing once a week at a local watering hole, and we went out for breakfast at a local restaurant that was open 24 hours. While we ate, we talked, and I was talking with a friend who mentioned he'd had an idea for a story, but where he wasn't a writer, he didn't know how to go about it. Two days later, at the same restaurant, we were discussing his idea. What it boiled down to was he had the names of four girls, and the instruments they played. He had no beginning, no plot, and no title, so in other words - he didn't have much. My mind was working overtime developing a story and it took me a while, because I didn't want just any story, I wanted a best seller. I took my time and developed DESTINY OF THE DIVAS into a strong paranormal, mystery, suspense, drama. Even though all prognosis was in my favor, I still had the hard part, finding a publisher.

I got sidettracked, writing about my book and all, but finding a publisher is JUST AS HARD as finding a needle in a haystack, at least for the new untested author. What do I mean by untested? You haven't proven your worth to a publisher. Publishers want authors who'll sell books, lots of them, so a first time author has to prove his worth to a top name publisher

Some authors bypass the traditional publisher route, by going to a POD (PRINT ON DEMAND) publisher, and today there are a number of them out there, both scrupulous and others who try to do good by the author, and I won't name names here, but for those of you who are considering this route, check with PREDITORS & EDITORS before you sign any agreement with a POD publisher.

I went with LULU.COM - and published OVERTURNED, MOUNTAIN OF LOVE, KASHMANTOU, LET FREEDOM RING, and THE MISADVENTURES OF THE DEVERS BROTHERS.

You might be reading this, and are thinking, WOW...! He's published six books. He must be rich and famous. Guess again. Yes I've got six published books, but if I'm not out here, seven days a week, marketing my books, they won't sell themselves. Each book needs me out here marketing them.

Is marketing fun? I think I'd rather wrestle an alligator. No marketing your book is not fun, but it's necessary.

Being an Author is more than just writing the words. Being an author is being the conductor of the symphony, being the symphony itself, and being the promoter of the symphony. The better a promoter you are, the larger the audience you'll attract. Not every author is a good promoter, but every author has to try.

Author Ernie Johnson