Showing posts with label Writers on the Move blog. Show all posts

Writers: Continue to Learn from the Newbies

Learning from the Newbies

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning series of books for Writers including Third Editions of The Frugal Book Promoter and The Frugal Editor

I love writing books that will help authors avoid some of the pitfalls I fell into back when the millennium was new and so was something we called POD (print-on-demand) was burgeoning—even for traditional publishers who found lots of useful things to do with it all while many were denigrating it.

There was so much new to learn—and to share! But I’ve noticed lately there was also so much I missed, especially about computer-related stuff. I’m finding the questions new authors have in places like Facebook’s groups great ways to learn more…and to help others more. So I went to work finding other resources I might have been glibly overlooking including advertisements that come to my email box—some uninvited!

I’ve been sharing these tips and ideas with my own new Facebook group mostly consisting of loyal writing friends, former students from the classes I taught at UCLA, from seminars where I presented and sometimes even my Facebook and Linked-In streams, sometimes using the easily identified hashtag #TheFrugalBookPromoterTips.

So, I’m keeping it short so you’ll see what I mean and then maybe even take my recommendation to buy a great new charger for your phone to replace an old one that doesn’t know all the new tricks this one does! (Keep reading for that!).

Here are a couple of reminders I gleaned by opening an e-mail telling me it was time to pay my monstrously expensive bill for the use of my iPhone from Verizon. (I usually skip it because I know only too well the deadline for that bill is coming up!).

#TheFrugalBookPromoterTips: Keep your battery between 30% and 80%. (30%!! Really??)

#TheFrugalBookPromoterTips: Don’t leave your phone in direct sunlight or charge it when it’s cold.

#TheFrugalBookPromoterTips: Need a battery checkup. No extra cost if you’re a Verizon customer. Find link here: https://my.asurion.com/device-care/os-selection. They deserve a little praise after that rude comment about their fees! Ahem!

#TheFrugalBookPromoterTips: Save your iPhone battery. Avoid Overnight charging.

I told you they were pretty basic; try to guess the one I hadn’t been using myself for the many decades of caring for my iPhones—and obviously not doing a very good job of it!

One last tip you might (or might not!) appreciate or need. When I finally absorbed (!)these much-needed tips (or readjusted what I had been doing!), I bought a new charger without any recommendation of advice other than Amazon’s Alexa just because it was old. She is the one AI person I use and trust; she saves me tons of time; and she recommended INIU. Their tag line is “Beyond Safe, Beyond Fast” and it’s no exaggeration. Their icon is an adorable light-up doggy paw that visually hints at what it’s doing and how long its own charge has lasted!

Here’s the major reason I love INUI: It automatically prevents me from overcharging my phone even if I inadvertently leave it doing its work overnight. It stops at that magic 80% number and won’t finish till I’m awake in the morning and decide my day is so full of appointments I might need the full 100%.

Tips and Tidbits or More #TheFrugalBookPromoterTips!

(This box is where Carolyn occasionally lists a Tidbit that will help authors write or promote better. She also includes a Tip to help readers find a treasure among long-neglected books or a sapphire among the newly-published.)

Writers' Tidbit: : Writers of all stripes will enjoy the quick-reading experience of my booklet full of tips I’ve found to correct many of my clients do wrong. It’s the Great Little Last Minute Edits full of word trippers that sometimes confuse you, or you don’t remember, or a few you never learned. It includes tips on wordiness and lots on style choices. It was inspired by my winningest book The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success.Find both on Amazon’s new buy page especially designed to make quick work of ordering e-books though it is available in paperback and hardcover as well.

Readers' Tip: I love June Casagrande’s book Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies(www.budurl.com/GrammarSnobs). It is irreverent and reminds us how much fun grammar (and language in general) could have been if only teachers had the freedom to teach those topics as living, breathing entities—which they are. And yes, she believes in breaking rules, too.

Time for Wrters to Work Harder On Your Own Reliable Resources

Reliable Resources in Greater Danger as Time Goes On

My Love Affair with Reliable Resources

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson,

author of poetry, fiction and the Modern History Press’s acclaimed HowToDoItFrugally Series of book for writers

I fell in love with reliable resources when I became a staff writer for my high school newspaper and realized the acquisition of a deep love for that concept surpassed my original attraction for my high school’s Thunderbol. (Was mostly interested in the smart(and cute!) ivy leaguer group of who guys hung out there!) And for very good reason. It turned out the cute boys ignored me, but that being “reporter” who could support my position help me when our editor (or staff advisor) wanted to edit (or ax) one of my columns I could save it by pointing to a reliable resource that supported my viewpoint.

I learned more about the value of reliable resources again sometimes around the time CNN introduced the highlight of my weekend TV consumption; I viewed their Reliable Resources as a class in class in constitutional law and began to see the how close the relationship to my chosen career of journalism which by then had served me well through a couple decades of assorted occupations. It was a TV one-of-a-kind and it never occurred to me it wouldn’t remain a staple of the cable station that brought believable news my way during several occasions when I also became aware of dishonesty coming from places I had until then trusted and admired (the Nixon era, and Vietnam and Iraq wars come to mind). It kept me from losing hope for better things to come so I could focus onbuilding a business and raising a family.

I was appalled when it was cancelled in 2020. I literally mourned for its anchor Brian Stelter who someone managed to survive under the radar with his online Reliable Resources Newsletter. Had I been more of an internet aficionado, his new journey would have helped me avoid years of negativity. Even in these bad moments, things were getting better. Not perfect but good enough to start believing in Camelot again.

Flash forward to slowly growing to love my hometown newspaper. It wasn’t The New York Times, but it was sure enough reliable. I even saw value in it their new management made a highly critiqued move. Though many didn’t agree in when they started re-labeling much of what had traditionally been identified by its placement the Opinion page. That page became “Opinion Voices” and even their columnists were targeted with headlines that carefully delineated in one word, Voices. Yes, both bold and italicized. So did their new label, “guest contributors,” when editors felt that was needed—apparently to strengthen its stance on free speech because it helped readers more easily identify what the simple word opinion had managed to do for a long time across the breadth of trustworthy media.

I also follow ideas (and dangers to watch for) that come from PEN America. During her interim co-CEO stint and chief program officer, Summer Lopez, interim co-CEO and chief program office was among the first to warn of the then-recent revelation that a lawsuit by a sitting president was brought against Penguin Random House the world’s largest trade book publisher and two authors for publishing a book!

I’ve always been proud of PEN with its global membership of writers and literary professionals). I’ve even participated in some of PEN’s efforts to support young writers by sponsoring seminars, only one of the paths they use to support our founding fathers’ determination to keep our country operating differently from the European countries they all hailed from. You know. FREE.

It turned out I had been ignoring the signals. I opened my daily newspapers to Lopez’s opinion piece dominating the LA Times Opinion page with the decree that reliable resources are in danger again. This administration seems to love the freedom afforded by our courts to speak our minds but tends to rely on diminishing other reliable resources like laws and precedence to govern. It’s clear enough: This lawsuit “against a book publisher” is a “dangerous escalation.” I only hope that it doesn’t become the straw that broke the camel’s back. I hope that this time the back that gets broken is from that heavy load known as “truth” hurled by writers themselves. All writers including authors of books and the powerhouse executives that publish their work. I hope they’ll all use the power of the pen to keep resources reliable before we lose the power of free press, free speech and, using Lopez’s words, “the freedom to write.”

MORE ABOUT THE “WRITERS-on-the-Move” COLUMNIST

Howard-Johnson is the recipient of the California Legislature’s Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award, and her community’s Character and Ethics award for her work promoting tolerance with her writing. She was also named to Pasadena Weekly’s list of “Fourteen San Gabriel Valley women who make life happen” and was given her community’s Diamond Award for Achievement in the Arts. Carolyn writes nonfiction for writers, poetry, and fiction and has studied writing at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom; Herzen University in St. Petersburg, Russia; and Charles University, Prague, as well as several universities right here in the good ol’ USA.

Letting Taylor Swift’s Genius Guide Holiday Choices

Vintage Vroman’s Bookstore Chirstmas Stars (Pasadena, CA.)

BloomingRed or see the whole series here. The series also includes chapbooks for Women’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and, yep...Christmas.

Why Every Author Needs To Update Their Editing Skills

Why Every Author Needs to Know Editing

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Author of The Frugal Editor: Do-It-Yourself Editing
Now In Its Third Edition

Last month I contributed an article “Ten Easy Ways to Keep Dialogue Sharp
to this #WritersontheMove blog with a promise to give authors reasons why
they need to know all the editing skills they can work into their busy writing
schedule including those for writing dialogue that I covered last week. I hoped to entice
even nonfiction writers who don’t often use dialogue to start using
it. Even newspapers that once

demanded strict "who, how, were, and why leads”
now include anecdotes in their front-page stories!

It surprises people when they learn that grammar rules change over time. Or that what they learned in high school or advanced grammar classes in college is either passé or may not apply to fiction. It also surprises them to learn that a perfectly edited book is never perfect because there are always so many disagreements among experts. And even experts are often misinformed. The worlds of grammar and style choices are filled with myths and misinformation like, “Never use contractions in your writing,” “Never use fragments,” and “Never end a sentence with a preposition.” Further, as my client base grew, I kept running into common misconceptions and outright annoying style choices that would never fly in the publishing world. Thus, a new edition of The Frugal Editor was a must! And, thus, I keep battling decades old misinformation about editing—especially among newer authors.

But what about authors who can proudly point to decades of publishing? Well, sometimes they suffer a little hubris. They think they have done well without worrying about spending time on what they know from high school grammar classes. and therefore already know. So we’ll start off with a smattering of what is new in my The Frugal Editor in its third edition—new in that last few years, in fact! And—if you scroll a bit—you’ll find another list of editing myths you—still believe—yes! You personally—that just happen to still be lying in wait for an occasion to embarrass (humiliate!?) you:

· The Third Edition of The Frugal Editor has been reorganized, and my publisher Victor Volkman at Modern History Press tells me I outdid myself with about 50% new (helpful!) material including new “Editor’s Extras” based on my own school of hard knocks!

· Authors will love the all-new sections including:

o Beta readers and peer reviewers

o What you probably don’t know about custom dictionaries

o Up-to-date rules for accommodating gender-specific and other cultural needs

o A chapter for word-lovers and poets

o Quickie reviews of word processors for you

o What even traditionally accepted front and back matter can do for your book sales, your career, and your readers

o Political Correctness considerations change and grow with each passing day. So, yes! Lots of updating here!

· The Third Edition of The Frugal Editor still includes the basics that make you into an on-your-own editor when you must be. Few writers other than Stephen King can afford to hire an editor for every query letter, every media release, every media kit, every blog post. So until your career is so star-studded you can afford a publicist and editor on a retainer basis, writers need to know both the basics of editing and the little-known secrets.

· The third edition is still loaded with reader favorites like what authors need to know about book covers—another aspect of publishing that even experienced authors might leave entirely up to others—but it’s updated!

· New information will dispel myths like these:

o Agents are a cantankerous lot. (Nope! In The Frugal Editor, twenty-one of the nation's best tell you their pet peeves and they do it in the best of spirits.)

o If your English teacher told you something is OK, it is. (No! Language rules have changed since you were a sophomore. Anyway, your English teachers likely have no background in publishing, so apart from basic grammar, how much help can they be?

o If a manuscript or query is grammar-perfect, you'll be fine. (No! Lots of things that are grammatically correct annoy publishers.)

o Always use your Spell and Grammar Checker. (No! Some suggest you don't use it at all, but The Frugal Editorwill help you make it your partner instead of your enemy.)

o It's easy to avoid agent and editor scams by asking other writers. Even other professionals! (The Frugal Editorgives you a to-do and not-to-do lists to help you avoid being taken even when you are doing just that. )

o Your publisher will assign a top-flight editor. Even big five publishers are having budget problems and many cut expenses by using less experienced/qualified editors. (Maybe, but don't count on it. The more you know, the better partner you’ll be for an editor!)

o Formatters and editors will take care of the hyphens, ellipses, and all the other grungy little punctuation marks that English teachers avoided teaching because they didn't know how to use them either. (Chances are, you'll catch even great formatters and editors—the ones you pay for their services—in an error or two if you know your stuff!

o When you do know your stuff, you’ll feel more comfortable defying all kinds of rules that are still extant. You’ll even feel comfortable explaining to your editor why this choice is an improvement for this particular title, voice, time, or era.

NOTE: The parts of this article bulleted are reprints (edited and updated) from one of my sell sheets. They are widely used in publishers’ and authors’ review-getting process using query letters, ARCs, and accompanying marketing materials. Find a sample of sell sheets—front, back, and footer—in the Appendix of The Frugal Editor, third edition.

You’ll find the first part of this plea of mine for writers right here on Karen Cioffi’s Writers on the Move
blog in my column on basic dialogue tips posted in May, 2025.

It will give you ten reasons why knowing more
editing than your do already might make

you a better (and happier) writer .

Go to:
https://www.writersonthemove.com/2025/05/dialogues-ten-basic-cant-go-wrong-rules.html

MORE ABOUT TODAY’S WRITERS ON THE MOVE CONTRIBUTOR

Carolyn Howard-Johnson was an instructor for the UCLA Extension Writer's Program for nearly a decade. The first book in her HowToDoItFrugally Series of books, The Frugal Book Promoter, won USA Book News' Best Professional Book Award and Book Publicists of Southern California's Irwin Award. The second, The Frugal Editor, is the winningest book in her HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers (The first edition was named best of 2004 by USA Book News.) TFEIII includes many more editing tips on dialogue—even punctuation for dialogue. Learn more about building a career in the publishing world at www.howtodoitfrugally.com.

“Careers that are not fed die as readily as any living
organism given no sustenance.”

Dialogue’s Ten Basic Can’t-Go-Wrong Rules

Ten Easy Ways to Keep Dialogue Sharp
And Why the Average Author Needs to Know Them

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Author of The Frugal Editor: Do-It-Yourself Editing
Now In Its Third Edition

Let’s start with the second part first because you, the author, are reasonably sure
your published work will receive attention from the best editors ever,
and in the meantime, running small documents past friends, relatives, and even English teachers
likely won’t cut it. This article covers grammar and dialogue that
English Departments’ don’t offer until college and then only if you happen
to choose it as an elective or major in creative writing.
PS: If you write nonfiction, and are avoiding anecdotes to make
your work sparkle, you’ll have tools enough to make your characters speak!

Dialogue’s Ten Basic Can’t-Go-Wrong Rules

1. Keep it simple. "He said" and "She said" will usually do. Your reader is trained to accept this repetition.

2. Forget you ever heard of strong verbs. Skip the "He yelped" and the "She sighed." They slow your dialogue down. If you feel need them, look at the words—the actual dialogue— your character used when he was yelping. Maybe it doesn't reflect the way someone would sound if he yelped. Maybe if you strengthen the dialogue, you be glad to ditch the overblown tag.

3. When you can, reveal who is saying something by the voice or tone of the dialogue. That way you may be able to skip tags occasionally, especially when you have only two people speaking to one another. Your dialogue will ring truer, too.

4. Avoid having characters use other characters' names. In real life, we don't use people's names in our speech much. We tend to reserve using names for when we're angry or disapproving or we just met in a room full of people and we're practicing out social skills. Having a character direct her speech to one character or another by using her name is a lazy writer's way of directing dialogue and it will annoy the reader. When readers are annoyed, they will not be immersed in the story you are trying to tell.

5. Avoid putting internal dialogue in italics. Trust your reader and your own ability to write in a character's point of view. Whichever point-of-view you have choses for your narrative will let your reader surmise who is speaking.

6. Be cautious about using dialogue to tell something that should be shown. It doesn't help to transfer “telling” from the narrative to what a character’s is saying. Professionals will know what you are trying to do and your reader will just think that character is long winded.

7. Don't break up dialogue sequences with long or overly frequent blocks of narrative. One of dialogue's greatest advantages is that it moves a story along. If a writer inserts too much stage direction, it will lose the forward motion and any tension it is building.

8. Avoid having every character answer a question directly. Some people do that (say a sensitive young girl who has been reared to obey her elders) but many don't. Some veer off with an answer that doesn't follow from the question asked. Some are silent. Some characters do any one of these things as a matter of course. Some do them purposefully, perhaps to avoid fibbing or to change the subject or because they are passive aggressive.

9. Avoid dull dialogue that doesn't help draw better characters or move the action forward. Forcing a reader to hear people introduce themselves to one another without a very good reason to do so is cruel and unusual punishment.

10. Use dialogue to unobtrusive plant a seed of intrigue. If a character brings up a concern that isn't solved immediately, you can heighten the page-turning effect until you are ready to supply the “great reveal.”

Though this article will have writers using professionally-written dialogue to liven everything from their nonfiction to their novels, I strongly recommend

Tom Chiarella's Writing Dialogue published by Writers' Digest. For more on editing in general—from editing query letters to turning unattractive adverbs into metaphoric gold—find my The Frugal Editor in its third edition on Amazon.

Next month, right here on Karen Cioffi’s Writers on the Move
blog, I’m planning another list that
will give you ten reasons why knowing more
editing than your do already might make

You a better (and happier) writer.

MORE ABOUT TODAY’S WRITERS ON THE MOVE CONTRIBUTOR

Carolyn Howard-Johnson was an instructor for the UCLA Extension Writer's Program for nearly a decade. The first book in her HowToDoItFrugally Series of books, The Frugal Book Promoter, won USA Book News' Best Professional Book Award and Book Publicists of Southern California's Irwin Award. The second, The Frugal Editor, is the winningest book in her HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers (The first edition was named best of 2004 by USA Book News. ) It includes many editing tips on dialogue, the use of quotation marks and more and the third edition includes even more. Learn more at www.howtodoitfrugally.com.

Writers On The Move

Writers: Continue to Learn from the Newbies

Time for Wrters to Work Harder On Your Own Reliable Resources

Letting Taylor Swift’s Genius Guide Holiday Choices

Why Every Author Needs To Update Their Editing Skills

Dialogue’s Ten Basic Can’t-Go-Wrong Rules

Writers: Continue to Learn from the Newbies

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