Cheryl Cowtan on Writing

Pacing is the speed at which events occur in your novel. Pacing can occur within lines and within the entire novel, which is the speed at which you move the plot along. Generally, you want scenes (where things happen) to move quickly, and interludes (where you describe or your character ponders) to slow down. Pacing problems occur when scenes go by too quickly or are too slow. One can leave your reader feeling confused and a little ripped off, and the other will bore your reader into putting your book down. I am currently reading an Indie novel and though there is some bang-on pacing at the beginning and at the 3/4 point, there are a few areas that had me pulling out of the story and wondering what the author was up to. The too fast example: The main character finally finds a necklace of power and when she puts it on her head flies back, lightening strikes, her arms reach out as if embracing the sky and then it's over and she says, "That was weird."...

   Many blogs, articles and podcasts address the reader's error in not following submission guidelines as the reason for rejection.  However, there are many reasons for rejection and one of those can be the writer's style.     A writer's style is affected by the writer's "voice" and how the writer puts sentences together. Style is specific to each writer, it's unique. But that doesn't mean it cannot be changed.     Writers change their style to target their imagined reader, and to mould their writing to the genre and the format.    According to The Writing Centre, you can improve your style by cleaning up wordiness, by reading out loud to catch awkward phrasing, and by focusing on meaning and tone.     One suggestion is to remove repetitive redundant words that mean the same thing. I could remove either one of the "r" words in the previous sentence without affecting the overall meaning.    If you are ...

I'm sitting in an educator's technology conference in Niagara Falls and the keynote speaker is addressing how teaching will change  in the next ten years. "Change" seems to be the topic of every educational professional learning workshop I attend, and the "change" is attributed to our ever-evolving technology. We know education isn't the only industry affected by our advances in tech, so my question is, "what is changing in the writer's world?" As a reader, researcher, author, you know many answers to this question. You will have read or personally experienced self-publishing, engaged in discussions about Kindle ethics, looked longingly at the spot where your local bookstore used to be, and then hammered out your thoughts on a personal blog. For this blog, I would like to look at an impending possibility brought on by the progressive use of technology to market reading materials to the reader--death of the genre. As technology a...

Yes, I'm still on this image promotion gig. And why? Because I see authors using all forms of graphics to promote their books: postcards (for travel themed books) excerpts partnered with a relevant image quotes from the book partnered with a symbol/image book cover side-by-side with author photo The ideas are blossoming as technology allows us to share and view images easily. I will eventually create each of the above to show you examples, but for now, here's the BookBit. The BookBit The BookBit shares a "bit" of your novel with a relevant image. How do you make one? First, select a riveting, action-packed, emotional or otherwise compelling 100-200 words of your novel, and then find a image to increase the impact you hope to have on your reader. Finding images to match your excerpt can be difficult, especially if you cannot create your own and don't know anyone who can create one for you. However, if you search on creativecommons.org you can find ...

I've been watching YouTube videos of authors, and I have to say, some videos made me feel closer to the author, some impressed me, and some made me wish I had never watched it. Presenting yourself in video can be a great way to connect to an audience. The question is, "who" do you present? Do you show them your funky, home personality, or dress up and be professional, or get quirky and align yourself with your genre? I think these questions have to be answered by the person filming themselves. Usually, I go for professional, but today I killed two hours (and cracked myself up) creating an instructional film called Don't be a You-Boob on YouTube   I believe this film might be the beginning of my author-platform evolution from words to video. Watch the film to learn and laugh about the many things (namely 10 ... or 11) that you can do to improve your YouTube production.

The Synopsis Often publishers and agents ask for a synopsis of your novel manuscript. The synopsis functions to provide the barebones information about your plot, character and the stakes of your story. It is usually no longer than one page, which is what makes writing it difficult. The synopsis includes what happens, so it's like a mini-arc of your story. We start here, this happens, we go here and then that happens and we end up there. The SynopSnip Creating a SynopSnip is much more fun, more visually stimulating and is for a different audience--the reader. Consider the SynopSnip to be a very succinct snapshop of your synopsis. It is also in a format that makes it easy to distribute on social media, such as Facebook, Twitter etc. Take a look at the one below to see what I mean. The Example: The Fergus She Novel: The Fergus She Characters: Rachel (protagonist) Scarlet (antagonist) Grafen (antagonist) Angus (love interest) Plot: Rachel is the victim of an ancien...

Wordle is a tool that converts a section of your text into a graphic. The graphic will feature words that are used many times in your text in large font, and words that are less often used in smaller fonts. Believe it or not, Wordle will take up to 90,000 words (and possibly more), which means, you could paste in your entire novel manuscript. Once you see your Wordle graphic, you can determine what words you might be overusing in your manuscript. For example: Is the word "back" in the same size font as your protagonist's name? Doing a quick "Edit>replace" using MS word will allow you to take out redundant words, and then recopy the text back into Wordle. However, make sure you do this on a copy of your MS and not your original. Later, you can figure out how to edit your manuscript to reduce the number of times you use those common words. With Wordle, what you're hoping to create is a mini, visual synopsis of your novel. So character names should...