REVIEW: THE WRITERS' POLICE ACADEMY

by Ursula Renée

Thanks to advances in technology, you can find almost any information with a few clicks on the Internet from the comfort of your home. But, there are times when you want to experience how your character would feel when faced with the decision of whether or not to use deadly force.

The Writers’ Police Academy (WPA) gives authors the opportunity to experience the excitement, anxiety, and relief that their characters go through by placing them in situations police, fire, and EMS experience. It is organized by Lee Lofland, a veteran in law enforcement and author of POLICE PROCEDURE AND INVESTIGATION and takes place at the Guilford Technical Community College, a police academy in North Carolina.

Participants of the WPA can experience what it is like to investigate a shallow grave, conduct a building search, work on a patient in the back of a moving ambulance, and more. Personnel from various law enforcement, fire and EMS agencies conduct rescue demonstrations with hydraulic rescue tools (most commonly known as the Jaws of Life), fire equipment and the arrest of a suspect. There are also lectures on interview and interrogation techniques, fire investigation, and hospital emergency procedures.

Authors have a chance to work with FATS (Firearms Training Simulator) and a Driving Simulator, while winners of a lottery have an opportunity to take a jail tour or participate in a ride-along. And, to make sure your heroine (and you) do not become victims, there is a class on self-defense. Besides the hands-on demonstrations and presentations, participants have a chance to speak with police, fire, and EMS personnel, who are happy to explain the use of various equipment and answer questions that will help authors add realism to their scenes.

The 2013 Writers’ Police Academy is in September. For more information, visit them at http://www.writerspoliceacademy.com.♥



Ursula Renée, who is the co-Vice President of the RWA/NYC, writes historical romances and thrillers. When she is not writing, she enjoys drawing, photography, and stone carving. Visit her at www.ursularenee.com.

CRAFT CORNER: DIALOGUE -- FIVE MISTAKES TO AVOID

by Isabo Kelly

A friend and editor once told me that we all get one “easy” thing in writing and the rest of the craft we have to struggle with to get right. My easy thing is Dialogue. The problem with having something come easy to you, though, is that you forget you still have to develop the skill so it will grow with the rest of your writing. I had two books published before an editor started calling me out on my dialogue mistakes. Imagine the horror.

What do you mean I need to fix my dialogue? Dialogue is supposed to be my easy thing. I’m not supposed to have to work at it! Wrong. Like it or not, we have to work on all the elements of our fiction, all the time. During this learning process, I discovered a few common mistakes made by authors of every level.

Here are five problems to look out for in writing dialogue:

1. Using characters’ names in dialogue all the time.
Listen to two people talk and you’ll notice you rarely hear them refer to each other by name. Whole conversations can be carried on without either person saying the full name of the other. Nicknames or pet names may come up, but rarely full names. The level of acquaintance between the two people will influence this, with people new to each other more likely to use names than people who’ve known each other for decades. But frequently in written dialogue, authors have characters constantly referring to each other by name: sometimes for dramatic effect, sometimes to make clear who’s speaking, sometimes because it seemed like a good idea at the time. This was one of the first things I got called out on. When you’re editing your stories, cut out as many uses of names in the dialogue as possible. This will not only tighten your prose, it will make the flow of the dialogue more realistic for your reader.

2. Not making the voices of your characters distinctive enough.
When done well, entire passages of written conversation with no dialogue tags can be read and the reader will still know who is speaking. Do all your characters—particularly your hero and heroine—sound alike? Do many of them use the same turns of phrase despite very different backgrounds? Try removing the tags and letting someone else read the dialogue. Can they tell who’s speaking? If they can’t, you need to work on making the voices clearer. Pay attention to word choice and turns of phrase that are unique to your character to help give them their individual voice. Subtle changes can make all the difference.

3. Forgetting that dialogue is not the same as a real life conversation.
This happens frequently, but it’s important to bear in mind that dialogue is NOT conversation. In conversation, we pause a lot, we use a lot of “em’s” and “um’s”, and we don’t always form coherent and understandable sentences. If you try to translate this directly into written dialogue, it never reads right. Dialogue has to make sense, it has to flow, and it has to be somewhat coherent. The trick is to make dialogue sound realistic without making it “real.” Avoid excessive stutters, interruptions and dropped sentences. Have your characters say what they mean to say.

4. Not using contractions.
Even if your characters are upper crust, even if they’re historical figures, humans use contractions when they talk. Leaving them out of dialogue will make your characters sounds stiff and unrealistic—and it’ll drive readers like me nuts. It’s tempting, particularly when you’re writing characters who are more formal in countenance, to have them say things like, “I will not have coffee.” But people don’t talk like this. Even a formal turn of phrase will sound more like, “I’ll not have coffee.” A more realistic way of saying this for a modern reader is, “I won’t have coffee.” The only time to use the full “will not” rather than “won’t” is when you want to add emphasis to the “not.” And if you’re using contractions regularly, when you do have a character say, “I will not have coffee”, the reader will know the character is placing that emphasis for a reason (like they’re pissed off at the person offering, or maybe they know there’s poison in the coffee).

5. Using dialogue to convey information.
Here’s the tricky part—sometimes dialogue is a great way to convey information, especially when you have characters discussing topics that are new to one or the other of them. The mistake in this technique arises when characters are conveying information they both already know.

“As you are well aware, Jane, I’ve just crashed my car into our front window, in the house we’ve lived in for the last fifteen years and where our children grew up.”

“Why yes, Stan. And as you know, we don’t have insurance on either the car or house to cover this accident, which is exactly like that incident last week when you ran over the neighbor’s award-winning roses worth half a million dollars.”

  Dialogue should be pertinent to the situation, and if it’s conveying information, the information needs to be new to at least one person in the conversation.

“Stan, honey, will our insurance cover the wreck you just made of our front window?”

“Uhm, no. Insurance company dropped us after I ran over the neighbor’s fancy flowers. Said I’m a high risk driver.”

“I wonder where they got that idea.”

Great dialogue will make your novels sparkle, bring your characters to life, and help your readers fall in love. Bad dialogue will make them throw your book against a wall. Watch out for these five common mistakes, and you’ll have your readers flipping pages to the very end.♥




For more on Isabo Kelly and her books, visit her at www.isabokelly.com, follow her on Twitter @IsaboKelly or friend her on Facebook www.facebook.com/IsaboKelly. This article was first printed in RWA/NYC newsletter, Keynotes.

MAKE THEM LAUGH

By Maria C. Ferrer



April 1st is the day for fools – fools in love, fools rushing in, fools galore. It’s a day for pranks, laughter and good jokes. When telling a joke, the key is to have a great punch line – basically, a great ending. When writing a novel –romance or otherwise–, the key is to have a great opening line.

The opening line is too often the only chance an author has to make a first good impression with a reader. Heck, that one line can make or break the sale, which could have led to future sales. The loss is just too depressing to contemplate, which is why your opening line is crucial. Crucial, with a capital “C”.

Here are some examples of great opening lines:

From Julie Garwood romance: "They say he killed his first wife."
Do you not want to know more about this man at the same time that you want to run from him?

From GONE WITH THE WIND: "Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were."
You either want to be like Scarlett or hate her with this intro!

From PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
Are those fighting words or what?!

From J.D. Robb suspense: “The business of murder took time, patience, skill, and a tolerance for the monotonous.”
Are shivers not running down your spine after reading that opening?

Think of opening lines from your favorite books or even your own books. Why did they worked? How did they captivate you?

Your opening line has to grab the reader's attention. Yes, this is that famous "hook" moment that everyone talks about. Your opening line, your opening hook should draw readers into your story and make them want to know more about your characters, more about the scene you have opened with; it should leave them wanting more.

Now, capturing the attention of today's readers is difficult. They have a short attention span to begin, and their thirst for immediate gratification makes writers' lives hard. Because if we do not hook them with our opening line, they are moving onto someone else's book. So hook them!

Here are five tips to a great opening line:

1) Start with an action or dialogue

2) Paint a picture

3) Set up a mystery

4) Introduce a character

5) Show them a new world

Opening lines are not easy. Sometimes I have spent days rewriting that one line because it doesn't work for me so I know it will not work for my reader. Other days, the line just magically writes itself. However long it takes for you to find that one great opening line, it will be worth it in the end.

You may have to write a whole scene, a whole chapter, a whole book, before you find just that right one. And that is alright. Whatever works for you. And if all else fails, make them laugh.



A good joke works at conventions, state dinners, weddings so why not as an opening line?♥