Technology Breakthrough

For years I've been suggesting that people record themselves reading their own stories. That's something I also kept meaning to do. Today that changed. I recorded a short story, Things That Go Rattle In the Night. You can hear it by clicking here. (This link opens the QuickTime player, which will play in the background if you right-click and open in a new tab or window.)

For recording this story, I used Audacity, the universally recommended Open Source freeware product for making digital voice recordings and doing simple edits. I found it straightforward and easy to use. When the story was recorded to my satisfaction, I exported it to the MP3 format. At 3.2 MB, the file compares favorably with the 28 MB of data in the Audacity file.

Now that I have this file, I may save it in WAV format for burning to a standard CD disk. Or, considering the speed with which everyone is turning to MP3 players and iPods, I may leave it as it is. In either case, it's ready to share.

If you want to try one of these projects yourself, here's how:

1. Download Audacity and follow the instructions to install it.
2. Go here and download lame_enc.dll. Unzip this file and put it in C:\Program Files\Audacity.
3. Open a new file in Audacity, then click on the red circle to begin recording. Click on the orange square to end the recording.

You'll need a microphone for this project. I use one mounted on a headset, such as you use for voice recognition software or an internet phone service like Skype. I tried several desktop microphones, and none were satisfactory, but if you have one, give it a try.

While using Audacity, you may need to adjust the microphone input level to keep your file from sounding hissy or to make it loud enough. Windows users can find this adjustment by double-clicking the sound icon in the system tray at the bottom right of the monitor. If you don't see the microphone meter, go to Options > Properties on the menu and click Microphone. Adjust the slider up and down until you get the result you want.

I had lots of fun with this project, and plan to record many more. How about you? Isn't it time you ventured into a new corner of technology? Stories always sound best with the author reads them. What stories do you have that your family would enjoy hearing in your voice?

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

A Picture Can Inspire A Thousand Words

If you ever find yourself at a loss for words, get out your photo album. I just rediscovered this old photo. The picture itself is terrible in so many respects, but it set off an explosion of story ideas, as you'll see.


The “story” in this picture is my third-grade Halloween costume. Mother made our costumes. I requested this one, and she did her usual great work to produce it. I could write more about other costumes. Other story ideas I find in this picture include:

• My huaraches — Mexican shoes woven of thin strips of leather. We bargained for these in a Juarez market, which triggers stories of trips to Juarez, bargaining, trading with the Indians, and shoes in general.


• My dad’s Groucho Marx glasses, with the huge nose. These illustrate his sense of humor, which brings all sorts of stories about him to mind.


• The curlers in my hair, used to contribute to the witch-effect. Those perforated metal curlers had a sort of clamp that held the hair ends in place against the barrel. The clamp was held in place by wrapping hair around the roller, then a wire fastener with a rubber roller on the end clipped across the end of the barrel to hold the curler tightly in place. Those curlers had fallen out of common use by 1960. A whole dissertation on hair styles, perms, curlers and such things is surfacing. Perhaps I'll also write a story about the ettiquette of being seen in curlers in public.
  


• The enameled tray Mother decorated and kept perched above the fireplace. I could write volumes about her handicrafts and art work.


• One of the two sofas in the room, which looks utterly awful by today’s standards — especially the protective plastic on the back! The general décor of that house, and the house itself (one of hundreds of similar ones provided by Uncle Sam for employees of Los Alamos Scientific Labs) inspires piles of pages.

This one picture inspires maybe one hundred stories. Even pictures you'd rather not include in an album or use for a story illustration may have value for bringing back memories. What stories lie dormant in your stash of old photos?

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Everything You Always Wondered About Punctuating Dialogue

As I promised in the last post, here are all the answers to show you how to punctuate any dialogue you may use in your stories. Since this topic tends become muddled without illustrations, I marked up some illustrations, and I'll let them speak for themselves.

This first example shows the most common way to state dialogue. You identify the speaker (explanatory text), then write the words that were said (dialogue).


Now and then you can reverse the order to give variety to your story.


Another way to add variety is to put the explanatory text in the middle of the dialogue.


Things become more complex when you quote somebody who is telling you what a third person said. This involves two sets of quotation marks, standard double ones, with single ones inside. In British usage, these two quotation mark customs are reversed. In Britain, single quotations marks are standard for general use, and double ones are used for the inside quotation.


Little changes when the quotation is a question or exclamation. Use the appropriate ending punctuation, always inside the ending quotation mark.


The last example is for those times when you talk to yourself in your stories. If you actually spoke aloud, you could punctuate it with quotation marks. But if you are using thoughts as a form of dialogue, you have two choices. You can put the contents of the thought in italics to set it off, or you can leave it plain. Until recently, standard usage was to leave it plain. That is a remnant of typewriter days when italics were not an option. Today usage is swinging quickly toward the use of italics. Punctuate as usual, just don't use punctuation marks.


This explanation has covered only dialogue. Quotation marks are also used to set off irony, some titles, unfamiliar words you are using for the first time, and words you are defining. Many people also use them to give emphasis to words. This latter usage is not technically pure, but if you don't overdo it, the Grammar Police will leave you alone.

According to the Grammar Police, any time you use quotation marks, all ending punctuation is always placed inside the final quotation mark. Being the rebellious and free spirit that I am, when it simply doesn't look right and make sense to follow that dictate, I say, “Rules are made to be broken.” Let common usage begin to drive rule creep. I'm not advocating punctuation riots and chaos here, but let reason and good judgement prevail.

And that, Gentle Readers, is all there is to it. Now, how about writing a story with some dialogue in it to give those cool illustrations a reason for being?

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

In Their Own Words

The best way to breathe life into your stories is to include a few lines of dialogue. Friends and relatives play a significant part in many of your stories, and the best way to make these people come alive and seem real is to let them speak for themselves.

For example, take this bit of dialogue I lifted from one of my own stories about an adventure my sister and I had when we were quite young:

We screamed so loud that Mother and GranRene flew out the door like someone had shot them out of a gun. They probably broke the record for the twenty-yard dash, running over to that tree.

“What’s wrong?!”

“There’s a snake.”

“Where?”

“Over there!” We excitedly pointed across the yard to the spot near the house where the snake was making its get-away.

GranRene ran over near it and looked.

“It’s just a bull snake. Bull snakes aren’t poisonous. They eat mice, and they’re good to have around.”

“Don’t you ever scream that way again unless you’re really in danger!” scolded Mother. She looked pale, and there was no question she meant it.

It’s hard to imagine how you could get this message across as well without dialogue.

The main reason people hesitate to use dialogue is concern that there is no way they remember what was said fifty years ago. Don’t let this deter you. If you remember the story, and you remember that people said something, you can do it. After all, it isn’t the exact words that matter, it’s what you remember. That’s what gives the story meaning. You aren’t testifying in court, you are sharing your memory. Whatever words come to mind as you recall the situation are an accurate reflection of your memory and the meaning it has for you.

Another reason people hesitate to write conversationally is uncertainty about the way it should be punctuated. Most of the time this is straightforward, but there are some twists and tangles.

Here’s my opportunity to create a bit of suspense. Stay tuned for the next post. It will include guidelines to tell you everything you always wanted to know about punctuating dialogue, but didn’t know who to ask.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Don't Be Deterred

Oh wow! To my horror I just learned that the link in my previous post to Pat Holt’s list of Ten Mistakes should have carried a warning:



I learned this from a friend who is on her maiden writing voyage. “After I read that list, I realized there are so many things to be careful about, I’m having trouble writing anything!” she balefully admitted.

The hair on the back of my neck went on full alert.

“Those rules are for editing, not writing drafts!” I told her. “Just write! Write anything. Just get words on paper!” I felt like standing on my chair and yelling, "Forget the rules!

She still sounded a little stuck and frozen so I made another suggestion: “Sit down with a tape recorder and tell a short story to the recorder. Then transcribe the tape.”

This idea appealed to her, and she promised to go home and give it a try. The idea behind this advice is that transferring her own words from audio to the written page will get her used to writing in a conversational tone. She agreed to put Pat’s list of rules out of mind for now. She’ll open her heart and let the words spill out. Then, maybe in a few weeks when she feels stronger, she’ll use that list to do a double-check on her edits before she circulates her stories to her intended audience.

If I caused you similar trepidation or reluctance, please accept my sincere apologies, and I have no doubt that Pat Holt would add her signature to mine. We don’t aim to discourage beginners. For better or for worse, we want everyone to write. Should you choose to take the next step and edit your work, then by all means, consult Pat’s list.

For now, keep this in mind:

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Ten Mistake Writers Don't See

If you take your writing at all seriously, check out Pat Holt’s list of Ten Mistakes Writers Don't See

1. Repeats
2. Flat Writing
3. Empty Adverbs
4. Phony Dialogue
5. No-good Suffixes
6. The “To Be” Words
7. Lists
8. Show, Don’t Tell
9. Awkward Phrasing
10. Commas

The list doesn’t tell you how to structure your story flow to increase suspense, entertain readers, or bring tears to their eyes. It doesn’t tell you how to crop your story to focus it. But heeding the advice on it will help you bring your words to life and keep readers interested.

Pat earned her spurs as a writing critic as an editor at Houghton Mifflin and the San Francisco Book Company. Later she was book editor and critic at The San Francisco Chronicle. Currently she is an advocate for independent bookstores and consults on manuscript development. The lady knows the business, and she knows writing.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Like Beads On a Necklace

How often do you write a life story that has more than one subject? What? It never occurred to you to consolidate topics? Welcome to the vast majority! Few people do. It’s natural to follow the ratio of one topic : one story. Not only is it natural, but when you read books on the subject, the planning chapters always have you make lists of story topics, and none of them (as far as I recall) discuss the option of doubling up.

There are several ways of doing this. One is nesting, where stories are imbedded, one within another, like a set of Russian nesting dolls. This technique requires that you return to complete each successive layer in reverse order to bring the overall story to closure.


Another way is to segue from one related story to the next, with a couple of lines of transition between.



One of the most interesting is to string small stories together along an ongoing thread story.


Lori Jakiela uses this latter approach in Miss New York Has Everything, her recent memoir of growing up in Trafford, PA. In one chapter she uses the ongoing saga of a visit from her aunt, an alcoholic nun who is also a member of Narcotics Anonymous. She uses the occasion of the visit to string together ten shorter stories like beads on a necklace. Additional details of the aunt’s visit space the added stories like knots between pearls.

This book will surely become a classic for students of memoir and lifestory writing because it offers outstanding examples of story structure along with rollicking humor that begs to be read aloud to anyone within earshot. But perhaps its strongest feature is the tenderness and insight with which she describes her parents, two ordinary working class people who become extraordinary through the loving pen of their daughter.

Enjoy!

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Good Enough Is Good Enough

After two recent posts on finding the perfect words you may be feeling discouraged. I hear you thinking, “That’s so much work!” Indeed it is. I happen to enjoy editing and rewording. It’s one of my favorite sports — up to a point. Then, well, I get bored. I get tired. I get other ideas and want to move on. That happens sooner on some pieces than others.

Novelist Karen Hancock addressed this condition with a quote in her blog: “This is where I have to start applying that Tom Clancy quote about good enough being good enough, whereas perfect is a total pain and often not worth the trouble anyway.”

Well said, Karen. What more could I add?

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

The Write Brain Workout

A few days ago in Transcending the Trite, I described ways of finding alternate words to keep your writing from sounding repetitious and stale. This sort of word puzzle is an exceptionally good workout for your brain. It keeps your neurons healthy and actually builds new connections, helping to keep your mind young and flexible. Here’s another example to encourage you to try it yourself.

Let’s click over to Thesaurus.com to find a synonym for “master” to reduce redundancy in this sentence: “Cindy was a master of creativity and the announcement she wrote was a masterpiece.” Oh dear — that’s okay for a first draft, to get the idea down on paper, but all I’m saying here is that Cindy wrote a masterpiece. If I want to leave that descriptive phrase in, I need to change it so it adds value to the message to justify the added ink.

I find pro, expert, whiz, wizard and exemplar, among others, but they don’t quite fit. Champion is close, but my favorite is crackerjack — that’s my word. Not only will I avoid repetition, but that word more precisely fits my need anyway. Oops, hold on. Crackerjack works, but I need to fiddle a bit further. Cindy isn’t a crackerjack of creativity, she’s a crackerjack writer. Or a creative wizard.

Sometimes you need to switch more than a single word. You need to drill down to the core concept or meaning. I’m happy with either of these alternatives, and either one is more expressive than the knee jerk original choice.

Stephanie West Allen gives additional ways to increase your vocabulary and word power in her TrackKnacks posting 7 power vocabulary words, plus two vocabulary boosters.

I urge you to click over there to learn about Word.A.Day and Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day along with all the ways that a great vocabulary can improve your life. Perhaps you’ll want to subscribe, as I’m doing. Thanks for the tip, Stephanie!

Now, how about giving your own neurons a workout by trying a few sentences in one of your stories to see what you can come up with?

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

The Day I Became Mortal

Some of our most profound stories are short, and they beg to be rendered graphically, as this one does.

This story is pared down to its essence. Further detail would distract from the knowingness of it. My memory is much richer:

I remember the sleeveless mini-dress I wore – a yellow coarse-weave fabric with a paisley pattern of pale golds and oranges, a wide collar and buttons down the front. I loved that dress, and wore it with my hippy sandals. I felt so cool in my hip short hairdo with the curls on top and sleek, smooth hair on the bottom. My sunglasses were huge.

I remember the smell of heat waves rising from asphalt and the fly buzzing lazily in the air. My bag of groceries weighed heavy and cold in my left arm and my tiny son’s little hand, as plump as his pudgy cheeks, warmed my other. He stood smiling in his navy chino boxer shorts, the madras plaid shirt matching the one I made his daddy, and his red Keds. The black vinyl top on our red Corvair Corsa convertible radiated heat like an oven.

I remember how intensely blue the sky was, how bright and hot the sun. Before then, summer seemed to go on forever, without any hint it would end. This day, as I looked at the sky, everything looked the same, and nothing was the same. Something fundamental had shifted. The balance had turned, in the season and in my soul. This moment was a milestone in my life, when I first truly knew that life is temporary.

How much does the story gain for you as a naïve reader with the addition of the extra memory? Some will like it better, some will prefer the spare version. Some will appreciate the artistic enhancement more than others.

This is a good time to reflect back to the concept of purpose. If my purpose is to portray the intensity of the moment and my insight, I'll go with the spare version. If my purpose is to portray a sense of the time, of life that summer, details matter.

Compare these two versions and consider how you might adapt your own stories. Obviously you won’t experiment with everything you write, but perhaps you have a milestone story of your own, a key insight moment, that you’d like to play with. Pare it down, dress it up. Different strokes for different folks, and different purposes.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Transcending the Trite

If you’re even a little bit serious about improving your writing, you know the value of replacing banal autopilot words with something more imaginative, something that will catch the reader’s eye rather than gliding past it like asphalt on the road. But how do you go about finding those fragrant figments of speech? It takes years to develop enough vocabulary flexibility to have a dozen options on the tip of your fingers for any given phrase.

This morning I began an e-mail to another writer. “I love your descriptions,” I wrote. Oh gag! I thought. Not about the descriptions, but about that trite phrase. I’m writing about lilting phrases that slide into my ear like the warble of a meadowlark, and all I can say is “I love your descriptions”? I tried again. “I admire your descriptions.” True, but not even close.

There was no need to flounder. Those of you reading this blog can do the same thing I did — click over to Thesaurus.com. I searched for alternatives to “admire” and came up with twenty-six lists containing hundreds of words, mostly overlapping. Treasure, cherish, commend, savor, applaud or esteem were improvements, but still lacking.

Rather than recasting the search with one of those words, I took another tack. I recast the sentence: “Your descriptions are music in my ears.” Mental melodies? Your lyrical lines…? How do I feel when I read her descriptions? I asked. What do they remind me of?

I won’t bore you with every thought in the train. I’ll skip to the final choice, only one of many satisfactory alternatives:  “Your lyrical lines of description evoke the happy tinkle of wind chimes. My heart smiles.” Okay. Maybe this is a bit overblown for most purposes, but it’s accurate! That is the way I respond. Her writing has that effect on me, and challenges me to respond in kind.

To me this is the difference between sending a birthday card from the Dollar Store versus handcrafting one on rice paper with embossed borders, a poem in hand-written calligraphy, and a few watercolor embellishments. Some occasions call for the quick-and-dirty card, and auto-pilot words are fine for most communications.

But not my stories! When I write for the delight of readers, they deserve my very best. I’m not great with calligraphy, poetry, rice paper or watercolor brushes. Word pictures are what I have to offer.

My challenge to you: Take one ordinary sentence from a story you’ve written, or one you’re working on, and see how far you can stretch it. Write from your heart to make it flower, make it growl, make it glow. Transcend the trite!

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal