Recent Revelations

Recent revelations:

On Saturday, Oct 19, 2019 I attended my RWASD meeting in which HelenKay Dimon was the speaker.

She’s such a gifted best selling author and brought much food for thought to her lecture on beginnings, which she stressed applies to the whole story. I’ll share a little:

1.      Ground your story with setting, place, and tone, with tone being the most important. A story can start without the other two. The tone is the author’s voice. What are you trying to accomplish in the story. A consistent tone should carry through all the character changes to the very end. This sense of forward movement should also include hooks. Your theme should be felt ideally, subconsciously by the reader.

2.      What’s your book about? Knowing this guides your decisions about what kind of descriptions and dialogue fit.

3.      A hero or heroine should be compelling not necessarily likeable (especially in the beginning).

HelenKay Dimon is the outgoing President of RWA, a lawyer, and prolific novelist. Go to https://helenkaydimon.com for more.

Damon Suede is the president elect for RWA and he tells a similar story in his lectures and books but with his own personal twists. First off, my publisher recommends Verbalize by Damon. But if you prefer first to watch a 45 minute intro of his book and the man go to Damon Suede Creative Pen and click on video. His pops up first.

The video is a wild ride through the artist’s mind, a genius, if you ask me. He’s gifted, loquacious and thought provoking. Get to know this talent. He wants you to use better and transitive verbs as if you were adding spice to a recipe among other points. Take the reader on a consistent journey of unified tone, voice, and theme.

He’s a firm believer in the value of listening to your story via audio aids as a way of validating its strength for the reader and making improvements based on what you hear. This means, he said she said may not be best. This, to me, is radical but I can certainly find ways to diminish the amount of he/she saids. I have ordered the book and will let you know if I got anything wrong and what else I learned. Start with the video.

His next book, Activate is a well crafted thesaurus of transitive verbs useful to any author who likes to spice his or her stories. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1945043059/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0