Short Story: Cougar Lake Pt. 1

There are two types of experiences in life: good experiences which make bad stories and bad experiences which make good stories. This is the latter kind.

The summer that I turned twenty I was very excited for, in addition to our yearly family camping trip, my Dad was taking my sister and I backpacking in the Cascades. As a kid, I had listened wide eyed to my Dad’s stories of his younger, more adventurous days, when he did things like backpacking, motorcycling, and that one time he smoked his school out with “essence of banana” in chemistry class. Such stories were usually told against the backdrop of Chinook or Snoqualmie pass when we went to go visit the folks in Eastern Washington. Even the things that went bad sounded kind of fun; like the time their camp was swarmed by a gang of starving chipmunks which bored holes into their packs in an attempt to get their food, or the time one of Dad’s buddies ended up with hundreds of mosquito bites on one arm and counted them, or when they had to split two packages of ramen amongst eight young men. But there was cool stuff too, like Jade Lake in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness area, which nestled in a hollow and was a pale jade green color, and when the sun rose in the morning the wind whipped red-orange clouds above it so they looked like licks of fire. Or at night, when the alpine waters would be still, and reflect the myriad of stars, freed from city lights, that were bursting out of the sky.

I was entranced. I wanted to try it. And besides, how may stories involve the intrepid hero setting off into the unknown, facing the wilderness with nothing but their wits and what they carry on their back?

So it was with an immense feeling of satisfaction that I viewed our table in the garage, laden with our supplies and backpacks one Friday evening in August.

I had carefully selected the trail after researching online short, easy hikes in the nearby area that led to a campsite. Dad had stipulated that the trail must be near water (there was a story there, no doubt) and not too difficult for us. I, while not exactly the pinnacle of human fitness, was most definitely not out of shape, and pretty confident in my abilities to simply walk for miles. I didn’t worry about Dad. While not exactly a thin man, his weight was never for lack of exercise, and I knew his job kept him in good walking shape. My sister, Cazi, seven years my junior, was in the same boat as me, and well, young. So when I found a place called Cougar Lake that was a five-ish mile trail to a pretty lake and rated “easy,” I was pretty sure I’d found the right one. I walked three miles up and down hills pretty regularly just to get to the library and back, and we had all day to cover five. No big.

There are many things in life which can only be learned through experience, and one of them is that hiking reviews are always made by people who do far more hiking than you. Always.

At any rate, this revelation was far away when Saturday dawned calm and clear, and after loading the car and taking the ubiquitous photo for our relieved-to-not-be-going mother, three intrepid members of the Eiser family set off for their Grand Adventure.

Just finding the trailhead itself proved to be a mini-adventure;­ it involved fourbying the maze of forest service roads that criss-cross the Cascades and driving past a perfectly functional campground at Bumping Lake. But that was pedestrian, urban. You could drive up to it. We were here for an experience.

But eventually we found the trailhead and parked the car. I noticed, with some concern, that there were perhaps a half dozen other cars already parked there. But hey- it’s a big forest. We’d probably find some solitude regardless. So we unloaded the car, adjusted our packs, checked our equipment, and filled out the paperwork.*

Walking sticks in hand, we set out. The first jaunt consisted of a half-mile downhill walk to a small river which we would then have to ford on foot. It seemed like an awfully long half mile as we walked and chatted, but the sound of running water kept getting closer and we eventually spilled out onto the river bank.

Thankfully, the Bumping River was tame that day, shallow and broad, and we’d come prepared with our sandals affixed to the outside of our pack. Dad went first, picking his way across, and we girls followed, all three sticking pretty close together in case one of us slipped.

For some reason, instead of bringing my Velcro athletic sandals I had elected to pack my bargain bucket one buck flip-flops which I usually only wore in campground showers. The river kept annoyingly and persistently trying to drag them off my feet and I kept having to twist myself and squeeze my toes together to keep from losing them in the current. It was slow going, and in this strange, shambling fashion I eventually reached the other side with dry shoes in hand.

All good? Not quite. My socks were dry, yes, but my feet were wet, and I had no towel, and well, we weren’t able to sit around and wait for my feet to air dry. There were bugs this close to the water. So I did the best I could to get my feet clean and dry and put my shoes back on.

The first hurdle cleared, we continued on, enthusiasm and feet only slightly dampened.

Honestly, I don’t remember much of the next leg. It was a very pretty woods, and we took our time, stopping to rest every now and then, and I very quickly worked my way through my easily accessible snacks and water. And still, the trail wound on.

We were huffing our way uphill at this point, and nobody had any extra breath to speak with, for which I was grateful. I had been dropping little nuggets of encouragement for the last couple of hours, pulling out my map, estimating distances, pointing out differences in the vegetation and landscape. “Just a little further! We’ll be reaching Swamp Lake soon! That hill! That bend!” (And yes, our next landmark on the way to Cougar Lake was a body of water aptly named ‘Swamp Lake,’ about a mile out from our final destination. A portent of things to come.) Eventually, I stopped speaking altogether, mumbling into silence and trying to remember just where I’d packed my inhaler. I could feel my sister drilling holes into the back of my head with her eyes. I had touted this hike to them with words like ‘easy’ and ‘beginner,’ words I’d been told and foolishly believed. During one of our many rests (at this point we were stopping whenever we found something roughly horizontal we could sit on) I pulled out my map again and looked at it with a slightly more critical eye.

Don’t ever download free maps on the internet. Pony up the ten bucks and buy a real one. Mine was grainy, inaccurate, and worse yet, I only now realized part of the trail was cut off by the edge of the paper. For all I knew it could have looped on out to Seattle before coming back.

“Soon…” I panted. Cazi groaned. Dad didn’t comment. I didn’t even believe myself anymore.

Worse yet, we kept getting passed by people in both directions. They were all insufferably chipper, not at all taxed or sweaty. There was a family who walked past us with children, all backs gloriously unburdened, and a group going opposite, travelling downhill and all smiles and poorly concealed sympathy.

“Soon…” they said, and I didn’t believe them.

There was nothing but the weight of the pack and my feet, dragging one after another.

Finally, there was a flash of blue in the trees, and I never thought I’d be so relieved to reach a place called Swamp Lake. It was indeed, buggy and a little marshy, but we stopped for a bit and took our packs off. After resting for a moment, we were forced to move around and explore by the swarms of mosquitoes and our own curiosity. And lo and behold! We found evidence of a campsite. So a question was raised: should we stop here, or press on?

Everybody huddled around my insufficient, shoddy little map and squinted at it.

“It’s only a mile more,” I pointed out, racking my brain to remember what the website had said. “And this is Swamp Lake. Maybe Cougar Lake won’t be quite as buggy,” I said, waving my hand in front of my face. “Do we really want to quit now?”

We didn’t want to quit. We were fools, proud, stubborn, glorious fools. We were finishing this and going home to Mom with heads held high. With renewed determination, we put the dreaded packs back on and continued forward.

Apparently, not a lot of people did. The trail became rutted, flooded, and difficult. In a few meadows, we were forced to break one of the cardinal rules of hiking and walked alongside the trail. In our defense though, the trail had sunk into the ground about six inches and filled with water. I remember looking at that meadow with fascination. It was undoubtedly pretty, but at this point I was fatigued and my mind was starting to drift. I imagined some large, furry creature bursting through the treeline, a moose or perhaps even a bear, and wondered what I should do in such a situation. Make for the other trees? Stay still? There was a sense in the air that at any moment anything could happen, though really, the most wildlife we saw was two shirtless young “bucks” come bounding down the trail, in full health and in disgustingly good shape. Mercifully, other than them, we hadn’t seen a soul in a while, which was good, because we were in a pitiable condition by then.

Somehow, impossibly, the trail had started going uphill again, and we were having to pick our way through loose rocks and roots to find good footing. We were stopping every ten or twenty feet to rest now, driven on only by the horseflies which had followed us up from Swamp Lake. I remember looking out at the view and dimly thinking “Wow, what a view! You had to work so hard to see this.” But of course I was too tired to appreciate it.

Until at last, with trembling legs and aching lungs we crested the ridge and looked down at Cougar Lake, a pretty if ordinary and unenchanting body of water, definitely not worth this toil, but I didn’t care. At that moment it could have been Mosquito Valley (which is a real place, by the way) and I still would have thought it the most wondrous sight. It was downhill from here, and more than that, I could take the pack off once we reached the bottom.

We’d made it.

END PART ONE

*For those unaware of it, exploring Washington forests is a maze of beauracracy and permits, the difficulty compounded by the fact that there are different rules for state and federal forest lands. The rules are constantly shifting and outlined in unhelpful, dense websites. Eventually, I just had to suck it up and call the nearest Ranger Station and talk to a human being. After a confusing fifteen minute phone call (have I mentioned I’m bad on the phone?) we finally figured out that I did not need a special permit to camp overnight on the trail but that I did need a permit to park the car at the trailhead. Also, I really ought to sign the log book at the trailhead with our itinerary so they would know where to look in case a rockslide killed us, or a cougar mauled and ate us, or we got hopelessly lost, or a hundred other things which could result in three morons entering the woods and never coming out. At any rate, we got the paperwork right. I hope.

Hiatus Update

Sorry folks, I know it's been a while since I've posted anything. I've recently moved, and it's been absolutely hectic around here. I have worked a little on some projects, and undoubtedly as things settle down into a normal routine my output will start to go up again. Remember, it's okay to take breaks every now and then; just make sure not to pause for too long! More to follow.

--C.T. Eiser

Poem: Fabric

I crafted thread and needle
For when the cosmos begins to tear,
But only my patch of space and time
Could I hope to repair.

So I let the rest unravel,
Without giving in to despair.
In the patchwork quilt of the universe
I'm responsible for just one square.

How to Write Dialogue Well

I love dialogue. I don't know why. Whether it's witty wordplay, subtle subtext, charged speeches, straight up snark, or just characters revealing themselves through the things they (don't) say, it's my favorite part of writing. Books with no dialogue bore me to tears. Books with bad dialogue are equally frustrating. So...

What makes good dialogue?

1. Dialogue has to be tight

Dialogue that is filler and goes nowhere makes for a story that is filler and goes nowhere. Remember what I said about editing a scene? If your dialogue serves no purpose to the plot or the characters (and ideally both) then it has no place in your story. Dispense with small talk for the sake of small talk. Your story doesn't have room for it. Remember: not everything which is said has to be read.

For example, instead of writing out:

     "Hello, old friend. I trust you had a pleasant trip."
     "Quite fine, my friend. The weather has been wonderful."
     "Yes, lovely. But I think it might rain soon."

Just write:

     They exchanged pleasantries.

Now you can get to what the conversation is really about, and there's still time to indicate these two character's personalities and relationship in the conversation to follow.

2. Remember that book speak is different than life speak

If you (discreetly) listen to people's conversations you will find they are full of filler. We have incomplete thoughts, we repeat ourselves, we lose track of where we were going, we interrupt each other, and we're very informal. It's kind of a nightmare. Even if this kind of speech is true to life, it doesn't look right in a book. Even a character who uses slang and speaks very casually is still going to use more formal language than they would in real life. People just don't have the patience to wait for a character to remember how to get to their point. Leave out the majority of the 'ums' and 'wells,' and tighten it up.

3. Make it sound natural

I view writing dialogue as a game volleyball, a series of actions-reactions. One thought should lead to the other. What one character says should naturally elicit the other's response. If you fear your dialogue is becoming stilted and too formal, it can help to read it out loud.

Also, characters should talk in a way which is consistent to them. This can be trickier if you don't know your characters well, but each major character should have a unique style of speaking. Also, realize they're going to speak differently around different people and in different situations. Practice, edit, and when in doubt, read out loud.

And lastly, don't overthink it. If it sounds good, it's probably fine.

4. Use the right tags

Dialogue tags are the things outside of the quotation marks often used to let the reader know who says what and how they said it. Most often, this consists of simply writing 'they said,' which is perfectly fine.

     "Do you really mean it? I mean, truly?" River said.

Most people don't even pause when they see the word 'said.' Our brains are so used to seeing it, we skip over the tag. You can use other descriptors (exclaimed, remarked, retorted) but these are best used sparingly and where their impact is the greatest. Too much, and it becomes distracting.

     "Do you really mean it?" River asked sleepily. "I mean, truly?"

Some dialogue tags are action tags, which work kind of like stage directions. They let you know who said what and how, without telling you directly. Instead, they show you what the speaker was doing. I'm guilty of using these a lot, 'cause I like them, but like using something other than 'said' it can be easily overdone.

     "Do you really mean it?" River rubbed her eyes, fighting sleep. "I mean truly?"

And of course, sometimes tags aren't necessary for every line, such as when only two people are talking. Your best bet is to use a variety of tags, and try to keep a good balance for the whole conversation.

     "Do you really mean it?" River rubbed her eyes, yawning. "I mean truly?"
     "Why would I lie?" Javin said.
     "I don't know. You might just want me to stop talking and go to sleep."
     He laughed. "That'll be the day."

5. Get the formatting right

A major inconvenience when writing dialogue is getting the formatting right, but it's important to do. This isn't a complete list of rules, but many of the ones I've come across. Just remember: English is a collection of exceptions. When in doubt, fact check.

Use a comma at the end of your quote if it has a tag. This acts as a single sentence, so don't capitalize the first word in the tag.

     "This is insane," a boy sitting in the library said.

You can also use something other than a comma with a tag as long as it's not a period. Weirdly, this still acts as a single sentence, so don't capitalize the tag.

     "What's so insane?" a girl sitting at the same table asked, absentmindedly flipping through her book.

But if there is no tag you can end the quote with something other than a comma (a period is okay here).

     "You know what I'm talking about!"

One exception to the 'no period unless it's the complete sentence' rule is if you use an action tag. Since the sentence ended in the quotation, the next sentence is capitalized.

      "No, not if you don't tell me." She slammed her book closed. "What's bothering you?"

Punctuation always goes inside the quotation marks, even if it looks weird. If you are quoting something in your quote, use single quotation marks and make sure to always close them. 

     "Listen to this: 'Past participles are used for all perfect tense forms of a verb.'"

Keep in mind that a new paragraph indicates a new speaker. If you only have two people talking you can flip back and forth without needing to add a tag. So long as it doesn't go on for too long, people should be able to keep track of who's speaking. But if you add a third person, you're going to need to start differentiating who's who.

     "It's English homework," she said.
     "It's insane. Who keeps track of this stuff?"
     "Well, for the moment, we do. Just memorize it for the test. It'll be over before you know it."
     "Hey guys," another student walked up. "What are you talking about?"
     "English grammar," the girl explained.
     "Ah," he said. "I'll leave you to it, then."

The exception to the 'new paragraph equals new speaker' rule is when a speaker has a long chunk of dialogue that requires a paragraph break, such as when the subject changes. In this case you would start a new paragraph with a quotation mark but leave the end quote off of the previous paragraph. Keep doing this until the speaker is finished.

     "It's nuts," the boy said. "They want us to actually learn things but who's brain works this way? I can't keep track of nouns and adverbs, let alone past participles and clauses.
     "If you ask me, they'd be better off having us read more and learn about things that actually matter."

The following aren't formatting rules per se, but formatting your dialogue this way can have some interesting affects. And of course, you still have to format them right.

Using a dash to end the quote indicates the speech was cut off.

     "Okay, but--" the girl started.
    "Don't even start," he growled.

Using a dash to begin a quote indicates something which was cut off is now being finished.

     "--you're not looking at it quite right."
     "This is just filler work, and I dare you to figure out how this is useful."

An ellipsis indicates a pause, or speech which has trailed off.

     "Oh, how to explain this..."
.
Interrupting a line can place a pause in your speech. If the first chunk of interrupted dialogue is not a complete thought then you can place a comma at the end of the tag. If you do that, don't capitalize the next word in your next chunk of dialogue. However, it is perfectly acceptable in cases to end the tag with a period, even if the dialogue is not a complete thought. If you do this, capitalize the next word. Both are acceptable, but the second places a longer pause and thus more emphasis on the next thing said.

     "I know," he said, "education is important. But why this?"
     "Look," she started. "It's important to learn because it's the way language is constructed. You might be able to learn grammatical rules intuitively by exposure, but if you know how to analyze language categorically then you can learn other languages more easily. The basics of language remain the same across all of them, it's just the order which words appear in and the rules that govern them which change. And besides, it'll make you a more well rounded person."

There are other dialogue tricks that don't have specific rules. For example, in my book I use brackets to indicate when a different language is being spoken and italics when animals are talking (don't ask). There are no specific rules for something like that, so just make sure you keep the formatting consistent and explain what it indicates at the outset.

     "[What are they babbling about?]" one of the exchange students whispered to another at the back of the library. Technically, it's considered rude to talk about people in a language they don't understand, but he wasn't terribly concerned about that.
     "[I have no idea. Something about English and grammar,]" his friend whispered back.
     "[Well, we all have our hobbies, I guess.]"

6. Avoid other pitfalls and distractions

I mentioned this a little bit when I talked about dialogue tags and formatting, but there are many ways to ruin dialogue. Even if you use perfect tags, have nuanced, meaningful, and natural dialogue which is formatted correctly, the content itself can become distracting. If your dialogue uses cliche or stereotyped speech patterns, or you write with too heavy of a dialect (think of the mole characters in the Redwall series) you'll lose people. It'll sound forced and unnatural. This isn't to say you won't have a character with a heavy accent, nervous speech pattern, or word whiskers. It means that for a book, those aspects have to be toned down so you get the impression of them rather than having them spelled out verbatim. If your reader has to reread something to work out what the character said, then your dialogue's not good.


So to reiterate, to write good dialogue:

• Make it tight and meaningful
• Make it natural feeling (even if it's slightly more formal than spoken speech)
• Use a good balance of tags
• Get the formatting correct
• Avoid common pitfalls such as bad formatting, distracting tags, overused dialect, inconsistency, and filler

More Photographs (Again)

Water droplets beading on a newly stained deck

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone  

Pigeon in NYC

Gyrfalcon, Point Defiance Zoo, Tacoma Washington

More glamour shots of Ruby Beach, Kalaloch Washington 

Some hot spring in Yellowstone

February Update

Biggest thing to happen in February: I published my first novel!

Of course, that wasn't the only thing I accomplished for the month. I also started the rough draft for the sequel, wrote some poems, and started a new painting:

In other news, I now have an account on Twitter. Still learning the ropes, but I always appreciate the support and I will be posting news and other items/thoughts of interest there often. Figured it was a better platform for quick tidbits, but of course I'm still going to be writing longer posts here.

I also noticed I've been getting a lot more readers lately. I don't know how y'all are finding this blog, but I'm really happy people are getting a chance to read my writing. Thanks guys.

--C.T. Eiser

Researching For Your Writing

I worked for the county library for three years shortly after graduating high school. And while it didn't work out career-wise, I did learn a lot from the job. Strangely enough, I learned more about  research working at the library than I did writing reports for language arts. And I don't know whether it was because the things I was looking up were subjects I was interested in, or because I didn't have to finish a paper by a deadline, or if it's because we had to learn how to help patrons with their own research, but I got good at it. At any rate, there's different levels of research appropriate for different subjects, and all are good for different reasons.

How to Research

From Reference Checking to Deep Research

As a writer, you will need to look things up periodically. Sometimes, you just need a quick reference and then you can get back to writing. This is preferred in most cases, as getting bogged down in research can put a halt on your progress. But for some types of writing, digging deeper is a requirement (historical novels and nonfiction, for example). Here's some different levels of research and the ways I like to go about them, ranging from the quickest to the most time consuming:

1. Google-first-link, a.k.a. "ask Siri"

When most people say they "looked [subject] up," this is what they mean. This isn't research, this is reference checking. Reference checking is good for things like average snowfall and how many tablespoons are in a cup, but bad for complicated topics like genetic engineering and the affects of feudalism on European society. I'm not knocking it. If you have to fact check something for your writing this is the fastest way to do so and is reasonably accurate. You'll end up doing it a lot. But make no mistake, this is not research.

2. Web research

Okay, so the first thing (and often the only thing) people usually do when they research a subject is they google it. It's convenient, and there's a lot of information available. And it invariably also brings up Wikipedia. Do not fear Wikipedia. Embrace Wikipedia. Teachers hate Wikipedia because "anybody can edit it," but that argument is utter nonsense. Anybody can do anything with any source of media, especially now. Anybody can start a website. Anybody can publish a book. Experts are just amateurs who spent a lot of time on their chosen subject. Yes, Wikipedia is easier to edit and often the target of vandalism. But it also has a lot of fastidious people dedicated to accuracy and one advantage over the internet at large: it's organized and concise.

But don't make it your only source.

Many research papers I had to write in school started out with a quick perusal of the Wikipedia page to get an overview of the topic, and then I used their cited sources to start my own research and go deeper. This is the best way I've found to do internet research. Not just using a search engine, but following the sources. Doesn't even have to be Wikipedia. Any factual site worth its salt is going to cite their sources if they're not the primary source themselves. Keep following those citations. Eventually, you follow the rabbit hole long enough and you get to the primary sources, which is where your best and most accurate information resides.

3. Ask a librarian

Reference librarians are a rarity, probably becoming more and more scarce, but the ones who still exist are out there and they would love to help you. Call if you can't go to the library in person, but make sure you get someone good who will help answer some of your questions and point you in the right direction for the rest. As a Page, I was last on the ladder when it came to answering the phone (which suited me fine) but if I did answer, it meant absolutely everyone else was busy. Honestly, I ended up googling most of the things people asked. You can do that yourself, so make sure you get someone a little more, er, able to give you a lot of time (I had things to shelve, okay?). I put this suggestion at #3 because while your conversation may not be long, the amount of information they'll point you towards will take a while to chew through.

4. Ask the expert

One thing you may not have considered is just asking an expert on the really tricky questions you may have. Honestly, this isn't a requirement or anything, and some people prefer to research anonymously, but do remember: experts have spent a lot of time on their subjects of choice. They've already done all of the stages of research and continue to do more. They're going to have a pretty clear view of their subject, and multiple experts are going to have multiple angles to draw from. And, as long as you're polite, decent, straightforward, and don't attempt to monopolize their time, a lot of people are going to be pretty happy to talk about their favorite subject. Especially nowadays, with email and social media, it's really easy to connect and ask questions.

5. Read an actual book

Do you know how much time and effort it takes to write a book? Do you know how much time and effort it takes to, say, bang out a blog post by comparison? Books are powerful. They take a long time to put together. The people who write them write them with care and organization. They have to go past multiple levels of revisions and fact checking. Now, not all books are created equal, but one thing books will always have over the internet is their organization and credibility. The internet is chaos, a riot of information, and the very things which make it a powerful source of information are also its weaknesses (expedient, easy to edit and access, prolific). Do yourself a favor. If you really want to know a subject, really know it, read some books. It's an investment of time, but the picture will be far more complete.

6. Experience

Obviously, this one is last. Most people don't have the time or resources to test or experience everything for themselves. But if you can find a way to fit it into your life, it can be more rewarding and comprehensive than any other form of research. (Just, you know, use common sense. Don't do stupid or dangerous stuff.)

Even if you just dabble, and never become an expert yourself, experience will give you understanding. I never understood the weight of a backpack until I went backpacking. I've read so many books with archery in them, but I never understood how much strength it took until I pulled a bowstring back for myself. I never knew how moving a sunrise could be until I experienced a miserable night, and I didn't know exactly how sulphur smelled until I stood by the hot springs of Yellowstone. So if you can, and you really, really want to fully comprehend a subject, find a way to get a taste of it. Cook over an open fire. Go to a historical fair or museum. Make it part of your next vacation. Convert your yard shed into a lab. Sometimes, with all the knowledge at our fingertips, we forget that some of the best research consists of just physically trying and seeing things for ourselves.

Announcement: "The King and His Commitments" now finished!

Enormous milestone for me today. After years of wanting to, I have finally written a complete story and published it. There was a lot of times I didn't think it was going to happen; that I lacked the endurance and discipline to finish something so large, or that it wasn't going to be good enough. But I'm proud to say I have finished it. And I think it's pretty darn enjoyable, if I do say so myself.

This weekend (Friday 2/23 - Sunday 2/25) the ebook will be available for free on Amazon. Please check it out.

And thank you to everyone who helped me get it together and supported the getting there. It means an awful, awful lot.

May your creative endeavors be just as successful!

--C.T. Eiser

Editing: Making a Scene

Editing is a messy process. Writing a rough draft is messy, sure, but editing has to take that mess and turn it into something coherent. Frankly, it can be overwhelming. Which is why when I took the chaos that was my first draft I quickly had to figure out how to break it into something manageable. So, how to make editing manageable?

First, read through the whole thing just to see if it makes sense.

Make note of what areas are slow, what areas need elaborated on, retconned, etc. Start big, and look at your story arc as a whole. Fix the major plot problems. Don't make notes on individual sentences yet.

Then break it down by scenes.

Not chapters (an arbitrary division that should generally come at the end of a scene), but scenes. A story is nothing more than that-- a series of interconnected scenes. And every scene you go through, ask yourself these questions:

1. What is the purpose of this scene?

This is the most obvious and first question-- why did you write this scene in the first place? What does it do for the story?

2. Does it tell me more about the characters?

I personally prefer a character driven story over a plot driven, but I know tastes vary on that front. But ideally, as this a story about your characters, every scene they are in should tell us something about their personality. So does it do that?

3. Does it further the plot?

Even a character driven story needs a plot. If the answer to question #2 is no, then #3 needs to be a definite yes. If #3 is also a no, then your scene is probably nothing more than exposition and should be ruthlessly eliminated or reincorporated.

4. Can I do so more efficiently?

The best scenes are ones which further the plot and highlight your characters' personalities. If #2 is a yes, but #3 is a no, then your scene is likely just character fluff, and should be incorporated in a more efficient manner. Nobody's stories have got time for fluff. Tighten it up.

5. What are the consequences?

Of course, it's not enough to just have a series of good scenes. They have to flow. I call this the "action-reaction" mindset. If something happens in your story and there are no consequences from it, then what was the point of it happening? One thing needs to inevitably lead to the next.


And that's all there is to it. They're basic questions. There's no magic trick. Just a laying of scenes, brick by brick, to create the road which drives your story.

And these questions work for more than just scenes too-- the characters you add, dialogue, action, it all has to do something for the story, or else you're just going in circles, adding filler.

After you've looked at these (and after doing it a few hundred times it will become a natural process) then it's time to edit the nuts and bolts-- grammar and spelling, word choice, continuity, and character consistency. This is where you go after those sentences with a red pen. But huzzah! You've already broken your story down into scenes, so just go over each scene with a fine tooth comb, one at a time.

Editing is a massive undertaking that in some ways is just as difficult as writing. But you wrote the rough draft didn't you? And that was massive. So approach it the same way: one piece at a time.

A FINAL NOTE: if you're a real writing wizard, you can help ease the editing process by learning to do this as you go along with the rough draft. Now, you want to be careful to not get so bogged down in analysis that you don't write a rough draft to begin with, but I've figured out the best thing for me to do is write down, before I write a scene, what the scene needs to accomplish and a quick sketch of what happens. It makes editing so much easier, just as taking the time to type things correctly in the first place does (please do that too). As the old saying goes "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

Even More Photographs!

Photography is my second hobby. So here's some more I've captured over the years (and I'm definitely not procrastinating or anything):

Praying Mantis, gas station in Idaho

Erupting geyser, Yellowstone

Red Wolf, Point Defiance Zoo, Tacoma

Mountain Pass, unsure of location

Craters of the Moon, Idaho

Duck

The View Near My House

The Moon, shot through a telescope

Our Firepit

Poem: Anchor and Sail

Tell me a story, if you will,
Of the boy with the tempered tongue
And the girl who rode on the tempest,
Who sailed so far from home.

Tell me a story, if you please,
Of the way the wind did bite
When she wrecked alone in the sand and the foam
On the stormy Isle of Night.

And on this isle, there lived a boy,
And brave and kind was he.
He saved the girl and brought her home,
And in her eyes he saw the Sea.

“Please stay with me, girl from the gale,
And regale me with your tales.
My house is warm, my temper true,
You’d never lack nor need to look back
For I would look after you.”

But she shook her head and said,
“No. You would not want me if you knew.
My heart is a ragged sail,
And I am pushed by every wave and swell
To seek the strange and the new.”

He thought about this carefully,
And then he softly said:

“I see your point, and your fear,
For it is my own dread.
My heart has an anchor’s curse
And this island I’ve never left.

“I used to think it weighed me down,
And made my life so narrow.
But then you came, pouring like rain,
So where you go, I‘ll follow.

“And when the winds try to drive
You into their violent arms,
I’ll throw myself into the deep
To keep you from all harm.

“Don’t you see? Anchor and Sail,
Without both together, neither does well.
So please, please, sail with me,
We’ll travel into eternity,
And see the world anew.”

Formatting Your Manuscript For Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)

Like a lot of people, I've always wanted to write and publish a book. Also like a lot of people, I shied away from it due to the competitive and complicated nature of traditional publishing. (Crafting query letters? Mounds of rejection slips? Other people editing my story? Choosing my cover? Pass.) Thankfully, with the proliferation of ebooks, the ease of internet access, and big companies like Amazon willing to take risks, self-publishing is not only possible but essentially free.

However, while self-publishing is possible and inexpensive, it is by no means free and painless.

For one thing, its a relatively new concept, so there's a lot of bugs still to be worked out. It is also very technical, and even with my background in computers and document formatting I still ended up doing a lot of work over.

So here's what you should know about the final formatting of your manuscript, things I learned through trial and error and wished I'd known before.

NOTE: for this article, when I refer to "publishing" or "self-publishing," I'm talking specifically about independent self-publishing with Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).

1. Make sure you have the right tools at your disposal

Writing is simple. You need something to write on and something to write with. Self-publishing is not. You need the correct electronic tools to work with from the start. First of all you need a solid computer with access to internet. Nothing fancy, just reliable. You really need to have Microsoft Word. I know, I know, there's other processing programs like OpenOffice that generally do the trick. But for formatting you really want Word. For one thing, it's simply more standardized across the whole internet, and KDP has a downloadable add-on to help with formatting for ebooks and paperbacks. It's really useful.

Once you've got text down, the next hurdle is formatting images. If you're going to include them in your manuscript (and you need a cover image anyways if you don't want lame stock photos) you're going to need some sort of image manipulation program. I'm too poor to afford Photoshop (even if I could swallow a monthly subscription charge) so I tend to use ArtRage for simple painting and manipulation, along with my computer's stock editing program for things like cropping. I also use a scanner to upload my hand drawn images.

A PDF converter is the last digital tool you'll need. It's not a strict requirement, but if you want your paperback to have bleed (printing to the edge of the page) you'll need one. Adobe, of course, has a program, and I'm sure there are others available. Make certain whatever program you use does not compress your image size.

So to recap, before you even start writing with publishing in mind, make sure you have (in order of importance):

• A computer with internet access
• Microsoft Word
• A printer/scanner
• An image manipulation program
• A PDF converter program

2. Prep your manuscript

Now that you have all your tools and your big fat manuscript typed out and proofread, you can begin formatting. The first thing you're going to want to do is make sure you have a clean document to work with. This means a document with no formatting already applied to it. If you're unsure whether you already messed with something or not, you can simply highlight all (ctrl+a) and hit the button "clear formatting" (note, this will get rid of things such as italics and bold too, so be aware).

Now that you have a nice clean document, you want to create a backup save. This requires saving your formatted manuscript under a separate file name. You're going to leave your unformatted and complete manuscript untouched in case of disaster.

Turn on your formatting marks, download the KDP plug-in, and you're ready to go.

3. Make sure your images are high enough quality

This is the problem that ran me for the most loops. 300 dots per inch (dpi) is the required minimum image quality for print and sounds simple enough, but there are a lot of hurdles to overcome to get there. Firstly, make sure your images are good quality to begin with. I found out the hard way to scan my images at 400 dpi, just to be safe. (600 dpi tended to crash Microsoft Word.) Before you put your images into Word, make sure to turn "image compression" off. This will be in different places for different versions of Word, so you'll have to look up how to do so. The final hurdle (one I didn't have the tools to overcome) is keeping the quality up if you convert your file into a PDF. Make sure you've got a good converter program!

4. Be flexible and patient, and take it one step/problem at a time

Once you launch the KDP plug-in for Word and fire it up, it becomes a simple matter of following the preloaded steps to making a good looking manuscript. In theory. In actuality, there's going to be frustration involved, with a myriad of potential problems and creative solutions required.

For example, I had to create a cover for my poetry book. I had a charcoal drawing in mind to use as well as my title elements already figured out. It should have been a simple matter. But first, my image wasn't high enough quality. I fixed that, rescanning it. Then I ran into the problem with Amazon's program Cover Creator where the fonts available didn't go with my content, nor were the various title elements placed correctly for my picture. So I tried to make a cover from scratch and downloaded the template they provide. I wanted a specific font so I had to type out my title and name in Word, take a screenshot of it, then layer that on top of the background using ArtRage. But the only format KDP would accept for custom covers was a print ready PDF, and ArtRage could only save things as JPGs. So I saved a JPG and converted it to a PDF, but my PDF converter compressed image quality and the cover no longer met their quality guidelines. At this point I could have screamed. The cover should have taken an hour, tops, and it took me a whole day to put together. Eventually, I worked around the problem by uploading my completed cover (JPG) on Cover Creator as the background picture and left the additional fields blank. The saga wasn't over yet, I had to fix issues of bleed later, but you can see how quickly something small can become a big, time consuming problem.

Additionally, there's no way to check their guidelines without uploading the previewer first, which takes a long time. The preselected styles are narrow and defined, and changing them can be time consuming and frustrating. It may not turn out exactly how you pictured things. Even after you hit publish, you may have to fix some things before your book will appear on the marketplace. So be patient, adjust your expectations, and do your best to work with the program.



If you can manage all this, then congratulations! You've published a book. Take a moment to feel proud of yourself, because no matter what else, just finishing an entire book and putting it out there is an accomplishment.

January Update

January was the month of poetry and document formatting for me, and so much editing. An unbelievable amount of editing. The bright side to all this is that I now have a book of poetry live on Amazon and a novel soon to follow. It requires some more work still, but I did finish drawing a map and now need to create a suitable cover, which might even prove fun. Due to all this, I have some blog posts in the works about editing, formatting, and self-publishing, so look forward to that this month, as well as the release of my first novel, "The King and His Commitments."

Thanks,

--C.T. Eiser

Sneak Peak: Map of Lannan Dús

As some of you are aware, my manuscript is nearing publication. (You know, this story.) My editing group had some interesting ideas for a title, but I have ultimately decided to go with "The King and His Commitments." It's a delightful play on words which will become apparent upon reading the novel.

However, one piece of feedback everybody was unanimous on was to "make a map!" And thus, I present you with this:

NOTE: not to scale

This map should be included in both the paperback and ebook version of the story once I've completed the formatting and publish them. Definitely expect that announcement!

--C.T. Eiser

Poem: Little Fractures

The little fractures in your chest,
Widen under pressure and stress.
Crack, deepen, delve, divide,
And reveal who you are inside.

So ask me now why I disliked
The little fractures in your spine,
And why I insist on making large
Something which seemed so small?

All are capable of great courage or despair,
But of which, we’re currently unaware.
He who is faithful in least is faithful in most,
When trials come, the truth will be known.

So for now I’ll go on those fault lines,
And trace their pattern with my finger.
I won’t have to wait for hard times,
To know which way you’ll shatter.

NOTE: This poem, along with those previously shared on this site, will be part of the book "Unfamiliar Thoughts," to be released at the end of the month. The paperback version of the book will include charcoal illustrations and approximately seventy additional never-before-seen poems. An announcement will be made on this site upon its release. As ever, thank you for your continued readership. --C.E.

Formatting Documents

I've been getting my first book (a collection of poems) ready for publication, and thus have spent the last few weeks reacquainting myself with the joys of formatting. It's about as much fun as it sounds, but I realize that even with a lot of computer experience this can be a frustrating process. I can't imagine what it would be like to attempt this without having a lot of practice with it. So here's a list of general formatting tips. This isn't a guide for specific and technical formatting techniques, for those already exist and are much more detailed than anything I could create, but more of a guide on how to approach formatting a Microsoft Word document (.doc or .docx).

1. Save formatting for last

This should be obvious, but for some it's not. Get your raw text down before you do anything else. Don't touch anything in the formatting bar until every word that's supposed to be in the finished document is already in it. This includes paragraph spacing, margins, justification, and font. The reason? If you start formatting a half done document you're going to end up with inconsistent formatting and a lot of repeated work. Formatting choices tend to bleed down the paper as you go too, so any change you make may not end up throughout the whole document. Get it written first, then make it pretty.

2. Section breaks

After the document is written, you're going to want to add section breaks to anywhere where the formatting will be different from the rest of the document. Doing this will save you headaches in the long run.

3. Working from the top down

Now that you're formatting your document, the best approach is to work from the top down, or from the big to the small. Basically ask yourself, what's the biggest/broadest thing I need to change? And then do that first. For example, you would change your page orientation/size/margins first, then apply font style/size, and then add page breaks. If you try it the other way around you're going to end up changing where all your page breaks are.

NOTE: Microsoft Word provides "styles" to help with formatting all your scattered text that needs to be consistent (such as headings). While they are useful, I'm not going to explain how to use them because they fall under the 'technical' category and are not required to make a pleasing document.

4. Hot keys

Hot keys are not strictly necessary, but they really help streamline the whole process and make formatting faster. While things vary from computer to computer, here's some basic hot keys to know:

shift: selects everything between one click to the next. Useful for highlighting large bodies of text
ctrl: selects one section and another non-adjacent one. Useful for highlighting disparate pieces of text
home: goes to the beginning of a line
end: goes to the end of a line
ctrl+home: goes to the beginning of your document
ctrl+end: goes to the end of your document
ctrl+a: select all
ctrl+s: save
ctrl+x: cut
ctrl+c: copy
ctrl+v: paste
ctrl+f: find
ctrl+z: undo
double click: select word
triple click: select paragraph

Obviously, these are not all the hot keys available, but they are the ones I use the most. Control and shift can be especially useful in conjunction with some others. For example, if you need to select all the text below a certain point, you can click on the point and then hit shift+ctrl+end to highlight all the text below. Go ahead and try them! They're really great.

5. Keep a notebook

Lastly, I like to keep a physical notebook by the computer at all times. When I discover a formatting or editing error while proofreading I find it useful to write them down and cross them off once they're fixed. This is especially true for large documents where it may not be practical to fix errors as you find them. It's easy reference and a good practice to get into.

Formatting can be a bear, but the results are well worth the effort, as a well formatted document looks both professional and effortless. So keep at it and you will improve.

More Photographs

Iron Goat Trail, Washington

Cougar Lake, Washington

Fire Lookout at High Rock, Washington

Molson, Canada

Ruby Beach, Washington

Silverdale, Washington

New York, New York

Multnomah Falls, Oregon

Elk in Ecola Park, Oregon