What's In a Name?

 Like most authors, I spend a considerable amount of time thinking up names for my characters. In fact, the main character in my most recent book, A British Courtesan in America goes through several names in an attempt to mask her identity. Coming up with suitable names is one of the most fun parts of starting any story. 

But how about names when it comes to a car? I've never been the kind of person who assigns a pet name for my cars. I let the manufacturers do that. But my cars do seem to have an identity. When I was in my 20s and about to buy my first-ever car, I wanted to get a Jeep, which I viewed as a quintessential American car. My mother said I should get something a bit less masculine than a Wrangler and steered me to a Toyota. 

Years later, it came time to buy a new car, and I did what I always wanted. I bought a Jeep. Not a Wrangler, but a Liberty. It spoke volumes to me, and not just about how liberating it was to finally buy the make of car I'd always wanted. It was rugged, reliable, and strong, just as its name implied. I was sorry to have to get rid of it after thirteen years of service. 

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I bought a newer and smaller Jeep this time. A Renegade. A friend of mine told me it was descriptive of my personality. I'd eschewed joining a sorority in college in favor of belonging to the Students for a Democratic Society. I write about the Sons of Liberty in my Revolutionary Women series, the bad boys of the Revolution. So a Renegade seems to have fit. However, unfortunately even a Renegade loses when it's hit by a semi-truck. 

So, I'm once again in the market for a new-to-me vehicle. The one that's caught my eye this time is a Patriot. Seems fitting, in these perilous political times. I'll let you know. 

Making Every Word Count

You'd think if you're writing a book that's 70,000 to 85,000 words that not every single one would matter. You as an author can let some things slide. Just telling the story is hard enough without dissecting every sentence and every paragraph.

And you'd be wrong.

I took the first chapter of the first draft of my newest endeavor to a full-day workshop yesterday, taught by Margie Lawson. The workshop was divided into parts, the first being Power Openings. She offered twenty points to check out in your opening. Things like: Is the first line your POV character's line? Uh, no. The story's about one of three sisters who heads west as a mail-order bride, but my first sentence has all three in it. Had all three in it. The reader couldn't tell who the story will be about. I hauled out my red pen and sliced through the first paragraph.

Then, we moved on to Power words. This part of the workshop was fun, since we had to exchange our work with another at the table and circle the power words in their work. Power words heighten the emotion, the tension. The words circled in my first paragraph were as follows: graves, parents, graveyard, fresh mounds. Immediately, you, the reader, know what's going on. And how this situation would affect the POV character.

In the afternoon, we moved on to Rhetorical Devices. Rhetorical Devices are essentially playing with words for a greater impact. I just used one of Margie's Top 20 by using the two word description at the end of one sentence and then at the start of the very next one. There are 19 other ones as well, some of which give my current editor fits. Such is the life of an author.

The last segment was about character descriptions. I thought I had gotten pretty good at describing my characters by now. I no longer stop the action and provide a head-to-toe description. But I do tend to use and reuse the same types of descriptive words to signal hair color, lip color, dimples, freckles, etc.

I need to liven things up without resorting to purple prose. If you think that's a fine line, you're absolutely right. It's what moves a book from the mid-list to the New York Times list.

I'm about 20,000 words into this story and thought it was moving along at a good clip. But I think, rather than getting the story down in a flash format from start to finish, I need to go back over these 20,000 and examine every word, every sentence, every paragraph, and use what I learned in the workshop. If I can apply what I learned to this part, and make every word count, maybe it'll become second nature to me when I get back to the story line.

At least that's the plan.