Christine Amsden

One of the most common questions I hear from new writers is: “How much description should I use?” The truth is, that’s the wrong question. Your story may require a ton of description or almost none at all. The question should be: What type of description should I use? The answer: relevant description.

Imagine that you’ve just walked into a living room. It’s your living room. You’ve walked into it every day for the past five years. Do you spend time thinking about the floral pattern on the sofa you’ve owned for twenty years? Do you study the lampshade you bought when you moved into the house? Probably not. You’re more likely to notice your kids running at you with news about school, the dog barking up a storm, and your husband asking how your day was.

Even then, are you likely to stop and describe your husband? If you’ve been married for ten years, then why would you stop and think about his square jaw, thick brown hair, and blue eyes? Unless your son has a black eye, why would you notice that his are blue like his father’s?

Now, let’s rewind and walk into the living room again. The floral sofa, the one your Aunt Ross gave you as a house warming gift and you wish you had the money to replace, is gone. In its place is a brand new leather sofa with a bright red bow on top. The children and the dog are only noticeable by their absence, and romantic music is playing on the stereo. Suddenly, it’s a whole new living room, one worthy of note and description. Something is about to happen here – probably something romantic – and it is set in motion by the very things you see when you step into that room.

Let’s step into a different living room now. This time it’s not yours, it’s your sisters, and you haven’t seen or heard from her in ten years. Cockroaches scatter when you turn on the light and the room smells of beer and marijuana. Your sister isn’t home yet, but from this description you have a horrible idea of what you might expect.

RELEVANT details are details that are either important to the story or to the character – preferably both. Description should move the story forward rather than slow it down. It should work with the action rather than against it. Description can tell a story on its own if you let it do its work properly.

The other thing about relevant description is that it doesn’t tend to saturate your brain all at once. If it takes a realistic character some time to notice important details then it will take your readers the same amount of time. Many readers will skim a paragraph that tries to hit them with all the details all at once. It’s just too much.

Let’s say that you walk into a sports arena. You may notice the excitement of the crowd, the noise, and the sticky concrete floor as you search for your seat. When you find it, you may notice that it’s orange or red or blue. After you sit down and chat with your friend you may notice the vender coming but to sell drinks or cotton candy. The announcer may come on and ask you to direct your attention to the scoreboard – which may be the first time you really notice that scoreboard.

How will the reader know what your settings and characters look like if you only give them details that are relevant to the plot? Well, they have imaginations too. As writers, we have to accept that our stories will take on a life of their own in the minds of our readers and we need to work with that rather than against that. There will be aspects that need to be envisioned a certain way, but do I really need to know that the sofa is blue? When I can fill in the less important parts of your story with things from my own life, like the green sofa I’m sitting on right now, then the details not only become relevant to your story, but they also become relevant to me.

Use descriptions. Bring out details to make the story come alive, but make it all relevant so that the details help tell the story rather than take over the story.

Edit. Revise. Rewrite. Repeat.

Until the end of time? Possibly. It is difficult to know when something is “done.” In a way, it never is. If you love to write, if you write regularly, then you are always improving your skill. What you write tomorrow will be better than what you wrote yesterday.

But when is it DONE?

If you want to get published then at some point, you have to print it off, stick a stamp on it, and send it out into the cold, lonely world. When do you do that?

Think about how you feel when you first get an idea for a story. Isn’t it exciting? You can’t wait to get words down on the page, however clunky! Maybe you outline, maybe you don’t (there is no one right way to write), but you live the story as you write it that first time. It has umph. It has passion. It has sparkle.

But it also has a lot of errors. Plus, maybe when you wrote that last scene you realized that Jake had to have gotten Nancy pregnant in chapter 2 or this ending will never work. Oh, and really, you didn’t need Mike at all. He seemed like a great character in the beginning but he turned out to be totally useless.

There are millions of these. Some big, some small, but all amount to ways that next time, you can write it better. Maybe you thought of them on your own, maybe you had a critique group help you. Either way, you know in your heart of hearts that you need to rewrite the story. Because it can be better. Because you have learned more about being a writer.

Each time you write the same story, it becomes more and more technically correct, incorporates more and more good writing skills that you have picked up along the way, and those plot holes get smoother and smoother. BUT each time you rewrite, the sparkle diminishes.

Think of it like a supply and demand chart. The point where the supply and demand lines meet is the optimal number of widgets to make at the optimal price.

It’s the same here — the optimal story is at the point where the sparkle and technical lines intersect. If you keep writing after that, you may get a more technically correct story but you will lose in passion and purpose.

Simple, huh? :=)

No, it’s never simple. Life is hardly ever simple. Heck, I can complicate this idea for you even further by mentioning that you can regain sparkle by having more time elapse — something you’d never want to write again today may come back to life in ten years or twenty years or thirty years.

Maybe you’re willing to wait. Or maybe it’s just better to do the best you can, send your little manuscript out into the world, and let it find its way. Meanwhile, writers improve by writing new things, not by writing the same thing over and over again until they can’t see words in the ink.

Happy writing.

If you read my novel, you’ll notice that many of my characters suffer from eating disorders of one kind of another. One is anorexic, another is bulimic, and a third has an unofficial eating disorder that I truly believe exists – sometimes called overeating disorder or compulsive overeating disorder (you can look it up on the internet for information).

We hear about these diseases from time to time on slow news days, usually squashed between dieting commercials and surrounded by advice on how to lose weight, get healthy, and stay fit.

What a sad irony.

An eating disorder is a lonely, silent killer. Peer pressure may even convince a girl to start, but in the end she suffers alone. Make no mistake – these disorders are deadly. The mortality rate for anorexia is 25% — that is to say that 1 out of every 4 anorexics will die from the disease. Bulimia is deadly as well, although it is more difficult to gather numbers on this since the death usually appears heart related and since bulimics show no outward signs of their disorder – they tend to be average or slightly above average in size. And of course, even an overeating disorder can kill you, in the end, through blocked arteries and a heart that can’t keep up with the extra pounds.

These diseases, like many mental problems, are often overlooked because the perception is that the victim is weak or bringing the problem on him or herself. This is simply not true and it is a disservice to people who may otherwise be able to get the help and treatment they need if it weren’t for the shame they fear.

If you have an eating disorder, I implore you to get help before it’s too late. If you don’t, I hope you will be a source of support and encouragement to someone around you who might need it.

Here is a link to the National Eating Disorders Association:

http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/p.asp?WebPage_ID=337

Today, I received my first unbiasd review (meaning not from a friend or relative) and I was thrilled! I’m working on a review section of the website and will put that up as soon as I can.

What comes next? Well, the first thing we need to do is get this book out to the ebook distributors. Before we can do that, we need permanent cover art. I think I am going to have a public vote for the best cover art so I can get some real, honest thoughts on which cover is most likely to get people to pick up the book. This should happen soon…but please don’t ask me to define the word “soon.”

Once that happens, we can start talking about going to print. I’m really excited for the print release. I’m getting positive feedback on this e-book release but I am also getting a lot of, “I’ll wait for the paperback.” I can understand that.

More updates coming soon…

My friend and neighbor finished reading my book a couple of days ago and yesterday during our semi-regular (emphasis on the “semi”) workout she asked me if I had ever met anyone who could really predict the future. I said that no, I had not, and she told me that she sometimes knew when the phone was going to ring and who was calling.

I really started thinking about it after she went home. There is a lot about the world that we don’t know and there is especially a lot about the human brain that we don’t know. Perhaps time isn’t even linear, as we often envision it, but a solenoid. (In fact, this theory has been put forth by people who have a lot more apreciation for its implications than I do!)

Even I have envisioned events before they happened. In my case, I write them off as coincidence. My brain tends to move at about a million miles an hour, constantly thinking about what has happened, is happening, and what will happen. I picture the future in dozens of different ways, often including highly unlikely fantasies like appearing on Oprah. It tends to be the likelier fantasies, like my husband coming home early from work to surprise me with flowers, that “come true.” With all those guesses floating around in my mind, eventually a few have to be right….right?

I guess I just don’t know and will keep an open mind, but you can rest assured that the psychic powers presented in my book are entirely fictional. :=)

As cosmic timing worked out, my parents were on vacation the day my novel came out, so they only had a chance to buy it this weekend. My mom, always the faster reader, got back to me Sunday with rave reviews, commenting on parts of the story in a way that only a mother can. “Mozzarella and parmesan!” she said, “You put our family’s lasagna recipe in your novel.”

So I had. It isn’t exactly a pivotal part of the story, so you may only have noticed it if you are my mom, but I thought I would share with you my favorite lasagna recipe:

SAUCE:
1 lb. Ground chuck
1 lb. Pork sausage
1 med. Onion
1~2 cloves Garlic

Brown the above in olive oil… Add

1 can (14. 5 oz.) Whole tomatoes
1 can (16 oz.) Stewed tomatoes
1 can (15 oz.) Tomato sauce special
1 can (6 oz.) Tomato paste
1 pkg. Spaghetti sauce mix
1 tsp. Basil
1/2 tsp. Oregano
Salt & pepper to taste
1/4 tsp. Garlic powder
1/4 tsp. Onion powder

Simmer above for 20 minutes.

1 lb. Lasagna noodles cooked
3 cups Mozzarella cheese
1&1/2 cups Parmesan cheese

In a large (10 x 15 inch) baking dish layer as follows…
1. Small amount of sauce (so noodles don’t stick)
2. Noodles
3. Sauce
4. Mozzarella cheese
5. Parmesan cheese

Repeat layers 2 thru 5 for a total of four layers. Bake covered at 350° for 45 minutes.

This recipe was given to my mom by my paternal grandmother (Sue Amsden) and she has made a few of her own adjustments over time. I make it just the way she did (unless I can’t find special tomato sauce, in which case I just use regular tomato sauce or Italian-style tomato sauce).

My friend and neighbor finished reading my book a couple of days ago and yesterday during our semi-regular (emphasis on the “semi”) workout she asked me if I had ever met anyone who could really predict the future. I said that no, I had not, and she told me that she sometimes knew when the phone was going to ring and who was calling.

I really started thinking about it after she went home. There is a lot about the world that we don’t know and there is especially a lot about the human brain that we don’t know. Perhaps time isn’t even linear, as we often envision it, but a solenoid. (In fact, this theory has been put forth by people who have a lot more apreciation for its implications than I do!)

Even I have envisioned events before they happened. In my case, I write them off as coincidence. My brain tends to move at about a million miles an hour, constantly thinking about what has happened, is happening, and what will happen. I picture the future in dozens of different ways, often including highly unlikely fantasies like appearing on Oprah. It tends to be the likelier fantasies, like my husband coming home early from work to surprise me with flowers, that “come true.” With all those guesses floating around in my mind, eventually a few have to be right….right?

I guess I just don’t know and will keep an open mind, but you can rest assured that the psychic powers presented in my book are entirely fictional. :=)

You have probably noticed that my front page now boasts a cover to my book, but I feel obliged to tell you that this will not be the real, permanent cover art. We’re still working on that.

Twilight Times was eager to get the book out during the Muse Online Conference so they went with the abstract face. My publisher and I both agree that it is a good picture, but that the title banner leaves something to be desired.

We are also playing with the idea of inverting the colors in the cover art — all the white becomes black, all the black becomes white, and the hair goes from blue and red to green and brown. It’s pretty neat looking, actually, the eyes kind of glow, but I’m not sure yet which one I’m going to go with.

I’ll keep you posted on this process.

What a great week! Touch of Fate has been available for 4 days and already I have several people telling me that they can’t put the book down! I’m just all smiles.

I thought it would be fun to keep you up to date on what it is I’m working on for the future. Touch of Fate is my first novel, but it will not be my last!

A month ago I put the words “THE END” at the bottom of a new rough draft — The Immortality Virus. Just as with Touch of Fate, The Immortality Virus began as a short story. I came up with it in August of 2005, shortly after sending Touch of Fate to Twilight Times. It did not take me long to realize that The Immortality Virus was too big for its breeches. It needed to be a novel from the start.

I took notes for a few months, had a baby, and then started writing the rough draft this past spring. Over the summer, I started working with two writers I met online who both have promising futures. We exchanged chapters every week and it encouraged me to keep producing.

I wrote The Immortality Virus a little differently from Touch of Fate. I did less planning and outlining this time around. I developed a character, a world, and a story problem. Then I let my main character, Grace, run around the world and try to solve the problem. I had fun, not knowing what was coming next. I introduced a love interest to her and had no idea how it would turn out. (Actually, I still don’t know – I may change it in the rewrite!)

I finished my rough draft just in time to set it aside and work on some marketing for Touch of Fate. My plan is to do a partial rewrite and thorough revision next summer, making use of the comments I received from my readers.

The Immortality Virus is a science fiction novel set about 450 years in the future. Humanity has stopped aging and as a result, there are terrible cultural and political problems. Grace Harper is a private investigator who is charged with looking for the man who messed up the world by stopping the aging process – at least, if he’s alive.

The reason that I have chosen to wait until the middle of next year to finish this is that I want to have time to distance myself from the rough draft so that when the time comes, I can look at it with a fresh eye. Also, since Touch of Fate will not be released to paperback until next year, I am not in a hurry to get this book out yet. I want my first novel to go for a spin.

In the meantime, and in between marketing, I am going to start work on another rough draft. Wish me luck – it’s the first book in the science fantasy trilogy I’ve been working on since I was eleven years old! (Back then, it was a single short story.) Last year I received some excellent advice and feel confident that I know what to do with it this time. (Yeah, yeah, how many times have I said that? But this time I’m older, wiser, and have the experience of having finished a novel.)