“On a warm night in early July of that long-evaporated year, The Interestings gathered for the very first time. They were only fifteen, sixteen, and they began to call themselves the name with tentative irony.”
– Opening of The Interestings
The Interestings is a literary fiction novel that follows a small cast of characters who start as gifted artistic teenagers and grow to see what becomes of their talents and their lives. One becomes famous, another is able to do the work she’s dreamt of with a lesser degree of success, one becomes a spectacular failure, and others find themselves falling into more ordinary roles within society. None, however, find themselves with what they really wanted. The novel follows their individual quests for happiness, fulfillment, and success, with all the ups and downs of life, their stories sometimes branching apart and sometimes becoming intertwined. It’s an exploration of what it means to be “talented” and “successful”, both in general and in the society we live in.
This is one of those books where all the characters are imperfect and happy endings are far from guaranteed. It uses limited omniscience to reveal information, skip around in time, and present the reader with certain judgments, but it tends to focus on one character per chapter, dipping into his or her thoughts alone. I found this to be an interesting technique, and I particularly enjoyed how easily it moved the reader forwards and backwards while letting each scene shine no matter where in the timeline it was located.
On the other hand, there were certain places where I found myself negatively judging both the characters and the narrator, which I was personally disappointed by. Some scenes seemed to do a good job of pointing the reader to the fact that the point of view characters were very wrong in their assessments, but other times the narrator was either absent or apparently agreed with them in a way that didn’t sit right with me.
Regardless, the writing itself was very good, and I would recommend it to any other writers (aspiring or otherwise) who want to explore and learn from its techniques. For more casual readers, it might fit the bill if you enjoy realistic fiction and are prepared to keep your own head about you as you read. It seems to be the sort of book that almost expects you to be making your own judgments and contemplating the characters and their fates. And perhaps it could be the sort of book that causes you to open your eyes and alter your own course in life, which would certainly make it very valuable indeed.
As a sci-fi and fantasy writer, I do a lot of world building. I create new words for fictional creatures, places, and concepts. I keep track of them to ensure I’m using them consistently. And I appreciate when the software I’m writing in can help with that, at least in terms of spelling. You probably know that Microsoft Word has a built-in spell checker. You may know you can choose to have the program ignore a particular error or add words to the dictionary when prompted. But did you know that you can create a custom dictionary for each of your fictional worlds and swap them in and out whenever you’d like?
To do this, all you need is a list of your desired words and a program that can create text documents. I recommend Notepad, which came free with my computer and more than likely is on yours as well if you have Windows. On my computer, it can be found under Windows Accessories. Otherwise, I can find it by typing Notepad into the search bar at the bottom of my desktop.
From here, all you need to do is add one word per line, select Save As, and save it with a .dic at the end of the file name and an Encoding of UTF-16 LE. Make sure you’ve changed the “Save as type” to All Files.
Now, in Microsoft Word, go to File and select Options. On the left side, there’s an option called Proofing. Click on it to see a button for Custom Dictionaries. From here you can click Add and select your custom dictionary to have it added to the list.
Any time you want to use your spell checker on a document unrelated to your novel or you want to use a different custom dictionary on a second novel, you can come back and use the remove button. Simple as that!
Once added, you can also use the Edit Word List button to add or remove words without having to open the dictionary file separately. From this same window, you can even add autocorrects for custom words if you’d like them. If there’s one in particular you’re always misspelling, you can pop it right in and Word will fix it for you after you type it incorrectly.
Personally, I find that every little thing like this cuts back on my annoyances substantially. Every time I don’t get a little red line under the name of my fictional country is a time my focus doesn’t get interrupted, and every error the spell checker can catch for me is one less thing to worry about when preparing my final draft to be sent out. I really value putting in a little time upfront to prevent headaches in the long run. If you’re a user of Microsoft Word, feel free to try it out and see if it works for you.
If you’ve spent time on Critique Circle, you’ve probably seen authors or critiquers with a star symbol next to their usernames. If you hover over it, you see that these people are Super Critters, but what exactly does that accomplishment mean? What does it take to be awarded it?
Well, a large part of the answer has to do with the progress bar you see on your dashboard (the page you get to by clicking the Critique Circle logo from any other page). You can see in the example above that my current progress for the month of May is 8,228 words. That means I’ve written 8,228 words’ worth of critiques during the current month. At the end of the progress bar is an orange star symbol, exactly like the Super Critter badge, and that’s because if you reach that goal (12,000 words) and have a grade of at least three stars (as shown right above), you get the badge for the remainder of the month and all of the following month.
So what does that mean in a nutshell? Anyone who has the badge has done a lot of critiquing for other users of the site in the past month or so. Maybe they’ve written forty critiques of three hundred words apiece. Maybe they’ve written twelve very in-depth critiques of a thousand words apiece. Likely the answer is somewhere in the middle, as not all critiques are the exact same length. Some people tend shorter while others tend longer, and for some it depends on what they’re critiquing.
Hopefully, though, you’re putting more time and effort into longer critiques rather than padding out the word count, and that’s where the grade comes into play. When you write a critique for someone, they will usually grade it on a five-star scale. One star is typically reserved for really problematic critiques, like the kind that get reported. Two stars is for unhelpful, and if you try to game the system, I wouldn’t be surprised if you find yourself with this sort of low rating.
While there probably are other ways, I wouldn’t recommend doing anything other than what I did to get this badge: honestly trying to help other writers. When I first joined the site, I wasn’t critiquing very often, but the more I got into it, the more writers I wanted to help out consistently or return the favor to after they helped me. I never thought I would end up critiquing that much; it just happened. I try to critique submissions where I feel that I truly have something helpful to contribute, and when that’s the case I naturally tend to go into detailed feedback.
I do think I had a bit of an advantage from having participated in workshops during my college days, as well as having spent significant amounts of time giving feedback to other amateur writers outside this site, but I think for anyone the key is doing your best and knowing your limits. If you try to give advice on something you don’t truly understand, you’re not doing anyone a favor. If, on the other hand, you take the time to understand your strengths as a reader/writer, you can use those to help someone who might be weaker in those areas.
For example, I once critiqued a short story whose author was looking for people with computer programming experience to give insight into whether the fictional artificial intelligence was written realistically. I topped easily over a thousand words just pointing out what wasn’t quite accurate in how the AI was being programmed and explaining what might work better based on my personal experiences. That sort of help is almost always appreciated, and many other writers appreciate simply getting feedback about what your reactions are as you’re reading and whether you’re engaged or feeling a certain emotion or getting bored or confused. And if you are more experienced, there’s a whole world of other advice you can get into, whether it’s giving suggestions to make a sentence sound better or talking about plot and pacing and characterization.
In short, it takes time and dedication. I would argue, though, that the reward is not the badge itself but the relationships you build along the way. A little icon of a star isn’t worth anything if you put in the bare minimum to get it and everyone you critiqued for knows it. For me, it’s about the satisfaction of a job well done, giving back to the people who’ve helped me and hopefully helping other writers get just a little farther on their journey to improvement.
One of the things I like to do when taking a break is play video games. I tend to pick one I like and get really invested in it, playing for hours and hours and exploring all it has to offer. It can be really relaxing, a great way to recharge after a stressful day at work. I tend to play a lot on Friday nights, sometimes bleeding into Saturday, and spend the rest of the weekend on writing-related activities after I’m feeling refreshed and energized again.
Lately, the game I’ve been playing is The Sims. I have the base game and a few add-ons, which I’ve justified the purchase of by telling myself that I’ve played the game for so many hours that other forms of entertainment would end up being more expensive for how long they’d hold my attention. My favorite is the Get to Work expansion pack, which lets you follow your sim to their job, as long as you pick one of the ones introduced with the pack. It also introduces aliens!
I’m not a fan of ghosts, as I prefer my sims to pass away more realistically, and I decided plant sims aren’t for me after turning one of my sims into a plant creature for a short period of time (it was just too difficult to keep them alive and happy with the needs for sunlight and water), but I have been really enjoying the aliens in the game. As part of the scientist career, you can invent a lot of devices, several related to aliens, and when you reach level ten, you can attend a party on the alien planet of Sixam and introduce yourself to all the aliens at once.
I had one of my sims do this, then brought back two inventions: one that acts as a gateway to the alien planet and another you can use to prevent alien abductions. I love this, as I wanted my sim’s daughter to marry an alien but I really don’t like the alien abduction aspect of the game. It’s kind of fun that they get beamed up in the middle of the night, but the fact that they can come back pregnant makes the whole thing way too creepy and disturbing for my taste. I much preferred having my scientist sim’s daughter visit Sixam, fall in love with an alien, and get married and have children that way.
It’s a little disappointing that the alien planet is so barren–after the party is over, there’s really nothing there but plants and rocks to collect–but half-alien sims look really awesome. I had my sim marry a second one after her first husband died so her two half-alien children could have a cute little half-alien half-sibling.
Full aliens look like this, with skin in blue, green, or purple. They all wear outfits like this one as well, with green glowing lights on a jumpsuit colored white, gray, or black.
My sim’s first husband was blue, so his children look like this:
And the new little one is purple like his father.
Full aliens have the option to “disguise” themselves as humans, but I really prefer them to just be themselves, so I love that the half-aliens are happy just the way they are, a perfect blend of the two worlds. I take them on family trips back to Sixam and pretend that there’s actually stuff for them to do there. I make sure their fathers spend/spent lots of time with them, pretending they were sharing all about their culture. And there are some alien-specific interactions, like a secret handshake and the ability to use brain power to analyze the humans around them and learn about their personalities. That’s a lot of fun as well.
Other than that, they do all the same things humans do, but oh well, at least the game is open enough to let the sims do lots of different things where I can have my imagination fill in the gaps. I love telling little stories as I play and helping each one of the characters reach their goals. The mother is an astronaut who’s also doing everything she can to help her kids succeed. The father is stay-at-home and dreams of cooking out-of-this-world dishes. The oldest son just started his career as a super spy. The daughter is nearing the end of high school and is trying to learn and develop as much as possible before her upcoming birthday. And the youngest one just became a toddler and is learning how to walk and talk and get along in the world.
I love my little fantasies, whether in my books, inside my head, or played out in the form of video games. If you decide to try out the same one, I hope that you enjoy it!
One of my favorite things about Scrivener is being able to have a folder for each chapter and a text for each scene. I love being able to drag and drop for easy reordering, and I especially love being able to identify which scene or chapter I’m looking for based on the title I gave it. For that to be useful, though, I have to give each one a title that completely gives away what happens in it. In my finished manuscript, I don’t want there to be chapter titles beyond “Chapter 1” and “Chapter 2”, so how do I hide my spoiler-filled titles when compiling?
Luckily, this is pretty easy once you know where to go. When you click on Compile, you’ll probably see something like this the first time.
Looks pretty simple. You can pick a format and a document type to save as. But if you click the blue downward-facing arrow, you get a lot more options. If you click over to the Formatting tab, you’ll see a lot more options. It can be difficult to figure out what the types listed mean, but luckily when you click on one in the list it will highlight an example of that type. Using this method, I can see that “Level 1+” is for my chapters and their titles, while “Level 2+” is for my scenes and their titles. From there, it’s easy to make sure the “title” box for both is unchecked.
Now when I compile, my finished manuscript will look like this:
Instead of this:
I hope this helps you out if you were trying to figure out how to accomplish this. Otherwise, I hope it gave you an idea of something to try out if it would be helpful for you to organize things the way I do. You will want to keep chapter titles showing if you created them intending readers to see them, of course, but if you actually want scene titles showing and they weren’t before, this method could help you as well. I imagine it could be useful for rotating point of view novels, where each scene could be titled with the name of the character whose viewpoint you’re jumping to, or perhaps for books that jump around in time and want each scene to start off with a date. Whatever the case, I hope you’re able to accomplish the effect you’re going for with a minimal amount of headaches.
If you own Excel and are looking for a way to store a timeline of events for your novel, this is the guide for you! I’m going to outline two different methods and show how examples tailored specifically to writers. Note that I’m using Excel 365, the latest subscription version.
The First Option
The first method is the easiest I found, which makes use of pre-made graphics. What you want to do is go to the Insert tab, click Illustrations, and then select SmartArt.
From here, you can choose the graphic that you want. I recommend either the Circle Accent Timeline or the Basic Timeline, shown next to it. Both of these are found under Process.
With the Circle Accent timeline, you can use different levels of a bulleted list to show events in different ways. I used three levels, the first one representing the date, the second one representing major events that happened that day, and the third level giving additional details for those events as necessary. Some details here are more vague than they truly would be, in the interest of not giving away more than the basic opening of my book, but I’m sure you can see how you might make use of it for your own novel.
The Basic Timeline works the same way, but shows things in a different format, with an arrow and more bullet points. It might be better suited to more simple timelines than the one I have in this example. If you just want all of the events in order, without keeping track of how many days have passed since certain things happened, you can probably do away with the dates and list each event as a separate, top-level bullet instead.
The Second Option
The second method is more complicated, but, in my opinion, much more useful for long and detailed timelines. It gives so much more functionality than the basic option, and once I figured out how to use it, I loved it.
It starts with putting all of your events into a standard Excel table. Make sure you include headers. This will matter later on down the line. I recommend having at least a column for date and a column for the events. I also added a column for characters and a column for sequence of events within the day, which you’ll also see the usefulness of later.
If you want to be able to insert a timeline later, you should format the date as a real date as opposed to what I did here, however. Go for something like August 17, 2022.
What you want to do next is highlight the table, go to Insert, click PivotTable, and select From Table/Range.
This will open a popup with the range of data (if you highlighted everything, this will be prefilled for you) and a few other options. I recommend just going with the default and hitting OK.
This will open a new sheet, with a little window on the side called PivotTable Fields. This is where your table headers should be showing. Clicking the checkmark next to all of them will add them to a table that gets automatically created for you. You can then click and drag them to create the order that things get shown in. You can now see that my sequence column is ensuring that each event shows in the proper order of the things that happened to that character on that day. I had to click and drag it from the Values to the Rows, so if you’re doing the same thing, you should expect that step as well.
A Grand Total shows up by default, which doesn’t make sense for this type of data. You can get rid of it by going to the Design tab on the top of the screen, clicking Grand Totals, and selecting the option to turn them off.
Now I’m going to show you why I made a column for character. There’s actually an option with this type of table to filter based on whatever column you want. Because I created one for character, I can now focus in on what happened just to that character over the course of the book or over the course of their life if I want to include backstory (and you know I do!).
This is done by adding what Excel calls a Slicer. Go to PivotTable Analyze at the top (make sure you’ve clicked on the table if you can’t see it), and select Insert Slicer.
This brings up a popup that allows you to select the column(s) you want to be able to filter by. I selected character, and just like that I gained the ability to select the one I want to see and have the table update for me. You can also select multiple characters at once using the Multi-Select option, which looks like a little checklist. Or you can hold down Shift while clicking on an additional character.
Now then, I promised a timeline, didn’t I? From this point, you can insert one, although it will work much differently from the first option I showed. Instead of giving you a graphic with all the events listed along it, it actually works a lot like the slicer. It allows you to select a certain date or period of time and focus in on only the events that happened then.
To add one, just go back to PivotTable Analyze and click on Insert Timeline.
The popup will prompt you to select the date column. After hitting OK, you’ll have a little box where you can view by years, quarters, months, or days. You can select the day/month/quarter/year you want or click and drag to select a range. In the example here, I’ve selected only August 17th.
And there’s the basics! There are plenty of other options for you to explore if you would like. For example, you could check out the filtering capabilities next to the Row Labels heading by clicking on the funnel image. If you decide you don’t need these, you can have Row Labels not display at all by turning off Field Headers under the PivotTable Analyze tab. Similarly, if you don’t need to be able to collapse and expand things using the +/- boxes, you can turn that off in the same place.
Conclusion
Feel free to play around and create what works best for you and for your novel. As for me, I think I’m going to use this PivotTable with days of the week and made-up years (because my novel doesn’t take place in the world we know) and seed out all the character backstory information I could ever want. Because my novel doesn’t focus on just one character, this is going to be incredibly useful for me as I try to ensure consistency. Hopefully you’re able to find a method that works for you and the book you’re trying to write as well!
Today I’m going to talk about a little thing that annoyed me for a while when I was learning how to use Scrivener. I had trouble finding other help articles online for this, so here you go!
The problem, in short, comes when I copy text from Microsoft Word. No matter how little I copy, it seems to change the length of every line, such that it doesn’t match what I have in the rest of the document.
The first paragraph here was copied in from Word, while the second was written in Scrivener. The difference is obvious, but how do you fix it?
Luckily, it’s pretty easy to do. You just have to go up to the top menu and click Format, then Ruler. There’s also a keyboard shortcut (Control + Shift + R). Either of these methods will give you a ruler to play with.
Now you can see that the length of the line is being controlled by the little arrow that shows up right where all the line breaks are. To fix it, all you have to do is highlight the section, the click and drag the arrow to the place where you want the line to break. Problem solved!
As a bonus, this is also how you can add or remove an indent at the start of each paragraph (using the downward facing arrow at the start of the ruler) or indent each line after the first (using the upward facing arrow at the start of the ruler). Behold your options!
I hope this helps you get the formatting you’re looking for! It definitely saves me from quite a bit of annoyance.
Whether you’ve just joined the site or if you’re just looking for ways to make your experience even better, here are the things that have given me the best results. If you’re very new to the site or if you haven’t even decided whether to join yet, check out my earlier review here!
5. Fill out your profile with any qualifications you might have
An empty profile does not create the best impression. If other members see you posting in the forums, leaving critiques, or posting your own pieces for feedback, chances are a few of them will be curious about who you are. If you don’t give them anything to go on, they’re likely to conclude that you’re so new you don’t know what you’re doing yet or that you don’t care enough to stick around. Not everyone will look, and not everyone will care, but isn’t it worth taking a bit of time to get the best possible result?
If you have qualifications, like a degree in Creative Writing, past publications, or even just years of practice, mention it here! People want to interact with writers who know their stuff. They also love to get critiques from people who often read the type of stuff they’re writing, and they value feedback from people who have knowledge about the subjects they’re writing about. If you can’t think of anything else, I recommend at least telling a little something about what you like to write and what your current project is.
4. Critique a lot before posting
You’re certainly not required to do this, but the more critiques you give, the more likely you are to get critiques (and good quality critiques) when you post your first piece. Of course, your chances are even better if the critiques you give are of good quality, so if you don’t have experience with giving critiques, I recommend doing some research before jumping in. Do some Googling, check out the forums for tips, and go to the “Finished” tab in the story queue to read through past submissions and see what kind of critiques other people on the site are giving. All of this will give you a head start.
3. Make use of author’s notes to describe what kind of feedback you’re looking for
When you are ready to submit your first piece, I recommend making use of the author’s notes to help guide your potential critiquers. Is this an early draft that you’re looking for general feedback on, as opposed to line edits? Is it a polished draft that you’re hoping to publish? And if you’re looking to publish, are you planning to query agents or self-publish? This will help you attract the kind of critiquers who can give you the type of help you’re looking for, and you’re likely to find the experience much more rewarding.
Just be aware that if you say you think you’re ready for publication, you’re likely to get critiquers who will go all-out and no-holds-barred. If that’s exactly the type of feedback you’re looking for, it’s a great way to get it! If you’re not sure whether you’re ready or not, you might be better off saying what your goal is and asking what people think you need to do to get there. They might say “you really need to work on improving in these areas and then rewrite” or they might say “just clean up these particular sentences and you’re good to go”. Either way, you’ll definitely get an answer.
2. Send thank you notes
When someone gives you a critique, send a personalized thank you note. This is extremely important, not only because it’s polite to recognize the effort someone else put in to help you but because a number of experienced users will avoid people who don’t thank anyone. To send a thank you, open the critique you got and look on the right side for the little green button that says “Reply”.
This will bring up a message box with some default text. If you really want to make sure you’re being polite, delete what it says and rewrite it in your own words. I like to tell them exactly what I found helpful, and I often let them know the revisions I’m planning to make based on their suggestions. You can also make use of this to ask questions if you didn’t understand something the critiquer said or if you have an idea based on their feedback that you want to run past them.
1. Consider returning critiques to build relationships
One of the best parts of the site is when you build relationships with other writers. There’s nothing better than seeing the person who gave you an awesome critique on chapter 1 coming back to do the same for chapter 2. So what can you do to increase your chances of that happening? First of all, do what I said in tips 5-3 to increase the chances that helpful critiquers will be attracted to your submission in the first place. Second, make sure you send those personalized thank you’s, according to tip 2. But one more thing that can make a world of difference is giving return critiques. If you love the feedback you got from someone, take a look at what they’ve submitted. If you like the looks of it, give them a critique. Relationships are built on give and take. While it’s definitely possible that someone will decide to keep following your submissions because they like your writing so much, there are a lot of users on the site who don’t have time to critique for everyone, and a lot of them will prioritize users who return favors.
Besides, the whole critiquing process can be a lot more fun if you get to know the people you’re exchanging critiques with. You can give better feedback if you’ve read and critiqued every chapter of a novel as it comes up for feedback, and the same is true in reverse. If you’re both exchanging personalized thank you’s, you can get an even better idea of what that person is looking for and what types of help they’d most appreciate. This is where you’ll really start to see the value.
Best of luck out there! I hope that you have a great experience and get everything you’re looking for.
I read twenty-four books in 2021, a lot of fantasy, a little bit of science fiction, one classic, and one non-fiction. On the fantasy front, I read some books by hugely popular authors and others that were very recently published. In a lot of cases, I was reading to try to get a feel for what fantasy readers want to see and for what the current market is like. I also ended up enjoying a lot of what I read, to the extent that I went out and read all the sequels as well.
This year, I would like to continue doing that, but I want to find a good balance between that sort of reading and the other sort that I enjoy even though it doesn’t contribute to that sort of research. I do want to keep reading classic literature, even though it tends to take longer to get through and isn’t directly applicable to the current market. I do think that I pick up writing techniques from reading books that are masterfully written, and I think it gives me insights into the literary world and the real one in which we live.
So I’m not going to set a goal for how many books I read or even how many pages, but I am going to try to spend at least some time reading in a meaningful way every week. Whether that means a few chapters in a classic that makes me stop and think or an entire modern novella that I just fly through, I’m going to try to feel good about myself for what I’m accomplishing. Numbers aren’t the whole story, but at this time next year, I want to look back and feel satisfied.
One of the features I use the most in Scrivener is the word count functionality. Sure, Microsoft Word and Google Docs will both tell you how many words are in your document, but Scrivener really takes it to another level. I’m going to be showing off my favorites and giving suggestions for how you can make use of them yourself.
Here in Scrivener’s Project Statistics (accessible under the Project menu), you can see word and character counts but also the page count in two different formats. Under Options, you can change how many words should be counted as a page, as well as what should be counted as part of the manuscript. This means you can have extra sections, like a reader’s guide for pronunciations and definitions of fantasy words, without having to manually subtract the word count for them while trying to determine how long the actual text of your novel is. You can also easily highlight a selection of scenes or chapters to see how long just those are, which can be particularly helpful if you’re trying to find chapters that are longer or shorter than the others or find out if you’re spending too much time on the exposition, a particular sub-plot, etc.
You can also set word count goals for each scene, which you can set ahead of time if you’re writing a first draft and have an idea of how long you want it to be or after the fact if you’re revising. Personally, I use this to set a maximum number of words because I have a problem with expanding while I revise. Having something like this helps me keep the writing under control, by forcing me to go back and take out the sentences and words that aren’t really serving a purpose. This can be edited at the bottom of every text by clicking on the little circle at the bottom right-hand corner (shown beside the green progress bar in the image above).
If you like goal setting, you can really take it all the way with the Project Targets window, one more option to be found under the Project menu. Here, you can set a target word count for your entire manuscript, as well as for your session (which starts when you open the program and continues until you close it, unless you choose to click Reset). For everyone who likes to target a certain number of words per day, this is an excellent option. For people like me, it will even count backwards as I try to push my manuscript back down to 120,000 words or less following my latest round of revisions!
All of these are little things, but I find that they really improve my writing experience. If you have Scrivener and haven’t explored it fully, I hope I’ve helped you find some new features to try. If you have, feel free to leave a comment about how you make use of these. Everybody has a different process, but I’m sure we can all learn something from each other.
Shannon Fallon 