What is Typo Blindness?
A typo is a typographical error. Typo Blindness occurs when a writer cannot see the errors in his or her own copy.
Clean copy. This is the goal to strive for when submitting a manuscript to an agent, editor, publisher, and, ultimately, a reader. Clean means error-free. No typographical errors; no misuse of homonyms or synonyms; no funky punctuation. Continue reading “How To Avoid Typo Blindness”
What is a Themed Story?
A themed story is one written specifically to reflect a particular idea or concept.
Scenario:
You, the author, see a Call for Submissions for a magazine, contest, or short story anthology. The parameters of the Submissions Call lists word count, author eligibility, deadline—and a theme.
~ “This collection will include stories about Grand Canyon National Park.”
~ Or, “The June, 2019 of Write It Right will focus on fathers and sons.”
~ Or, “Send us your true tales of humorous holiday disasters.”
Editors of a publication, organizers of a conference, or judges in a writing contest limit entries or submissions by selecting a central idea for stories. A regional chapter of a national organization may want to publish a themed anthology that highlights their area. A journal may want to shine a spotlight on some particular social issue or historical event. A publisher may want to collect stories about a particular idea to make the finished product easier to market.
There are numerous reasons for calling for themed submissions. Here are some tips on writing for one.
Regional publications, such as literary magazines or anthologies from group chapters, will often seek submissions set in their region—a logical choice that not only highlights their home base but hones in on a market. A smart writer might seek a little-known or underserved event, or write in a specific or personal way about a unique spot in the area.
The theme was selected for a reason. Incorporating it in a meaningful way, rather than attempting a plug-in, will make a better story.
But if you write about the time you dropped the Thanksgiving turkey on the floor because Grandma had a heart attack and/or this gave Uncle Joe an excuse to get drunk and throw Aunt Betty’s cranberry jelly mold through the plate glass window—that’s a holiday disaster all right, but is it humorous?
In short, be sure you read all the words in the theme, and match them with your story.
A theme is a box. You can think inside the box, outside the box, or you can open the box and crawl out of it carrying a thread.
In addition to editing Fish Tales, I’ve successfully written to theme a few times. My story “Trust” received the Fiction Writing Award for the Writers at the Beach: Seaglass 2008 conference and was published in Delaware Beach Life magazine. The theme was “oceans.”
Have you written or are trying to write to a theme? Any thoughts or advice to share? I’m listening.
Does this seem like a snore of a How-To post? If so, let me explain why I’m devoting a How-To Thursday to a subject so seemingly banal.
There are scores of resources on how to correctly punctuate the titles of books, songs, movies, newspapers, articles, and other works of art. Despite that, I often make title corrections in manuscripts. This tells me that while it’s easy to research, title punctuation still baffles a lot of writers.
So here is a quick and easy way to remember what gets put in italics and what goes between quotation marks. Continue reading “How To Punctuate Titles in a Manuscript”
In early August, a 15-page handwritten letter was sent from Earl Bradley to the justices of the Delaware State Supreme Court. The letter was Bradley’s pitch on why the justices should reconsider his case.
If the name Earl Bradley doesn’t ring a bell with you, here’s a reminder: Bradley is the worst pedophile in American history. He was convicted of raping, assaulting and molesting 85 girls and 1 boy, over more than a decade. The average age of his victims was three.
Yes, you read that correctly: age 3. How did he have access to so many very young children, for so long? He was their pediatrician.
In sending the letter mentioned above, Bradley bypassed his attorneys. This was his first communication since his conviction in June 0f 2011. By sending the letter, Bradley “broke his silence.”
Silence and rape are hellish partners, aren’t they? Of course, it’s hard to cry foul when you are only three. Often, all a three-year-old can do is cry.
I don’t often recycle posts, but below is one I wrote as a guest blogger at The Working Stiffs. It appeared after Bradley’s one-day trial, but before the judge delivered a sentence. The sentence turned out to be 14 life terms in prison, plus 164 years. A lot of people think he got off easy.
I’m revisiting this sad and painful story because in his letter, Bradley expresses his outrage about the “assaults” on his personal privacy, and requests his conviction be overturned. The thought that this might happen, even conceivably, is chilling. But this is our legal system, which I respect. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to be silent about my disgust with him.
Original post below, from July 15, 2011:
WARNING: This post contains graphic descriptions of child abuse, including rape.
Dr. Earl Bradley was an odd guy. His BayBees Pediatric clinic near Lewes, Delaware was known for its unusual décor: a real merry-go-round and small Ferris wheel in the yard, with a life-sized Buzz Lightyear nearby. The clinic’s VW bug was painted like a bee with black and yellow stripes. Inside, walls displayed posters of TV characters and shelves full of toys. One room held a small movie theater where Dr. Bradley showed Disney films.
This was not your typical pediatrician’s office.
But it’s not against the law to be peculiar. For all his eccentricities, Bradley had a thriving practice. He seemed to love his little patients—so much so that he lavished kisses on them. He didn’t rush appointments—he sometimes spent a half hour, alone, with a child. He took little girls to a toy room to be rewarded with “princess dolls” and candy. If a child had an allergic reaction to an inoculation, he provided red Popsicles to soothe swollen lips. He gave up his weekends for three-day series of shots to treat ear infections.
And if children cried after an exam, well, sick children cry. Shots hurt. His patients were too young to explain their tears and fears, so parents did what parents do. They trusted their child’s doctor. A doctor, like a priest or a teacher or a camp counselor, operates in a position of trust. Plus, if there was anything untoward about Dr. Earl Bradley, there were licensing boards and medical review teams and police to catch that. Right?
Being odd is not illegal, but it is illegal to abuse children. Eighteen months ago, after a year-long investigation that began when a toddler told her mother that Bradley touched her “in the basement and it hurt,” Delaware State Police troopers went to BayBees Pediatrics with an arrest warrant. It listed multiple counts of sexual exploitation against Dr. Earl Bradley. In a search of the property, homemade videos that showed 13 hours, 35 minutes and 6 seconds of criminal sexual activity performed by the doctor on his patients were discovered.
Over 100 children appeared on the tapes. The average victim was three years old. All but one were girls. During the videoed assaults, little girls turned “ashen gray” while being orally raped to the point of suffocation, after which their attacker—a trained, licensed and certified medical professional—performed CPR to revive them. Footage showed children in diapers screaming as they tried to escape.
The arrest date was December 8, 2009. A news photo shows a handcuffed Dr. Earl Bradley wearing a jacket with Mickey Mouse embroidered on it.
Since the arrest, Delawareans have reeled in disbelief at a horror tale the Brothers Grimm couldn’t fathom in their sickest imaginings. The Popsicles? To disguise lips swollen after forcible oral sex. The three-day series of shots? To allow repeated assaults on the same child. The toy room with the “princess dolls”? Equipped with cameras so Bradley could record his sadistic acts.
The toys, the movies, the candy, the kisses, the special attention? All meant to “groom” unsuspecting parents, to put them at ease, to show how much he cared about their little tykes. Because Earl Bradley might be an evil, deranged bastard not worthy of the oxygen he sucks into his undeserving lungs, but like many pedophiles, he was also clever and manipulative. He knew that to gain access to his young victims, he had to get past their parents. To do that, he relied on the trust people afford to doctors.
In February of 2010, a grand jury indicted Bradley on more than 470 charges of abuse, rape and sexual exploitation of 103 children. The oldest victim was 14; the youngest three months. 86 victims have been identified. 15 have not.
His trial was held last month. Bradley waived his right to a jury, so a bench trial was held. Only two witnesses called by the prosecution, both Delaware State Troopers. One was detective Thomas Elliott, the lead investigator who authored the search warrant.
The other witness was with the High-Tech Crimes Unit, a veteran computer forensics expert who analyzed the videotapes. Detective Scott Garland viewed 13+ hours of little girls—toddlers, babies–subjected to assaults he described under oath as violent, brutal, beyond anything he had ever witnessed, scenes nothing in his years investigating sex crimes had prepared him to see. At one point, he testified that he yelled “Let her up!” at his computer as the little girl onscreen was orally raped until she lost consciousness.
I’ve debated about naming Detectives Elliott and Garland. I have because I have to believe that somewhere in this horrifying situation are some good guys. Some DSP troopers who worked the Bradley case required special counseling. I hope it helped them. The detectives deserve recognition for doing a job I, and most people reading this, could never want or perform.
The trial lasted one day. Bradley was founded guilty on 24 counts of rape, assault and sexual exploitation of a child. His sentencing is pending.
At the trial, the defense didn’t put up a case. Why? Because there is an issue with the execution of the search warrant that uncovered the video tapes. An appeal is expected. If the video evidence is thrown out, it is unlikely that his victims can provide reliable testimony. Children don’t make good witnesses. In this case, some of the victims were not only too young to be considered reliable, some were still too young to talk.
But the children aren’t the only victims in the Bradley case, and the complaint that result in his arrest wasn’t the first. Since 1994, when he worked at a Philadelphia hospital, complaints were made to hospitals, to police, to state medical boards against Earl Bradley, by parents, nurses, doctors, even his sister and officer manager, about inappropriate touching, videotaping of patients, prolonged or unnecessary vaginal exams. He was investigated more than once, but there was never sufficient evidence for an arrest warrant. Now, Delaware’s governor has called for an independent review of the various police, medical and legal bodies involved in the Bradley case. In February, the state medical board permanently revoked his medical license.
In a few weeks, after reviewing testimony and the videotapes, the judge will deliver a sentence. I pity that judge, just like I pity the state troopers, and as I pity the victims’ parents, whose nightmares I can’t begin to imagine. Most of all, I pity the tiny little children whose youth might, hopefully, spare them remembering what happened to them at the hands of a monster.
But pity doesn’t stop crime. Earl Bradley has been called the worst pedophile in American history, but few people outside of Delaware know about him. Some people here want it that way. People who got angry at constant news coverage. People who believe it makes the area look bad. People who find talk of child rape distasteful. People who want to heal and put all this ugliness behind them. People who don’t want to believe that someone who is educated and with an important job, could ever do such horrible things to an innocent child.
On the other side are people like me, who think that stories about monsters who hurt children should be shouted from the rooftops. A pedophile wants you to be in denial. A pedophile wants you to believe he can’t live in your pretty little town. If you don’t believe it can happen to you, to your child, in your town, by a person in a position of trust, all the better for the pedophile.
What is an Open Mic?
An Open Mic is an invitation to artists to share their work. Open Mics may follow a reading or musical performance, when the floor is opened to the audience.
An Open Mic can be good or it can be cringe-worthy. For a politician or public figure, an open mic can be a “gotcha!” moment when their raw, honest whisperings are inadvertently captured by a live microphone. For a police station dispatcher, “Open mic!” is what patrol officers yell into their own mics when the dispatcher forgets to key off before discussing her love life with whoever is nearby.
For an author, an Open Mic is a chance to share work with a receptive audience. There are different types of Open Mic opportunities: Continue reading “How To Tame an Open Mic”
The story hero is rich, charming, and handsome, with a tragic past: his parents eloped and died young, so when we meet him, he’s a lonely orphan being raised by a stern grandfather.
To his good fortune and our delight, he is adopted by a neighbor family full of girls, who treat him as a playmate and pseudo—brother. As he grows up, we see he can be shy at parties, but will happily dance away from the crowded ballroom; he is a scamp and a lazy student, but in turn can be considerate and brave. He has a mercurial, musical side that comes from his Italian mother. All in all, he’s a wonderfully written character.
When he is old enough, he falls in love, but alas! The young lady of his choosing turns down his proposal. Broken-hearted and bitter, he runs off to Europe to flex his inner dilettante. Eventually, his true self – the good boy – emerges again when he falls for another young lady—his first love’s baby sister!
As we have seen throughout the story, despite our hero’s many attributes, nothing comes easily for him. His new love insists he prove himself worthy, mature, and steadfast. Again to his good fortune and our delight, he does, and marries her, and returns to her family, where he has always belonged.
He sounds like the perfect romantic hero, doesn’t he? He’s got it all: tragedy, potential, redemption. If there is one thing wrong with this hero, it’s his name.
Laurie.
In case you have not already guessed, Laurie is short for Theodore Laurence, the romantic boy-brother-lover of Little Women.
When I read Little Women as a young girl, I fell in love with Laurie. I’d already fallen in love with Gilbert Blythe from Anne of Green Gables, and would soon fall in love with Marius Pontmercy of Les Miserables, so my penchant for falling for good boys was firmly entrenched.
But while Gilbert may not be the most testosteroney moniker around, and Marius is, well, French, neither gives a modern reader quite as much pause as Laurie.
Because, face it—Laurie is a girl’s name. In 1868, when the first half of Little Women was published, perhaps a feminine nickname for a male character was acceptable. Jo sometimes called him Teddy, which was slightly better, I suppose, but for the most part, he remained Laurie.
This makes me wonder. In 2012, can a male hero have a girl’s name?
Think of the last novels you’ve read. What is the hero’s name? Jake, Jack, Russ, Dave, Joe, Moe, Mike, Mick, Nick, Will, Jim, Luke, Walt, Ranger. One syllable (except for Ranger) and a manly man’s name.
There are times when I open a novel and see one of the above names, and I am reminded of the scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding when Gus introduces his nieces and nephews: “Anita, Diane and Nick. Anita, Diane, and Nick. Nick, Nick. Nicko. Nick. Nicky.”
I have nothing against Jake, Jack, or Joe, or Nick, Nicko, and Nicky, but wouldn’t it be great to have some two syllable names in there? Even, gasp!, an occasional Laurie?
There’s an old Johnny Cash song called “A Boy Named Sue.” Sue’s dad abandoned him and left him with a girl’s name, which seemed like an added cruelty. Salt in the wound. Poor Sue had to fight his whole life: “My name is Sue. How do you do? You’re gonna die!”
It made for a cute song, but it made Sue strong and tough. Would he have been so resilient if he was called Mike?
If we are interested in challenging a male hero, think about the extra challenge of being saddled with a girl’s name.
So, I’m curious. Must your manly hero have a manly name? Would you be okay with a tough guy named Laurie? Or Sue?
Ramona
Ramona DeFelice Long 