Writing Backwards

I met with Jeff Gerke from Marcher Lord Press on Nov. 13th, 2010 at the Heart of America Christian Writer's Conference. He is a great promoter of "on the edge" Christian writing. He reviewed some of our writing and made several comments--both positive and negative. He noted that at times the writing uses "triplets". These are sentences that contain three actions in one sentence. It would be something like: "He lifted his head, looked into the sky, and sneezed." Whereas there is not an overabundance of these, it is something that I do at times. We will need to go back and make some changes to minimize this type of sentence. He also mentioned that POV is something to always be aware of, especially in descriptions of characters who are by themselves. And for us to watch weak sentence structure such as starting sentences with participles such as "ing" words. While he gave kudos such as "I didn't comment on this page because I was enjoying it. You really are good at description--do more of that," he asked if we could "extend the moments before the first sentence." What was life like before this incident? Who is this person--Alexenah? He felt as if he was seeing someone come into a room, killing everyone and we don't care who the people are...and we need to. As a result I have written a scene to put before it and have sent it to Tom for edit. By doing this, it seems that I am writing the book backwards!

For the record: Sometimes I read other well known authors and see them break the rules all the time. They use "ly" words, break point of view, and I just keep reading and enjoy the story.