Monthly Archives: August 2011

23 Techniques for Fighting Dirty – A Guide For Your Fictional Throw Down HOSTED by MORE COWBELL JUDGED by NAKED EDITOR

Posted on August 30, 2011 | 3 Comments
23 Techniques for Fighting Dirty – A Guide For Your Fictional Throw Down

– Jenny Hansen


What in the heck do you mean by Fighting Dirty?

Jenny Hansen has been creating a fiction writer’s Dirty Fighting Guide on her blog,

MORE COWBELL**

She is offering up a graduation gift (a kick-butt contest) to all of her loyal writer/readers, a graduation into Dirty Fighting Apprenticeship. AND she’s asked me to be a part of it!!!!

Um… are you going to “fight” the winner of this contest? I’m scared, Tiffany. You are pretty tuff!

No no no. Not what this is about, AT ALL!

This is about writing a conflict into your scene, an argument. An argument that really RAMPS up the friction and gives writers the ability to toss in everything from back story to any unknown feelings in the relationship.

What is my part in it? I’m the silverhaired man in the ring, slapping the sweaty, blood soaked mat —- counting down to the TKO!

ok, not really.

Here is the real deal:

I get to do an on-screen edit of the final 3 scenes in the contest.

I will be editing your action/conflict/argument scenes to show those lucky 3 writers what works, what could be better, what is right on the money! And also: missed opportunities, how to add physicality to the scene without slowing it down, how the dialogue could be streamlined, how to add speed with the cadence of your scene, etc.

I could go on, but I want you guys to get readin’ the Guide and start on your entries!

“There are twenty-three entries on the Dirty Fighting Techniques. Surely at least one of these will help you ratchet up the conflict in your story. We want to throw those precious characters FAR under the bus.”
—- Jenny Hansen

Now head on over to Jenny’s blog and toss your characters in the mud, get them dirty, and get them FIGHTING!
http://jennyhansenauthor.wordpress.com/

I want to see sweat fling, flang, flying off of those characters and their dialogue.

Make me proud!

*********** if you missed it, here is a link to my last guest blog on writing action scenes – There is More To Writing Action Than Meets the Fist

~TiffanyLawsonInman is NakedEditor

** in ref to SNL skit
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/719364/
 with host Christopher Walken

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Posted in contest, Dirty Fighting, fiction writing, Naked Editor, self editing

LunchBreakContest: Fiction Writer’s Challenge

Posted on August 26, 2011 | 18 Comments

** this contest is over :(
Never fear – more to come!
Winners have been posted in the comments section.

WELCOME FICTION WRITERS!

This is the site for the #LunchBreakContest
(a Saturday morning, or late afternoon coffee break can be used too)

This contest is split onto two sites

1. Read the article at

http://haleywhitehall.com/2011/08/writing-action-meets-fist/

2. Comment under my article for ONE entry into drawing.

3. Come back to this post at Naked Editor’s blog.

4. As a comment for this post, Enter your novel blurb/ or manuscript blurb, and your very own Dramatic Dissection as a fun writing challenge and a SECOND op for your name to go into the drawing **** SEE CONTEST RULES BELOW ! !

*** you will have to read the guest blog article titled:
ThereIsMoreToWritingActionThanMeetsTheFist
in order to understand the CONTEST RULES.

In ref to the guest blog article’s moment to moment.

Step 1: Copy/paste a scene or portion of a scene from your own manuscript (or your favorite novel) where there is a power exchange between two characters.

Step 2: Give us your moment to moment on the cause-effect relationships that are happening in your example.

Step 3: When you are doing this, you might have an “aha” moment! There might not be enough going on between your characters during a high stakes scene! Then take a break later and work on it. I will be leaving this contest open until Sunday Evening so that you guys have an opportunity to edit before posting.

** I didn’t say it would be easy, I said, “Fiction Writing Challenge!”
Prizes include:

FREE EDITs-For-First-Five-Pages-Of-Your-Manuscript by yours truly
TiffanyLawsonInman, the NAKED EDITOR

************** Keep in mind, I might not pick just one winner. If I am impressed by how many people participate and step up to the challenge, I might crank out FREE EDITS for 5 or more writers! ************

FREE registration for the Naked Editor’s October online class, offered at Lawson Writers Academy !

class description:

The Triple Threat Behind Staging A Scene:
An Actor’s Take On Writing Physicality, Choreography, and Action.

**Action creates a rhythm allowing the reader to breathe in sync with your characters. Physicality has the ability to highlight personality, relationship, and motivation. Choreography, in a fight or love scene, can expose the intricacies of your ever moving story.

For a list of Topics covered in this course, go to:
http://bit.ly/LawsonWritersAcademyCourses

Winners have been picked!

Traditionally for a drawing, all names go into a hat and a certain number of names are pulled out for different prizes.

Well I changed the rules. Don’t worry! It was in your favor 

Because the challenge was difficult and because you all had to post that precious writing in the worlds view.
(sometimes a very scary thing for even published authors)

I put ALL of the contest entries into a hat and pulled ALL of the names out for one or the other of the prizes.

Yup. ALL of the ladies who participated in the challenge (and they also commented over on Haley’s Blog) are WINNERS!

Then, I went BACK to Haley’s blog comments, took the leftover names and put them into a different hat.

I picked, not 1, not 2, but

—– 3 winners out of the comment hat.

I feel like a Leprechaun tossing out edits and classes!

Weeeeeee!!!!

Winners of my October class: The Triple Threat Behind Staging A Scene:
An Actor’s Take On Writing Physicality, Choreography, and Action.

Jami Gold
Bratty
Jennifer (BookwormCastle)
Jessica Aspen
Yikici

Winners of EDITs-For-First-Five-Pages-Of-Your-Manuscript by yours truly
TiffanyLawsonInman, the NAKED EDITOR

Jody Moller
Kimberle
Gloria Richard
Stacy Green
Kate Macnicol

Congrats to you all!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now, if you didn’t win the class and want to enroll, gosh – it’s 30 dollars – you can swing that, right?? 

AND if you didn’t win the First Five Page Edits – I have a Post-NaNoWriMo (National Writers Month) special that will be happening in December and January – so stay tuned!!

In order to sign the class winners up for the class – please email me at TiffanyLawsonIsMyEditor@gmail.com so I can enroll you guys free of charge.
Please put *Class winner* in the subject box I can’t wait to see you all in the October!

Edit winners, I will need an email from you too! Not only do I need your FIRST five pages, but I need your synopsis as well. I need to know where your story is headed, to make sure you are starting out in right direction in the first 5 pages! Email those to TiffanyLawsonIsMyEditor@gmail.com with *Edit Winners* in subject line

Thanks again for participating! Keep coming back to my blog and follow me on Twitter @NakedEditor I will be hosting more (perhaps easier, perhaps not…) contests, and just plain drawings, running Editing Specials, starting my Self-Editing Tips n’ Tricks series at the end of this week, teaching MORE classes, and hopefully getting a little bit of sleep.

Much love to you and your writing,
TiffanyLawsonInman

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Posted in contest, Freelance Editing, Writing Craft

The WHY behind NAKED EDITOR

Posted on August 23, 2011 | 1 Comment

Why, Naked Editor?

Because I believe in order to find the power inside a manuscript you have to strip fiction down to the bones. Cut the fluff and find the core of the characters and plot. Many writers head into a project with too much at once. They have created a full life for their manuscript and its characters. At this stage, writers can’t see the words for what they are anymore. It makes for either too much going into each line, or not enough.

Can a story survive in this state?

No.

Voice gets lost, there is misguided emotion, characters are missing motivation, relationships don’t hold the reader’s attention, description dumps slow the pace, and a writer’s precious story is lost.

What happens when you shop a story like this to an agent or publisher?

Rejection.

And most of the time…the writer doesn’t know why. But, I do.

I have experience as an actor, book seller, a literary agent’s assistant, and freelance fiction editor.

With my professional actor training, I look at fiction from the character’s eyes. This view can show an author where they are lacking in cause-effect relationships, awkward body language, static wording, meaningless dialogue, and cadence flops. My skills as an editor/agent can pinpoint where there are weaknesses in plot, each character, and each character relationship.

My perspective on a manuscript spans from the inside out, and from the outside in.

I see myself like Tom Hanks in The Da Vinci Code (minus the stuffy sport coat.) The clue filled passage is stretched out in front of him, and as he is reading, words and symbols light up, zipping from here to there. Words are all we have to light the path to publication. That is what I see when I edit a manuscript, bright and shiny clues, leading me to the writer’s potential.

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Posted in Actor, Description Dumps, Dramatic Action, Naked Editor

The First Blog Post. Small post. More to come. Oh, so much more!

Posted on August 19, 2011 | 4 Comments
Hello blog world! I finished my ABOUT ME *just the beginning page, only to realize I have a blank spot on home page for a post. Any post. My FIRST POST!Well I’m going to use this time to give a shout out to my mom, Margie Lawson. If you don’t know who she is, go to:


http://www.margielawson.com/
 or just know that she is an editing teacher guru! She has just installed a new section of her site called, Margie Graduates Guest Blog Arena.
http://bit.ly/MargieGradBlogArena
(time out for a curtsy, I came up with the name:) ) It’s a fantastic place to see release dates for her graduates books, deep editing analysis, and a little taste of what they wrote.One of the first things I have learned about the writing/editing/publishing world – we need to support each other!

To learn more about becoming a Margie Graduate or a Tiffany Graduate, go to:


http://www.margielawson.com/lawson-writers-academy-courses

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Posted in Guest blog, Lawson Writer's Academy, Margie Lawson