Writers in the Storm

by Lori Freeland  

Whether you’ve just joined the writing world or you’ve been around awhile, you’ve probably figured out that good writing takes time and practice. Thankfully, it’s a skill like any other and can be honed. While some parts may come naturally, others will need to be learned. And that won’t happen overnight. But you can kick-start your knowledge and make it look like you know exactly what you’re doing.

Here are 5 ways to instantly up your writing game:  

1. Identify Your Audience

You can’t write for everyone. Throw out the temptation to be a bibliophile-pleaser. Unlike a stretchy pair of leggings, your final product will not and cannot be a one-size-fits-all. Know your genre and your readers’ expectations.

Writing for academics? Go ahead and throw in the big, fancy scientific words and dry, winding sentences. Penning a book for kids? Leave those words out, and research what’s appropriate for the reading level you’re trying to hit. Creating commercial fiction? Ditch a literary style in favor of something more fast-paced. Putting together a how-to guide? Make sure every step is clear and concise.  

Sidenote: Word will give you a general idea of where you fit in grade-level wise in the editor feature.

2. Strive for Clarity

The goal of most writers is to get their message out of their own heads and into someone else’s. This applies to novels, picture books, memoirs, articles, blogs, manuals . . . you get the idea. If the reader can’t understand the idea or the words, they have no take-away. If the story is too hard to follow, you’ll lose your audience.

• avoid clutter on the page

Paragraph often and make sure there’s enough “white space.” Which would you rather read?

• stay away from winding, snake-like sentences, multiple clauses, repetition, and  redundancy

Don’t do this (and yes, I’ve read similar sentences far too often):

At the beginning of the day, he first went to the meadow and took out his picnic basket and set it on the blanket, poured himself a glass of wine, cut the cheese into tiny cubes, thought about how blue the sky seemed to be despite the ongoing bad-air alert and, wishing he wasn’t alone, he closed his eyes and dreamed of his former love, and that’s how he began his day at first.

• avoid using words you wouldn’t use in an ordinary conversation

He frolicked through the meadow versus He walked through the meadow

• in fiction, paint a visual with words and “show” us the movie running in your mind

• in nonfiction, be conversational and invite your reader in

3. Use Proper Punctuation

Even though our casual, text-based culture says otherwise, capitalization, commas, and periods are still a thing, And an emoji isn’t actually considered punctuation. You can find the first post in my Comma Series here.

• lean into contractions

While this may feel like the opposite of “proper” punctuation, it’s not.

Read that sentence again this way: While this may feel like the opposite of “proper” punctuation, it is not.

I just got a lot less conversational in my tone, and most writing is not—and shouldn’t be—formal.

Why? Because we think and speak in contractions. Unless you’re writing a formal paper or academic article, ignore what you learned in school. This applies to fiction—not only with  dialogue but narrative as well—nonfiction, and even emails.

No contractions: I will not go with you. You are not very nice. I am not happy with you.

Contractions: I won’t go with you. You’re not very nice. I’m not happy with you.

Ellipses have had a makeover

• instead of:

She fell asleep…and missed everything.

• try:

She fell asleep … and missed everything

OR

She fell asleep . . . and missed everything. 

• periods and commas go inside quotation marks, even if it looks weird

• She wanted his “job.”
  • Because he wanted “out,” she let him go.

• semicolons and colons are fading out while em dashes are gaining popularity and can be used in place of a semicolon

Her career as a pastry chef was on the line—no ordinary bakeware would do.

• in place of a colon and words like “including,” “like,” and “such as.”

She chose the party events—the favors, the games, the cocktails.  

• as an interrupter

She didn’t just want dinner—although it smelled terrific—she also wanted company.

• to break up dialogue and action (make sure the em dashes go outside the quotes)

“I don’t want that dog”—she pointed to the Irish setter—“I want the Lhasa apso.”

4. Keep Up With Trends

Trends in spelling, grammar, and punctuation change in the writing world just as they do everywhere else. Want to keep up? Subscribe to a resource like The Chicago Manual of Style online. CMOS recently updated to the 17th edition, and they offer a free thirty-day trial.

Bookmark the Merriam-Webster online dictionary and pop in what you’re unsure of, especially hyphenated words. Some of them are now spelled as one word. Make sure your titles are properly capitalized based on your style (CMOS, MLA, AP, etc.).

Check out Capitalize My Title.

Here are some current trends (at least for now):

• there is no “s” in toward
• ’til is now spelled till
• there’s no longer a comma before words like “too” and “either” at the end of a sentence
  • I like cookies too.
  • I didn’t want to go either.
• some common hyphenated words have merged
  • e-mail is email
  • make-up is makeup
• “his/her” and “his or her” are changing to them or they

5. Take a Second Look

Even editors need editors. It doesn’t matter if you’re sending an email, writing copy, or polishing a manuscript, read what you’ve written. At least once. Ideally, out loud. Your ear catches what your eye misses.

Run spellcheck too. But always check to make sure the suggested changes are accurate. Automated spellcheckers can’t replace human discernment when it comes to context. *See screenshot below.

I still use the editor in Word, but I also like PerfectIt 5 as it pairs with The Chicago Manual of Style. Some other writers use Grammarly, but it can throw you off if you’re not careful.

*Word wants me to change “read” to “or reading,” but that doesn’t work in the context of this sentence. 

Don’t leave your writing to chance. Definitely don’t rely on the old adage “fake it till you make it.” Instead, decide to learn one thing well, then add another and another. I’ll bet you’ll be amazed at what comes naturally to your brain and shows up effortlessly on the page.

Let’s Talk . . .

What are some ways you appear professional in your writing? Are there tips a seasoned writer shared with you when you first started out? Talk to us in the comments. We’re all looking to become strong, solid writers, and helping each other will get us there sooner.

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About Lori

Lori Freeland believes everyone has a story to tell. An author, editor, and writing coach, she holds a BA in psychology from The University of Wisconsin and lives in the Dallas area. A regular contributor to Writers in the Storm and Crosswalk and former editor for The Christian Pulse and Armonia Publishing, she’s presented multiple workshops at conferences across the country and has experience in developmental and copy edits in various genres of fiction and nonfiction. She writes articles, novels, and everything in between. When she’s not curled up with her husband drinking too much coffee and worrying about her adult kids, she loves to mess with the lives of the imaginary people living in her head. You can visit her at lorifreeland.com and find her inspirational blog and writing tips at lafreeland.com.  

Image by Kevin Phillips from Pixabay

by Piper Bayard of Bayard & Holmes

My writing partner, Jay Holmes, is a veteran of the Cold War and every other war since, as well as a 45+ year member of the United States Intelligence Community. As such, he is also a veteran of approaches by honeypots.

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“Dating for me was gorgeous Russian women appearing out of nowhere and pretending to love me, and me pretending to believe them.”

~ Jay Holmes

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Honeypots are spies trained to use sex for the purpose of wheedling information out of targets, luring targets to specific locations, and/or enticing targets into behavior that can be used to blackmail them. These professionals are highly skilled in the arts of seduction and pleasure, and they will perform literally any act the target desires.

While many of them work directly for governments, like Holmes’s dates did during the Cold War, they are sometimes prostitutes working with a pimp who uses them to gather information in order to sell it to the highest bidder, or several bidders. Whether they are official government agents or freelancers, honeypots are one of the most effective tools of the espionage profession.

Honeypot Myths

One of the most common myths about honeypots in fiction is that of the Honeypot Assassin—the seductress who murders her mark in the name of espionage. It’s not that it never happens in real life, but it pretty much doesn’t happen on purpose. This goes back to the fact that most people aren’t black widow spiders. As a general rule, we humans like to keep our killing and our sex compartmentalized far away from each other.

The seductive love-kitten personality and the assassin personality are fundamentally different from each other—a rather universal fact that even the Soviets recognized. For example, the assassin will likely balk at the simple act of surrendering their hair to a barber for a trim. Honeypots, on the other hand, must freely surrender their entire bodies to total strangers.

I make all your mousey fantasy come true.

Not only that, the honeypot must be convincingly enthusiastic about doing absolutely anything the target wants him or her to do, even if it involves a troupe of circus acrobats, random vegetables from the produce section, flying monkeys, dirty shoes, or inappropriate references to their mother and barnyard animals. In fact, the more elaborate, exotic, or outright depraved the target’s behavior, the better for the honeypot.

Since honeypots are most frequently about obtaining blackmail material, vanilla sex is of virtually no use to them. Their goal is to lure the target to their pre-wired lair to extract and live out the mark’s deepest, darkest fantasies.

Honeypots and Surveillance

Honeypots work with teams that go into a space ahead of them and set up whatever surveillance equipment is appropriate to the task at hand. It’s the honeypot’s job to get the mark back to that space for the soirée with the flying monkeys, so to speak. In the rare case that the goal is assassination, the honeypot will most commonly lure the target to a specific location for someone else to take over from there.

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“How do you know if there’s a honeypot working your Moscow hotel? You’re in a Moscow hotel.”

~ Jay Holmes

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Who Do Honeypots Target?

Honeypots don’t just target spooks* (members of the Intelligence Community). Spooks are actually the minority targets. Any businessman, senator, banker, engineer, scientist, or person in a position to potentially know something of value is a viable mark.

Honeypots from various countries target these marks in coffee shops, museums, bars of five-star hotels, or any other place where they can strike up a conversation that quickly leads to, “What is the dirtiest thing you have ever wanted to do? I want to do it with you.”

Honey traps—the traps set by honeypots—don’t work on every target, but they work frequently. If they didn’t work, the Russians and other countries would not waste millions of dollars in such enterprises. The Russians may not be “Soviet” anymore, but they are still the same cheap spies that they were a few decades ago, and they don’t like wasting money that could be better spent on misappropriations for their own personal use.

Who Uses the Most Honeypots?

The United States has never used as many honeypots as Russia and other countries do. While there have been American booty spooks over the years, no American intelligence operative is ever expected to have sex with anyone as part of a mission. The American Intelligence Community keeps a Rolodex of high-level prostitutes ready to meet any such requirements.

The Russians, on the other hand, keep a large stable of honeypots, and they always have. No doubt some Russian honeypots are volunteers. However, many, particularly during the Cold War, are beautiful women and men who have been coerced into the profession with threats of harm to their families.

Notable Honeypot History

Some of the more interesting honeypot cases that have slowly leaked over time involved US President John F. Kennedy. He holds the distinction of having slept with three honeypots, though not simultaneously, and not all while he was president.

One of the spies, Inga Arvad, was ostensibly working for the Nazis during WWII when JFK slept with her. The second occurrence was during Kennedy’s presidential trip to Ireland, when he apparently slept with a Soviet spy. That spy was later involved with the British “Profumo Affair,” which brought down the government of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. In a third incident, JFK slept with a member of a freelance spy ring who was selling information on a “piecework basis” to Russia and its Warsaw Pact allies.

In spite of this busy sex schedule with foreign spies, there is no credible evidence that JFK shared any secret information with any of his seemingly countless conquests.

And that’s the other side of the honeypot equation. Getting a man or a woman (or a man, a woman, and a flying monkey circus) into bed, and getting he, she, or them to share some bodily fluids, does not always lead to obtaining useful information.

Managing Honeypots

When operatives have missions in locations where the Russians, Chinese, or others have an abundance of honeypots, the operatives must take all of those eyes and ears into account. One way an intelligence agency can deal with all of those spies is to do what’s called “flood the local environment.” That means sending out a bevy of spooks to attract the attention of the honeypots, their surveillance teams, and any other spies in the area and keep them busy.

Who's zooming who?

This tactic has numerous uses. Operatives might flood the environment to keep enemy spies averted while an important mission goes down elsewhere in the area. It’s an espionage sleight of hand, if you will.

Another reason operatives will flood the environment is to assess the quantity and behavior of another country’s spooks—to find out how enemy teams will react to the flood, and how many teams might be working in a particular area. And sometimes, American operatives will flood the environment just to fake out the other side and mess with their heads.

When operatives are sent out to flood the environment, there is no hard-and-fast rule as to how a spook might keep the honeypot occupied. A single operative is certainly welcome to partake of the honeypot’s charms and skills in such a case.

A more conservative operative or one who is married might find creative ways to avoid actual physical intimacy, such as visiting tourist sites and making the honeypot think they’re really turned on by walking twenty miles a day and stopping for gelato every ten minutes.

There is no formula, only the response in the moment, and it’s up to the skills and wits of the field spooks to handle the situation.

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“The most humiliating failure for any spook is to get caught by a honeypot.”

~ Jay Holmes

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Final Thoughts

Field espionage is a lonely business, and that loneliness makes spooks vulnerable to honeypots. Even the least-proficient honeypots are attractive, attentive, and flattering. The best ones are a little less flattering, and they are patient. All adjust to their target’s personality, and some foreign honeypots are so patient and dedicated that they will even fake a marriage with the target.

Yes. That element of The Americans was true regarding the ruthlessness of the Soviets.

Foreign governments position honeypots in all the favorite places of the diplomatic community. Members of the Intelligence Community working under diplomatic cover in a foreign country, whether they are janitors or Operations Officers, can assume they will be targeted.

These spooks are taught to keep their distance from strangers and to remember their position at all times. They must fully embrace the mindset that they are a target, and they must make the conscious decision to forgo the sudden affections of attractive strangers, to remain alert at all times when interacting with strangers, and to report those honeypot encounters. The last thing any spook wants is to be remembered by their peers as the one who got trapped by a honeypot.

Note*: "Spook" is the centuries-old common term for a spy. It means, "a ghost that haunts and is undesirable." Intelligence personnel of all ethnicities are known to themselves and others in the military and intelligence communities as spooks.

Do you have any questions about honeypots? Have you ever had a honeypot encounter? Are there other espionage topics you would like us to address?

About Bayard & Holmes

Piper Bayard and Jay Holmes of Bayard & Holmes are the authors of espionage tomes and international spy thrillers. Please visit Piper and Jay at their site, BayardandHolmes.com. For notices of their upcoming releases, subscribe to the Bayard & Holmes Covert Briefing. You can also contact Bayard & Holmes at their Contact page, on Twitter at @piperbayard, on Facebook at Piper Bayard, or at their email, BayardandHolmes@protonmail.com.

Top Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

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SPYCRAFT: Essentials

What do the main intelligence agencies do and where do they operate? How do they recruit personnel? What are real-life honey pots and sleeper agents? What about truth serums and enhanced interrogations? And what are the most common foibles of popular spy fiction?

With the voice of over forty years of experience in the Intelligence Community, Bayard & Holmes answer these questions and share information on espionage history, firearms of spycraft, tradecraft techniques, and the personalities and personal challenges of the men and women behind the myths.

Though crafted with advice and specific tips for writers, SPYCRAFT: Essentials is for anyone who wants to learn more about the inner workings of the Shadow World.

“For any author, this is the new bible for crafting stories of espionage.”

~ James Rollins, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Demon Crown

by Janice Hardy

While there’s something exciting about writing a first draft, I always look forward to the revisions. It isn’t until I see how my story unfolds that I fully understand where I can make it stronger, and turning that literary lump of coal into a diamond is quite rewarding–and a lot of fun. I won’t lie, it’s also a lot of work, but well worth it.

The list-maker in me has a whole folder filled with revision tips and tricks, from lists of words that commonly indicate weak prose, to templates to check my goal-conflict-stakes structure, to questions to ask in every scene.

Here are my three favorite tips for revising a novel.

1. Create an Editorial Map

Also called a book map or a story map, an editorial map is a hugely useful tool to identify what’s in my novel and where it happens. This lets you quickly capture the action, conflict, stakes, and resolution in a few sentences and see the plot elements that will move the story forward.

Simply summarize what happens in each chapter and scene. I mostly look for plot and character arc details–the protagonist’s goal, what they physically do in that scene, what problem they face, how it turns out and how this leads to the next scene. But you can break down your scenes however you’d like, so if lists or bullet points are what works for you, use that.

This also creates a handy reference guide for later when you need to remember when something happened or when a character first did or realized something critical to the story. You can even make notes in the editorial map on where you want to flesh out the story and easily see how it works with the overall novel. I like adding those revision notes in a different color to help differentiate them.

If you find a scene where nothing happens, that’s a big red flag that you might need to add goals, conflict, or stakes, or even get your protagonist out of their head. It’s also a good way to see if you have a lot of scenes where basically the same thing happens, such as like five chase scenes, or six “almost caught” scenes. Too many similar scenes will make the novel feel flat and repetitious.

Extra Tip: 

One neat trick here is to pinpoint the action and see how it causes the next scene's goal. For example, if you have a lot of scenes that link together with “and then X happens, and then Y happens,” that’s a red flag that you have no real forward plot movement. But if you have a lot of scenes that say, “and then X happens, so the protagonist has to do Y, but Z happened” then you can see how the plot is moving forward.

2. Do a “Problem Words” Search

Weak prose can make even a great story read flat. Although it’s not a hard and fast rule, there are words that are commonly found lurking in weak prose, such as those pesky “to be” verbs. For example, Bob was running isn’t nearly as strong as Bob ran. Just looking at all the “to be” verbs and adverbs that creep into a manuscript can help you spot a slew of potential areas to tighten the prose.

Other words to watch out for: adverbs, filter words (such as looked, heard, thought, saw, etc.), telling red flags (to verb, as, when, before, etc.), and prepositions. While there’s nothing wrong with any of these words on their own, they do frequently equate to lazy writing.

Zero in on your favorites.

Then there are the words you know you overuse, and we all have our favorites. Maybe you have a lot of scowling, or smiling, or a simile you can’t help but use all the time. My overused crutch words are, just, only, and the phrase “eyes widened.”

Make a list of your words and search for them in each scene (use your find function of your writing program), then look at the sentence. Ask yourself:

• If I cut the word, does the sentence read better?
• If I rewrote the sentence to eliminate the word, does it read better?
• Is there a stronger verb or noun I could use?
• Can I rewrite the sentence in a more active fashion?
• Can I be more descriptive or am I relying on boring words?
• Can I rewrite it so it’s more in the voice of my character?

If editing to eliminate the word makes it better, then do it. If it says exactly what you want it to say, leave it in.

Searching for these words individually allows you to focus on the sentence and not get caught up in the larger story. It also forces you to notice any lazy writing that might technically be fine, but could be stronger with a little effort.

Extra tip: 

Adverbs are very useful placeholder words, and they’re often used in areas that can be fleshed out to better show that emotion or action. Most times, if you see an adverb, it’s an opportunity to show a little more and tell a little less.

3. Check the Transitions: Chapters and Scene Breaks

Author Elmore Leonard has a famous quote: “I cut the parts people skip.” Scene breaks are a great example of this advice in action, as they allow transition between scenes without all the pace-slowing “and this is how we got from Point A to Point B” description. It’s not a bad idea to go through each chapter and see how scenes end and how they hand off to the next scene. If a scene isn’t ending with a reason for the reader to keep reading, that’s an opportunity to tweak it so it does.

Sometimes this means cutting some travel description or stage direction, or even end a scene much earlier. Look for moments that would make a reader want to turn the page and revise to end there instead. A book a reader can’t put down is one where the author made sure every scene break and transition keeps that reader hooked.

At the end of every scene, ask yourself what will make the reader want to keep reading? If the answer starts with “To find out if…” or something similar, odds are you’re on the right track.

Extra Tip:

Look at the last line or two of every scene. Does it leave a question hanging the reader will want an answer to? It doesn’t have to be a literal question, as a sense of foreboding can work just as well and create a “what’s going to go wrong?” question for the reader. Do those final few lines tease or just end the scene with no sense of forward momentum?

Revision is often where the real writing magic happens, turning a rough idea into a polished novel. A writer has a myriad of ways in which to do that, but these three tips are my favorites and always get me started on the right path. Once I do these tasks, it’s a lot easier to see what else in the novel needs to be done and I can revise effectively.

What are some of your favorite revision tips? Have you tried any of these? Please share with us down in the comments!

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About Janice

Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the teen fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, including The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. She also writes the Grace Harper urban fantasy series for adults under the name, J.T. Hardy. When she's not writing fiction, she runs the popular writing site Fiction University, and has written multiple books on writing, including Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It), Plotting Your Novel: Ideas and Structure, and the Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft series. Sign up for her newsletter and receive 25 ways to Strengthen Your Writing Right Now free.

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