Writers in the Storm

Julie Glover

Two months ago, I went over the basics of the new WordPress update, aka Gutenberg software. Last month, I covered formatting options. Today, let's talk about some features and plugins you might want to use.

Copying & Pasting into WordPress

I always write my posts in the WordPress editor screen, but many bloggers prefer to pen their posts in word processing software, then copy and paste into WordPress. How can you make that happen?

Straight copy and paste. Go grab the whole text from its source (on a PC, you can use Ctrl+A and then Ctrl+C to copy it), then come over to the WordPress editor screen and paste it in (Ctrl+V). Gutenberg will convert it to paragraph blocks, and you can then change any specific block to another format choice if you want, such as Heading.

Using HTML. Some writers save their post as HTML and then paste it into WordPress. If that was your go-to method, you'll notice that you no longer have a visible place where HTML editor is shown—but it's still here!

Up at the top right corner, where you save posts, you'll see three vertical dots.

Clicking there opens up a menu with editor options. You have the Visual Editor, the default view with text, images, and so on. And then there's the Code Editor, which is the HTML Editor. Of course, the next step is clicking that second one, so that the check mark moves to Code Editor.

And when you click that, you open up the HTML editor view, which looks like this:

From here, you can paste in your HTML Code. Then, if you want, switch back over to Visual Editor to see the results.

Fullscreen Mode

Let's go back to those three vertical dots. Another option there you might want to use is the Fullscreen Mode.

Unfortunately, its promise that you can "Work without distraction" seems a bit extreme, since this mode does not address the cat walking across your keyboard, the children yelling for your attention, or spammers calling your phone every five minutes. But it does allow a cleaner look for drafting and editing your post. Namely this:

No top or left menu to contend with—just a simple screen to work from.

Reusable Blocks

I love this feature. Let's say you have a book ad that you often use to entice readers to hop over and purchase your fabulous book. You can save that as a reusable block, which you can then access and drop into any post.

First, you create whatever block you want. In this case, I added an image block and inputted the URL link to the Amazon purchase page in the right-hand side bar. Then click anywhere on the block, which brings up the block menu, and click on the three vertical dots. Among the options there is Add to Reusable Blocks.

Once you click that, you'll be asked what you want to call that block and then you'll save it, thus adding it to your list of Reusable Blocks. Then, the next time you want to use that block again, you simply click on the circled plus sign, click Reusable Blocks, and select the one you want.

WordPress will drop it right into the post for you and will remember your formatting, such as the URL link you added before. You can edit the reusable block if you need to by clicking the block and choosing Edit at the top right.

Plugins with More Block Options

While there are many formatting choices in Gutenberg already, you might want to add a few more for special purposes. For instance, wouldn't it be great to easily add a Preorder or Buy Now button for your book release? How about a profile box to feature the author of a post or the author of a book you're reviewing? Want to insert a Google map so readers can find your next book signing?

Several plugins allow you to do just that—get more block options. I tested several, and these are the ones I found easiest to use.

Atomic Blocks. If you install this plugin, you'll get several more options for block formatting. Here are all the offerings:

Just to highlight a few of these, you could add a Customizable Button after a book cover image to encourage sales:

Or you could highlight the author of a post or an author whose book or resource you're promoting with the Profile feature. (They make it so easy to add the photo and social links.)

And the Post Grid block is really cool if you want to show your most recent posts. Here's just our latest three posts, but you can choose any number you want.

Ultimate Add-ons for Gutenberg Blocks. One thing I like about this plugin is that you can deactivate any of the features you know you won't use. For instance, I deactivated the Restaurant Menu option, since our website will not be serving you a lunch buffet anytime soon.

But there are useful block options, like inserting a Google map. Here's can example showing where you can find the California Dream' Writers Conference, where I'll be presenting a young adult workshop in April.

Next up, the Timeline feature. Surely there are other uses for this, but you could let your readers know when books have been or will be released. (And yes, those are real titles of a novella series coming soon.)

You could also feature reviews left about your book with the Testimonial block.

There are more options with each of those two plugins, and if you choose to add them, play around and see what you like and don't like.

We've thrown a lot at you with this WordPress update / Gutenberg software, so all the information may feel overwhelming. But you won't use all of the options. Just choose what works for you and don't worry about the rest.

With this update, we have a lot of choices available so that we can customize our sites according to our needs and our readers' desires. I'm wishing you all the best in coming up with the best design for your website.

One more time: What questions do you have about the WordPress update? Any features you wish you had but you can't find?

Definite Limits, Approximate Limits, Infinite Limits, and No Limits for Writers

by Fae Rowen

I have to admit that I giggled when I decided to write about limits. I mean, how can a calculus teacher not be excited about getting to blog about limits?

No worries, you won't be getting a math lesson from me today. But I have to admit that I cannot think about limits without mathematical ideas. So here we go with limits—as they apply to writing.

Definite Limit: A definite limit is an exact number, a constant.

In life, we might call it a hard limit or hard line, something you cannot cross.

Like a deadline for taxes or a job application. Or delivering a book to an editor.

In writing, it's the requirements of genre writing, like the HEA in a romance or red herrings in a mystery. Your publisher expects a clean copy of your manuscript, with zero typos and zero grammatical errors. I have a friend who writes for a New York publisher who requires her to have exactly twenty-two chapters in every book. Not twenty-three, not twenty-one.

As writers, we all have our definite limits about certain words we will not put on the page or types of scenes we will not write. These are all non-negotiable.

Approximate Limit: An approximate limit is the limiting factor in a situation. Let's say you are at the fifty-yard line on a football field, pointed toward the goal. For your first play, you run half the distance to the goal line. Your second play you run half the remaining distance to the goal line. You continue running half the distance to the goal line for as long as you're willing to run. Soon, you're within an eyelash of the goal line, but when you take your next move, you will be half the most recent distance to the goal. You will never reach the goal line, although you will be painfully close to it. Your limit is the goal line.

An example of an approximate limit in writing is the page or word count a publishing house requires. Eighty-five thousand words is a target. A little above or a little below is fine. No one expects you to turn in a book with exactly eighty-five thousand words. If you're writing a thriller, your main character encounters danger and suspense close to the first page. Some set-up may be allowed, but your readers must be on the edge of their seats by the end of the first chapter, which becomes your approximate limit.

Infinite limit: A strict mathematical definition of infinite limit is something (a function) increasing, or decreasing, without bound. In other words, something gets bigger and bigger and never levels off or gets smaller. Wouldn't it be nice if your bank account had an infinite upper bound, and just kept getting bigger and bigger, even if by just a small amount? (Note: Technically, an infinite limit means the limits does not exist, however, that is the mathematical purist view.)

As a writer, I think of the emotion in my story as an infinite limit. It doesn't matter what the emotion is—fear, love, or something else—but everything my characters think, do, say or experience should ratchet up that emotion until the end of the book. Readers read fiction to feel emotion, to make a connection. It is my job to take them deeper and farther along that journey to a satisfying ending, so they can continue feeling and thinking about the story after the last word. They may not remember the plot in two years, but if they remember the way they felt during reading the novel and afterward, I've done my job.

When a reader encounters this infinite limit, they tell others about your books, they put your next book on pre-order.

No Limit or A Limit Does Not Exist: This one sounds scary, particularly if you've ever lived with a teen. It simply means that when you approach a problem from two opposite directions, you do not end up at the same place. Yes, it's like your best argument for your teen to do something turned around to come at the issue from the opposite direction and get an entirely different result.

This is frustrating, even dangerous in real life. It's dangerous as a writer, too, because this is the place that readers talk about throwing the book at the wall. Our logic, our genre promise, our characters, must follow rules—either society's, someone they love (or hate or work for) or their own.

Be very careful in no limit territory in your writing.

But in your writing life, remember that there are no limits. None at all. Whether you're just starting out, ready to begin the submitting process, starting publishing, or continuing an established writing career, you are the sculptor of that career. If you need to learn more about the craft, take classes, read articles and books. If you haven't finished a book yet, finish it this year. If you don't know how to market, attend a conference, talk to other authors and learn how to market your work and yourself. If you can't bear to write one more romance and want to ditch your successful career, decide how you can change things up by putting a twist on your romance idea and write that story in a different genre.

The only way you fail as a writer is to quit writing. That's a definite limit.

How can you remove some of the limits you've put on yourself? Do you have someone you can ask for support when necessary?

ABOUT FAE:

by Laurie Schnebly Campbell

I’m tempted to do this entire blog in initials, but suspect that’d get old pretty fast. Just like discussions of viewpoint can, when writers debate (endlessly) the pros & cons of whose point of view is best for a scene.

After all, does it really matter? Do our readers even notice whose head/s they’re in?

Even more important, do they really CARE?

Well, that depends.

Some of them rave with wholehearted enthusiasm about novels where they’re right there with a character through every step of his or her exciting / dramatic / heartwarming / terrifying / enormously satisfying journey.

Some readers never notice.

But those who do? They’re usually enthralled because:

They’ve been in deep POV.

“I feel like I truly know this person; I get exactly how he’s feeling.”

“She could be my best friend -- I’d recognize her immediately if I saw her at any table in Starbucks.”

“It always takes me a while to come back to real life after one of those books.”

Never once, though, has a reader enthused:

“The transitions from first-person to third-person were amazingly seamless.”

“I loved how we moved from omniscient POV to the hero’s whenever things got tense.”

“It’s such a treat reading an author who head-hops so smoothly.”

A writer might conceivably make such observations, but only if we’re discussing craft rather than being engrossed in the story.

And when we think about what we want people to take away from the experience of reading our books, it’s pretty clear which kind of comments we’d rather hear:

“I was really THERE in the story” wins every time.

Does that mean deep viewpoint is essential?

Absolutely not. There are tons of successful books where immersion in the character’s world is NOT the primary goal. Shallow viewpoint works just fine for:

• Delivering several red herrings along with the legitimate clues needed to solve a mystery
• Describing the unique, richly detailed setting where the characters will begin their quest
• Providing some backstory on why William left his estate to Jeremy instead of Jonathan.

Those could all be done through the viewpoint of characters in the story, or an omniscient narrator.

Which do you prefer?

Or does it depend on the book? (Hint: that’s the correct answer.)

Some writers have no problem choosing what POV to use -- if each book in this publisher’s particular line or the author’s own series, for instance, uses deep third or alternating firsts. It’s only when faced with total freedom to choose what’ll best serve the story that, well…

We sometimes start to waffle.

Why?

Because nobody likes to make a commitment without thinking through all the pros and cons of each possible choice.

And there are an incredible number of choices for just about any novel.

Advantages of straight-through first-person, like To Kill A Mockingbird or Huckleberry Finn, include:

• More immediacy in identifying with the character
• No need to switch viewpoints from scene to scene
• The amazing ease in maintaining consistency of voice

But of course there’s one big disadvantage, which is that you can’t let the reader in on things the narrator has no way of knowing.

All right, then, is third-person (like in Pride and Prejudice or Harry Potter) a better bet? The advantages of that include:

• Ability to show whatever readers needs to know from some POV
• Flexibility in choosing whose perspective will best enhance a scene
• Narrative from any number of characters (although 187 may be a few too many!)

And yet you know the downsides there as well, right? It’s hard to feel quite as in-tune with someone when you’re in their head only part of the time, and it can get confusing if readers aren’t 100% certain whose head they’re in at the beginning of a scene.

If you do go with third-person, though, do you want it to be an omniscient narrator who knows what everyone is thinking and feeling at every moment?

Or do you want it limited to only a handful of characters, or even just one?

The fewer POV characters you use, the easier it is to go deep.

And that’s something readers almost always love.

There are tricks to creating deep POV, which we’ll look at in my upcoming class on “The Whole Point of Point of View.” But keep in mind that depth of viewpoint isn’t necessarily a requirement for a truly great story.

It’s just one of many tools which could be considered less important than Plot, Character and even Genre.

After all, when you think about the books you’ve enjoyed most during your lifetime, their POV probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. It tends to rank a little farther down the list of “why I gave this five stars.”

But those books that deserve a place on your keeper shelf all make very effective use of viewpoint. Whether it’s:

• past or present tense
• deep or shallow
• omniscient or limited
• first-person or third…

…whatever choices the author made were the right ones for that particular story, because it kept you engaged.

And it happened so naturally, you might not even be able to identify what viewpoint/s made your favorite novels your favorite. (That is, assuming you leave your own titles off the list!)

Off the top of my head, when I think of “three all-time favorites,” right now they’d be Greensleeves by Eloise Jarvis McGraw, Penmarric by Susan Howatch, and Little Women by Louisa May Alcott…and all I remember is that Penmarric had five sections, each narrated by a different first-person character.

So that leads to a prize-drawing question for you:

What three books do you think of as your all-time favorites TODAY? And if you can remember the viewpoint for any of them, mention that as well.

Somebody who answers will win free registration to my POV class from February 18-March 1, and meanwhile it’ll be a treat hearing about great books from people who know and love reading!

* * * * * *

About Laurie:

After winning “Best Special Edition of the Year” over Nora Roberts, Laurie Schnebly Campbell discovered she loved teaching every bit as much as writing...if not more. Last year she asked her mailing list of writers “what class topic would you like?” More people said “POV” than anything else, so “The Whole Point of Point of View” is coming up on February 18 at https://yhoo.it/2Dofvgi.

All photos from www.freestockphotos.biz.