acronym: a word, such as NATO, radar, or laser, formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term; also, an abbreviation, such as FBI, formed from initial letters.
Acronyms are a type of abbreviation. Chances are, your characters see, understand and use acronyms. And that can be very useful to you, the writer.
How can you use an acronym?
Give a context to the world your characters inhabit: You'll use acronyms that everyone will recognize, like AMEX, TSA, IRS. You don't have to spell out the meanings of common acronyms; in fact, omitting the cumbersome definitions is exactly why you use this type of acronym.
Succinctly enhance setting: If you read AI in a blurb, you're probably going to be reading a science fiction or contemporary/near future work involving computers and artificial intelligence. Think HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey or Bladerunner. I write science fiction military adventure romance (how's that for a sub-genre?) so SOL, SNAFU, and FUBAR and other acronyms that originated in the military let you know you've entered my world.
To convey mood: If you're an actor, when the cast hears the play is SRO, the mood backstage is energized, happy, expectant. Standing Room Only means your job is guaranteed past tonight. It means big names in the business will take notice, and maybe that break you've been hoping for will materialize after the next performance.
Give readers "in the know" an "Easter egg": If you're in a hospital and you overhear a nurse say that your roommate is going to get a 3H, you can be glad you're not in line for that procedure. 3H is a medical slang acronym for an enema that is "high, hot, and a Hell of a lot" that is given to troublesome patients. You don't need to define all your acronyms, but you can show their meanings through context. When you don't define an acronym that's been used in dialogue, it probably won't impact your story, but a reader who knows what those letters mean can smile, knowing they've found that secret surprise you left for them.
Reveal unknown information: You can make up your own acronyms and reveal the definition when it will make the most impact. In my debut YA book, PRISM, the name of the planet matches the landscape of a world where government and military leaders were exiled to twenty-five years ago. Instead of plants, crystals and crystalline forms grow. The reader sees the sunlight streaming through prisms of different shapes and colors. It's a harsh, but beautiful, planet. Late in the book, the hero sees a top secret folder stamped P.R.I.S.M. The cover page reads Prisoner Relocation Internment Security Management. This information changes the mindset of the hero—and, hopefully, the reader. Because this prison world was never meant as a place for a thousand people to survive and thrive.
Avoid overused acronyms. ROTFL was fun when it first became widely used. Now, it's not so fresh, which means description, either visceral or using the senses will have much more of an impact.
Add humor: What if my character uses acronyms but can't spell? What if she changes the meaning of the acronym with one letter. Say she types ROTFS for rolling on the floor screaming. She thinks its hilarious, but no one knows what she means. If I wrote anything funny, I could see this used as a running gag to reveal her character. Imagine she texts, "HM, I had my first VT at lunch today." HM: holey moley, VT: vampire taco Warning--PSA (Personal Story Ahead): I guess it's been a long time since I've been out to eat, because today, I saw a "vampire taco" on a menu. I asked what it was and the server described it. It sounded innocuous, and who doesn't want to brag they've eaten a vampire taco? So I ordered it. Let's just say the server needs to talk to the cook. But I have eaten a vampire taco.
Have you used acronyms in your writing? How might you add them to your WIP?
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ABOUT FAE:
Fae Rowen discovered the romance genre after years as a science fiction freak. Writing futuristics and medieval paranormals, she jokes that she can live anywhere but the present. As a mathematician, she knows life’s a lot more fun when you get to define your world and its rules.
Punished, oh-no, that’s published as a co-author of a math textbook, she yearns to hear personal stories about finding love from those who read her books, rather than the horrors of calculus lessons gone wrong. She is grateful for good friends who remind her to do the practical things in life like grocery shop, show up at the airport for a flight and pay bills.
A “hard” scientist who avoided writing classes like the plague, she now shares her brain with characters who demand that their stories be told. Amazing, gifted critique partners keep her on the straight and narrow. Feedback from readers keeps her fingers on the keyboard.
P.R.I.S.M., a young adult science fiction story of survival, betrayal, deceit, lies, and love, available for pre-order October 2, 2017.
Once Upon a Time, I Had a Writing Groove…then the music changed. Finding your writing groove after life transitions A post made possible by the fact that my husband doesn’t read anything I write…except checks.
Four years ago, I retired after teaching high school English for twenty-five years and grooved myself right into being a full-time writer.
I basked in my writerly world for six months until my husband announced he was starting his own business, and he needed—guess who—to work for him. The groove became the rut my writing fell into and out of my reach. But he assured me I’d be able to take my laptop to work and write…between answering the phone, filing, and clients that barked, growled, pooped and peed. Did writing happen? Well, I took notes because how can you not when a man arrives with his snake in a cardboard box and tells you it has a cold, and he’s sure of it because the snake’s been sneezing. My journal/morning pages became my refuge, and I comforted myself with the knowledge that I was at least still capable of forming coherent sentences.
Then, six months later, after increasing my meds (let’s all agree to no judgment here) and his hiring more employees, I re-retired to being a writerly person again. Rescued the stories I’d abandoned, salvaged what I could, and filled the rut with enough hope to get my groove back. Until…we (he) decided that converting part of our home into a vacation rental would be a brilliant idea. My new job description included bedmaking, washing, cleaning, dusting, vacuuming, and scheduling. And once again, did writing happen? Well, I took notes because how can you not when a neighbor calls to tell you that the bachelorettes left a penis-shaped piñata in your front yard?
I managed to cobble together enough chapters to publish my first indie…a Christmas novella. Maybe because of the constant craziness of my life at the time, maybe because I was simply grateful to have an idea, regardless of how wacky it was, I allowed myself to have fun with a cast of characters who grew out of these first lines that baked in my brain: “It took Beulah Grace three tries, but she finally killed my mother. The first time was in June when she accused her, her being my mother Nancy Jane Pressfield, of diverting $29.54 from the Magnolia Springs Garden Club into her personal account. For fertilizer.”
In the meantime, my husband had neck and back surgery following an accident (more on this later).
And because the husband and I can take crazy to a whole new level…we did. We converted the entire home to a vacation rental. Which meant we had to move. Which meant I had to pack. Which meant my writing groove transformed into a rut. Again.
Months later, my groove returned when the writing gods smiled upon me, and I was offered a contract. This provided me legitimate grounds for escaping post-moving responsibilities because my mantra became, “I have a deadline. I have to keep writing.”
A year later, we sold the vacation-rental house, sold the house we moved into and, after a lifetime in NOLA, we moved to Houston. I wanted to be closer to my kids, my husband retired because he could no longer work due to his injuries, and my book was finished. Of course, this meant more packing followed by more unpacking.
Writing? Nada. Nothing. Zilch. Zero.
Now, for months, I’ve been coping with RHS (Retired Husband Syndrome), which is only slightly related to RLS (Restless Leg Syndrome). Instead of having irresistible urges to move your legs, RHS is characterized by irresistible urges to move your husband. To another planet. At least temporarily. Because how the hell else am I going to write when…
the television in the room next to my office is belching high speed car chases and crashes, and universes exploding, and weapons firing at volumes that make the floors tremble
when, if my fingers aren’t glued to the keyboard, I mustn’t be writing, so questions like: “Do you know where ___is? Can you print this for me? I’m going to Home Depot. Don’t you want to come with me? How about we leave in two days to drive to Omaha for the College World Series? We’ll only be gone ten days.”
a text summons me upstairs, and I bolt to the second floor thinking something is wrong, only to find said texter on the ladder, pointing to the floor, and asking if I mind handing the (insert name of tool here) to him so he doesn’t have to get down off the ladder
One of my writer friends, who also deals with RHS, says she shuts her office door, but her husband still walks in. She said she never knew he could talk so much.
My PSA: In all fairness, my husband didn’t want to retire, and the man who could play two rounds of golf a day is barely able to play six holes. I mean, if I could find a play group for retired men, I’d be delighted. He probably would be as well.
So, now what? How do I find my groove before it becomes a rut again or, worse, a trench? To segue from Orly Konig-Lopez’s post on Juy 21, how do we move from “Working World” to “Retired World”?
My first thought was maybe I should consider a part-time job.
But, seriously, it was recognizing that we’re in a season of our lives where the bucket that holds the list of all the things we want to accomplish is much closer to our feet than we’d like it to be. So, how much time away from the man who made my own retirement do-able, who made my dream of living closer to my kids possible, who’s blessed my life beyond measure, am I willing to sacrifice in the name of writing?
And I had a come-to-Jesus meeting with myself about my own bucket list as a writer. What book(s) would I regret never having written? How do I, gut-level honesty, spend the time I do have writing, not trying to write? Cory Padgett wrote an article, “6 Ways to Waste Your Time as a Writer,” and I’m guilty of all of them, plus about ten more she didn’t mention.
I could sit myself somewhere else to write, like Starbucks or the library, for a few hours a day. We could schedule days as yours, mine and ours. I could pimp myself and my writer friends (let’s all agree that’s marketing) on social media during one of those butt-thrashing noisy movies he watches. We’d at least be in the same room and that counts for something, right?
So, maybe the music of my writing groove changed. But that doesn’t mean it’s time to stop dancing.
Perhaps, during these transitions, when our writing seems to be falling off the edge of life's cliffs, we learn what we need. Not what we want. You know...like our characters.
Has your writing groove ever been hijacked? How did you find it again? Are we, as writers, destined to always choose between sacrificing writing for our families or sacrificing our families for writing?
About Christa
A true Southern woman who knows any cook worth her gumbo always starts with a roux and who never wears white after Labor Day, Christa Allan writes women’s fiction, stories of hope and redemption. Her latest novel, Since You’ve Been Gone released in 2016. Her other novels include: A Test of Faith (2015), Threads of Hope (2013), Edge of Grace (2011), and Walking on Broken Glass (2010).
There is a lot of buzz around town about a new business that recently opened in my community. From what I hear, it’s already booming just a few weeks in. This new business is a cocktail lounge, and while I’m not familiar with what it takes to open a lounge, I couldn’t help but notice that the owners spent a great deal of time preparing for the grand opening. Every time I passed by, they were working on making it look good. They knew that if they wanted customers to return, they would need to plan a fabulous opening that would make customers want more.
The same can be applied to the opening of a novel. If you want a reader to continue reading, then your opening must be grand.
When I say grand, I don’t mean complicated. I just mean the opening needs to succinctly give the reader a taste of what’s to come and make them want more. I have had the pleasure of being a judge in several writing contests, and I have noticed that most openings of unpublished manuscripts are lackluster and do very little to set the tone or hook you in. In fact, if I were not a judge, I would not read past any of those openings. That’s not good news since in the publishing field, writers must grab an editor from the first page, if not the first paragraph – even the first sentence – or your time is up.
If your beginning is not grand enough, it doesn’t matter how well you’ve written the rest of the story. The editor will never know. So how can you make sure that your opening is grand? Here are five steps to help guide you.
Establish a Sense of Place
Just like the grand opening of the cocktail lounge, one of the things you need to give your readers is a sense of place. Some people would call it ambiance. If you walked into the cocktail lounge on opening night, you would have felt the vibe based on the setting around you. It has a slightly historical downtown feel that is upscale while instantly making you feel welcome.
This is what you want to do in your novel, as well. Give us details that make us feel like we are there, but not too many. Use a few key words and sentences to set the tone, hinting at what is to come. You can start wide with a setting and focus in on where the character is. Perhaps you will show us the expanse of the city and immediately focus in on the barstool where your character is drinking a martini and staring at himself in the mirror. Or maybe we are at the kitchen table and there are two place settings, but only one person. Wherever you start, you want the reader to be there too.
Introduce an Interesting Character
Another thing the cocktail lounge did was hire good employees to represent them. When you go there, not only do you get a sense of ambiance as soon as you walk in, but the employees are engaging and friendly, dressed in a way that evokes the personality of the cocktail lounge itself. You instantly want to talk to them, for them to make your drink, perhaps especially that one server with the playful look who seems to be in charge.
It’s the same for your story. Make sure that your main character does or says something that makes you want to know more about them. You don’t have time to describe your character in detail during the opening, but you can make them ask a question or do something interesting, or even recall the hint of a memory that makes the reader want to get to know the character(s) better. Perhaps she has a bad case of bedhead, bad breath, and can’t remember her own name, but she knows she needs a skinny soy vanilla latte with two shots of espresso. What the author wants is to present a snapshot of the character that is intriguing or engaging, but not a detailed description.
Entice the Reader with Action
If you walk into the cocktail lounge on opening night, stuff is happening all around you. It’s bustling, you are catching snippets of conversations all around, and that guy in the corner looks like he might propose to the woman sitting across from him even though the way she’s staring so hard at her plate that she looks like she wants to run.
In a novel’s grand opening, you need some action, as well. It can be big, but it doesn’t have to be. Something just needs to be happening. Is your character slamming down the phone? Are the wheels of the toppled bicycle spinning? Is someone drumming their fingers loud enough to annoy the woman across the room? You want the reader to wonder why someone slammed the phone down, why the wheels are spinning, and what is really annoying the woman across the room. Whatever action is happening in the opening scene, you want it to entice the reader to wonder about what has just happened and what is going to continue happening in the story. Bring the reader into the action early and make her feel it enough to want to keep reading.
Organize the Beginning
This is probably the most important aspect of a story opening. If I walk into the new cocktail lounge on opening night and can’t tell if I’m in a bar, a doctor’s office, or a nail salon, I’m not going to stay. Even if the energy is buzzing, things are happening that intrigue me, and the people around are interesting, I’m gone.
If an editor or agent can’t figure out what is happening, they aren’t going to keep reading your novel, either. Readers need to know where they are at and have a hint of where they are going. I think that many writers inadvertently create a confusing story opening because they are afraid of giving up too much information too fast, but in my experience as an author, we usually have the opposite problem. We don’t have to tell the whole story in the beginning, but as an editor once told me, giving enough information to orient the reader is like giving them a flashlight to show them the way without illuminating everything around them.
Hook the Reader
The hook is paramount. I can’t say it enough. If I leave the cocktail lounge and nothing has happened that I want to come back to, the business has lost me, but if there is a chalkboard announcing an upcoming happy hour and a secret grand prize, I would want to go back to see what the prize is.
That’s exactly how you want your readers to feel after the opening.
A great hook is like the attractive man or woman in the corner of the cocktail lounge waving a one-hundred-dollar bill at the reader. What is it about them? Are they going to give that money away? That’s when they crook their finger at the reader to follow, just before they slip out the backdoor. In your novel’s beginning, what morsel can you give that makes the reader want to follow you through that door? Maybe you don’t tell the secret, but you let the reader know there is one. This is where you spill the breadcrumbs that make them want to read the whole thing.
What are examples of some of the best openings you've read?
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About Tina Ann Forkner
Tina Ann Forkner wrangles words on the pages of her novels and kids in the classroom as a substitute teacher. She lives in Wyoming with her husband, who knows when to wear a cowboy hat, and three teenagers who never do (even if she thinks they should). She is the author of five novels including Rose House, Waking Up Joy, and The Real Thing.
