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BY MERILYN OBLAD

My high school English teacher liked shocking her students in any way that she could. She was an ardent KISS fan (picture a five foot nothing 56 year old woman dressed in full KISS regalia and makeup for Halloween). But that was just for physical effect. She enjoyed throwing mental conundrums our way, too.

The little gem I’ll never forget: language is a barrier to communication. I really think she liked the head-scratching this elicited as much as the attempt at thoughtful response that came after it.

Much to my surprise, she wasn’t the only teacher I heard this from; my choir director later corroborated the same idea by quoting to us statistics about how people communicate ideas and thoughts. Words alone come way down the list at some ridiculously low percentage like 10- or 15%. The rest of verbal communication is conveyed by facial expression, tone, and body language.

I’m sure both teachers would be shocked to know that I still remember those brief lessons, never mind that I’ve processed them and am now using them here. But that’s beside the point. My point is that language actually can be a barrier to communicating our thoughts in the way we intend them to be communicated. I’m certain you all have experienced this, though you may not have put it precisely that way, because let’s face it, we all think differently. And therein lies the problem.

Miscommunication happens most frequently on social media, but it isn’t the only place where written shenanigans abound. Your stories, your creative babies, are also misunderstood. How do you take the vision in your head and effectively put it on paper? Start by asking yourself some questions: what emotional atmosphere am I trying to convey? What are the goals of my characters? What do I want my readers to take away from this particular scene?

Make sure you have a good beta reader with whom you can hash things out. In order to really get your point across, you must have feedback from another person. One of the traps of writing is that you know what you mean, but other people do not know what you mean, making it difficult for you to see where the holes in your work are. They see your story through their own life experience, which means they interpret your words differently than you do. So, check with your beta readers on how they perceive some of the sticky scenes and passages you’re stumbling over.

Don’t be afraid to embrace descriptors, for they make all the difference. “The mouse ran across the road,” has no particular feeling to it, but, “The mouse bolted across the hot asphalt in a desperate attempt to outpace the voracious cat stalking it,” gives the sense of urgency I want to you to feel, with some nice undertones of futility and time of day for added measure. The first is technically correct, but the second is emotionally evocative. If I wrote the first, but meant the second, then my very words have become a barrier to communicating what I really mean to you, my audience.

Some of you more experienced and talented writers may be rolling your eyes at all of this because it’s all old hat advice. But I have two very particular reasons for exploring the idea of breaking down the communication barriers.

First, I just finished my part of the judging of our recent fantasy anthology competition. One of the trends I noticed is that we had several technically correct submissions that were not as well-told as they could have been. In other words, the writing was excellent but the storytelling was lacking. Flat characters and stilted action do not a good story make. I want to see in my mind what you writers see when you envision your tales. I want to feel what you want me to feel.

And I don’t mean just lovey-dovey girly feelings. Fear, anxiety, stress, anger, bewilderment, frustration, hatred, and anticipation are as much a part of the human experience as love and loneliness. Your characters ought to be dripping with humanity, tangible examples of what we all face, feel, and endure. The settings might be extraordinary, even impossible in real life, but your characters should have all the multifaceted complexity of a real person.

And second, even experienced writers fall into dull and repetitious traps. I have a weakness for Pride & Prejudice variations. Some are beautifully written tales that do justice to Austen’s immortal characters, offering insight into the originals while weaving a masterful new tale. Others, not so much. One well-established author in particular frustrates me with her inability to explain/show stress and frustration in more than one way. She has her characters constantly grabbing, pinching, or touching their temples. I want to yell at her, “There are a MILLION different ways to say that! Get a thesaurus, for Pete’s sake! ARGH!!!!,” in my more calm moments.

Her repetition thus becomes another barrier, because that’s only one way to describe frustration. It ignores the nuances of helpless, angry, bemused, or end-of-your-rope frustration that all evoke different feelings entirely and create a richer story, even providing a turning point to move the plot along. (Think angry frustration leading to a passionate determination to do something about whatever situation is causing the frustration.)

Be imaginative when you want to repeat an idea. I know you can, because you’re a writer. And for the sake of my judging sanity, PLEASE invest in a good thesaurus. Synonyms are our friends. Do not shirk them.  The Emotion Thesaurus and its companion volumes The Negative Trait Thesaurusand The Positive Trait Thesaurus, all by Angela Ackerman, are excellent resources.

So if your readers are tripping and falling on communication hurdles, please take a step back and examine your language. You may be underselling your ideas through your word choice, not delving into your personal bag of human experience enough, or laying on the repetition too thick. In spite of what my English teacher told us, language can be a glorious gateway into another reality and not an impossible to overcome obstacle. So leave the barriers behind and tell me what you really mean. I promise I’ll understand.

A lover of all things historical, MeriLyn Oblad (pronounced Mary Lynn) has both a BA and MA in History, the former from the University of Nevada, Reno and the latter from Brigham Young University. She brings more than a decade of document analysis, an eye for fine detail, and seven years of writing local histories to the Xchyler table.

MeriLyn’s first project, Legends and Lore: An Anthology of Mythic Proportions, will be released October 18, 2014.

BY PENNY FREEMAN

How many times have you said this to yourself (or someone else): I just can’t write today. I’ve got stuff going on. And you can’t—not really. You can’t work on your current project when your whole mind/heart/soul is consumed with your stuff. So, don’t. But neither should you let it go to waste.

And, then there are all those movies and TV shows where the writer is sitting before their keyboard, hammering away, going 90 miles a minute, with tears streaming down there faces. (They’re out there. I promise, but I couldn’t find one to share). Maybe someone else comes into the room and says, “Hey. Are you all right?” And they sob, “I’m just writing.” Then, every once in a while, they’ll wag their head and wail, “Oh, this is good. It’s so good.”

Admit it. You’ve done this. You’ve made yourself cry. Or, you’ve made someone else ask you why you’re so angry or depressed, and you say, “I’m just writing this scene . . .”

Writers who are guilty of this—or lucky enough to experience this—are doing one thing right: they’re using their stuff. They’ve dug down deep within themselves and found those raw emotions that they have experienced and perhaps suppressed, but are allowing themselves to express through their writing. Now, this is no guarantee that their writing won’t be overwrought and florid, that readers won’t be able to choke it down with a spoon, but, they’re making it real.

So, back to those days when you’ve got stuff and you’re sure you can’t write. Fine. Don’t work on your WIP, but do write. Even if you just scrawl a few lines in a journal or notebook, write it down enough so you remember the edge later. “Ergh! My boss is such a jerk!! I can’t stand that she . . .” You get the idea. Usually, because you are a writer, once you get started, it takes a while to peter out. And, more often than not, when it does, you feel better and more able to deal with your stuff.

True confession: sometimes writers tell me about their stuff. That’s good. I don’t mind. The den mother in me empathizes, commiserates, wishes to high heaven they weren’t going through this rough patch, and sometimes offers a bit of advice, or at least a virtual pat on the back and a hug. The editor in me turns into Snidely Whiplash, dry-washes my hands, and chortles with malevolent glee, “the better to write stuff with, my dear.”

Finally, a real-life example (and more true confessions): my mother and I had a rocky relationship, falling out on more than one occasion. So, when she died at the age of eighty, I went dry-eyed for days—and felt guilty about it.

My siblings asked me to write her obituary, and that was fine. I can put names and dates together in an entirely clinical and emotionally detached fashion. Just don’t ask me to write her eulogy. I told them specifically, I don’t want to write her eulogy. So, of course, they volunteered me to write and deliver her eulogy.

Long story short: after wrestling with it literally down to the hour of her funeral, I wrote what I wanted to write, not what others wanted me to write or say, and got up to deliver it in defiance. I didn’t cry when I wrote it. I haven’t cried since, but up there in front of one hundred people, reading what I wrote aloud, I blubbered like a baby. I very nearly shoved the paper at my husband and sat down. But, I didn’t.

Funny thing. Nobody got angry. (Dang!) Everybody loved it. Everybody told me it was exactly what needed to be said. And, it’s probably one of the better things I’ve written. If you really want, you can read it here.

Can I write about troubled parent/child relationships. Ummm, yes. Been there. Done that

Moral of the story: write down your stuff, even your most painful stuff. The events, relationships, and sensibilities that you personally experience and write about are those which will ring most true to your reader. That doesn’t mean to say you have to air all your family’s dirty laundry, but utilizing a tidbit here, a circumstance there, a universal emotion that you might not realize is so, you can create your world of fiction and populate it with people that become real.

Editor-in-chief Penny Freeman lives, writes, edits, and markets from her home in southeast Texas. She currently supervises several editorial projects. Her next release, Legends and Lore: An Anthology of Mythic Proportions, is slated for release October 15, 2014.

BY MEGAN OLIPHANT

So You’re Writing A Book: Where to Go For Advice

As with most things in life, there are always people to tell you how to do things. Writing is no exception. There are thousands of books written about it, all kinds of “how-to” articles and innumerable blog posts. There are almost as many ways to write as there are writers.

In all the noise and confusion, however, there are certain things you can look for to help you:

• Someone who has published a lot. They will have the experience of working the process that newer writers lack. Several bestselling novelists have written their version of how to write.
• A book that gives general guidelines rather than dogmatic commandments. Any book that says “This is the only way to do it” is really saying “This is the only way the process worked for me”. Be leery of such types of advice. Look instead for writing advice that leads you to your own conclusions that are best for your novel or story.
• A strong, succinct writing style guide. The rules of grammar are hardbound. Not understanding the proper use of a semicolon or the difference between “lay” and “lie” will undermine your effectiveness at sharing the story you want to. Knowing the rules, internalizing them, will mean that if you need to, you can break a rule here and there for stylistic reasons that will enhance your story, rather than detract from it.

So in those thousands of books and countless blog posts and articles, where do you start? I have three books that I recommend.

• Orson Scott Card’s Characters and Viewpoint. This helps with some truly fundamental things you need to understand to build a story, including the pros and cons of the different viewpoints, such as 3rd limited vs. 1st person. I’ve read it multiple times and each time I learn more.
• The Complete Writer’s Guide to Heroes and Heroines: Sixteen Master Archetypes by Tami D. Cowden, Carolyn LeFever, and Sue Viders. This one shows you how to build your characters, giving them the many facets they need to become well rounded. It also will help you to figure out how they may react with other characters that are very different from them, whether you are building a romantic relationship or a superhero and his sidekick. Or her arch nemesis. It lays it out so you can figure out for yourself how your characters might behave.
• The Chicago Manual of Style by Chicago University Press. This is actually the online guide, to which you can buy a subscription. I think it’s a critical must have, because as many times as people say there are rules, English is a living language, and therefore will make changes accordingly. That change will be slow sometimes, and it won’t change as quickly as the dictionary with its new words every year, but it does change. If you’d rather have the book, you can order that as well.

So you can add this blog post to all those other out there, and honestly, we all find our own paths to publication, as many paths as there are people. It is a subjective art, after all. But I have found these books to be invaluable to write the best way possible, so our mistakes don’t get in the way of the story.

Megan Oliphant has studied creative writing since college, taking classes from the founder of LTUE, Marion K. “Doc” Smith at BYU and attended Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp in late June. Her primary interests are in fantasy, ranging from dark urban to high epic, but she’s a sucker for a good mystery that she can’t guess the ending to before she gets there. She divides her time between reading, writing, and “familying” with her husband and five children in North Carolina.

Megan joined The X Team in May of 2014. Her first project, Accidental Apprentice by Anika Arrington, is slated for release in September of 2014. She is project lead on Darkness Rising, a young adult fantasy by Elizabeth Lunyou, slated for release in 2015.