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Tech Tips for Writers is an (almost) weekly post on overcoming Tech Dread. I’ll cover issues that friends, both real-time and virtual, have shared. Feel free to post a comment about a question you have. I’ll cover it in a future Tip.

Q: I always outline before I write my novel. What’s an easy way to do that?

A:  Outlining can’t be easier than doing it in Word. Here’s what you do:

• Select the Numbered List or Bullet List in MS Word. MS Word 2010 lets you select the style up front. MS Word 2003–it’s a bit more complicated
• Your first bullet or number appears on the screen. Type your item
• Push enter to add another number or bullet
• To create a subpoint, push tab after you’ve pushed enter to start the next bullet/number
• To move a subpoint up a level, push Shift+tab after you’ve pushed enter for the next bullet/number

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When you read your story, does it sound off, maybe you can’t quite put your finger on it, but you know you’ve done something wrong? Sometimes–maybe even lots of times–there are simple fixes. These writer’s tips will come at you once a week, giving you plenty of time to go through your story and make the adjustments.

Today’s tip: Submittals must be done right.

Take it from one who’s been there, when agents and editors see a manuscript with formatting and grammar errors, they know right away the author hasn’t done the basic groundwork needed to submit an Inquiry. To them, that means the mss will not be polished–and thus, not worth the agent’s time.

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Writing the Breakout Novel

by Donald Maass

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have a library of books on how to write, each supposed to rocket me to the next level, morph me from mid-list writer to best-seller. Each of them provided some tidbit that is now integral to my writing style, something I remember and use every time I sit down at my computer and unleash my muse.

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When I started this blog four years and 586 posts ago, I wasn’t sure where to take it. I knew I wanted to connect with other writers so I used that as the theme. Now, thanks to the 430,000+ people who have visited, I know much more about the ‘why’. Yes, it’s about getting to know kindred souls, but there is so much more I’ve gotten from blogging. Like these:

Photo credit: Nemo

How to write

We bloggers divide ourselves into two categories: 1) those who write short, under-1000-word posts and 2) those who write in-depth, lengthy articles. I’ve chosen the former. I like pithy ideas that  readers can consume in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee. As a result, I’ve learned to be frugal with my words. I choose verbiage that conveys more than one-words-worth of information and I leave tangential issues for another post. Because I realize readers are consuming on the run, I make sure to be clear–no misplaced pronouns or fuzzy concepts like ‘thing’ or ‘something’.

Prove my point

This part of writing transcends what print journalists and novel writers must do. Yes, they do it, but my readers expect me to support ideas with links to sources. If I’m reviewing a book, I can easily link to the author’s website for deeper reading. That’s something that can’t happen in paper writing. Sure, they can provide the link, but to put the paper down, open the laptop, copy that link–I mean, who does that? In a blog, I get annoyed if someone cites research and doesn’t provide the link.

What my voice was

I write thrillers. To pen a good thriller, you have to do what James Frey suggested in his exemplary guideline for thriller writers, including:

1. Have no bland, colorless characters
2. Have a hook at the end of each chapter
3. Be fresh in your writing
4. Keep the clock ticking and the excitement mounting

For me, that means keep my writing relevant and engaging with hooks that make readers come back for more. Literary fiction writers do it differently. My blog approach matches my novels.

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I invite you to drop by my article over at Today’s Author, Who is Today’s Author. If you can’t make it, no worries. I’ll post here soon.

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Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is webmaster for six blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com and TeachHUB, CSG Master Teacher, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, Cisco guest blogger, Technology in Education featured blogger, and IMS tech expert. She is  the editor of a K-6 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-6 Digital Citizenship curriculum, creator of technology training books for middle school and ebooks on technology in education. Currently, she’s editing a thriller that should be out to publishers next summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

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Tech Tips for Writers is an (almost) weekly post on overcoming Tech Dread. I’ll cover issues that friends, both real-time and virtual, have shared. Feel free to post a comment about a question you have. I’ll cover it in a future Tip.

Q:   What’s an easy way to create a digital slideshow that takes no time?

A:  The books we-all write traditionally are words, but that’s changing. With digital interactive books, you can share images of your characters, settings, events. I’ve done that for a book I wrote on paleo-historic man. I saw you glaze over. That’s what I mean. For some topics, it’s hard to visualize the ideas and if you can’t see it in your mind, you probably won’t want to read it. I decided to include images of what my characters look like, where they lived, how they carried out their daily activities.

Sure, you know how to do that in WordPress, but what about Windows? Here’s all you do:

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When you read your story, does it sound off, maybe you can’t quite put your finger on it, but you know you’ve done something wrong? Sometimes–maybe even lots of times–there are simple fixes. These writer’s tips will come at you once a week, giving you plenty of time to go through your story and make the adjustments.

Today’s tip: Writers must have a web presence.

A web presence is your reach beyond the realtime world into cybersphere. Why is a web presence so important for today’s writers? Here are three reasons:

• If you have a contract with a publisher, s/he is too busy marketing books for popular, well-known authors to worry about you. That means sales and marketing is up to you. The worst situation I can imagine is after you give away the rights to your baby (maybe you sold them–no matter the price, it doesn’t compensate for the hours or years of labor that went into writing your book), the guy who bought them (the publisher) allows your story to languish–selling a couple of books a month. That’s not uncommon. The only way to fix that is you marketing your books.

Silent Joe

by T. Jefferson Parker

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I know of no author who writes such unique characters as does T. Jefferson Parker. Joe Trona (the protagonist in Silent Joe) is yet another in Parker’s stable of main characters that I loved getting to know. He is the 23-year-old adopted son of a politician who spends his entire life thankful to the father who saved him from a family-less life–picked Joe from among all other children in the Home despite the acid burns that covered half of Joe’s face. From that day forward, Trona hones his body to a level of strength that will defend him from future attacks and trains his mind to seek out danger to his father. But, early in the story, he fails and his father dies. Joe makes it his job to find the killers and bring them to justice.

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I write techno-thrillers, so I’m always reading about computers, technology, the Latest Stuff. Here are some of my

Geeks come in all sizes

favorite Geek Speak words (Computer nerds are so neologistic):

1. alpha geek–the most technologically savvy dude in the company
2. amazonned–amazonized, means you’ve lost a chunk of your business to a dot-com.
3. back hack–when you get hacked, you return the favor
4. beta baby–child born to a high-tech pro after 1995
5. code 18–Used by tech support to disguise when they’re calling a technical issue user-caused. They’re so PC
6. cyberterrorism–terror on a computer
7. digital jewelry–any hi-tech stuff you wear around your neck–ipods, phones, etc.
8. edress–an electronic address (IP, IM, email, etc.)
9. idea hampster–Someone who always has his/her idea generator running
10. inner geek–the techie deep within each of us

Face

Can you describe body parts without being boring?

I got a lot of feedback on my post on physical descriptors for characters, A Nose by Any Other Name. Here are a few more that will jog your inspiration:

• Brush of make-up and light touch of lipstick

Mouth, neck and chin

• Square chin
• Strong chin
• hanging jowls
• slack, hanging mouth
• long neck
• Adam’s apple
• Neck muscles were drumhead tight
• Beard gone to white
• Thick brown mustache gone to gray