Who's Reading Now?

Nice Spot to Read a Good Book

According to a report from the Pew Research Center, about a quarter of American adults did not read or listen to a single book last year. Seemed like when I was a kid everyone read books, but that was back in the 60s, the one channel on television and no internet days. The same report says that in the last 25 years the percentage of non-readers of a single book in a year has nearly tripled. That is a lot of people not reading, and only about a quarter of Americans say they read 11 or more books in the last year.

Why are people reading less? Too many other things to do for entertainment? Maybe, or maybe not enough good books to get people excited about reading again. Like them or not, the Harry Potter books, the vampire romances and books like 50 Shades, have certainly got, at least, some persons excited about reading.

Do we just need better books? Unfortunately too many books attempted to copy these best sellers and most didn’t work. But that has always been the case with success in every venue.

So what is the answer? Write something people want to read. But the question, what is it that will get both readers and nonreaders alike excited about reading again?  Most genres are too narrow to appeal to those who have given up on reading, so it must be something new and exciting. Or maybe not.

Good stories, good writing, great promotion might help. Seems like word of mouth is still what sells the most books, even traditionally published books need help from word of mouth and of course social media.

But it is still about the story. The last three fiction books I have tried were no-goes. I give them one or two chapters, that’s it, too many books to read a bad one. I get authors promotions touting their great new book, and in some cases, they are just, flat-out bad.

So it’s still the story, if it is a great story and the author promotes, word of mouth/social media should take care of the rest.

 

 

10 Tips to be a Great Writer

Elmore Leonard passed away a half year ago after a long and productive life. He wrote westerns and crime and western crime. I have always wondered why more writers didn’t write in these somewhat parallel genres. Westerns are almost always based on a crime and the solving of the crime. Move from the old west to modern and westerns and crime novels become interchangeable.

Leonard’s success may have been based on his well-known ten tips for good writing.

1.     Never open a book with weather.

2.    Avoid prologues.

3.    Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.

4.    Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.

5.    Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. 

6.    Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."

7.    Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

8.    Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

9.    Don't go into great detail describing places and things.

10.                 Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

 My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

 If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it

 

“And she thought if you don't have the desire to fight or wait for something there's no reason for being on earth.”  Elmore Leonard, Last Stand at Saber River 

Avoiding the One Star

Over the years I have come across many things that can turn a good novel bad. I am not a full -time professional writer or editor although I dabble in both. But I do consider myself a professional reader. With that said, her are, The Waring Rule’s for staying away for the dreaded- One Star Rating.

1.    Do not name every character in the novel, the bartender does not need a name if he is only the bartender. Neither does the guy sitting across from the protagonist at a poker game- if he is never again in the story.

2.   Some words are spelled differently in England than in the United States.  A Defense Attorney in America is different from a Defence Attorney in England.

3.   I hate a page with three sentences on a page and a next page with fifteen. A few long sentences are fine, but too many and it gets difficult to read.

4.    Comments from a few westerns I have recently read. Please be aware I am a professional historian-these may not bug everyone.

 

·        Fry Bread became popular in the 1860s with the Navajo who were given so little provisions it was one of the few foods they could make. It was never common in cafés or in non-Indian homes. And it was Fry Bread, not, Fried Bread. It tastes great, if you want to try it I posted a recipe on my cooking site some time ago. http://crazy-cooking.blogspot.com/2013/01/journey-bread-and-donuts.html

 

·        Early playing cards were not marked in the corners like todays.

·        Cowboys would never have ordered a steak rare

·        There were no blue jeans in the old west

·        The cowboy did not pull his fixin’s from his shirt pocket

 

As far as one star ratings, I don’t give them. If I can’t give it a three or better I don’t rate it. I also don’t give ratings to books that already have several dozen ratings. If you are anything like me, I only look at a few of the ratings, that’s enough.

 

 

 

 

What Grade Level Are You Writing For?

Have you ever wondered what level of reader you are writing for?  Or for that matter have you ever wondered what level the books you are reading are meant for?  Seems there are a variety of on line tools, free of charge, that an author can use to check the level of your words and sentence structure. I checked some of my blog posts, fifth to seventh grade, and also typed in some of the stuff I was reading, two novels, both seventh grade. And how does that stack up, well average reading material is fifth to seventh grade so I guess what I am writing is at about the correct level. Think I may challenge myself to find some more difficult reading material.

Here are two great online tools to check up on yourself, try them out it is great fun. I tested this blog, complete with links, and here are my results.

http://www.writingtester.com/ , my readable Score was, 57/ 100, the higher the number the easier it is to read.  Grade level for this post, came in at a grade six.

The second analyzer is based on tried and true methods used in American schools for many years. This scale is based on the, Flesch Reading Ease Scale, a popular readability algorithm.  You can find this analyzer at, http://sarahktyler.com/code/sample.php, using this scale the same block post came in at a grade level of 6.3, very similar to the writing tester. Surprisingly when I added in the links the reading level for this analyzer went down to 4.54, interesting, not sure what that means.

This might be a waste of time but it beats the computer card game I was playing.