Coffee Chat 20.0 with S.K. Anthony: Chatting 'Til the Cows Come Home

I'm waiting for S.K. to arrive. At least, I think she's not here yet. Lately, I've found her visiting the animals before coming in the house. She's really spoiling Live Bacon. He has three sets of boots now! What does a pig need boots for, anyway? . . . he does seem to like them, though, and they look adorable on him.

Well, she said she had an idea for this week's chat, but she always has ideas, so I don't know if this one is normal, or another of her harebrained schemes to take over the world. I guess I'll know it when I hear it.

SK: [Walks in carrying a large shopping bag from L.L. Bacon.] Oh hey, Lynda! You're up . . . Man, the pets are growing up so fast! Anyway, I'm ready to get this ball rolling. What do you have up your sleeve this time?

ER: Ahh, here's the gal after my own heart, bringing treats for the animals and ready to swig coffee like there's no tomorrow. Nothing up my sleeve, man. You said you had the best idea EVAH—"an ace in the hole," I believe was your exact quote.

SK: Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle! I did say I had an idea for today's chat, didn't I? I haven't had my coffee yet, and two heads are better than one, so I’m sure you'll help me remember what I wanted to discuss. Won’t you?

ER: Oh, you can count on me. Look on the bright side: we are always chock-full of ideas. We haven't scraped the bottom of the barrel yet—I'm sure there's an oldie but goodie we haven't used.

Sit down and have a cuppa while we put our heads together to try and remember.

SK: [Takes sip of coffee.] Ahhh, this really makes me feel like mi casa es su casa! Err, well it is your casa, but that's not the point. All right, so let's buckle down and get busy painting our nails or something. Smart cookies don't crumble and idle hands are the devil's workshop, after all.

ER: Speaking of idle hands, what have you been doing this summer? Working like a dog on your book revisions, no doubt. You seem to be burning the midnight oil on some project or another every time I talk to you.

SK: Goodness, I'm at my wits’ end with revisions. It's almost like Static has an ax to grind with me. [SK grabs Lynda’s hand and starts filing nails.]

ER: Take it easy on my hands! Those are fingernails, not sheet metal.

SK: Don’t be a big baby—no pain, no gain! I’m almost done. Either way, I'm taking it easy on Static. Rome wasn't built in a day, you know. On the other hand, I’ve been as sly as fox this summer: I'm reposting our chats on Mondays. What about you? You've been busy as a bee.

ER: I have been busy! Running around like a chicken with its head cut off, in fact. This "working outside the home" stuff? It’s for the birds. Still, I do like my job and the people I work with. They're the bomb!

I'm still editing at home, too. No time to twiddle my thumbs. [Twiddles just for the novelty of it because there is, in fact, time to twiddle thumbs on Coffee Chat days.]

I love that you're reblogging our old chats from the beginning. And did you notice? If you read between the lines, we actually make sense in some of them, believe it or not.

SK: I just hope you don't burn the candle at both ends. Sometimes you just have to stop and smell the roses with a friend over coffee and some goodies. Speaking of, what are we eating? I'm hungry as a bear.

ER: Oh, stop the crocodile tears. We have enough food here to choke a horse—you won't go hungry for long. You thought last week's bacon was great? You ain't seen nothing yet! I made blueberry crepes.

SK: What color you want on your nails? [Holds up red and black nail polish.] I thought red would suit you; the black is for me. Let’s stuff our faces first, though.

ER: [Nods.] Red does bring out the best features in my glasses. Not that I really had a choice in the matter, as usual.

I just wish you could remember what our topic was supposed to be for this week. We're not getting any younger, you know. The suspense is killing me!

SK: [Absentmindedly pours coffee into a large bowl, obviously distracted.] Eureka!

ER: Eureka?

SK: By Jove, I think I’ve got it! [Flaps hands in the air.]

ER: Do tell. [Takes bowl & pours coffee back into pot. SK never notices.]

SK: Clichés. I wanted to talk about clichés. [Sighs heavily in plops back into a chair.] And now time’s up.

ER: Well, there’s no use crying over spilled milk. It is what it is.

SK: [Instantly cheery again.] You’re right. Live and learn. Clichés aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, anyway. Let’s have more coffee—and get those crepes over here.

As always:

You can find S.K. Anthony in a number of places. She's on Twitter @SKathAnthony, her website is www.skanthony.com, her Facebook page is S Katherine Anthony, and on occasional occasions, she'll be right here with me, drinking coffee and laughing it up over our latest plans and schemes. And possibly even talking about books and writing. 

You can find me here. I'm always here. 

L = Leave Other People's Ideas in Other People's Books

If you like a book, don’t copy it. 

Ever since Twilight was published, the majority of YA romance books contain a clearing. Always a clearing. 

Need conflict? Have the MC orphaned and living with a cruel uncle and aunt, a la Harry Potter. 

The hero doesn’t have to have perfect abs, perfect grades, popularity, a nice car and skills in every sport. The heroine doesn’t need to be pretty but clumsy. Or pretty but doesn’t realize it. Every vampire doesn’t have to become suddenly beautiful. Every forbidden love story doesn’t have to involve a werewolf and vampire couple. I feel bad for my Native American friends, because people expect them to be wiser than the average person. What pressure. If you thought a plot twist was spectacular, don’t steal it and change the names to put it in your book as your own work.

Just as there are only twelve musical notes which can be made into an infinite combination of beautiful or horrendous sounds, there are an infinite number of plots that can spring from a basic formula of HERE WE ARE + SOMETHING HAPPENS + THINGS ARE TENSE = THINGS RESOLVE. They don’t all have to involve superpowers, too-perfect characters, love triangles, or—*shudder*—a clearing.

K = Know the Rules in Order to Break Them for Effect

Knowing the rules doesn’t mean they have to be followed stringently. Most dialogue doesn’t follow Ze Proper English, and shouldn’t have to, unless you’re writing a book called How to Speak Uncomfortably to Others. Come to think of it, I’ve read books that should have carried that title.

You can use slang if you want to get jiggy. (And okay, now I’m laughing pretty hard, because that is SO not what I would say and I suddenly feel 100 years old while typing it.) Prepositions are sometimes all right to end sentences with. And you can begin a sentence with a conjunction. You can apply the oft-misused Random Capitalization. If you wish, use clichés until the cows come home. Even . . . yep, incomplete sentences. You can do all these things, as long as you are using them for a particular reason, and you are aware that you’re breaking rules.

It’s the unsuspecting people who need to be careful. The phrase, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” attributed to George Santayana (and repeated in various forms by Edmund Burke, Winston Churchill, and others), can be changed to the literary version: “Those who do not know the rules are bound to break them.”  

It all goes in order: learn them well, then break them sparingly. You don’t want to be breaking so many rules that your readers begin to wonder if you ever learned any to begin with. 

C = Clichés Need to Go

Avoid them like the plague. Considering that I was able to find, in about three seconds, a multitude of Google results for “clichés in writing,” it’s amazing to me that writers continue to use and abuse them (there’s a cliché or two for you in this paragraph alone).

There are those who go for the obvious phrases, like “stick out like a sore thumb,” “like a kid in a candy store,” or “breath of fresh air.” Others are more subtle than that. 

http://authonomy.com/writing-tips/publishers-list-of-phrases-for-writers-to-avoid/ mentions the newer trend of “stock modifiers”—words that are commonly paired together that have become clichés of their own. Someone isn’t moved; he’s visibly moved. Another is woefully unprepared. Yet another is unfailingly polite.

Clichés don’t always have to be set phrases; they can also be storytelling clichés, as discussed on http://litreactor.com/columns/top-10-storytelling-cliches-that-need-to-disappear-forever. There’s an easy way to proceed, which usually turns into a cop-out. Describing your character’s looks by having her look in a mirror? Don't fall into that trap; be unique and don't follow the crowd. Is your character a bad guy? Blame bad parenting or past abuse. I’ll tell you a secret: the scariest bad guys are the ones who have no horrendous incident to blame. They’re just psycho and that’s that.