Pre-Flight Check In: Brenda Novak's Diabetes Auction!

Add Power and Take Off with a Deep Editing Analysis:

DRIVE TIME by Hank Phillippi Ryan

Dare Devil Dachshund Contest!

Smooth Landings!

The LAST DAY of Brenda Novak's Diabetes Auction is TODAY, May 31st!

Bid on an item at the DIABETES AUCTION on-line -- and you may win an experience that changes your life.

Over 2000 donations!

Here are the goodies I'm donating:

1. A set of Six Lecture Packets

2. A 50 page Triple Pass Deep Edit Critique

3. Registration for a WRITE AT SEA Master Class: Deep Editing Power taught by Margie Lawson  :-) March 24 - 28, 2011

4. An Amazing FLYING GET-AWAY for Two!

You select the destination – any place within 600 miles from Denver.

5. Registration for a three-day IMMERSION MASTER CLASS session!

For details, click on each item above.

CLICK FAST!  The Diabetes Auction ends in a few hours.

Immersion Master Class:  MayMersion Mavens

Are you interested in digging deep into psychologically empowered deep editing?  Hands-on learning?

Immersion Master Classes are held in my log home at the top of a Colorado mountain. Class members stay at a lodge by my home.

Meet the writers who became MayMersion Mavens:

Front row, left to right: Nikki Duncan, Peg Colyar, Tracey Devlin.

Back row, left to right: Tricia Wood, Courtney Kaul, Adrienne Giordano.

The MayMersion Mavens stretched their smiles as often as they stretched their brains.

Courtney and Adrienne empowered their WIP's during a break-out session in the 'library.'

Here's a shot of the fourth morning. Brain stretching was successful.

You may think the light behind them is the morning sun. It's really a Deep Edit aura. :-)

Enrollment is limited to seven in each Immersion Master Class session. The four sessions for 2010 are full, so I'm adding another session, August 12 - 16, 2010

To read specifics about Immersion Master Class sessions, click here.

Two On-line Courses in June:

June 1 - 13:

Writing Body Language and Dialogue Cues Like a Psychologist

June 14 - 27:

Powering Up Body Language in Real Life: Projecting a Professional Persona When Pitching and Presenting

To read a course description, click on the title. To Register for either course, click here.

Is your June too busy to take an on-line course?

Consider a Lecture Packet. The lectures for each of my on-line courses are available through Paypal -- at $22 per course. Please click here to read descriptions and to order.

Hank Phillippi Ryan, DRIVE TIME

Hank Phillippi Ryan earns accolades for her Charlotte McNally mysteries the same way she earned 26 Emmy Awards for her investigative journalism. In her journalism and writing worlds, she nailed knowledge, mastered craft, kept her passion on fire.

Her debut novel, PRIME TIME, 2007, garnered two RITA nominations, finaled in the Daphne, was selected as a Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice, and won an Agatha Award for Best First Mystery. Her third release, AIR TIME, was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Novel. Her short story, ON THE HOUSE, won a 2009 Agatha Award for Best Short Story.

If you’ve taken my classes you may know I use a construction crane to raise my writing craft bar high. Hank Phillippi Ryan’s writing craft and story-telling impress me. Her books impress others too.

Check out these raves for DRIVE TIME:

"Hank Phillippi Ryan knows the television business entirely; she understands plotting; and she writes beautifull y. No wonder I loved Drive Time. Anyone would."

—Robert B. Parker

"Placing Ryan in the same league as Lisa Scottoline...her latest book catapults the reader into the fast lane and doesn't relent until the story careens to a stop. New readers will speed to get her earlier books, and diehard fans will hope for another installment."

—Li brary Journal on DRIVE TIME (starred review!)

"Drive Time is Hank Phillippi Ryan at her nonstop best. I loved it! The story grabbed me on the first page and didn't let go until the very last page... Charlie is a heroine for today. Readers won't be able to get enough of her."

—Carla Neggers

How does Hank Phillippi Ryan impress readers and reviewers (and moi) with her writing?

Dig deep into the examples from DRIVE TIME, her February 2010 release, and you’ll have some clues.

I just finished teaching DEEP EDITING, so I decided to share a few rhetorical devices from DRIVE TIME.  Enjoy!

Rhetorical Devices:

Anaphora:

Amplifies POV Character’s Guilt:

Feeling guilty for missing the Borum reconnaissance. Guilty for not reading my e-mail. Guilty because it crossed my mind that maybe—if Randall Kindell is a Bexter bigwig—we could leave him out of our story.

Shares what she’d hoped to find, but didn’t:

But my search turns up nothing. No diary. No ledger. No file of incriminating letters.

Describes Setting: The full paragraph:

The lobby has the air of a small-town British train station at rush hour. Chilly. High ceilings. Identically dressed students, carefully diverse. A few hovering parents. There’s the low-key buzz of hellos and good-byes. Everyone bustling, everyone determined, everyone with a destination. And all keeping to schedule.

Read those examples out loud – and you’ll hear the power of repetition. You’ll hear the power of anaphora. You’ll hear the power of every-beat-counts cadence.

Study the last example. Analyze sentence structure and placement. Notice how Hank Phillippi Ryan varied sentence lengths and used punctuation to enhance cadence. To draw the reader into the setting. To mirror the rush. The bustling. The determination.

Polysyndeton: Describes Character:

In his floppy New England Patriots T-shirt, all ankles and knees and ears, the little boy looks a lot less scared than he did by the side of the road.

Epizeuxis: Also an example of Expanding Time:

Now something big is flying out of the back of the truck. A—bat? Part of my brain struggles to name it, while the rest of me, focused, calculates the best way to avoid it. A huge piece of---paper? It’s metal. Metal. Metal. A huge scrap of metal, caught by the increasing wind is flying toward us.

Zeugma: Two examples:

1. The upstairs hall is emptying, too. It smells of dust and bleach and change.

2. Of sharing closets and sharing secrets.

Alliteration:

If you didn’t disagree and discuss and debate, no good ideas would ever emerge.

Hyperbole: Used in a character description:

He’s wearing a khaki canvas vest with a million zippered pockets. His jeans are wrinkled too.

Eponym: I’m including the paragraph. Check out the cadence and backloading.

I’ve seen his fifth-grade photo, a pudgy Humpty perched on the front row, and a few pages later, his charismatic image in the graduating class, suddenly with shoulders, class-president hair, and tall enough to be in the back with the other hunks. That was almost thirty years ago. He’s still got the shoulders and most of the hair. And the charisma.

Epistrophe:

I keep my attention balanced between monitoring the position of the Explorer and driving safely. But the night is clear, and the road is clear, and my view of the Explorer is clear.

Onomatopoeia:

The phone makes a bee-bah noise, reminding me I haven’t retrieved my message from Josh.

Simile:

No-Hat is driving like a sixteen-year-old taking the Registry of Motor Vehicle’s licensing exa m.

Body Language and Dialogue Cues:

Facial Expressions: Includes POV’s Expression -- and Two Examples of Parallelism:

No-Hat is smiling, looking me up and down. There’s not a flicker of recognition. He’s either really good at acting or he has no idea who I am.

I wrench my expression back to normal, hoping he didn’t notice my hesitation. All I can do is see where this goes. It’s a public parking lot just before rush hour. He couldn’t just shoot me. I put on a big smile. Because I have a little idea.

Facial Expression: Uses Parallelism, Interpreted as a Lie:

Her eyes are wide and direct, her expression innocent and earnest.

Like a child who’s practiced lying.

Proxemics: Two examples from consecutive pages:

1. Fee still makes no move to take the book. I shift my weight, inching a bit closer to her on the love seat. She backs up into her pillows ever so slightly, politely but distinctly keeping her distance.

2. Leaning forward, I invade her space a millimeter more.

Dialogue Cues – from POV and non-POV characters:

“Mom?” I say, even before I hear the second syllable of her ‘hello.’ “It’s me. What’s wrong?”

“Well. Charlotte. Where have you been? And what have you been doing?” Mom, ignoring my question, sounds like she’s interrogating fifteen-year-old me after some teenage transgression. I hardly ever transgressed, since there wasn’t much transgression territory for geeks and bookworms. I still recognize the tone.

“Nowhere. And nothing.” The time-honored teenage answer comes out before I can stop myself. I regroup, attempting to find a response befitting a forty-seven-year-old.

What did Hank Phillippi Ryan accomplish with those dialogue cues and internalizations? She showed agitation, deepened character including a backstory sliver, and slipped in her POV character’s age.

Dialogue Cue: Interpreted:

“What in the hell are you talking about, Charlotte?”

‘Hell’ comes out southernized, like ‘hay-ull,’ which means Franklin’s tired and cranky.

Dialogue Cue: POV Character:

I pitch my voice a bit higher than natural. New England Valley girl, “I’ve really, really always wanted one. But I never found the right one. You know how it is.”

Chapter Opening: Chapter Seventeen:

“I’m not press. I’m family.” I’m facing an expanse of government issue wood and metal, the front desk in the foyer of the district attorney’s office. And I’ve suddenly hit a wall.

The wall in this case is the flame-haired, lip-liner addicted, fashion-challenged receptionist of the D.A.’s office. Her green plastic nameplate says Monica Beales. Her demeanor says go away.

Analysis:

Shared Setting: Used few words and moves on with story. The reader gets the setting.

. . . facing an expanse of government issue wood and metal, the front desk in the foyer of the district attorney’s office.

Fresh Writing: Physical Description of Receptionist

. . . flame-haired, lip-liner addicted, fashion-challenged receptionist . . .

Rhetorical Device: Anadiplosis: Echoes ‘wall’ --

And I’ve suddenly hit a wall.

The wall in this case . . .

Rhetorical Device: Parallelism: Conveys Name and Attitude –

Her green plastic nameplate says Monica Beales. Her demeanor says go away.

Cadence:

I encourage you to read those two paragraphs out loud. Just like you read your work out loud. Right?

The cadence is powerful throughout both paragraphs. The content and cadence drive the reader from the first word to the last.

Here's the Last Example – Two character descriptions (physical and approach to life) alliteration, power internalizations, rhetorical question, fresh writing, tight writing, strong cadence . . .

I can’t believe the boys are bickering again. J.T., battered leather jacket and broken-in jea ns, foreign-correspondent cool and with a network resume, is my age, but he’s still the new guy at Channel 3. Franklin, pressed and preppy in Burberry camel hair, is ten years J.T.’s junior, but still holds station seniority. Picking my wa y toward the car, I turn to watch, half amused, half a nnoyed, as they continue their battle for turf. Can’t we all just get along? Men.

Hank Phillippi Ryan deserves her stellar reviews and stellar awards. I enjoy her stories and style and hope you enjoy them too.

The Dare Devil Dachshund Contest!

On the last Wednesday of each month, I place a dachshund cartoon on one of my web site pages. You find the Dare Devil Dachshund and enter the monthly drawing. You could win my EDITS System Power Pack!

The EDITS System Power Pack includes a certificate for one hour of my Deep Editing brain -- applied to 15 pages of your WIP.

You could be the next Dare Devil Dachshund Contest Winner!

I love presenting. I love having fun with writers. I love sharing my expertise and energy.

If you are looking for a speaker for a half-day, full day, two full days or more, or a workshop presenter and keynote speaker, please contact me. I present five full-day Master Classes, your-choice keynote speeches, and forty-plus one and two-hour workshops.

For more information, contact Margie.

I'm betting many of you have plans for a fabulous and fun summer. Hopefully you have plans to move your writing projects forward too.

Somehow, time speeds up during the summer months. Days and weeks ram into each other until they hit Labor Day.  Then it hits you, summer is over. Aack!  You didn't accomplish your goals.

Plan ahead for smooth landings at the end of your summer. Set small goals. Monthly goals. Doable goals.  Be good to yourself. Schedule some time off for summertime play.

Smooth and Happy Landings to All!

Smiling.........................Margie