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[writingwithoutdrama]

Physical Intimacy

Intimacy. The romantic overtures abound in Romance books and Lifetime Movies, but are we only seeing the final stages? Intimacy is one side of Robert Sternberg's triangle theory of love. (Passion and Commitment being the other two.) While some stages seem to fit the other sides of the triangle, these are just the stepping stones of intimacy.

Intimacy is emotional. In its infancy, intimacy begins with our eyes taking stock of a form. A single glance is all it takes for our nether regions to take notice, but we want more than just a one night lay.

Do they return the same bashful glance? Can we call their eyes the window to the soul or does that single glance warn us to flee; run, run, run away and never return.

Is the physical chemistry all we have? We smile back, and now our tongues get thick and unruly. Our words trip over themselves as we try to communicate. Butterflies in our stomachs should be called Jaws with how unstable we feel.

If we weigh our attraction to them, we move on to the fourth step. We allow them to hold our hands. Sometimes our hands seem made for each other as they slide into place; other times, it's a battle of fingers. It is a purposeful movement showing we are comfortable enough to try being something more.

Queue the arm drop on the shoulder routine. It's famous in movies because it demonstrates the growing emotional connection. Done too soon, and the arm-to-shoulders becomes invasive. This stage is a flag showing we are something. We've come to a point that we are emotionally invested.

Ever watch a movie and the man guides his date to her chair with his hand at the small of her back? This one act alone shows how familiar and personable the couple are to each other. They are invested in each other.

Kissing is a recognizable intimacy, and in writing, can be a tension builder. Like a blimp, kissing is a visible sign of an emotional and physical bond. The couple needs fewer words to communicate. They understand the needs and desires of their partner. At this stage, we let someone into our personal space, and the attraction is hard to deny.

The ketchup stage, as I call it, begins an extraordinarily intimate state. We allow our partner to invade our personal space outside passion filled concessions. We stroke their scruff, and they brush our hair. We wipe the ketchup glob from the corner of their mouth. If we don't trust them here, we can't continue.

The final two stages are a delicate dance that overlaps in passion-addled minds. Foreplay and touching of hands to body, intimacy skyrocket the physical responses of passion and emotions; there are no clear lines between them and us.

Keep your shirt on. Without the clothes and the layer of soap bubbles we hide behind, we are barren to our lover's touch. There is no closer intimacy besides intercourse.

While some of these steps of intimacy cross the realm of passion, these steps build a commitment for a steady relationship. These stages aren't gauged by time but by internal weights of attraction and desires; some people speed through with no care for emotional exchange while others seem to stall. By understanding the different stages, your writing can flourish in ways that build the tension and the understanding of better, more stable relationships. Look at key points in your life and see how these stages correlate with you and your lover.

This was originally posted on WwD’s blog.

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[writingwithoutdrama]

Title Pages—Parts of Front Matter

Publishers do various things with their layout, which may or may not follow guidelines published in books like the Chicago Manual of Style. The differences progress through hardback, print, and eBooks.

The most basic of front matter is the inclusion of what is called a half-title and the full title page.

The half-title page consists only of the title. It’s also known as the “bastard” title. The full title contains the title, author name, and it might also have the name of the publisher at the bottom of the page. The designs between the two can be similar—like shown above—or they can be slightly different.

The title pages are important because it tells what the book is in case the cover is torn up, it’s a place where authors can sign, it protects the prose, etc. Some full-title pages are these artistic renderings of beauty and sometimes they aren’t much different from the half-title page.

But do we really need the half-title page? That info is clearly in the full title page and doesn’t it do the same?

For the answer to that, we’d have to look at why the bastard page exists to begin with.

At one point, books were expensive to own. They were a labor of love and wealth, expertly bound with ornate covers. The wealthy would have a book bound to match their library. It’s why in some old photos/paintings, an entire library seems to be filled with the same color. They were purposefully bound that way. It showed wealth and immeasurable wealth to some regard.

The half-title started out as a blank sheet of paper, used to keep the book and the ornate full title page safe while it was being stacked, like a bookmark, and protect the book in binding. That single page was a “bastard” page. It wasn’t part of the book.

With the invention of printing presses, the interior of a book could be produced, but they weren’t bound. The first few runs (sometimes just a couple hundred copies) were printed for the wealthy, and those were bound on better paper and in beautiful volumes. The other copies were stacked, like a newspaper being delivered to a newsstand, and sold for those who could afford them.

The top page of the stack of the “book” was blank, and people wrote the title by hand. That page would look like a well-worn menu at a busy restaurant—discolored, torn, stained, etc—by the time some copies were sold. The age when this was going on, there wasn’t plastic wrap and file folders. It was twine or glue/leather binding, and for the poor, the binding wasn’t an option.

Books when bound, at one point, weren’t stored with the spines facing out. In fact, titles on the spine are a fairly new addition to the whole book process. People would tear out the page, write the title, and wrap it along the loose edge of a book. In a library of hundreds of books, the hand-written bastard page became the “spine.” Printers stopped including a blank page and began printing just the title because of that act.

The page still lingers even with the modern advantages of the printing process.

The process is fairly automated. The paper isn’t expensive. If the process screws up, it doesn’t take days of long hours to replace the work.

Sometimes we leave it because it’s “traditional.” It’s something that was done, and we’ve forgotten why. I think most people fall under this one.

Some of us leave it in as a nod to what that single page accomplished. Similar to why we don’t indent the first paragraph of a chapter.

Some writers leave it in, because that’s the page they know they will autograph. Why do they need their name in print when they will sign it? That page can be removed and framed, and the book loses no value.

It’s fairly obvious why the full-title is needed. We never see people argue that point. It’s there to make a statement. To give information. It’s to protect the actual book from being manhandled during the process.

Do we need the half-title page? In eBooks, I rarely include it, and unless a client asks for it to be removed, I always include it in print; somewhat because of tradition, but also because that half-title page helped shape how books look and how important that page was in helping those who couldn’t afford traditional binding to be exposed to a wealth of knowledge shared by thousands by the simple arrangement of the alphabet into ideas.

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This post was edited/proofed by Dennis Dotyhttps://www.dennisdotywebsite.com/ and ProWritingAid.

[writingwithoutdrama]

Editors? Worthy Investment or Total Scam?

I will not do a pros and cons thing like I do with so many posts. Editors are a worthy investment. I will break down the perks of working with one and how to find the perfect editor for you.

I always say, "write for yourself, edit for the world." What I mean is write the stories you want to read but have an editor to make sure someone outside of your "bubble" can understand it.

We live in cultural bubbles. Sayings, phrases, items, and a million other things make our bubbles unique, but if we can't convey what something is so that others can understand it, you're shunning a larger population of readers.

An example, in one of my Laughing P books, I talked about cattle guards. Where I live, cattle guards are common. They are poles laid across a road for trucks to drive across but anything with a hoof can't walk across. Sometimes they are part of a larger box that is inserted into the road and sometimes it's just a grate type insert—depends on the road/terrain/ground components.

My editor texted me with questions. My prose didn't do it justice; people who didn't grow up in farming communities couldn't understand it. I was limiting my market instead of making my book as reader friendly as possible while sticking to the vibe of the books.

"Well, that's one example."

I ran my manuscripts through Grammarly and ProWritingAid. I had betas, and I'd read it dozens of times. I learned a few things...

Betas aren't editors. They are readers. It's a good thing, but they are looking for a good time in a good story and not to make sure you didn't put the wrong form of to or forget a hyphen or where the proper place for an ellipse is.

The mind likes to make the job easier. It's why we naturally overlook spelling errors as long as the first two letters and the last letter are in the correct spot.

Manuscripts bleed red.

That red made me realize that computers don't replace the human component.

A well-edited book does a few things.

Rules are always rules, until they aren't, or were they rules to begin with? Most rules of grammar and punctuation in Fiction Writing are dictated by the Chicago Manual of Styles NOT the APA, MLA, AP, Oxford Guide or what you learned in eighth grade English class. There are hard rules, hard rules with exceptions, rules that fluctuate depending on where a word falls in the sentence, there are assumptions which people think are rules that aren't rules ... It's the difference between following the recipe to a tee on the back of a pre-packaged cake box and being a good enough cook who understands the chemistry of baking and can make a cake from scratch without relying on a cookbook. The average writer can follow the directions. They are the "common sense" rules—the ones we learned in eighth grade, but they aren't the best rules for running a bakery.

It makes the book readable by everyone. Not everyone will like the subject, but an English teacher can enjoy the same book as a doctor, car mechanic, stay-at-home parent, young person, older person, etc. because it's not riddled with errors. A poorly edited book ... there are some things people are willing suspend their belief in (think of movies like Avatar, Power Rangers, Bird Box) but constantly noticing things like misspellings, incomplete thoughts, odd formatting (yes, even the layout can change a reader's perspective), pull the reader out of the book, and the thing they love now becomes a chore.

It's cheaper to maintain. You can throw money at promos, but once reviews start rolling in about how bad it is to read, you're having to throw more money in, hoping someone 1-clicks without reading those reviews. If you have it edited first, the reviews would be a mix of people who loved every moment and those who didn't like the premise, not a bunch of 1 and 2 star reviews and DNFs because it was hard to read.

They can be one of your biggest champions. Editors talk to other editors, they talk to their wives/husbands, and buy books for friends. A good editor can become a friend, an ally, the support that you didn't realize you need. They can be the sounding board for when something just confuses the piss out of you, and to be fair, writers pour their SOULS into what they write. They chip at it and thread a piece of themselves into it, and I'm not talking about if they write about murder they think about killing someone. No, I'm talking about the little nuances, like your favorite color or your preference for names that start with a B that you never even noticed. They don't replace your beta team, but they understand you in a way that no one else does because they have that critical eye and WANT you to be the best that you can be.

If none of this has convinced of the importance of an editor, write a short story and pay for it to be edited by three different editors. If it doesn't bleed redder than you expected—you're claiming you don't need one so even a little red is bad—then you must be a miracle, an exception to the rule.

Stephen King, Kim Harrison, James Patterson, JK Rowling, Suzan Tisdale, SK Quinn, Craig Martelle, and thousands of others who have turned their love of writing into a career have one thing in common regardless if they are traditionally published or indie. They all have editors. The names known across the globe, all have editors.

Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more WwD content.

This post was originally posted on WwD’s main blog on Wordpress: writingwithoutdrama.com.

This post was edited/proofed by Dennis Doty  https://www.dennisdotywebsite.com/ and ProWritingAid.

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