Explore New Writing

Merry Christmas

Wishing all, individually and collectively, the merriest 2016 Christmas ever.

I filled a lull to engage in reading aspiring novel writers outside the stream of those for whom I get paid to do freelance editing.

The novel picked up today, women's fiction, stopped me cold in the first few pages.

This book and writer, who shall remain anonymous, hit me with the following two sentences:

1.  "Anne spent the next year was in a blur of creative frenzy."

Obviously the word "was" should be deleted as one simple grammar cure.

Even then the narrative presentation smacks of dullness. I think I know what is meant. You may get a greater understanding if I reveal Anne is a portrait painter.

Would you say "blur" is the right word? Blur can be defined as "obscure," "haze,"

"stain," "cloud," and "dim."

Rather than "spent" would you be more impressed if Anne "unleashed" a frenzy of creative talent?

2.  "Inside the warmth and happy mood lighting welcomed them, and they ...."

Are you dangling with me? If you read further, the scene starts as two people walk into and begin a conversation in a bar. You might rearrange the words to state: "Warm lighting and a happy mood welcomed ___ and ___ ." That may not be true. It could be "____ and ____, in a happy mood, were welcomed by the bar's warmth." "Happy mood" could be expanded to tilt one's understanding in another direction: "Joyous voices, interrupted by song and laughter, greeted _____ and _____."

No matter what you decide, isn't the fact that you had to delay your reading to grasp an understanding of what the words were crafted to mean annoying?

Still, it's no reason to avoid new writers. Pick up one of their books or download a digital copy. The hunt for hidden treasure is always exciting.

Again, Merry Christmas. 

Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays

It's been awhile since I posted.

Obstacles have been cleared and I return to wish all a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

While it's untitled, a new romance after 2016's Gold Award One Paper Heart has been
completed and will debut in early 2018. The timeline extended to make room in 2017
for the promised mystery Into the Dark, the return of Sheriff Jonas McHugh. He was first
encountered as the Iowa sheriff in Baby Bones.

Keep writing. Be aware that if you have to take multiple breaths before the end
of the sentence, it's likely too long, or mindless. Be aware of words. The term "awful" in the beginning was meant to be "full of awe." Not what you find today. It's meaning is the exact
opposite.

While spoken words "disappear" into the air as soon as spoken. Words typed on a computer
screen are often viewed as provisional. That is, not as permanent as words struck by the
letters on a typewriter. Technology has created an easier path to the mind, not one that is
different in hope.

The hope still remains that words have impact, an intended impact.

Enjoy the holidays with friends and family. I'll be back sooner than expected.

Until December 15, 2016, One Paper Heart is available for 50% off only at
www.smashwords.com/books/view/553245 with coupon code JC59M entered at checkout.

Read both Amanda and Why Does One Write?

For a limited time, read a complimentary copy of Donan Berg's Amanda. Visit Read Amanda, Click here. While at the website be sure to read the code to be entered as a coupon at checkout. Say thank you by posting a review at Barnes and Noble, www.bn.com, or Goodreads.

Why does one write?

For a limited time

For the innate joy?

To mask the pain?

To tell or retell a story?

For a buffet of riches?

Whatever the motivation to slide a pen across paper or to click keys and have characters pop up on a monitor’s screen, truth clashes with fiction. Even if our brain were infallible, would we want to record the minutiae of living? Would anyone desire to read it? The simple answer is no, or at least probably not.

And then there is the horrifying thought that perhaps someone else has said what you want to say or it has been said by others. Where is the idea, the turn of phrase never before spoken or set forth in writing? It is there. No one has had your experience, your perspective, your daily life. There’s the richness, the subtly, the unique emotion coursing from your brain to your fingertips. Whether it be a roar or a gentle nudge, it seeks expression, your exquisite unique expression.

And, with high hopes, you’ve begun. You inch the pen off the paper or press the “shift” button without pairing it with another key because you fear the “right” word exists, but not in your mind. Don’t wait. Perfection in the first instance is not your goal.

 First thoughts can be best, or fuzzy or out of context as the hand fails to match your mind’s speed. No worry. Experience will guide you and the first recorded thought is part of the required experience.  The sun shines every day at 36,000 feet. At sea level, there are lapses to allow daydreaming spurred by cloud images. Both the sun’s rays and their blockage frame the experience of the sun to give alternate and wonderful days not filled with monotony.

There be no need to worry that your first efforts drive a slow romantic dance step into a somersault. The journey into the box canyon is not lost. The return along the same road can offer new insights.

Do not be stymied by literal truth. Even if there is such a thing, differentiate between what the world may see and what you see and sense.  Be strong and forceful in all directions. If you envisioned one story and end up telling another, that’s not failure. It’s success.

About the author

Donan Berg, a heralded mystery writer, in 2016 won the Feathered Quill 1st Place Gold Book Award for Romance. He’s received comments from readers who said they don’t read romance, but One Paper Heart was an exception they enjoyed. You can read a One Paper Heart free sample by clicking on the link or at major online book retailer websites.

Book Review. Tom Brokaw, A Lucky Life Interrupted

Tom Brokaw's seventh novel, A Lucky Life Interrupted, need not interrupt your life.

It's a short work, 256 pages in its Random House large print edition. The story's hook is the famed journalist and NBC anchorman's diagnosis of multiple myeloma, a treatable but incurable cancer affecting the blood's plasma cells

While there are memorable artful twists of the English language, e.g., the neighborhood of life has no long term leases, they are too few. The constant straying from the disease to past events and celebrity name-dropping is disheartening. The back page blurb says Brokaw writes to help others. That may be his intent, but how many people jump on planes from Minnesota's Mayo Clinic to Sloan-Kettering in New York and have General Electric subsidize the cost of a $500 chemo pill, taken twice daily. Brokaw said his co-pay was $15 per pill. Thus, he pays out-of-pocket $30 while GE pays $970 and Brokaw doesn't mention the cost of two other major drugs and other injections and/or care.

Even the presented facts (which are not disputed) get jumbled to lose apple to apple comparison. For example, "The American Cancer Society estimates that in 2015 1,658,370 new cancer cases will be diagnosed and that in the same year about 1,600 people will die from cancer-related conditions daily." Doesn't it seem that deaths are low?  Then note that the first is an annual figure and the second is daily.  To be comparable, the second must be multiplied by 365.  Moreover, let's not forget that the elapsed time between diagnosis to death is not always less than twelve months or one year. There is overlap and it's left uncommented upon.

If that is not disquieting, the ending is. At page 253, Brokaw asks the rhetorical questions: "Has cancer changed  me? Am I a better person? That's for others to judge."  The word "copout" rings in the mind. It's ironic that a great communicator can't say, or more likely won't, which is the impression given.

Brokaw does acknowledge in brief sketches that his situation, based on income, doctors in the family, being a Mayo Clinic public trustee, and with employer insurance coverage, he is far from the everyman experience. One might even say light years from the experience of the World War II generation he wrote eloquently about in his first book.

It is not a research book if a reader is concerned about the United States healthcare crisis.


Donan Berg is a freelance editor and independent author. His latest novel, One Paper Heart, won the 2016 Feathered Quill Gold 1st Place Romance Book Award. One Paper Heart e-book or One Paper Heart trade paperback .  His mysteries and other stories can be found at Amazon .

Donan Berg's One Paper Heart Wins Gold

Donan Berg, author of mystery novels earning 5-star ratings, topped all 2016 Featheredquill.com romance category entries with his debut contemporary romance novel entitled One Paper Heart.

The February 2016 Featheredquill.com  Gold Award/1st Place winner announcement list can found at its website.

An excerpt of One Paper Heart appeared here in an earlier blog post. For a larger free sample click on the following link: One Paper Heart free sample .

Click here to order E-book One Paper Heart E-book $2.99

Click here to order trade paperback One Paper Heart Paperback $13.00

Writing Analysis - The Bones Dance Foxtrot

Statistical fiction writing analysis is a fun exercise.

How the results are interpreted becomes a writer's individual journey.
A dash of faith is required to accept the topic ranges as fair or supported
by empirical data.

I submitted The Bones Dance Foxtrot, Second Skeleton Series Mystery.
It's a novel available in trade paperback and e-book worldwide,
free on Amazon's KindleUnlimited. Author Donan Berg Amazon Page

Here is what was determined by the word analysis.

Generic words 2.15%  (Less than acceptable range, which should be good.)

Flesch Kincaid Grade 5.73 (Reads at sixth grade level.)

Adverbs 5.19%  (Less than acceptable range, which should be good.)

Passive sentences 4.37% (At range bottom.)

Adjectives 6.24% (Within range.)

Sentence length 9.47 words. (At range's lower end.)

Initial pronouns 2.07% (At range's lower end.)

Difficult sentences 19.79% (At range middle.)

Best genre is mystery/detective/police procedural. (44.69% )

To forge a conclusion from the above results adds further subjectivity.
The novel's length is approximately 86,000 words. Lower than the acceptable
range of generic words suggests the words written were specific. This may account
for the mid-range sentence difficulty, however, the sixth grade comprehension
level indicates readability wasn't hindered, nor was it a PhD dissertation.

Perhaps, the short sentence length coupled with active sentences (i.e., a low
number of passive sentences) mitigated the difficult sentences effect? The low
number of initial sentence pronouns supports sentence variety.

Authors should remember that the typical reader doesn't parse sentences or
count words. He or she reads. If the author makes the story interesting and easy,
the more read the work will be.

Ten Book Club Discussion Questions

Adolph’s Gold by Donan Berg

1.  What conflicts protagonist Adolph Anderson other than the fact he doesn’t clip a gold detective shield to his belt?

2.  Was Chief Ron Howard right to pair Adolph and Luann? Was there ever any doubt that Adolph would achieve his gold shield?

3.  Did Adolph follow correct police investigative procedure or fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants?

Does it matter? If not to Adolph, to reality’s criminal justice system?

4.  Adolph finds scraps of poetry, or what ascribes to be poetry. What do they foreshadow?

If someone said it was an author’s trick to advance the story’s plot or to generate artificial suspense, would you agree or disagree?  What other foretelling is there?

5.  Did the locale add significance to the story?

6.  There is a multitude of secondary characters. Are all necessary? Did they distract or become vital to understanding Adolph or his gold shield quest? How important is Officer Finnegan? Rebecca? Dean Wainright? Lt. “Bulldog” Hunter?

7.  Is Adolph’s family important to understanding all sides of Adolph? What significance is his relationship to his wife, his daughter? Does Adolph’s interaction indicate he’s more concerned about his family’s well-being or that Adolph would act as he does for any individual in peril?

8.  Does any character name remind you of an earlier Donan Berg mystery?

9.  Is there a fear, an experience or a contemporaneous event that motivates Adolph to alter or confirm how he reacts the way he does? More than one?

10. Is it important to characterize the novel as a police procedural? Would it fit or cross to other genres? Mystery? Thriller? Literary? Character or family study?