Improve Your Writing with Readability Statistics By Denice Whitmore and Jo Wilkins

In this computer age of instant gratification, readability statistics are a great tool to keep your writing technically on track. What can this option do for you? Take a look at the graphic below:

                                               

•              The top of the chart tracks your counts

•              The middle of the chart gives the averages found in your document

•              The bottom gives the passive percentage, reading ease and grade level

The bottom is the most important. Industry standards for today are 5th to 6th grade level of writing, 5% or less passive voice (Mostly reserved for dialogue because we speak in passive voice) and a 75% to 85% readability on the Flesh reading scale. As for the grade level, keep in mind that:

o                  The Gettysburg Address was written at a 6^th grade level

o                  Hemmingway wrote at a 5^th grade level. Old Man of the Sea is at 5.3.

o                  Newspapers are written on a 3^rd grade level so everyone can understand them.

It’s not the words you use, but the complexity of the sentences that determines grade level. A few years ago a member of the Henderson Writers' Group approached Jo and asked why his book wouldn’t sell. She took it home to read and ended up throwing it across the room during the third chapter With an average sentence length of 62 words, Jo would finish a sentence and have to go back to the beginning since it had changed directions so many times she had no idea what it was about. So, she investigated why. The back blurb ─ first sentence was 56 words, has 4 commas and changes direction after each comma.

Jo typed in the first few pages to check the readability score. It was 27% passive voice, Read on a 12.6 grade level and had scored a 36 for readability. She told him he needed to dumb it down. He said he couldn’t, his three college professors had edited it for him and he didn't want to upset them. She told him that was the only audience he would attract. A couple of years later, after he heeded her advice, he wrote a killer fiction book that fell into the proper readability scores and it sold well on Amazon.

Here is how to set up the readability statistics for Microsoft Word and Corel Word Perfect. If you would like a tracking sheet that will help you keep track of your statistics email info@mysticpublishersinc.com. 

To set up your computer to give you the readability scores for any document in Microsoft Word 2003, you need to take these steps.

Drop down the Tools menu from the standard toolbar.

Click once on Options at the bottom of the list.

When the Options dialogue box comes on the screen click on the top tab that reads Spelling & Grammar.

On the Spelling & Grammar page, go to the bottom of the page in the grammar section.  Check the boxes that say Check grammar as you type – Check grammar with spelling – Show readability statistics.

Click on the OK option at the bottom and the dialogue box will close.

After this is set up, every time you hit F7 to check the spelling and grammar, a box will come up to show you the word count and the readability scores for the document on the screen.

To set up the equivalent of this feature in Corel’s Word Perfect, there are a few more steps, and it must be done manually with every document.

Drop down the Tools menu on the application toolbar.

Click on the Gramatik option (or use Alt+Shift+F7) to open the grammar checker.

On the right hand side of the grammar checker dialogues box, tag the options button.

A square menu will come on screen.  In the center of that menu you will find the selection, Analysis    ►.

Place the mouse arrow on either the word or the arrowhead, and another box will come on screen.

In this box, scroll to the bottom of the listed features to readability.

Click once on readability and a dialogue box will come on screen.

In the readability dialogue box, you will see the scores of your document compared to a Hemingway short story.

You can change the comparison to the Gettysburg Address for speeches or to the 1040EZ instructions for an instructional document.

The Flagged button at the bottom of the box takes you to a screen that outlines the grammar rules you may have broken.

The Basic Counts button takes you to a screen where you can view the word count—Sentence structure—etc.

 To set up your computer to give you the readability scores for any document in Microsoft Word 2007, you need to take these steps. 

Step 1.            Open Word and click on the Microsoft Symbol in the upper left-hand corner.

Step 2.            On the drop down menu click on the word option button in the lower right hand corner next to the exit button.

Step 3.            In the next menu box, click on PROOFING (the third option down) in the left-hand side list of options.

Step 4.            In the next menu box, go the bottom of the options displayed and place a check in the box next to SHOW READABILITY STATISTICS.

To set up your computer to give you the readability scores for any document in Microsoft Word 2010 &2013

1.         To initiate the Readability Statistics, open a word document and clicked on FILE at the extreme left side of the screen.
2.         Scroll down the menu on the left side until you see OPTIONS. A new menu comes out.

3.         At this point in 2010, you must go into the Proofing menu to find the readability option. In 2013 just scroll to the bottom of the menu.      
4.         Check the box for readability. If the box is ghosted and will not allow you to put in the check mark, put a check in the Grammar & Spelling options and it allow you to initiate the option.

5.         Hit ok & you are done. 

Why Write? by Janelle Evans

            Someone once asked me why I choose to be a writer. The cocky answer: because I’m good at it, isn’t entirely true. I’m a writer because I choose not to ignore the seeds of imagination that are always floating around in my head. The whole “good at it” ebbs and flows, depending on the day. Sometimes way more ebb than flow, but I keep at it. That’s what catapults me out of a this-is-a-hobby mentality into serious writer. I spend time, money, and uber-amounts of effort to learn and grow in the craft.

            The world tells writers we are only successful once we’re published. Not true, and I’m speaking from experience here, my first published book came two years ago.

            Every time I find a surprising thread in my plot that keeps a story going, I’m smiling for days. Finish a book, and I’m dancing around the house. Sure they’re private victories, but they keep me coming back to write more. And coming back is more than half the battle.

 

Read more blogs by our guest blogger at authorjanelleevans.com

You’ve got a Blank Space, Baby by Mary Einfeldt

            You’ve always known you wanted to be a writer. You’ve scribbled down twiddles in notebooks and toyed with some bad poetry in your teens, but now it’s time to get serious and get the book that’s been floating around in your subconscious down on paper. Maybe it’s National Novel Writing Month and this is finally the excuse you’ve been looking for to get started. So you open your computer and stare at a Big. Blank. Screen. Now what?

            If you’re a smart writer, you’ve read enough books to know that the first page, the first sentence, is crucial. If the first page is brilliant, the reader will naturally continue on to page two and so forth. The first few lines can establish the whole tone and voice of the book. But that glaring white screen is intimidating. The pressure of putting your best self forward from the start can cause pressure on a writer that leads to frustration and ultimately self-doubt. If anything, a writer should approach a story with confidence.

            So how to begin? While starting at the beginning of the story is a good idea, this does not mean you have to start with that all-important first line. Focus instead on starting with the first third of the book. If you were to partition your story into three chunks of beginning middle and end, go ahead and start somewhere in the beginning. Work on introducing your characters and setting, hint at the conflict that is to come, and refine your unique voice. Rather than stressing out about a good first line, spend your first few days on fleshing out that beginning chunk. Chances are as you start writing, you will stumble across a line that demands to be front and center. And if you write and write for days and still nothing stands out to you as a solid opening? Remind yourself that writers have the luxury of going back and changing things that may not have worked the first time around. Lucky writers.

            If at any point you get a little stuck, try one, or all, of these go-to exercises that will help you craft a strong opening:

 

·         Grab a notebook, a pen, and your ten favorite books of all time. You don’t need to overthink this and look for the ten best or most critically acclaimed books of all time, just ten that you personally love. Read the first page of each book and jot down notes on phrases or other elements that stand out to you. Look for lines that set the tone for the whole story, or bring your favorite character to life. Taking the time to notice what you like is one of the best ways to help you create something you like. You’ll be tempted to look up famous first lines, like those from 1984 or Neuromancer, and see what smart people have to say about them. Don’t. Other people’s opinions on first lines are great but they won’t give you as much fresh insight as looking at something you love and figuring out why you like it will.

 

·         Put yourself in the shoes of your main character, then plop them into the first scene in your story. Write down the first thing they notice. Maybe it would be the first thing you as the author would notice, maybe not. If your character is particularly observant, perhaps they would notice something that was missing, rather than something present. Perhaps if they are perpetually hungry, they would notice the smell of roasting chicken and herbs in another inaccessible room. If he has put himself in a dangerous situation, would he focus on the obstacles? Or on the ultimate goal? If you don’t know your character well enough, take a break from this exercise and spend a few minutes writing just about your character on a deeper level than surface appearances and personality traits.

 

·         Write a few terrible openings. Sometimes the best way to get creative and find what works is by starting with what you know doesn’t work. Not only will this get some bad ideas out of your system to make room for the good ones, your brain may start firing in some unusual unfamiliar pathways that could potentially break you out of the deep ruts of well-travelled ideas.

 

            The most important thing to take away from this, is to just start writing. Focus more on getting that beginning chunk of story down than putting your best line down first. Keep filling up that blank space until you’ve got a mass of raw material to go and play with.

Mystic Publishers Employee Bios: Jo Wilkins, President

            I started out as a closet poet in 1972 and over the years evolved into an author of Science Fiction novels (first one published in 2003). Because of the vanity press trap my co-author and I fell into, I also started helping authors self-publish that same year. That self-publishing aid, Mystic Publishers, also evolved. By 2013, it became the parent corporation of our new company, Mystic Publishers, Inc. Under this corporate name, we organized the three divisions of the company.

            Being associated with Mystic Publishers, Inc. has been one of the most rewarding aspects of my life. The other rewarding portion of my life was starting the Henderson Writer’s Group in August of 2000. Through the group, I became dedicated to assisting writers become published authors by starting the Las Vegas Writer’s Conferences. As president and founder of the group, I discovered there are good stories that were only in need of a little help. They were passed over because they are new authors and have no established audience to automatically bring in returns for a publishing house. So why not bring the publishers here to see these talented writers.

            As a publisher now, myself, I love finding authors that are 90% ready for publication and working with them until their manuscripts are print-ready. To hold the printed copy of that book, that we all helped produce, brings on a feeling almost as good as when I opened the first box of my first novel. It is an accomplishment that all involved work very hard to bring about. 

 

            Favorite Author: Isaac Asimov

            Favorite Book: The Foundation Trilogy and the books that preceded and followed it. The story arc incorporating the robot from The Caves of Steel was truly mind-blowing.

            Writing inspiration: Science, learning new things and thinking how they could be used in the future, the stars, creating future societies that have no biases against their fellow man.

Don't Judge a Book by it's Cover by Richard Draude

            The popular idiom “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” might be true in an idealistic sense, but it usually refers to judging people by their appearance. There is a reality for publishers and the book industry in general. For the vast majority of readers the cover of a book is a deciding factor in not only whether or not they should buy the book, but if they will enjoy it as well.

            There are literally millions of books for a reader to choose from, Your cover is the first “sales pitch” so to speak. If it doesn’t catch a buyer’s eye, their imagination, or their attention, he or she will pass it over in favor of a book with more appeal on either side.

 

            Text and Font

 

            If the title is not clear enough to read from a distance, or when it becomes a thumbnail image online, then a great sounding title will be lost on a potential customer. Your font is critical. If it’s sloppy, illegible, unappealing, or just unprofessional, such as the overly-used, you could even say abused fonts of, Comic Sans or Papyrus, it will immediately turn off most readers.

            Not only is your cover a billboard for the book, it is in a sense, the first page of your story. The graphic chosen can communicate, at a quick glance, the style and mood of the tale inside. A dark cover, with lots of shadow, can suggest a danger or even horror. A bright white cover with clouds could suggest a motivational text book. Why is this important? It speaks to the emotions of the reader, engaging them on a deeper level, and thus potentially securing a book sale. A sale sets the stage for whether or not any reader will like the book in the first place.
            A cover can also create preconceptions in a reader’s mind about what the characters or the setting look like. It is debatable whether or not this is a good thing, as the cover design may not match the author or reader’s ideas, but it could act as a visual aid where necessary. Romance and erotica obviously make good use of this fact with appealing models on the front cover, enticing readers as much as they might entice each other as characters in the story.
            A reader’s first assurance that the book is of a high quality, is a well-designed cover. The cover can scare away a customer or lure them in. Bad covers, with pixilated images, watermarks clearly visible, text badly formatted or aligned, and so forth, suggest to the reader that the interior of the book will be equally sloppy. A poorly designed cover creates preconceptions in the mind of the reader, setting them in “critical” mode instead of “enjoyment” mode. With their attention already drawn to errors and sloppiness, they will more easily spot mistakes in the text, and might even go looking for them. They are also likely to be less forgiving of typos than they would of what appears to be a more professional work.

 

            The importance of cover design

 

            Big publishers come up with different covers for different markets, catering to the unique culture of each region. Design principles are not the same the whole world over, leading to, for example, simpler designs on many UK covers, with more frequent use of negative space, and more detailed designs on US covers that cram in more imagery, potentially speaking to different cultural perceptions of “value for money.”

            Due to different meanings of words in different countries, titles on covers can also change. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is a classic example of this. The book was renamed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in the United States. The word “Philosopher” does not have the same connotations with magic here as it does in England. The artwork also changed, helping reinforce the magical themes of the book. The font itself became much more mystical, ending up being the font not only for the books, but employed for the movies as well.

             Great cover designs need to draw the reader’s attention, engage them on an emotional level, suggest the tone and style of the work, and showcase the quality of the book itself, all the while taking into consideration the potential cultural expectations of the reader. This is a monumental task, without doubt, but one that could be a deciding factor in making a book a best-seller.

 

Suggested types of Dialogue An Excerpt from Conflict, Action & Suspense By William Noble

Yes/No:

The most obvious form of conflict is confrontation, and conflict develops action and conflict for our characters and the stories plotline. This type of dialogue is an excellent way to develop confrontation.

            Ex:      "I'm calling the police!"

                        "You'd better wait."

                        "We must tell them."

                        "Not tonight, we don't."

Well/Maybe:

Since people are rarely responsive to one another, more often than not they are evasive or partial in their answers.

            EX:       1.       "Would you tell me your name, please?"

                                    "Why do you want to know?"

                        2.         "I wish you'd pay more attention."

                                    "Wow, I hate the dress that lady is wearing."

Possible techniques of usage

·         Answer a question with a question

·         Let two or three lines of dialogue go by without the character answering a question

·         Mimic another speaker's line

·         Have the character not answer a question posed, but have him give the answer on his own to those in the crowd or group

The Threat of the Unsaid:

Sometimes to further the plot, put your character into an emotional whirlwind. Have him/her quiet when everyone else is shouting. This technique gives you the opportunity to ramp up the tension of a scene.

            Ex:       From Raymond Carter's, The Student's Wife

                        "You're asleep," she said.

                        "I'm not," Mike said.

                        "I can't think of anything else. You go now. Tell me what you like."

                        "I don't know. Lots of things."

                        "Well, tell me. We're just talking, aren't we?"

                        "I wish you'd leave me alone, Nan." He turned over to his side of the bed again                            and let his arm rest off the edge. She turned too, and pressed against him.

Self-talk/Inner Monologue:

Unlike a thought, an internal monologue is usually one character's dialogue with him/her self. Because it's in one person's and there is no other character to bounce the lines off, this should mirror the jumbled, disjointed thoughts that fly through our heads. Something like the following:

            Ex:       ...what do I know about boats, I'm a musician, there are some better, a lot                                              worse... but boats are scary, and I hide in this closet they call a head, waiting for                          something to show while jazz riffs flow through my head... and I know I don't                          belong here because boats can sink.

Gesturing:

This technique is different than an action tag in that it has more to do with the subtext of the scene. It can show the character's attitude as well as his/her hidden intentions without stating them in the line of dialogue.

            Ex:      Karen laid her hand on Max's arm. "I need your opinion."

                        "I don't know what you want from me."

                        "Well, can't you tell me what you think?"

                        Max's eyes never left the mirror while he spoke. "I'm not sure I have an opinion."

(Think about it, what does the red portions of this dialogue exchange show about the subtext of the scene?) 

Punctuating Your Dialogue (Jo A. Wilkins)

 Since you want your reader to get concise information from the way you present your story, you must write pithy dialogue. And, the best way to have dialogue read as you intend the reader to see it, it is important to punctuate it correctly.

1.      What is the usual way to identify the beginning and end of a dialogue line?

a.      Quotation marks ( “ ” ) are the identifiers that most authors use at the beginning and end of a character’s dialogue.

                                                                          i.      “I would rather not go there.”

b.      Although, in Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier, he used no quotation marks. His dialogue lines began with an em-dash. He used it consistently so it worked for him and his publisher.

                                                                          i.      ― Why would I want to do that, he said.

2.      How could an author create an interruption in a line of dialogue without telling the reader he was interrupted?

a.      To let the reader experience an interruption naturally, use an em-dash at the abrupt end of an incomplete word to show that there was an incomplete line of dialogue. Let the next paragraph start with the dialogue that carries on.

                                                                          i.      “Why woul―” (next paragraph) “Because I told you too.”

3.      How can an author punctuate around dialogue when action identifies the speaker?

a.      When using ordinary dialogue tags, use a comma between the tag and the dialogue delivered then either open or close the quotes. Or you can split the sentence and place the tag inside the dialogue as shown below.

                                                                          i.      “I said I wasn’t going to do that,” she said, a tear falling from her eye.

                                                                       ii.      “I…” she said, a tear falling from her eye, “…I,― I  wasn’t going to do that.”

a.      Note the ellipses and the action portion of the tag. They show the reader that there is a hesitation and/or the emotions in the delivery of the dialogue.

4.      Action tags (or gestures)

a.      To eliminate the overuse of dialogue tags, and still show the emotions or intentions of the character, you can use an action tag or gesture that also identifies the speaker. When using an action tag you end the tag with a period (.). These can be placed either before or after the line of dialogue.

                                                                          i.      Jerry slammed his fist on the table. “I don’t want you to go.”

                                                                       ii.      “I don’t want you to go.” Jerry slumped onto his chair.