Is your writing a little bland? Need to add a little spice to the soup? It’s my honor to welcome friend and fellow author Christi Barth. Let’s get cooking!

My mother is not an adventurous cook – and that is putting it very politely.  Growing up, a standard dinner consisted of chicken breast poached in water (which gives it no flavor whatsoever) and over boiled zucchini (which leaches out all of the flavor).  Give me a second to shudder at the memory.  It’s a wonder I grew up to be such an adventurous foodie.

I’m sharing my childhood trauma with you because writing is similar to cooking.  As a contest judge, I’ve read more than my fair share of flavorless entries.  Even with correct grammar and a forward moving plot, a book can still fall flatter than a whisper-thin crepe.  That is the difference between a simple narrative/dialogue exposition and a full fledged story.  Details are the seasoning.  What is spaghetti sauce without herbs and spices?  Ketchup!  Who wants to eat a plate of pasta covered in that?  But once you add oregano, fennel, salt, pepper and red wine, now you have a sauce.

Just adding in a little color isn’t enough.  Identifying each speaker as they enter a scene by describing their clothes leaves the distinct impression a writer worked off a checklist.  In addition to stark details like a blue shirt or blond hair, you want to add in finer points that transmit the feel of the character.  Let’s compare and contrast some descriptions from my recent release Cruising Toward Love:

Mrs. P. was an old lady who liked to gossip.

Or……

With a smack of her loose dentures, Mrs. P. leaned across the counter.  She had a reputation for twisting and squeezing to extract every last drop of gossip, leaving her victims as raw and wrung out as an over juiced orange.
Another example:

Zoe was hungover.

Or……

“My tongue feels like the fuzzy green mold on month-old leftovers.” Zoe slid bonelessly into a chair.

One more choice for you to ponder:

A man who must be a photographer stepped forward.  He wore a blue polo shirt that matched his eyes and was heavily muscled.

Or……

A tall man with a camera around his neck, one in his hands and another in a pouch at his waist stepped forward.  His biceps strained against the confines of his aquamarine polo shirt identifying him as crew.  Eyes almost the same color as his shirt twinkled from behind horn rimmed glasses.

If you have trouble with this, don’t panic! I recommend pounding out your first draft.  Squeeze out your plot, and toss in the basic dialogue.  Once you finish – either a chapter or the entire thing – go back and, only by using the cues in what you’ve written, try to actually draw a picture of the scene (no real drawing talent required).  If all you have are two naked stick figures on a blank page with maybe one doorway, then you’ve left out some vastly important minutiae.

This process can help you identify the holes where you need to work in descriptions.  Does this mean you have to describe every item on a desk from the keyboard to the post-it notes to a legal pad?  Of course not.  Mention a cluttered desk, buried under listing stacks of paper.  Or a chrome and glass desk with every item lined up with military precision.  You’re picturing two very different people in different rooms at this point, aren’t you?  And therein lies the fun.

A story with depth and richness resonates with readers.  It gives them an emotional buy in, and transports them away from their everyday lives into the multi-layered world you’ve created.  Think about it:  would you rather have a five course meal, or a sandwich of lettuce and mayo on white bread?  If anyone is stuck, put your problem lines in the comments section, and I’ll help flesh them out.

For information on all my books, please visit www.christibarth.com or swing by my blog at http://christibarth.blogspot.com .

Blurb:  Can an unexplained breakup and ten years of heartache be cured by the romance – and endless buffets – of a tropical cruise?  When her sister is left at the altar, small town librarian Zoe Balis jumps at the chance to take the bride’s unused ticket for the honeymoon cruise.  But she didn’t count on sharing a cabin with the man who broke her heart ten years ago!

Army medic Nate Hyatt never told Zoe goodbye when he enlisted – or the real reason why he dumped her on prom night after a year as high school sweethearts.  And he never stopped dreaming about the girl he left behind.  Could this voyage be his chance to fix the worst mistake he ever made?  After all, a Caribbean cruise should be romantic… if he can convince her to move past ten years of bitterness and hurt.

Once aboard the luxury liner, Zoe befriends a bored Internet mogul with more heart than tact.  Nate vents his problems to a ship’s photographer battling PTSD.  The four team up on an island hopping treasure hunt.  The stakes grow higher with each of Zoe’s mysterious brushes with death.  They race to discover why she’s a target and who’s behind it, while still competing in the treasure hunt. Zoe’s never gotten over her first love, and is tempted to let Nate back into her life.  But she already lost him once.  She’s not willing to risk loving a man whose career keeps him in a combat zone.  Can Nate breach her defenses and suture her broken heart?  Grab a deck chair and see if they survive the stormy relationship seas as they cruise toward love!

Remember the year two major studios both put out movies about an astroid hitting the earth? Remember the year every book in the B&N was about Anne Boleyn? Remember the year a certain author *cough* published a book about Cleopatra’s daughter and so did everybody else?

I’ve always assumed this kind of thing happens because there’s a sort of collective conscious at work. Creative people are influenced by their times to be fascinated by certain subjects, so maybe it’s not so strange that ideas happen in clusters.

But I’m also certain that there’s a bit of serendipitous magic at work. And when you’re a writer, it feels like destiny. Case in point? The recent historical erotica story that I’ve been writing like a maniac, night and day, for the past week.

The setting? The 1920s. The heroine? A silent film screen siren loosely based on Clara Bow. The hero? An American aviator. They fall in love while trying to make a hollywood movie about WWI fighter pilots.

I’m thirty-five thousand words into this novella. It’s almost done. I’m putting the frosting on the cake now and pulling it to a conclusion, so I decide, on a whim, to look up the popular films of 1927.

And what do I find? But Wings, the first film, and the only silent film, to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. It starred none other than Clara Bow. If that weren’t freaktastic enough, this historic film–which was believed to be lost–is going to be released in its restored version THIS MONTH!

If only I could write and publish this in time for the January 24th release of the film, I’d be a happy girl. In the meantime, I’m going to have to settle for the mystical sense of satisfaction that maybe I’m writing something I was meant to be writing.

So, it started out like this. My mother decided to buy a Nook a few weeks ago. And then, after hearing me tell her about all the authors who give away free books or offer very reasonably priced novels, she couldn’t find any. Now, she’s not exactly technically savvy, so in complete frustration with her, I went onto the B&N site to look myself.

One thing that B&N does is try very hard to hide its cheap and free books. Try navigating around on your nook to find them. It’s a pain. It’s certainly not impossible and my mother should have been able to do it, but it does take a little effort.

This got me to thinking about the plethora of Amazon/Kindle sites out there devoted to promoting cheap kindle reads. They are huge promotional machines. I’ve seen indie authors shoot up onto the lists just because they were featured on a Pixel of Ink or Kindle Lovers or somesuch. But a quick google search for an equivalent Nook Book site I could send my mom to yielded…um…nothing.

Obviously, there’s a hole in the market, so I aim to fill it. Together with Eliza Knight, we’ve started a new Nook Lover’s site just in time for all those folks who are opening their Christmas presents and finding Nooks under the tree. Sites like these take a little time to build so we’re not charging anything for anyone to be featured there. In fact, if you are featured now, when the site is still tiny, we will feature you again when we’re booming, at no cost.

So do you guys have any feedback or advice to give? Anybody want to try it out?

Guest post by Michelle Grogan

Do you have an idea for a great story percolating just below the surface but you’re having trouble getting it out of your head and down onto paper? Yeah, I’ve been there – plenty of times. I know what I want. I know what I want to say. But it’s just not ready to step out into the light of day. But this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t still keep those juices of creativity flowing. The best way I have found to do this is to find random prompts – sometimes those prompts can manifest into some great stories of their own.

Now, it’s easy to become bogged down in all the prompts that are out there and lose focus on why you want to use prompts in the first place. And of course, it’s not always easy to find one that appeals to you. Well, I’m here to alleviate some of those worries!!! In my search for a stock of prompts that I could store away in a file for when I needed to that hit of inspiration to get those stubborn creative juices flowing, I came across this great website dedicated to prompts of all kinds!!

Check out Creative Writing Prompts. At first glance it might not look like much – I mean the sheer number of prompts being offered – 346 – can be a little overwhelming, but not let that scare you. The fun comes when you hover your pointer icon over one of the numbers and a prompt pops up for you! Clicking on the number will move it to the number one spot. There are prompts for all kinds of writers! Not sure how to start that amazing story in your head? Hover over number 113 – Begin with “Today I will . . .” and write for 10 minutes. Play with the idea of writing a poem? Move your mouse to number 103 – Create a poem using Emily Dickinson’s “Bring me the sunset in a cup” as a starting point. Want to challenge yourself? Check out number 24 – Imagine your life is now a book. In 100 words, write the blurb for it; or number 122 – Use all these words in a poem: crash, crumpled paper, straw, gravel, ochre; even try number 143 – In 200 words, describe a day in the life of a window washer . . . hey, you never know, the window washer can be the witness to a major crime and has to describe what he was doing and what he saw.

So don’t sweat it if when you sit down to write, you draw a blank or you need a moment away from your story because you’re struggling with it or need to find a new direction to go. Settle in with a good prompt and you’ll soon find that the ideas are flowing faster than you can keep up with them!!

In fact, I’m going to take some of my own advice – I’ve been feeling a little stuck creatively, think I’ll hop on over and settle in with a good prompt.

Happy writing!! J

Bio: By day, Michelle Grogan is a Literacy Coach working with students with learning/behavioral/emotional disorders improve their reading and writing skills; by night–she’s the self-published author of Forbidden Love (currently in kindle format on Amazon.com) living with her fiance in Westchester County. Reading has always brought get joy to Michelle’s life, allowing her to experience new worlds and meet a plethora of new characters. Her love of reading lead to her love of writing and creating her own characters and discovering their stories. As a child, those stories were acted out with Barbies and My Little Ponies . . . as she got older, she put pen to paper and embarked on her own writing journey. Still an avid reading, Michelle’s favorite authors include James Patterson, Andrew Gross, Rachel Vincent, Jordan Dane, James Rollins, among so many others!!