Don’t let these two words hold up your writing!

Stickup is a noun meaning a robbery at gunpoint, as in That convenience store has seen more stickups this year than any other in New York City.

Stick up is a verb in which a person raises his or her hands straight up in the air, which is what police will ask a robber to do when caught, as in “Stick up your hands!” the Los Angeles policeman shouted.

______________

My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

“Writing became such . . . that I couldn’t wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say.” – Sharon O’Brien

“Love is easy, and I love writing. You can’t resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you’re in love.” – Ray Bradbury

“For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.” – Catherine Drinker Bowen

“There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.” – Zora Neale Hurston

“Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of the writer.” – Kurt Vonnegut

______________

My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

“Prune what is turgid, elevate what is commonplace, arrange what is disorderly, introduce rhythm where the language is harsh, modify where it is too absolute.” – Marcus Fabius Quintilianus

“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” – Thomas Jefferson

“Write drunk; edit sober.” – Peter De Vries (often misattributed to Ernest Hemingway)

“Inside every fat book is a thin book trying to get out.” – Unknown

“There are two typos of people in this world: those who can edit and those who can’t.” – Jarod Kintz

______________

My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

One of your biggest selling points, especially if a novelist, is that you’re “local.” While that can only take you so far, you’d be foolish not to fully harness it. A lot of businesses and institutions “local” products or those about their region. Among them:
• Libraries
• Tourism bureaus and historical societies
• Gift shops
• Book stores
• Stores related to you book’s topic (If you’re book is book hiking, why not get a local outfitter to carry it?)
• Bed and breakfasts

Simply approach the manager of the business or institution about carrying your books. Offer to give them a percentage of the sale with you providing the books. Mom-and-pop or locally-owned stores usually are the most interested. And don’t forget that local newspapers and radio stations almost always are interested in press releases about local authors.

________________________

My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional book editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past decade, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of 80 books including the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my book marketing guidebooks:

• Rules for spelling possessive nouns 
• Double or single l when adding a suffix?
• Correct method for making ‘process’ plural
• Split infinitives: To quickly confuse or not to confuse

______________

My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

Science fiction stories typically revolve around a novum, a scientifically plausible concept that is a “reality” in the tale. The novum might be an mechanical device like robot servants, artificial intelligence, or space stations with artificial gravity; it also can be a hypothetical idea such as “The Earth is a scientific experiment run by aliens to determine the meaning of life” or “The government outlaws books.” The author then asks “What if?” exploring how the world with this novum is different than ours.

Among the problems of many novice science fiction writers is instead of introducing a new novum they rely on used furniture – that is, they borrow novums from popular SF series. After all, how many novels have you read that use starships exploring the galaxy for the Earth-based Federation? Barely changing names to appear as if you are not appropriating – a starcraft seeking M-class worlds for the Earth-centered Alliance – still doesn’t cut it as original or fully using the potential that science fiction offers to examine our culture or humanity.

To help SF writers, here are some novums of potential near-future inventions from which stories could be built:

Digital fabricator
What if everyone had a sophisticated 3D printer in their home or business? All you have to do is download a pattern, enter enough raw materials, hit PRINT, and voilà, you have a toy, a small piece of furniture, or an electronic device. How will this disrupt and alter the economy and people’s lives?

Fire-fighting drones
Rather than fight fires with water, why not have drones direct pressure waves at fires? At the right frequency (especially a bass sound), the sound waves actually suck the oxygen away from the fire, suppressing it. Could such a system be installed in buildings rather than the sprinkler systems we currently use?

Hyperloop mass transportation
What if compressed air and induction motors could propel a train through a vacuum tube at 760 miles per hour (Such a system already is on the planning table.)? How would this change commuting, the way retail shops are located, and people’s perception of distance?

Invisible gel
What if doctors, during a diagnosis or surgery, could inject a liquid into the body so that skin is nearly transparent, allowing them to see through to the blood vessels underneath? What other applications might there be for this gel?

Robot pets
What if your family could have a robot pet, a perfect replication of a dog or a cat, except that it never needs to be fed or cleaned up after, can be powered down when you go on vacation, and will live much, much longer? What are the downsides of having such a pet?

______________

My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

“A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.” – Charles Peguy

“Literature is the art of using words. This is not a platitude, but a truth of the first importance, a truth so profound that many writers never get down to it…” – Arnold Bennett

“Words empty as the wind are best left unsaid.” – Homer

“If the word doesn’t exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn’t exist.” – Charles Baudelaire

“Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.” – Stephen King

______________________

My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

Which way you spell this word depends upon where you are in the English-speaking world. Americans use “canceled” while Brits and Canadians use “cancelled.”

______________

My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks:

Science fiction stories typically arise from a novum, a scientifically plausible concept that is a “reality” in the tale. The novum might be an mechanical device like robot servants, artificial intelligence, or faster-than-light spacecraft; it also can be a hypothetical idea such as “The Earth is a scientific experiment run by aliens to determine the meaning of life” or “The government outlaws books.” The author then asks “What if?” exploring how the world with this novum is different than ours.

Among the problems of many novice science fiction writers is instead of introducing a new novum they rely on used furniture – that is, they borrow novums from popular SF series. After all, how many novels have you read that use starships exploring the galaxy for the Earth-based Federation? Barely changing names to appear as if you are not appropriating – a starcraft seeking M-class worlds for the Earth-centered Alliance – still doesn’t cut it as original or fully using the potential that science fiction offers to examine our culture or humanity.

To help SF writers, here are some novums of potential near-future inventions from which stories could be built:

82 Eridani colonization
What if future space explorers decided to colonize a habitable world orbiting this star, which is slightly dimmer than our own sun? The solar system is about 19.77 light years away. 

Fire-fighting wand
What if to put out a fire you could wave a wand that emitted an electric field destabilizing the flame’s underlying structure? Would this wand have other uses?

Microbatteries
What if with a 3D printer we could create lithium-ion batteries the size of a sand grain? How do this allow us to further miniaturize devices, whether they be medical implants or insect-size flying drones?

Sequoia replanting
What if in 2100, thanks to global warming, sequoias have almost entirely disappeared from national parks in California, but could now be grow in the Southern Cascades? In short, Lassen and Crater Lake national parks would grow sequoia groves that in a thousand years will look like they do now in Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks.

Touchable pictures
What if via 3D printing we could create textured pictures that the visually impaired could feel to “see” a photograph? Could such textured pictures be the basis of a new form of art or carry human-assigned meanings that allow various textures to deliver symbolic messages?

______________

My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my writing guidebooks: