Dilemma: Why use a few original words when a great many clichés will do?

Excuse me for being existential. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

By Kevin S. Giles

Ever notice how we beat some words to death in the news? In social media? In everyday conversation?

For example, why is it important to continually state that all storm damage “looks like a bomb went off?” Or, that the aftermath looks like “a war zone?” Or why we redundantly describe every storm in winter (and sometimes in fall and spring) as “a winter storm?” What else would they be, in winter? A “summer storm” that occurred in winter would be far more newsworthy. And when did a thunderstorm become “a rain event?”

We also have “past history.” In the past? No kidding.

Beware false drama

Why do we engage in false drama, such as “a brutal murder,” heard habitually over the years? If you know of a “kind murder,” let me know. The same idea pertains to “grisly” murders and “tragic” deaths.

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And, the false drama category includes “rushed to the hospital,” one of the most overused and misleading descriptions in journalism. In these days of modern ambulances equipped with the latest medical technology, and EMTs trained in on-scene trauma care, rushing is rare. A newer false drama cliché (used everywhere all of a sudden to describe shootings) is “multiple victims,” lazy news reporting that obscures critical facts. How many people were shot? Two? Seventeen? Forty?

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Tell it like it is? Life experiences, all of them, make fodder for good novels

By Kevin S. Giles

Did you know most of you are writers? Potentially writers, at least?

(And no, I’m not your long-ago English teacher coming to haunt you, so relax.)

Writing doesn’t require any qualifications, certifications, degrees or pedigrees.

But life experience? Yes.

Who doesn’t have life experience? It’s the cornerstone of all writing. For purposes of example, let me take you back to English class (painful as this journey might be) for just a moment.

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What I learned after being reprimanded that I couldn’t ‘write the Queen’s English’

By Kevin S. Giles

I was a young reporter beginning my first full-time newspaper job when a snarling copy editor informed me one night, “You can’t even write the Queen’s English.”

He wasn’t wrong. Let me explain.

This frank assessment of my writing skills took place overseas at a metro paper in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. I was 21 years old. The newsroom at the Courier-Mail felt foreign to me in many respects as I struggled to learn colloquialisms and the stiff manner of England-influenced news writing.

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Kevin S. Giles talks about nonfiction writing in ‘Eight Essential Secrets …’

Cover of 'Eight Essential Secrets'

My guide to nonfiction writing is now available on Kindle.

By Kevin S. Giles

Reading about writing nonfiction isn’t the same as doing it yourself.

I learned that through trial and error.

Somewhere in the midst of writing “Jerry’s Riot: The True Story of Montana’s 1959 Prison Disturbance,” I decided that after I published, I would write a concise book to help writers avoid common pitfalls.

Some years went by. As I wrote and published “One Woman Against War: The Jeannette Rankin Story, I renewed my desire to help fellow writers launch their own nonfiction stories.

Finally, I got around to it.

My short book, Eight Essential Secrets for Beginning Nonfiction Writers, draws on my personal experience. It can be read in an hour or less. I didn’t want to encumber nonfiction writers with volumes of advice. Instead, I give them straightforward tips to put to work right away.

Successful nonfiction requires diligent research, a deep pool of accurate facts and a flair for storytelling. It also requires focus because success depends on the quality of the idea.

I spent a blur of evenings and weekends working on my nonfiction books. Sometimes I became discouraged at all that work ahead of me. In those moments I reminded myself that I had embarked on a long journey. Every few steps took me closer to the end.

Do you have what it takes to write nonfiction?

Are you curious, relentless, enduring and inspired? I’m betting so. None of us know until we try.

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Western Montana native Kevin S. Giles wrote the popular prison nonfiction work Jerry’s Riot, the coming-of-age novel Summer of the Black Chevy, and a biography of Montana congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, One Woman Against War, which is an expanded version of his earlier work, “Flight of the Dove.” His new novel, Headline: FIRE! is the third in the Red Maguire series. Masks, Mayhem and Murder is the second. The first is “Mystery of the Purple Roses.” More information is available at https://kevinsgiles.com.

Interview with Montana native Kevin S. Giles who writes books about his home state

Photo shows Kevin S. Giles

Kevin S. Giles is a native Montanan and longtime newspaper journalist.

You’ve published a biography of Jeannette Rankin. Who was she?

¶ History knows her as the first woman elected to Congress. She went to the US House of Representatives in 1916. She was a fierce suffragist, led Montana to approving suffrage in 1914, and rode that momentum to Congress. At that time only 10 states had given women the right to vote. Once Montanans elected Rankin, national suffragists saw her as the voice in Congress who would achieve a federal suffrage amendment.

Did that work out?

¶ Unfortunately for the suffragists, no. World War I got in the way. But even as Congress preoccupied itself with war legislation, Rankin led a push for the federal amendment. The House approved it but the Senate didn’t, by a narrow margin, and it wasn’t until the next Congress that the amendment got enough votes and went to the states for ratification. Some people fault Rankin for failing to secure suffrage by federal amendment in those two years she served in the House. I think the opposite.There’s substantial proof that Rankin’s success at being elected astonished many Americans, the first woman ever, and she achieved more in that term than anybody expected. During that war, Congress didn’t spend much time considering the needs of women and children. That was Rankin’s principal platform, so you can see her challenges beyond the obvious one of being the only woman in the entire male Congress.

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Author Kevin S. Giles: If you want readers, publishing is only part of a long story

Photo shows Kevin S. Giles

The author, Kevin S. Giles, pondering his next cavalcade of words. Sunglasses optional.

By Kevin S. Giles

I learned a few things. One of these discoveries was a reminder that promoting a book takes a lot of work, even more than it did in the early Internet era. Infinite online opportunities await hopeful authors. So does the challenge of cutting through the “noise” of tens of millions of people trying to get noticed all at once, many of them promoting a political bias or sharing false information. Yes, the Internet has opened a new frontier to authors. No, finding an audience doesn’t come easy, because distractions abound.

When I published Summer of the Black Chevy, the spam started rolling in like a winter storm. Internet marketers promise they can deliver a rich market of readers — for an undisclosed price, of course — and they aren’t entirely wrong about that. Navigating the Internet, and rising above the noise, does require a strategy that largely involves social media to target customers.

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Makings of a writer (as an adventuresome boy) in western Montana

Photo shows Author Kevin S. Giles as Boy Scout

In May 1964, I left at 6 a.m. to attend a Boy Scout campout at Dillon, Montana, according to my mother’s notes on the back of the photo. I was suitably prepared with my dad’s sleeping bag.

By Kevin S. Giles

I often wonder why I didn’t write more as a boy, or if I did, where it all went. My father, forever inclined to purge the attic of anything resembling sentimentality, might have pitched whatever I wrote. Or, maybe, I hardly wrote at all?

Writing seemed painful then. I realize now that was my first lesson about this craft of putting words to innermost thoughts.

In 1965 – the year that my novel Summer of the Black Chevy takes place – owning a personal computer seemed as far-fetched as landing on the moon. My mother had a black Royal typewriter with big round keys that clunked when pushed. Until I was a high school junior I didn’t know how to type anyway, and writing on tablets echoed homework, so I kept stories in my head and went to hang out with friends.

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Miles traveled: A writer’s journey began in the mountains of western Montana

Photo shows Kevin S. Giles

This was during the time I wrote “Flight of the Dove.” I was at my paying job (or appearing so) in the Independent Record newsroom in Helena, Montana.

By Kevin S. Giles

Ideas for writing fiction tumbled around in my head for most of the bouncing long road through adulthood. I also deal in fact. I still can’t say with certainty which is harder to write.

I wrote Flight of the Dove: The Story of Jeannette Rankin on a typewriter when my second daughter, Harmony, was a baby. Looking back, writing nonfiction in the pre-Internet days seems somewhat of a miracle. I spent hours in the library at card files, and writing letters to distant places, and trying to revise my story by retyping pages time and again. The new edition of the Rankin book (One Woman Against War), which I launched in 2016, benefits from technology that puts information at our fingertips.

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From Author Kevin S. Giles: Write your fact-based nonfiction book with confidence

By Kevin S. Giles

Want to write a book about an event? A good story you want to share with other people?

The first step is thinking about your audience. Who will read the book? Who will pay for it? How will you tell your prospective readers about your book? What similar books can you find already on the market? Continue reading