Monthly Archives: February 2015

The Fog of War

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I’m still struggling to finish my novel, but my son wanted to see the movie American Sniper this week and I just couldn’t say no. I was curious about the film because it’s generated a lot of controversy. Some people say the movie is pro-war, some say it’s anti-war. I wanted to see for myself.
The movie is directed by Clint Eastwood, and I should state right off the bat that I have a lot of admiration for the guy. His Unforgiven is one of my favorite films, full of classic quotes. (“It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.”) In fact, the King of Jordan apparently used a quote from Unforgiven a few days ago when he promised vengeance against the Islamic State for burning one of his Air Force pilots to death. Eastwood’s Million Dollar Babyis also amazing. And then of course there’s Dirty Harry, Rawhide and all those spaghetti westerns. Eastwood has built up a lot of good will with me, over half a century, so my opinion might be a little prejudiced in his favor.
That said, I can’t understand how anyone can think American Sniper is a pro-war movie. On the contrary, it does an excellent job of showing the horrors of war, specifically the urban combat in Iraq in 2004 and the following years. And it doesn’t shrink from portraying the terrible injuries, both physical and mental, that many veterans of the Iraq war are still battling. The hero — Chris Kyle, based on the real Iraq-war sniper who was murdered a couple of years ago by a fellow veteran — expresses a lot of patriotic sentiments and hews to the oft-repeated justifications for invading Iraq. (“You want these f***ers to come to San Diego or New York?”) But Eastwood makes it clear that this hero isn’t always thinking straight. After the funeral of a buddy who had started to question why they were in Iraq, Kyle angrily argues that the man’s loss of confidence caused his death. But we know this isn’t true, because just a few minutes earlier in the movie we saw this guy die, and it had nothing to do with his confidence or lack of it. He just stepped into the path of a bullet. It was the typical random carnage of war.
So here we have a good example of a classic thriller technique that’s very difficult to pull off: the unreliable narrator. The hero says something that you could certainly take at face value, but it’s also possible that he’s confused and traumatized. And maybe that’s why the movie is so controversial. It says different things to different people, depending on their preconceptions and politics. And I think that’s a good thing. The film is complex, or at least it tries to be.
In other respects, though, American Sniper is too Hollywood. Because the movie revolves around Kyle, he has to do everything — he’s a sniper, he’s a commander, he’s an interrogator. He’s an expert on hunting down Al Qaeda. At times it seems like he’s running the whole war. And at times Eastwood veers dangerously into spaghetti-western territory. The showdown between Kyle and the movie’s primary villain, an enemy sniper, plays like a High Noon shootout, except in this case the dueling snipers are more than a mile away from each other. (This face-off, by the way, never happened in real life. It’s strictly a Hollywood creation.) And the movie’s climax is like a Middle Eastern version of the Alamo, with a special-effects sandstorm thrown in for good measure.
Last but not least, I have to put in a good word for Bradley Cooper, the actor who plays Kyle. If I were to issue ratings like Entertainment Weekly, American Sniper would get a B+, but Cooper’s performance would get an A. That scene where he hyperventilates after nearly shooting the small Iraqi boy struggling to lift an RPG launcher? It was phenomenal.

Okay, back to the novel. This time I’m really going to finish it.

First Page Critique: Where to Start the Story – Secrets of the Home Wood

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Jordan Dane
@JordanDane

twilight forest moon


Below if the first 400 words of an anonymous submission from a follower here at The Kill Zone. My feedback is on the flip side, but please share your constructive criticism. Let’s discuss this submission.


Secrets of the Home Wood: The Escape
Why didn’t he just stay by the creek? It was quiet and peaceful there. The trees that hung their heads together over the creek, were enormous in girth and mossed with age. He used to like sitting with his back against a willow on the creekside, but lately that just led to staring through the swaying branches to the path on the other side of the creek. And then his thoughts would turn bitter as they circled for the hundredth time. How could they go back without me? Dang summer cold. He was better now. Maybe he could just go through and surprise them. Yeah, that would go over well.


Why didn’t he just stay by the creek? He had flung a stone into the creek and as he watched it ricochet off the rocks and sink beneath the water, he was reminded of the battle. He had looked forward to going back with his parents to help set up the King’s library and the school. He earned the right. Tugg told him he had become a warrior…well, a furless warrior were the exact words, but that didn’t change what he’d done. He felt different over there. He felt he could do things and be what he couldn’t at home. He had saved his friend Pugg’s life and then held his head while he died. He had fought in a battle to save a kingdom and on this side of the portal he had to go back to being ordinary Jon. A kid with responsibilities on the family farm and a best friend he could no longer share everything with. And now look where that had gotten him!


“Jon! What is the matter with you?”


Marly stood with one hand on his arm and the other fisted on her hip. They each stood astride their bikes on the gravelled shoulder of the Concession Two road. Her green eyes sparked with hurt. A cool, late summer breeze trickled between the mature trees that lined the road and lifted the red curls on her forehead. Something boiled in his gut when her next words were borrowed straight from his mother. “Have you lost your marbles?”


Jonathon jerked his arm out of his best friend’s grasp.


“What’s it to you?” He said rudely. He regretted his unfair words immediately when her bow-shaped mouth dropped into an “O”. Too late to take it back. He rode it out. “Look. I’ve got to go. Gramp’s waiting for me.”


Before he could say something else he’d be sorry for, Jonathon leaped onto the seat of his bike and pedalled furiously away. He gave himself a mental boot. How could he talk to his best friend like that? What was the matter with him? He should turn right around and apologize. No. He couldn’t. If he did that, he might break down and tell her the secret. He had thought that coming to see her would distract him from the misery of his thoughts but he didn’t take into account how well she knew him. She knew something was up with him. Marly had been bugging him more and more lately saying he had changed in the last couple of months, was different, holding something back. He couldn’t go back to her just yet.  He’d call her later after he had gathered his thoughts as his Mom would say.


The thought of his mother made him pedal even faster. They were all supposed to go back together. How could they go back without him? She and Dad had been gone two weeks. The burn of resentment flicked around his heart, again. He was supposed to go, too, dang it. And to make it worse, he couldn’t even let off steam to Marly about it. “Let off steam.” Worst. Now he was channelling his grandfather. 


Feedback:
The start of any story can be challenging for any author. We focus on the first 400 words in our TKZ review process, because industry professionals, who are inundated with countless submissions, can usually determine whether they will want to read more or reject the work that quickly.


In an excellent TKZ post, The Great Backstory Debate, by our own James Scott Bell, Jim talks about starting with a character in motion or a disturbance happening in the character’s world that jumpstarts the story at a key spot that should intrigue a reader. New writers may begin a story that way, but they often add back story dumps or too much introspection that “tells” the reader what is happening, to catch them up with events that have already happened. That’s what is taking place in this story.


The first two paragraphs are back story, until a voice calls out to Jon (a disturbance), saying, “Jon! What is the matter with you?” The author might have a better beginning at that point, but there is also “the secret” mentioned in the second to last paragraph. Depending on what the author has in mind, I could see Jon and Marly having a tense talk to lessen his internal monologue, where Jon is obviously holding back before he pedals away, with more of a hint as to the secret. 

NO EXPLANATION OR BACKSTORY. The author should have patience to reveal whatever the secret is in due time. The main thing is to STICK WITH THE ACTION and get the reader caught up in the MYSTERY ELEMENTS of what Jon is keeping from Marly and why his family might have left him behind because of it.


DIALOGUE can lessen the introspection and minimize the author’s tendency to add what Jon knows from his past. Force Jon to stay in the moment with Marley and only allow the reader to glimpse his reticence to talk, so the reader might wonder why. Or have him wanting to race off to stop his family from leaving him behind, if that is part of the story. SHOW DON’T TELL what is truly happening and wait to reveal the mystery later.


ADVERBS –  During my edit process, I look for adverbs, generally words that end in LY. If a sentence is worded correctly, to convey the author’s intent, an adverb is redundant and unnecessary. Here’s an example from the submission: “What’s it to you?” He said rudely. He regretted his unfair words immediately… In this example, the word ‘rudely’ is redundant because the snappy remark from Jon is indeed rude, plus he regrets saying it immediately. Overuse of adverbs can be seen as weak writing in the eyes of industry professionals.



HOUSEKEEPING – There are typos in this short intro. I’ve highlighted the misspellings in yellow. My Word software caught the errors and underlined them in red. Authors should use the benefits of this type of software application. Submissions to industry professional should be error free. Don’t give them an easy reason to say no. I also wasn’t sure if the names TUGG and PUGG were the same character, yet with a misspelling. Reading the work aloud could help catch errors like this.


That’s my overview of the submission from this brave author. Please share your thoughts to help with ideas on how to improve this introduction.

Subplots

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By Joe Moore
@JoeMoore_writer

One of the most dreaded parts of a book to write is the middle, or what I call the “muddle”. Beginnings are fun and somewhat easy, and endings can be, too. But the tar pit in the middle can bog a writer (and reader) down, sometimes to the point of no recovery. One method of beefing up the submarine-clipart-Submarine-Clip-Art-24.jpgmiddle is the use of subplots.

But just knowing about subplots and their importance is not enough. Many writers are not completely sure what a subplot is, much less how to weave one into the story so that the subplot strengthens the main plot and its characters. Here are some tips to help understand how subplots play a role in your story.

What Is A Subplot?

A subplot is a secondary story that runs parallel to the main plot. One of the easiest methods to understanding subplots is to look at the different layers of your own life. From the moment you awaken in the morning until you fall asleep at night, the plot of your life story is to do what needs to be done to maintain your existence—go to work, do your job, take on and complete tasks, go home and spend time with your family, end your day with plans to repeat and improve your plot tomorrow.

Possible subplots

1. Your car is old and prone to breaking down. On the way to work, it dies for good. You don’t have the money to fix it.

2. Your son calls from college with bad news—he’s failing and needs to move back home.

3. The neighbor’s dog barks constantly but the owner won’t do anything about it.

These are simple subplots, but they can help to provide additional conflict to your story and generate suspense when needed, especially in the muddle. Dealing with them can also help to develop your main character so his actions are more believable concerning the main plot.

When choosing a subplot, make sure it has something to do with the main plot. It might be interesting to have your main character decide to go sky diving, but unless doing so provides an opportunity to have him face his fear of heights or build up his courage for what’s to come later in the main story, it would be a waste of time.

When should you start a subplot?

If the subplot is about your protagonist, you should introduce it as soon as possible. If you intend to have multiple subplots, their starts can be staggered later in the story. Let’s take subplot #3 in the suggestions from above—the barking dog. Your protagonist could be awakened by the dog at the beginning of the story. It could be a cause for constant irritation whenever he’s home and could come up a number of times throughout the plot as the protagonist tries to deal with the neighbor. The barking dog subplot has nothing to do with the main plot other than to show the protagonist’s ability to cope with the problem and his skill at dealing with hostile people. These characteristics will come in play later when dealing with the big events of the plot.

Moving between plot and subplots

An obvious back and forth between plot and subplot can come off as contrived. It’s better to weave the subplot into the main plot so that they seem one and the same. For instance, the protagonist is awakened by the barking dog on the day of the big corporate presentation—the main thrust of the plot. If they don’t get the account, he could be let go. The barking puts him in a foul mood. He phones home after the meeting to let his wife know how it went only to hear the dog barking in the background of the call. He gets home, thankful that the dog is not barking. But at 3:00 AM his peaceful sleep is once again interrupted by the barking. Solving the issue of the dog and its owner is not the main plot of the book, but it is a character-building opportunity and a cause for conflict.

So when things get bogged down in the muddle, rely on the subplot(s) you’ve already introduced and built upon to fill the gaps and move the story forward.

How about you? Do you use subplots? Any additional tips to define and utilize them?

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tomb-coverMax is back! Coming this Spring, Maxine Decker returns in THE TOMB from Sholes & Moore. #1 New York Times bestseller Brad Thor calls Sholes & Moore one of his favorite writing teams.

Creating A Personal Ode From 40 Characters

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Attention all budding poets: A new site lets you to turn you  tweets into poetry, or something like it.  Poetweet skims through your history of tweets, and then converts the results into verse.  (You choose whether you want your poem to appear as a Sonnet or other format.)

When I ran my Twitter ID through the engine, Poetweet created a ditty called “A Writer”. The resulting verse seems odd, but somehow perfect. (Disclosure: I rearranged a couple of lines to enhance the logical ‘flow’).

“A Writer”
by Kathryn Lilley

Putting On Your Writing Face
Getting It Done
Just One More Chapter
The Gag Order Rules
Where Have All the Commas Gone?
Are We Daft?
Where Do We Go To Get the Vaccine?
Sit Down And Write the Darn Outline
Lessons from 2014
Playing A Trick On Your Mind
‘Make it new’
Performing Amazing Grace

If you haven’t tried the tool yet, give it a try. Then, please share a stanza from your “ode”. The wackier, the better!

How would you like to be remembered?

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By Clare Langley-Hawthorne




Last week’s death of Colleeen McCullough (bestselling Australian writer of The Thorn Birds amongst others) – was not only extremely sad but also, surprisingly, the catalyst for controversy over alleged gender bias in the literary world. It wasn’t her death per se that prompted this controversy, but rather the obituary written in one of Australia’s most prominent newspapers ‘The Australian‘.  How’s this for a first paragraph…

“COLLEEN McCullough, Australia’s best selling author, was a charmer. Plain of feature, and certainly overweight, she was, nevertheless, a woman of wit and warmth. In one interview, she said: “I’ve never been into clothes or figure and the interesting thing is I never had any trouble attracting men.”

So much for mentioning that she was a bestselling author of 25 novels or that she had also been a neuroscientist at Yale Medical School…

The fact that a newspaper such as The Australian would even print such an obituary made many Australians (including myself) cringe at the specter of a female writer being judged, not by the quality of her work or her books sales, but by her appearance and her weight. 

At least the publication of this obituary has generated some valuable debate over perceptions of women in creative and ‘entertainment’ spheres. The controversy that erupted has provoked some great mock obituaries as well. On Twitter there is even the hashtag #myozobituary (Take a look at some of these – I think the the author Neil Gaimon’s mock obituary is particular good).

Apart from the obvious idiocy The Australian’s obituary demonstrates, it nonetheless raise concerns about how gender factors into society’s assessment of writers – and I wonder how much we, as readers and writers still tend to make judgements based on ‘appearance’ as well as talent.

So TKZers have you ever encountered moments where your gender, appearance, weight or other physical factors were judged rather than your writing?

Do you think appearance matters in this very visible age of book marketing? Do you think it affects women and men differently?

If you write darker thrillers and mysteries have you considered using a pseudonym or initials so that your gender isn’t a factor in how a book is perceived?

And finally, if you feel brave, feel free to share what your mock ‘oz obituary’ would be…

Story and Structure in Love

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James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Back in November, TKZ commenter Dale Ivan Smith talked about a major challenge he faced.
Here’s the key paragraph:
 
The big challenge … is not taking forever on the pre-writing and outlining. How do you impose deadlines on yourself for outlining and still create a solid, damn good novel outline? My fear of drafting a bad story has to a big extent been replaced with the fear of outlining a bad one 😉
 
I answered him, in part, this way:
 
Dale, you’ve asked a great question. I think it really comes down to fear. 
 
There’s an easier and better way to find story, IMO: it’s to play BEFORE you write. Play on the monkey bars built of structural signposts. You actually can be more creative this way because you’re not drafting. Thus, it’s much faster, too. 
 
You can also play in the actual writing. But you’ll be playing a game that readers can make sense of. 
 
It’s the best of both worlds. Freedom AND focus, and a lot less frustration. The people who’ve been writing to me about Write Your Novel From the Middle have been having epiphanies on this. Which is cool. I’ll have more to say on writing this way in the months ahead. 
 
This “best of both worlds” combines the playfulness and creativity of the pantser with the beautiful form of the plotter, all with that most important person in mind—the reader! 
 
If you want to sell books and not just feel good about your writing, you need more than pure freedom and more than mere outlining. 
 
You need a guide, a map, a blueprint, but one that is flexible and freeing, not cold and ruthless. 
 
Which is why I’ve written a new book called Super Structure: The Key to Unleashing the Power of Story.
Story LOVES structure, because structure translates story into a form that enables reader connection…and those are the stories that sell.
 
And don’t let’s confuse structure with outlining, which causes pantsers to break out in the cold sweats. This is a common error. Any writer of any temperament can utilize structure principles, even if your approach is the seat-of-the-pants variety. To be aware of structure is not the same thing as writing a 40 page, single-spaced outline. Which is a perfectly legit thing to do. Just ask James Patterson. Or many fine writers of the past. 
 
But outlining is not a requirement. Which is one reason I wrote this book. It’s for any type of writer because it stresses the idea of “signpost scenes.” There are fourteen signposts scenes, or beats, in Super Structure. It’s culled from the best and most popular novels and screenplays of the past, as well as my own research and development of writing principles over the last 25 years. 
 
The material in this book greatly expands upon the chapter on structure in Write Your Novel From the Middle. Super Structure can be considered a companion to that book, but it also stands alone in its treatment of the elements of a solid and pleasing plot. 
 
Recently, the longtime literary editor for Playboy, Alice K. Turner, went to her final review at age 75. Her obituary in the New York Times talked about how she championed literary fiction for 20 years there, bringing a measure of respectability, ahem, between the folds. And she truly did, publishing some of the best writers of our time and discovering new talent.
 
I love what she said about her preference for a solid, well-structured plot: “If you’re good enough, like Picasso, you can put noses and breasts wherever you like. But first you have to know where they belong.” 
 
Super Structure will tell you where story elements belong. Then you are free to do what you like, experiment all you want.
 
But when your story isn’t working, and you don’t know why, Super Structure will be there to help you find out! It is very friendly that way. Say hello to it today.