First Page Critique – Renegades

Posted on February 18, 2016 by Jordan Dane

My first critique for 2016. For your reading pleasure, we have RENEGADES, submitted anonymously for feedback. My comments will be on the flip side. Please provide your constructive criticism in your comments. Our brave author appreciates the help.

I’m dating myself with this pic of Lorenzo Lamas as RENEGADE

RENEGADES

Silvana
Miami, Florida
Friday, March 30, 2012
3:25 PM

Silvana Machado’s cell phone went off while she was pistol-whipping a street punk. He’d gotten up in her face when she and Vargas confronted him after they spotted two hookers slipping cash into his palm. He wasn’t particularly well turned out, wearing fairly ordinary clothing, utterly lacking the gaudy flash popular in pimpdom. She made him as a newbie, just getting his enterprise off the ground. He’d gotten out of a black Dodge Charger, not a bad car, but a far cry from your typical pimp’s tricked-out ride. She eyed the caller ID on the bleating phone. Headquarters.

She holstered her weapon and opened the call. “Machado.” Bobby Vargas held on to the the punk.

“Sergeant Machado, Lieutenant Santos here. What’s your location?”

Silvana stepped away from her partner and the punk, just out of earshot. “Northwest 26th Avenue, just off 50th Street, sir.”

“What are you doing?”

“Questioning a suspect, sir. Possible involvement in last week’s drug murder in this neighborhood.”

“Forget it. Get over to 75th and Biscayne, the Sea & Sand Motel. On the double. The manager found a body in one of the rooms.”

“Yes, sir.” She swiped the call off and turned back to the punk, now sniveling. His lip was slashed open. A mouse was forming over his swollen left eye. She pushed a heavy lock of mousey-brown hair back from her face and held out her palm. “Give.” Two snaps of her thick fingers.

“Gi-give what?” the punk said.

Vargas landed a hard knee into his skinny back. He buckled.

“The money, dipshit,” Silvana said. He resisted no more. She reached into his pockets and pulled out a wad of cash, maybe twelve or thirteen hundred. “Now, I understand they call you G-Man.” His head went up and down fast a couple of times. “Okay, G-Man, get this straight.” She held up the cash, close to his bleeding face. “This is your initiation fee.
From now on, it’ll cost you one grand a week to run your whores in this neighborhood. You understand?”

He said, “A grand? Man, that’s a ”

Another whack of her semiauto across his face. Blood flew from his mouth, nearly hitting Vargas’s sleeve. She was well-muscled and that one had to hurt.

“One thousand. Every Friday. Four PM, right here at this corner. You miss a payment or if we don’t find you on Friday, we’ll find you on Saturday and you won’t see Sunday. You hearing me?”

He nodded.

“Say it!” she said.

“One th-thousand. Every Friday. Four  four o’clock. I-I hear you.”

FEEDBACK

OVERVIEW – I think I met this woman at my last high school reunion. Interesting voice for this character. I’m not sure if she is an anti-hero or a baddee, but I’m willing to find out. I love a well-drawn anti-hero. I’d keep reading. Below are some suggestions:

STICK WITH THE ACTION – In the first paragraph, the first sentence sets up the action that is taking place, but then the author immediately takes us out of the action by setting up what led to the pistol-whipping and what the pimp is wearing and what he drives. I’d suggest taking care of some of this set up (ie like why the hookers were slipping him cash) with dialogue but stick with the action to keep the reader in the moment and totally buying into the danger of the scene. I can see her making taunting fun of him to her “look the other way” partner. The longer explanation diffuses the moment. But I laughed out loud when I heard her say, “Questioning a suspect” to her LT. Slam dunk on timing of a great line. I almost don’t want to read the next line – “Possible involvement in last week’s drug murder in this neighborhood.” Author might consider dropping it to sharpen the dark humor to this scene.

GUN USE – I have a thing about a cop using his/her weapon to beat someone with. She then puts the bloody weapon into her holster to spread the DNA. I know this is done a lot in TV and movies, but does anyone else take issue with this? My police officer friend gave me his input and I can’t post what he said here. This is a family blog.

TAG LINE/DATE USE – In the tag line at the top, the author uses the year 2012, which dates this story. I can see if a particular date is important for a period piece, but if the intention is simply to set the stage for something that occurred 3 years ago, then it might be better to use something like: March – Three years ago. I can see this set up to flash forward to present time when we encounter Silvana again.

EMBEDDED DIALOGUE – In the paragraph that begins, “The money, dipshit,” Silvana said, this weightier paragraph has a number of dialogue exchanges in it. Personally I like pulling out as much dialogue, for readers to follow easily. In a wordy paragraph that looks like a narrative, a reader might skim over or lose some lines. I prefer seeing dialogue more clearly and with more white space on the page as a respite for the eye.

SPELL CHECK – Words like “mousey” and “dipshit” show as misspelled and “”semiauto” should be hyphenated. Also, the time “Four PM” does not have to have the caps.

For Discussion: Any other comments of feedback for this courageous author, TKZers? Would you keep reading?

HOT TARGET – $1.99 ebook (Coming Feb 18)

Rafael Madero stands in the crosshairs of a vicious drug cartel—powerless to stop his fate—and his secret could put Athena and the Omega Team in the middle of a drug war.

The Omega Team series will launch Feb 18 with Amazon Kindle Worlds. Come join the facebook launch party at this LINK on Feb 18 for giveaways and chats with the authors in this romantic action adventure series.

It Was Just A Dream

Posted on February 17, 2016 by Joe Moore

I’d like to welcome back to TKZ my friend and fellow ITW member, Meg Gardiner. If you’ve ever considered using a dream or dream sequence in your manuscript, Meg points out the perils of doing so. Read on and take note. – Joe Moore

———————–

When I teach writing workshops, I always warn students about what not to do. In particular, I strongly urge them not to open their stories in these ways:

With the protagonist staring out the window, thinking about his past.
With the detective squinting into the sunrise, hung over.
With the protagonist waking up.
With a dream sequence.

Why? Because these are clichés — they’ve been done ten thousand times. They’re tired. And because, if your story opens in one of these ways, nothing is happening.

In the case of dream sequences, there’s an additional reason. When readers reach the end of the scene and read, “And then she woke up,” they feel cheated.

As readers, we immerse ourselves in a story by suspending disbelief. That is, while we read, we willingly suspend our knowledge that a story is fiction and accept it as true. (Thank Samuel Taylor Coleridge for the concept.) But readers generally give an author only one shot at this. If a story opens with an amazingly dramatic, action-packed, emotionally resonant scene that turns out to be a dream, readers are likely to feel that the author has pulled a bait and switch.

Oh. The hero didn’t REALLY save his wife from a mob shootout. He just fell asleep on the sofa.

Huh. The heroine didn’t REALLY leap into the ocean from the deck of a burning ship. She just ate too much pizza and had a nightmare.

Readers invest themselves in the story. When it turns out that the drama is all in a character’s sleeping mind, they’re likely to bail.

Inevitably, when I urge students to avoid dream sequences, one or two will tell me that’s how their novel opens. When I ask why, they say they want the story to open with a punch — but that nothing dramatic happens until chapter five, so the dream is the only way to get some action on the page. Or they tell me they want to show the characters’ fears, longings, or memories, and “there’s no other way.”

There’s always another way. And ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it will be better than opening with a character’s unconscious fantasies. If you want readers to come along for the entire ride, you need your characters to be awake and in action in the physical world from the word go.

How do you deal with dreams in your manuscript? Or do you avoid them altogether?

Meg Gardiner is the bestselling author of twelve thrillers. Her novels include the Edgar Award-winning CHINA LAKE and PHANTOM INSTINCT, which was chosen one of O, the Oprah magazine’s “Best Books of Summer.” She lives in Austin, Texas.

Dumb Mistakes That
Will Doom Your Book

Posted on February 16, 2016 by PJ Parrish

Don’t get whistled out of the game on fouls before you have a chance to show off your best moves. – Miss Snark

By PJ Parrish

So I’m watching Hassan Whiteside play in the Heat game the other night and it got me thinking about writing books. Or maybe it was Marco Rubio in his last debate. I dunno. Not sure who inspired me more. But what I want to talk about today is dumb moves.

Shooting yourself in the foot. Stepping in it. Dropping the ball. Screwing the pooch. Whatever you want to call it, this is not something you want to do in your career. Ask Whiteside. He threw an elbow into the face of his Spurs opponent and got ejected (his third this season). Or ask Rubio. He became Chris Christie’s chew toy after he robo-repeated a talking point three times in thirty seconds. (and paid for it by dropping to fifth in the New Hampshire primary.)

Hey, we’re all human. We all make mistakes. Believe me, I have. Some that adversely affected my writing career. So let’s take a look today at some of the wrong moves that can, as the great agent Miss Snark said, get you knocked out of the game before you’ve even had a chance. Your contributions to our guide to dumbness are welcome!

When writing the book…

Don’t chase the trend: We can go way back to Jaws for examples here. In the wake of Benchley’s novel, we quickly got such memorable chum as Megalodon (oil rig explosion unleashes giant shark), Carcharodan (prehistoric shark freed when iceberg melts), Extinct (killer shark preys on boys in Mississippi River) and Meg (really big pregnant shark bubbles up from Marianas Trench and eats dumb tourists.) After Anne Rice, Charlaine Harris and Stephanie Meyers dug up Bram Stoker, we got a full decade of un-deads. And après Dan Brown came le deluge of conspiracies (Templars! Cathars! Christian Inquisitors! Oh my!) Here’s my point: By the time you decide you want to follow a trend in publishing, it has begun to wane (and surely will be over in the 18 months it will take you to write it and get it to market). T.S. Eliot might have said, “Mediocre writers borrow, great writers steal.” But if you’re trying to break into the bestseller bank, chances are the money’s already gone. So think twice before you use that unreliable narrator or try to wedge “girl” in your title. You are a snowflake. You are unique. Let your book reflect that.

Don’t be content with dull titles: Your title is your book’s billboard, meant to be glimpsed and grasped as a reader speeds by in the bookstore or on Amazon. It is ADVERTISING and it must convey in just a few words the essence, heart, and all the wonderful promise of your story. Work hard on this. Yes, slap anything on the file name as you work, but always, as you work through the writing, search for that pithy phrase that capsulizes what you are trying to say. Try Shakespeare (The Fault Is in Our Stars, Infinite Jest) or poetry (No Country For All Men — Yeats). Go for weird juxtapositions (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) or intrigue (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil or Then There Were None) or humor (Hello, Vodka, It’s Me, Chelsea!). Twist an old phrase (Dr. Suess’s You’re Only Old Once.). So many times, I read manuscripts (or published books) where the title feels like an after-thought, almost as if the writer used up all his juice just getting 300 pages down, breathed out whew! and then went back to page 1 and typed The Templar Conspiracy Book I. Click here for some good tips on titles. Click here if you want to read the worst titles of maybe all time — and see some butt-ugly covers. Which leads me to…

Don’t use ugly covers: Now, if you’re traditionally published you have little control over this. (although some enlightened publishers are getting better about seeking author input.) But if you are self-pubbing, don’t let your nephew who flunked out of Pittsburgh AI design your cover. Don’t go find free lousy images and try to do this yourself. Nothing screams amateur louder than an ugly cover. It tells potential readers that you think so poorly of your story that you’re willing to send it out in the world in dirty sweatpants and a Led Zeppelin World Tour 1971 T-shirt. Pay someone to do this. It’s worth every schekel. If you cheap out, don’t be surprised to see your ugly cover end up HERE.

After the Book is Done…

Don’t forget to copy edit it: This is tedious. This is awful. This is grunt work that comes after even the hell of rewrites. Well, tough. After you finish your filet mignon, you have to floss. You might be really tired of looking at the thing and all you want to do is get it out there in the world, wait for someone to love it, and throw shekels your way. Resist the urge to do this. Instead, PRINT IT OUT and read it for typos, misspellings, stupid mistakes, grammar lapses, brain farts. After you’re done, go back and do it again — maybe with a ruler held under each line so you go reeeeeal slow. I know authors who copy edit their stuff backwards so the mistakes jump out better. You won’t get all the bad stuff. But the goal is to make it as clean and professional as you humanly can. If you don’t know the difference between lay and lie, find someone who does. Agents and editors all say if they see dumb errors in manuscripts, they won’t read on. No one will take your words seriously until you do.

Write a great query letter: This isn’t easy but it’s really important. Agents want to fall in love with new talent and every affair begins with a magic moment. A great query is simple, direct but has a terrific hook. Which is not the same as a plot summary. In Hollywood-speak, it is a “log line” that capsulizes the essence of your plot with a strong emotional pull. (ie from Aliens: “In space, no one can hear you scream.”) This is hard writing. Even if you self-publish, learning how to write a great tease for your book will serve you well when you go to write that Amazon copy. Click here to see a simple and very serviceable query template.

Have some cajones: There is nothing worse than a falsely humble author. If you are doing a book signing, would you tell someone who walks up to your table, “Oh, I know you’re busy…you don’t really want to know about my book.” So, in your query letter, don’t spend precious words apologizing for “wasting” an agent’s time by sending them your letter. If you don’t have faith in your book, how do you expect anyone else to? Even if you aren’t a pro yet, act like one. Be like that wide receiver who doesn’t spike the football in the end zone — act like you belong there. (I got this one from a great blog by agent Jenny Bent. Click here to read the rest of her advice on submitting.)

Follow the rules when submitting your novel: Reputable agents are good people; they truly want to find the next best thing because they love good books. So be a pro and follow their rules. Research what types of novels they are looking for. Find out their names and how to spell them. (DEAR AGENT is sorta off-putting, you know?) Format your manuscript in the way they want it — ie, double-spaced, courier or roman, etc.) And finally: Don’t forget to number your pages. Don’t use colored paper or add weird stuff like glitter. And for God’s sake, don’t call your book “a fiction novel.” You laugh? I saw the actual query letter that had that gem.

I don’t think that guy ever made it off the bench.

Print, Audio and Ebook Experience

Posted on February 15, 2016 by Clare Langley-Hawthorne

I thought this blog post would never eventuate after our aborted President’s Day weekend in Telluride that coincided with a huge boulder falling on a transmission line resulting in zero power to the whole town. We actually ended up driving back to Denver early after a night of picnicking in the semi darkness of our (rather chilly) hotel room. My husband and I called it our family Valentine’s Day adventure but after 12 hours of driving in 2 days it was more of an exhausting Valentine’s Day than anything…although, at least now I have no excuses and the blog post could be completed:)

On the way to Telluride and back we listened to two audio books in the car – one (which shall remain nameless) highlighted the very worst aspects of the audio book experience (wooden narration revealing a badly written novel in all its horror…) and we gave that one up after three discs; the second (thankfully) displayed all the wonderful elements associated with listening to a great book on CD. This (and I’m more than happy to identify it as The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman) was narrated by the wonderful Derek Jacobi (and a cast of other great British actors) and so was perhaps an unfair comparison – but, at least for part of our trip, the audio book experience was pleasantly memorable.

Both my twin boys love listening to books narrated well and still enjoy having me read aloud to them each night (which I still managed to do in our Telluride hotel room by flashlight!). What is interesting to me is that, although they love a great audio book, they are still ambivalent to ebooks – far preferring to read the print version. I often end up buying or getting from the library the print version of ebooks I own for them, as both boys want to read the hard copy rather than the electronic version. Since they both love spending on their computers and iPads, I have to wonder why neither of them have embraced ebooks. Is it because, like a bad audio book experience, it feels awkward and unenjoyable? Or is there something magical about turning the pages of a printed book that cannot be captured in an ebook (something that, as children, they feel strongly about perhaps?).

With recent reports of Amazon potentially opening physical bookstores, I also wonder whether we are finding an increasing resistance to ebooks (?). Now, I’m equally comfortable reading on my Kindle as I am reading the print version of a book – and yet my boys, who have grown up in the age of the iPad and Kindle, are not. They turn their noses up at any offer I may have to purchase the ebook version of a book they want. They’d much rather hold a book in their hands.

What about you? As a reader, do you have a preference for print, audio or ebooks? As a writer are you more wary of ebook only publication sites or publishers? Have you had a great book ruined by the audio version? What do you think – are we perhaps seeing generational differences that might result in a resurgence of print (if my boys are any indication)?

A Trick That Will Tame Your Crazy Writing Stress

Posted on February 14, 2016 by James Scott Bell

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Some time ago the astute Kristine Kathryn Rusch posted about what she calls The Popcorn Kitten Problem. It’s based on the video below. Take a look at a bit of it:

Now that is what an indie writer’s mind can often feel like. So much freedom! So many things to write! And yet so many marketing hats to put on, and a ton of petty tasks that seem to repeat, over and over again.

Lest ye think this is just an indie conundrum, it’s also increasingly a picture of a tradpub author’s brain, because so much of the marketing onus now falls upon the writer. Publishers are insisting upon “platform” before they offer contracts. When a book is released the harried in-house publicity person (if there is one) has little time for any single author. So you better be out there doing a hundred different things…every day!

If you don’t watch out the resulting stress might grab your good endorphins like an amped-up Conor McGregor and slam them to mat.

Enough of that and you could end up tired or with a chronic case of the blues.

Here’s how a typical popcorn kitten scenario might play out:

You’re writing your WIP, an essential scene where your protagonist has to apply for a new job. In your pre-planning you decided that job would be as a hairdresser. Or, since you are a notorious pantser, you came up with that on the spot.

You don’t know all that much about the hairdressing business. If you are a wise writer, you put a mark in your manuscript that will tell you to do the research later. Then you’ll write as much of the scene as you can, based on what you know about human nature and job interviews—and if you don’t know about either of these, you should quit writing and join the Navy. Then get out and write a novel about the Navy.

Instead, you decide to leave your WIP and jump on the internet for some “quick” research. As you look at search results, you see a book called What Every Writer Needs To Know About Writing Hairdresser Interview Scenes, and you click over to Amazon to check it out. Seems reasonable at $2.99, but just to make sure you don’t spend your discretionary Starbucks money like a fool, you download the free sample.

But while you are on Amazon you see a recommendation for a mystery series about hairdressers. You know the author. She’s someone you met at Bouchercon. You hop over to the book page and see 125 five-star reviews and a rank of 1,286 in the paid Kindle store. At a price of $4.99. What? Your self-published stand-alone mystery is only $2.99 and it’s ranked 423,679.

You wonder what this other author has that you don’t. So you look at her Amazon author page and check out her covers. Wow. Great! Your cover was done by your cousin Axel, a budding commercial artist who lives with his poet girlfriend, Moonglow. Well, you admit, you got what you paid for.

You do a little more research and find out who did this author’s covers. You check out the artist’s portfolio online and what he charges. Whoa! That’s a healthy chunk!

So you do a little research on how to judge the worth of a book cover. There are many blog posts on this, and you read a few of them. Something else catches your eye on the last one. It’s about the importance of book description copy in selling a book. You recall that when you did yours you had a nagging suspicion it was rather plain vanilla, but you were anxious to get the book out because everyone in your critique group was making money self-publishing and you didn’t want to be the chump standing on the dock as the ship took off for the Bahamas with all your friends.

You go back to Amazon and find a book called Book Description Copy for Former Chumps Like Yourself, and you download that sample. You read that sample, and from the Table of Contents figure out some of what your own description was missing, so you open up a new doc and start writing afresh.

Ten minutes into that a thought pops into your head. You don’t want to have your protagonist apply for a hairdresser job. No! She should be an insurance investigator!

So you hop back on Google looking for “How to become an insurance investigator.” Lo and behold, there’s a book called Insurance Investigation for Former Chumps Like Yourself. The author has a website. You go to the website and see he has a blog. Gold!

Which reminds you, you were going to try to do some guest posts for various blogs when your book came out. That’s publicity! Where was that list again? You search for it … you need to send out some emails!

You look at the clock. Uh-oh, it’s almost time to pick up Lydia from school, and what have you done on your WIP? Fifty-seven words! The last word you typed was hairdresser…

I’m sure you can relate. Just as a Molinist theologian can contemplate an infinite number of contingent realities, so you, the writer, have an infinite number of ways you can get distracted, going off in different directions based upon a single pop of a cerebral synapse, one little soft-pawed frolic of a popcorn kitten.

So what’s the cure?

Here is a simple trick that can change your life. All it requires is some paper and a little mental discipline.

I call it Nab, Stab and Tab.

First step is to nab that thought. Recognize it for what it is—a siren’s song to leave what you’re focused on and slide into Alice’s rabbit hole. You might even say it out loud. “My crazy mind wants me to go on Google right now!”

Next step, stab. You want to nail the thought to your desk so it doesn’t hop around in your head. You do this by writing it down. That’s all. I have scratch paper nearby for just this purpose. So in the scenario above, if I suddenly remembered I want to explore guest blogging, I’d write guest blogging on the paper.

Then I immediately forget about it and get back on task! This is the key moment, the forgetting. Get back to work on your WIP!

Finally, when I come up for air and have some time, I’ll give each thought a tab—I assign it a level of importance, using the A, B, C method (which I detail in my monograph, How to Manage the Time of Your Life).

A is for highly important, must-do.

B is for what I’d like to do.

C is for items that can wait.

If there is more than one A item, I prioritize these with A1, A2. Same with any Bs and Cs.

Next, I estimate how much time each task will take. I use quarter hour increments. So a task might take me .25 hour or .5 or a full 1 or 2. Whatever.

Finally, I put the A tasks into my weekly schedule in priority order. If there’s enough time, I’ll put in the Bs. The Cs I usually put off.

This may sound complicated, but it takes only a few seconds to nab and stab. And only a few minutes to tab and schedule.

Yet the benefits are profound. Less stress, more focus on you primary work.

The kittens will start to purr, and then they’ll go to sleep.

And you’ll sleep better, too.

So can you relate to kittens bouncing around in your mind? How do you usually handle it?

Coming to Your Smartphone: Books That Are Unprintable

Posted on February 13, 2016 by Joe Hartlaub

I grew up reading. Comic books, paperbacks, hardcovers (each of the original Hardy Boys series was in hardcover, way back when)…I devoured them all. If you get a great author with a terrific story you really don’t need anything else. I occasionally, however, like something different if it’s nicely done. I’m not sure if anyone remembers the Griffin & Sabine trilogy by Nick Bantock with all of its removable notes and letters and envelopes and the like, but I surely enjoyed that. I also liked a couple of the “choose your ending” books that were published several years ago and still are, even though they are aimed at a somewhat different age group. Then came ebooks, which are great. Nothing, however, seems to beat a traditional book. That isn’t going to stop folks from making modifications, however.

The next big leap appears to already be here, and combines phone applications with original literary works specifically written for the medium, utilizing video, Google Street View, photographs, music and the like. The result is a book which cannot be printed but which can be accessed by an e-reader, smartphone, or laptop.

One of the players in this medium is a company named Editions at Play. The books in question are specifically designed to be read on a tablet or phone, and contain features integral to the story that mitigate against their being printed. They are phone and tablet applications, designed to be used on…well, phones and tablets. Newer phones and tablets, that is. If you have a new smartphone you won’t have a problem, but if you’re still hanging on the that five year old Android you might be limited to your laptop screen in reading these. That aside, you can find samples of two appbooks from Editions at Play — The Truth About Cats & Dogs by Sam Riviere and Joe Dunthorne, and Entrances & Exits by Reif Larsen — at the link above, and from the looks of things, more are on the way. Editions at Play isn’t the only company investing in this. There are a number of others, including what appears to be an author-collaborative effort from Penguin Random House that will be published (is that still the right word?) later this year.

I of course could not resist. I went to the website link above and looked at the books presently for sale, sampled them, and laid down three bucks and change for each of them. I haven’t gotten to The Truth About Cats & Dogs yet but I did play wi…er, read, Entrances & Exits, which is a bit of a romantic tale, wherein it appears that a man’s wife has run off with their neighbor. The cuckold takes to wandering, going out of his comfort zone a bit further and further with each excursion. The book uses Google Street View quite heavily (the project is heavily tied in with google) and while neither the subject matter nor the writing is especially weighty, the overall experience is entertaining. Call it a couple of steps up from an illustrated novel/short story.

Will the appbook replace the printed book? No. No. And no again. Even the publisher acknowledges that. There is certainly a place for them, however, particularly, I believe, in the tween and young adult market, which has already begun to pick up the concept and run with it. One could incorporate videos, music, alternate endings, open endings, write your own ending, online contests…where would it end? That would be up to the creator(s). And you might be able to do it yourself. My nine year-old granddaughter tells me that hey, it’s really not all that difficult to write programming code.

What do you think of this? As a reader or as an author or both? Does this interest you, or does it look like a gimmick? Not that there’s anything wrong with a gimmick.

Reader Friday: Which Novel Best Describes Your One True Love?

Posted on February 12, 2016 by Kathryn Lilley

By Kathryn Lilley TKZ Founder

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s that time of year again.

VALENTINE’S DAY

is on SUNDAY. (In case you forgot, there are probably still a few good cards left at your local Hallmark Store.)

But let’s forget for a moment the shallow realm of cute puppies with flowers, kissy-face couples, hearts drawn in the sand, soft-porn sexual innuendo cards, all that corny blah blah blah. Let’s get to the root of this over-commercialized holiday we call Valentine’s Day.

Valentine’s Day is about Love.

Romantic Love.

Real Love.

True Love.

True, Real, Romantic, Intense, Even-when-its Prospects are Gone or Gone Hopelessly Missing, L-O-V-E.

We have all (or, almost all) experienced that particular life-upending emotion called True Love, at some point in time. Even when it has somehow been lost or overwritten by life’s vicissitudes, True Love remains forever in one’s heart. You can never rid yourself of your One True Love. Even if He or She is no longer nestled in a loving embrace next to you at the Midnight Hour, your One True Love is still there. Well hidden, perhaps, but He/She is there, lurking. Ready to pounce on your emotional status quo.

Perhaps you’ve tried to dismiss your One True Love; you may even assume that you’ve forgotten all about that Love. It happened so long ago, after all. Something went wrong, and by now you’ve long since written off the whole experience as a regrettable “When Love Goes Wrong”-ish duet, one best left in the past.

But then, many years later, there pops up a reminder. You’ll be driving down a rainy highway late one night, semi-blinded by the zigzag streaks of oncoming headlights, and a particular song comes over the radio. And then something seizes your heart: a memory. That memory twists your innards, all over again. The pain of your loss returns, like it happened yesterday. Love, lost. You change channels to silence that pesky reminder. The source of that reminder? That source was your One True Love.

Or maybe you are one of the Lucky Ones. Maybe you are presently happily, intensely living in blissful harmony with your One True Love. If so, count your blessings. And if you are so blessed to be living in union with your One True Love, on Valentine’s Day this year (it’s on Sunday. Remember that) please do that person a favor. Send Him (or Her) a decent card this year, okay? No puppies, sexual jokes, or sand hearts allowed. A personal message, written by you, not by Hallmark, would be appropriate. True Love is an important thing. It’s not a cheapie card and a teddy bear accompanied by chocolates and/or hottie-babe pajamas, no matter what the TV hucksters tell you.

So here’s my question for You regarding the topic of “Valentine’s Day”:

If you were to ask your Heart the following question: “Which novel best describes the way I feel (or felt) about the One True Love of my life,” which title would your Heart suggest? Or, (if you’re feeling truly brave), which song title would your Heart recognize?

And…Happy Valentine’s Day, Y’all.

Listening to Your Characters

Posted on February 11, 2016 by Elaine Viets

By Elaine Viets

What do your characters sound like? Can you hear their voices?
If they aren’t speaking to you, you may not be writing fully developed characters.
I thought I knew my characters for Brain Storm, my new hardboiled Angela Richman death investigator mystery. They’d been in my head for two years. I was working on the copyedited manuscript when the questionnaire for the Brain Storm audio book landed in my e-mail box. The audio version of Brain Storm will be out this August.
The producer’s questionnaire has six questions.
Naturally I whined. I’m a writer, right? But when I answered the audio questions, I realized I’d been given a gift.
The first question said, “Is there anything about the main character or other significant characters in your book that you would like us to know before we begin the casting process?”
Sure, I could describe my characters – all 19 of them. I knew what they looked like, who they married, how many children and divorces they had. I knew their successes and disappointments. I’d created them.
Then the audio producer asked, “Please describe the specific accents (regional, national, international) you expect to hear.”

Easy. Brain Storm is set in mythical Chouteau County, Missouri, ten square miles of white privilege near St. Louis. This is the eastern side of the state, where Missouri is pronounced “Missour-ee.” It’s called “Missour-uh” on the other side. I once heard a tape of a guy campaigning for governor. The slick called our great state Missour-uh when he was speaking in Kansas City, on the west side, and Missour-ee in St. Louis.

I wrote to the audio producer that Missouri was a border state in the Civil War, but my local characters would have Midwestern accents, not Southern ones.
I described the tone and the narrative point of view. Then I went back to the copyedits.

And continued reading about Dr. Jeb Travis Tritt, a brain surgeon. I‛d described this important character as having a soft Kentucky accent. Except at least once in the book, I said Dr. Tritt was “loud.” He’s not supposed to talk that way. I got rid of that misleading “loud,” and Dr. Tritt was once more himself.

Then there was the hair stylist, Mario. In the questionnaire, I described him as a “talented, compassionate man who wants to do make-overs on every woman he meets. Gay and extremely handsome. Speaks English with a slight Cuban accent.”
But as I read the manuscript, I realized that description wasn’t clear enough. How would the voice talent read Mario‛s part? The hair stylist was important to Brain Storm. In my mind, I saw Mario, dressed in fashionable black. Then I heard him speak — and hoped the voice talent wouldn‛t fall for the gay hair stylist stereotype. So I explained Mario was gay, but not stereotypically flamboyant.

As I read through the copyedited manuscript, I not only saw my characters – I heard them. And noticed sometimes they didn’t quite sound like themselves.
This was not a major rewrite, just little tweaks. Katie the assistant medical examiner cussed constantly. I had to explain that she wasn’t really foul-mouthed – her swearing “was more stylish than obscene.”
One by one, I listened to each character. And decided that audio questionnaire wasn’t extra work.
It was sound advice.

Seducing Your Readers

Posted on February 10, 2016 by Robert Gregory Browne

Let’s talk about sex.

Those of you who are uncomfortable with the subject, feel free to bail out now. I’m likely to get pretty raunchy.

Still with me? I thought so.

When we make love like those on websites similar to videoshd.xxx often do, most of us have a particular goal in mind: that moment when your entire body seems to stem from one central point, when every nerve-ending tingles wildly as fireworks assault your brain. That moment, of course, is orgasm, and anyone who has experienced one (or two or three)— especially with a willing and enthusiastic partner (or two or three)— knows that it can be an exquisitely pleasurable sensation. You’ve probably seen it in a video (or two or three) somewhere on the internet, like ww.vrpornmovies.net!

But are all orgasms created equal? Of course not. The quality of our orgasms is directly related to the quality of the fun and games that precede them, you can see plenty of examples of high-quality fun on websites similar to animehentaivideos.xxx to get the orgasms to the promised land, not to mention our emotional bond with our partner, and our willingness (or unwillingness) to surrender ourselves fully to the moment.

So what, you’re probably wondering, does any of this have to do with writing?

YOUR WILLING PARTNER

Writing is an extremely intimate act. In his book, On Writing, Stephen King describes it as a form of telepathy. You put your thoughts on paper, and days, months, or even years later, someone reads your mind.

Think about it. With a simple arrangement of words, you have the potential to pull your audience into your mind where they can be stroked and fondled and toyed with— sometimes gently, sometimes rough. The result is often a partnership so strong and emotionally satisfying that neither of us ever wants to let go.

Who of us here can forget those times when we’ve read a book we didn’t want to end? And when the end did come, we felt drained, elated, and thoroughly satisfied, much like we do after a night of unbridled passion.

Getting to that place wasn’t an accident. The writer of the book—at least in most cases—didn’t merely fumble his way toward climax. If he (or she) did his job, every step was carefully choreographed to lead us around the third act corner toward the final pay-off. And the quality of that pay-off is related to one important thing:

THE GENTLE ART OF LOVEMAKING

We’re often reminded in how-to books that the typical story is broken into three acts: Set-up, Confrontation, and Resolution.

But it sounds pretty cold and uncaring, doesn’t it? Not to mention dull.

But what if we were to beat the lovemaking analogy into the ground and refer to the three acts in this way:

Seduction, Foreplay, and Climax.

That certainly puts a whole new slant on things, doesn’t it? And if we’re to have a successful story with a successful and satisfying ending— one that keeps our partners wanting more— we must pay careful attention to these three words.

Seduction.

The beginning of a story, any story, cannot and should not be referred to as anything other than a seduction. It is our job to make our audience want us.

How do we accomplish that?

First we start with character. We must create characters that our audience won’t mind, figuratively speaking, getting into bed with. Particularly the lead. Is he or she someone we find attractive? Does he have a problem or flaws we can relate to? Are his life circumstances universal yet unique enough to pique our interest?

The next element is mystery. Every story should be a mystery. Remember the girl in college the guys all wanted but knew so little about? A big part of her allure was the hint of mystery she carried. No matter what genre you’re writing in, you should never, never, never put all of your cards on the table at the beginning of the game. Instead you must reveal them one at a time, each new card offering a clue to the mystery of our characters and their stories.

The third and most important element of seduction is giving your characters a goal. And, again, not just your lead . Every single character you write should have a goal of some kind. Put two characters with opposing goals in a room and you have drama. But the goal of your hero must be compelling enough to intrigue us and hold our interest.

Foreplay.

Once we get our reader into bed, however, we certainly can’t let them down. As you would with a lover, you explore and tease and make new discoveries—which can often lead your partner to discover something about his or herself that, until that moment, remained dormant.

The foreplay in the second act is a continuation of the seduction but on a deeper, more intimate level. This is when we really begin to understand and root for the characters, and when their stake in the outcome becomes more and more important. Surprises are sprung, secrets are revealed , and our emotions and feelings build with each new scene, gradually working us toward the moment we’re all waiting for:

The Climax.

And this is why we’re here today, class, to talk about that most crucial of Act Three moments: the time when all of the work you’ve done for the last three hundred or so pages comes together like the pieces of a puzzle, where plot and subplot intertwine to create the only ending that makes sense within the context of the story you’ve told—a thrilling and, hopefully, explosive orgasm of emotion. The final kiss; the final death; the final revelation that sends your audience soaring.

But you can’t get there without laying the proper groundwork. Author Mickey Spillane once said that the first page of a novel sells that novel and the last page sells the next one. This is certainly true, but what he doesn’t say is that what comes between is what sells that last page.

Without masterful seduction and foreplay it is virtually impossible to reach a satisfying climax. Act Three is a culmination of all that came before it, and if the preceding two acts are anything short of spectacular, you’ll be lucky if your readers even stick around for number three. It’s all up to you.

Every time you sit down to write, you must remember that the reader is your partner, your lover, and in order to make him or her happy you must seduce, thrill, and most importantly, satisfy.*

*This blog post is an excerpt from my book, CASTING THE BONES: An Author’s Guide to the Craft of Fiction.

Sure, you can do your own thing, but not if you want to sell books

Posted on February 9, 2016 by Kathryn Lilley

By Kathryn Lilley, TKZ Founder

Pardon the lateness of today’s post–your trusty admin got flummoxed by one too many date line and time zone changes. We were in Australia for the Tennis Open, then New Zealand. Not being a tennis enthusiast, I spent most of my time chatting away with members of our group. I met one lovely woman, a writer, who’d written a book following the death of her husband. She traveled across multiple continents and countries, collecting stories of hope from people whose spouses had died. I haven’t read the book yet, but I understand it includes many “signs” that the surviving spouses interpreted as communications from their loved ones. It sounds like a lovely story, like THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING meets Eat, Pray, Love.

But what struck me most about her story was her description of the editing process. Without being prompted, I launched into a discussion of any number of ways one could set up a framework for a book dealing with death, travel, and personal/spiritual discovery. My new author friend waved her hand, as if to dismiss the whole topic of structure.

“I hired an editor, a very well known person,” she said, “but I wanted to write my book in my own way. Structure, organization–that kind of stuff, I felt, interfered with the way I wanted to tell my story”

Me: “And was your book…published?”

“Eventually,” she replied. “I hired a (well-known predatory company that makes money off inexperienced writers, emphasis mine) that made it into an ebook and uploaded it to Amazon, to all the biggies.

“I just wanted to structure it my own way,” she concluded.

“And that’s fine,” I replied. “But if you actually want to, you know, sell books, you may want to consider revisiting your editor’s suggestions.”

This brings up something I’ll never understand: Why do people insist on “doing their own thing”, rejecting sound, time-tested, professional advice? It’s highly unlikely that a first-time writer’s notion of “doing her own thing” will result in a better book than if she had simply followed some tried-and-true craft guidelines.

Me? I’m like a sponge. I’m always looking for new ways to soak up valuable input from seasoned authors and professionals. That’s why, a few years ago, I gathered a few hardy, fellow writers. Together, we started this blog. This blog is the place we can all come, let down our writer’s facade, and talk about the nuts and bolts of the writing craft.

“Do you own thing”? Good for diary writing. Not so good for selling books. What do you think?

Update: I just realized that instead of posting my stupid selfie at the top of this post, I should have linked to a video of the absolutely most adorable thing in New Zealand, the annual Running of the Wools. They run the sheep down the Main Street of Queenstown (or at least, try to make them run). It’s hilarious. Watch it if Ewe dare.

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Monthly Archives: February 2016