Author Archives: Dale Ivan Smith

About Dale Ivan Smith

Dale Ivan Smith is a retired librarian turned full-time author. He started out writing fantasy and science fiction, including his five-book Empowered series, and has stories in the High Moon, Street Spells, and Underground anthologies, and his collection, Rules Concerning Earthlight. He's now following his passion for cozy mysteries and working on the Meg Booker Librarian Mysteries series, beginning with A Shush Before Dying and Book Drop Dead.

Love and Death

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Last Saturday I was a panelist at Symposium, a very small writing-focused science fiction event held in my neck of the proverbial woods.

The guest of honor was a local writer, Steve Perry, who has had seventy plus novels published in science fiction, fantasy, thriller, including a NYT best selling Star Wars novel, Shadows of Empire, and ten books in Tom Clancy’s Net Force series.

He and I were part of the first panel of the day, “Love and Death—the only two things worth writing about.” We five panelists agreed that love and death were indeed fundamental to fiction, as they are in life. As Steve noted, everyone hopes for the former and will, eventually, face the latter.

The rest of that session tackled the questions posed in the panel’s description, such as what makes for a good plot, and what are the elements you are looking for, etc.

But the panel got me thinking further about the role of love and death in fiction, and how both are central to story telling.

Death.

Whether the world is at stake, or just one life, the risk of death can both shape and propel a story forward.

During the panel I brought up character death, citing our own James Scott Bell’s three kinds of death stakes:

“As I’ve written many times, the best fiction is about a battle with death, which comes in three forms: physical, professional/vocational, or psychological/spiritual.”

I added a fourth, societal. The risks of dying in any of these ways creates huge stakes for the character, and can drive the plot. Physical death is obvious. Psychological death is a loss of identity, sanity

Speaking of the plot, there’s the plot’s own “death stakes,” which could be one and the same with your hero’s death stakes, or could be death on a bigger scale, and which could also be potential psychological death of a community, or even the death of an ideal, such as justice or freedom, etc.

Love.

We tend to think of love as romantic love, but of course that’s only one kind. There’s love for family, as well as your community and your country.

Brotherly/sisterly platonic love can be powerful grist for the story mill. A little while back I joined my wife’s CraftLit group for an online watch of one of my all time-favorite movies, The Great Escape, which is filled with death stakes, both for characters and as part of the plot.

The Great Escape also depicts brotherly love, based on friendship and a bond brought about by the shared circumstances of war and imprisonment. We see several examples in the movie. There is the scrounger, Hedley, played to perfection by James Garner, and the forger, Blythe, equally well portrayed by Donald Pleasence who become friends while working together. Then there’s the two tunnel kings, Danny, played by Charles Bronson, and his friend Willie (John Leyton).

Hedley insists on taking a now sight-impaired Blythe out with him during the escape, increasing his own risk of physical death.

Willie stays with Danny to guide him when Danny is overcome by claustrophobia. The two stick together and find a way to freedom.

Being willing to lay your life down for another, is a sacrifice for love. Being willing to move heaven and earth to save someone, say a kidnapped lover, can be the stuff of thrillers and failure could result in not only physical death for the lover, but also psychological death for the hero.

Another classic movie example of love and death:

Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest sees Cary Grant’s advertising executive thrust into a world of deadly espionage, thanks to being in the wrong place at the wrong time and being mistaken for someone else.

He faces death multiple times in the course of the movie, including memorably at a crossroads when a crop dusting plane turns out to be an assassin’s weapon. He meets and falls for a beautiful young woman, played by Eva Marie Saint, who is not what she seems. In the end, he survives and gets the girl. Love and death drive a suspenseful, relentlessly paced film.

Modern mysteries often have death stakes for the sleuth, who can face not only the prospect of a a physical death, but also psychological and professional, and, especially in a cozy, can deal with societal death.

Moreover, they focus on solving a murder, and these death stakes can be in play for the victim as well as the killer’s motives. The victim may have caused what the villain perceives as death, perhaps the psychological death from the killer’s romantic relationship having been ruptured by jealousy or even betrayal, or professional (vocational) death, again by something the killer perceives as being done to them by the victim. And the killer certainly could be correct.

Modern mysteries can also have a love interest or interests for the sleuth, as in the cases of Stephanie Plum bounty hunter and Hannah Swensen baker and amateur detective. Both deal with long running romantic triangles. Both also regularly deal with potential death stakes for themselves.

So, love and death. Are they indeed the only things worth writing about?

For my part, I’d say they may not be the only things, but they are certainly two of the most important things to write about.

What do you think?

Revisited: WHAT MY HORSE TAUGHT ME ABOUT CHARACTER ARCS

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Kay DiBianca is still on leave, so today I’m sharing her very first post here at TKZ, a guest post, hosted by Debbie Burke.

WHAT MY HORSE TAUGHT ME ABOUT CHARACTER ARCS – Guest Post by Kay DiBianca

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by Debbie Burke

Today, I’m pleased to host cozy mystery author Kay DiBianca who shares her fun and unique perspective on character arcs. Kay is a familiar name around The Zone, offering frequent, insightful comments. Welcome to Kay and the horse she rode in on! 

It was a day for speed. A wind-at-your-back, smile-on-your-face day when a youthful gallop overruled frumpy caution, so we barreled down the dirt trail into the park and around a blind turn. As the bushes on our right gave way and the road ahead came into view, a terrifying specter suddenly loomed up in the middle of the trail, no more than fifty yards in front of us.

Dixie, my high-strung, prone-to-panic filly, slammed on the brakes. I had no idea a horse could stop like that. Two stiff-legged hops – thump, thump — to a dead halt.

I went straight over her head. Turns out an English forward seat saddle is particularly ill-suited for sudden deer sightings.

As I was flying through the air, anticipating an unpleasant reacquaintance with Mother Earth, Dixie began some kind of crazy cha-cha in reverse, trying to flee the tiny deer creature. I was still holding on to the reins, however, so she couldn’t turn and run. Instead, she made a determined dart backward, dragging me along in her wake.

You might be wondering why I didn’t just let go of the reins and save myself from a mouthful of dirt and a painful awareness of my sudden change in circumstances. I’ll be honest with you. I would have let my horse drag me into the next county before I allowed her to return riderless to the barn. I have my pride, you know.

Body-surfing down a dirt trail at the whim of a frightened animal is an excellent way to focus one’s mind.  I’m older now, but sometimes I still get that urge to gallop furiously into the next adventure, no matter what form it takes. But when I recall that day in the park, the awful taste of grit in my mouth, the look of terror in Dixie’s eyes, and the acrid scent of fear in the air, I pull back the reins on my emotions and proceed at a deliberate trot.

Whether dramatic or not, we each have a set of experiences that have transformed the way we view the world. Likewise, we all know the characters we write about must change from the beginning of the story to the end, and the change must be meaningful.

So TKZers: Tell us about a character in one of your novels that went through a metamorphosis. Was it a dramatic, once in a lifetime experience? Or a slow coming to grips with reality over the course of the story? How did you accomplish the change in a way that would grab your readers?

I’m deeply grateful to Debbie Burke for giving me the opportunity to post to the Kill Zone Blog. And thanks to all the TKZ contributors and commenters for allowing me to be part of the journey.

SAVING ONE LIFE IS LIKE SAVING THE WHOLE WORLD.

Kay’s delightful cozy mystery, Dead Man’s Watch, features characters the reader cares about.

Available at Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books.

Words of Wisdom: Anthologies and Contests

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Anthologies, both traditionally published and indie, can be a wonderful opportunity to reach more readers and stretch your writing. I’ve had stories in three anthologies, Underground, Street Spells, and High Moon. I learned from all three experiences as well as found some new readers.

Legitimate writing contests can also be an opportunity to garner some attention and interest in your work.

Today’s Words of Wisdom brings you posts by Michelle Gagnon and Laura Benedict on getting work into anthologies and what was learned in the process, while Debbie Burke provides a terrific resource on writing contests. All three are worth reading in full.

I hope you’ll excuse a little BSP today. I have a short story out in the new Mystery Writers of America Anthology, VENGEANCE, edited by the wonderful Lee Child. Plus I think there’s a lesson to be learned from the long, occasionally tortuous journey this story has had over the past twelve years…

Some background first. This was the first real piece of crime fiction I ever wrote. I composed it while working with the San Francisco Writers’ Workshop back in 2000. I’ve never been much of a short story writer, but at the time I was just diving back into fiction, and figured that playing around with briefer pieces might help me find my voice. So this was one of the first (and only) stories I ever wrote. Shortly afterward, I started working on my first book (the one that never sold), and then, eventually, moved on to writing THE TUNNELS.

I always had a soft spot for this story, but had no idea what to do with it. Filled with hope, I submitted it to a few literary magazines. After it was roundly rejected by them, I shrugged and put it away in a drawer.

Fast forward to 2004. Lee Child was headlining the Book Passage Mystery Writers’ Conference, and at the last minute I scraped together enough money to attend. On the last night of the conference, all the participants were invited to read a short piece of fiction, kind of an informal critique exercise. I wasn’t happy with the opening of my novel yet, and was considering skipping the event entirely until I remembered this story. So I pulled it out of the drawer, dusted it off, and read it that night. All in all, it was well received; Lee attended the reading, and spoke with me afterward about how much he’d liked it. Which was terribly flattering, but again, I had no idea what to do with it. So back in the drawer it went.

Fast forward another seven years, to 2011. Lee emailed me out of the blue and asked if I’d ever done anything with that story from the Book Passage reading. He explained that he was putting together an anthology for the MWA centered around the theme of vigilante justice, and thought my piece might fit in perfectly. He asked if it would be all right to include it. Once I finished turning cartwheels across the room, I said yes.

So this week my little story, the first piece of crime fiction I ever wrote, was published alongside the work of some of my idols, including Lee, Dennis Lehane, Michael Connelly, Karin Slaughter, and Zoe Sharp. To say that I was honored to be part of this anthology would be a tremendous understatement. It really is a dream come true.

And from it, I’ve learned a few things:

  1. a) It’s impossible to judge the true value of a writing conference. Sometimes they might seem like a waste of time and money, but you never know what may come of the contacts you make there.
  2. b) Never empty that drawer. The story that can’t find a home today might bear fruit years down the road (or even decades!)
  3. c) Never give up. I have to confess, when those literary magazines first snubbed my work, I was disheartened and almost tossed in the towel. I really thought the story was pretty great, and discovering that not everyone agreed was crushing. It was hard to go on when it felt like what I was writing might never be appreciated, or even read, by anyone outside my critique group. Eight published or soon-to-be-published novels (and one short story) later, I’m really happy that I decided to forge ahead.

What follows is an excerpt from my story, IT AIN’T RIGHT. The VENGEANCE Anthology is currently on sale at bookstores and online.

Michelle Gagnon—April 5, 2012

My work has been in quite a few anthologies the past few decades, and I’ve edited five and published two of those myself. Yet I have never been involved in such an unprofessional exchange.

Publishing isn’t, “Hey, kids! Let’s put out a book!” Well, it can be, but the process needs to stay professional. And it would seem to me that a primary tenet of professionalism would be: Try not to alienate prospective writers.

Here’s a handy list for creating an anthology:

  • Define your theme. Make it broad, or make it narrow. Be flexible enough to push the boundaries a bit if you need to. The narrower your focus, the smaller your natural audience will be.
  • Put together a budget. Will you pay the writers in cash or copies or both?
  • Get a few writers on board that you know well so that if you will be going to a publisher, you have committed work from writers they recognize.
  • Write a proposal whether you will be shopping it to publishers or not. It will give you good guidelines against which you can measure submissions.
  • Find a publisher or, if you’re game and have some knowledge of publishing, put it out there yourself. How will it be distributed? Through regular distributors? Online vendors?
  • Decide if you want all original work or reprints or both.
  • Plot out a schedule backwards from your desired pub date. Give yourself three-four months before the actual pub date to assemble, edit, copyedit, and format the stories. Writers often miss deadlines. Build in an extra month for dawdlers or disaster. Allow writers three to six months for writing. It might as well be three because 90% of them will write the story in the last available month.
  • Scheduling six to nine months to put the whole thing together is reasonable. This is variable of course. Using all reprints may be faster—but often the writer will need to get permissions from another, larger publisher. And the larger they are, the slower they are. (It took seven weeks to get permission from one publisher for a Surreal South anthology, and we almost had to drop the story.)
  • Establish who will be the contact for all authors. Who will do the mailings and keep track of the files?
  • NOW open submissions for your slush pile, and give folks a few months to come up with stories and write them. If you have a solid core of committed writers, you have a head start. If you give everyone three months to write and submit, you’ll have plenty of time to read and choose.
  • Acknowledge submissions.
  • Get someone working on the cover art.
  • Draw up a contract. Do you want exclusive, or non-exclusive rights?
  • Choose the stories. Have a couple runners-up in case some submissions get pulled.
  • In the name of all that’s holy, send the appropriate rejection and acceptance emails to all of the writers.
  • Assemble the manuscript. Make sure all the rights are covered.
  • Plan advertising (or work with marketing dept.)
  • Write cover copy.
  • Have someone write an introduction that teases the theme and mentions all the accepted stories by name.
  • Make any necessary edits and okay them with the writers.
  • Copyedit the stories, send the manuscripts back to the writers for approval. Give them a deadline for getting back to you.
  • Get a blurb or two if you can. Put galleys up on NetGalley, etc. to encourage reviews.
  • Format, print, distribute.

NOTE: This is not a hard and fast schedule for every anthology. Big ones will take longer. Working with inexperienced writers will take longer. If you’re doing an ebook anthology of reprints or one that is very small, you may be able to do all this stuff in a few weeks.

Lisa Morton, Carolyn Haines, and I all wrote our stories for Haunted Holidays: Three Short Tales of Terror and had the book out in paper and ebook on multiple platforms in three months.

The point is, take your time. Think it through at the beginning of the project. Be friendly but professional in your communications with your writers. Admit it if you screw up, but don’t set yourself up for failure by setting unrealistic expectations for yourself and everyone else involved.

Laura Benedict—January 11, 2017

Why enter writing contests? Here are six reasons:

  1. Contests are incentives to finish your work and submit it to the outside world;
  2. Some offer valuable critique and feedback;
  3. Encouragement, recognition, and validation;
  4. Money and/or prizes;
  5. Awards help marketing;
  6. Intangible rewards.

Writers are often timid about sending their stories out into the world.

Contests however aren’t quite as scary as cold-submitting to agents and editors.You pay an entry fee and judges read your short story, novel excerpt, or screenplay. Some contests offer critiques to improve your craft and pinpoint what needs work.

If you don’t win, heck, neither did most other entrants so it’s not that humiliating.

If you do win, terrific! That recognition boosts confidence and increases credibility when you approach agents and publishers.

There are many reputable contests, but others are questionable or downright dodgy. 

Please note: contests mentioned in this post are not endorsements or recommendations.

Contests may be opportunities for the sponsor to expand their mailing list, offering their advertising and marketing services.

Some competitions require the author to give up all rights to their work. What happens if you create a character who later becomes a merchandising goldmine? Depending on contest terms, your earnings may be limited to a  one-time cash prize with no rights to future royalties. Victoria Strauss’s article cites a contest that solicits writers who want to become Manga scriptwriters. She writes:

Copyright surrender in a work-for-hire situation isn’t necessarily a “beware”, as long as the contract terms aren’t exploitative and you understand the implications of what you’re agreeing to.

In this case, however, the one-time money prize is the sole compensationyou’ll receive for your copyright transfer, from which [the sponsor] can then profit indefinitely. Be aware also that if you win and your script does not get developed into a series, [sponsor] will still own your work. Winning, therefore, has potential benefits–but also potential costs.

Before entering, check out contests with reliable sources like Writer Beware, The Write Life, Poets & Writers, ProWritingAid (this list is a year old and may be out of date), Kindlepreneur, Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi).

Run a Google search entering “[name of contest] scam” and look for red flags.

Before entering, always, always, always read the fine print.

What about entry fees? They typically range from free to $100+.

High entry fees raise questions:

  • Is the contest’s purpose to recognize excellence?
  • Or is this another scheme to take advantage of writers?

Valid reasons for higher fees are:

  • Pay honorariums to judges;
  • Fund prizes;
  • Support nonprofit organizations that help writers.

Research the contest, then use your own judgment whether or not the fee is worth it.

On the other end of the spectrum, “free” isn’t necessarily free. 

Debbie Burke—January 16, 2024

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How about you, have you thought about having submitting a short story in anthology?  If you have had a short story anthologized, what was your experience?

Have you entered a writing contest?

Mojo Words of Wisdom

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Have you ever lost your writing mojo? Have you been blocked, overwhelmed by self-doubt, or felt your motivation to write vanish?

If so, today’s Words of Wisdom has you covered with advice from Clare Langley-Hawthorne, Boyd Morrison, and James Scott Bell. While the first two posts are included in their entirety, it’s well worth visiting the original posts to read the comments, and of course, JSB’s post is also worth reading in full.

I’ve been feeling like a bit of a loser of late – perhaps it’s the summer (or the week off from preschool which placed me in writing limbo) – but my writing mojo feels a little dented so I’ve had to claw my way back from depression-dom to start the week off. The only way I know how to beat the writing blues – not a writing block mind you – but that plague of self-doubt that hits you at midnight and which follows you through the day – is to resort to an old-fashioned tried and true method. Bum Glue.

This means that I sit down and, no matter how crappy or disillusioned I feel, I write. What gets typed may be absolute drivel (and it often is at first) but I persevere. I sit down, keep my bum glued to the seat, and write.

Tonight, as I compose this blog, I am preparing myself for the challenge of a week of bum glue ahead of me. I am trying to shaking off the panic and the angst, trying to shove back the “I’m a loser” thoughts and getting ready to face my fears. As Jim so aptly wrote in his post yesterday, I just have to move up the pyramid and the only way to do that is to keep writing.

So does anyone have any pearls of wisdom for me as I take a deep breath, wriggle my behind, and prepare? How do you restore your spirits or reclaim your writing mojo? Or am I the only one who suddenly finds themselves in that deep pit looking up and wondering how to escape?

Any tips on getting the bum glue to stick?

Clare Langley-Hawthorne—August 31, 2009

It only occurred to me recently how apt the word brainstorm truly is. Perhaps it was prompted by watching the terrible effects of Hurricane Sandy, but I’m sure it was also related to my own story problems lately.

I’m working on my fourth Tyler Locke book right now, and I’ve been having a hell of a time wrapping my head around why the plot just wasn’t working. I had a synopsis and basic outline, but the elements weren’t gelling into a cohesive story. No matter what I did with the plot I had, it wouldn’t work. It was as if I were trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle with pieces from three different boxes. The individual elements were all great, but for some reason they didn’t fit together.

It was the dreaded writer’s block. But I’ve written five novels already, so how could that be possible? Shouldn’t I have the process figured out by now? If I were a golfer, I’d curse my case of the yips. The stuff that should be an easy putt by now was suddenly impossible. The mojo was gone, and I didn’t know if it was a permanent condition or more specific to this story.

Then my wife reminded me that this happens with every book. I always reach a point where I want to chuck the whole thing and move on to something else because I can’t figure out what’s wrong with the story. She recited my familiar lamentations back to me: “This is never going to work.” “I’ll never finish the book.” “Why did I start writing this stupid thing in the first place?”

As Christopher Vogler describes in The Writer’s Journey, I had reached the deepest chamber of the Inmost Cave to face the Ordeal. And the defining element of the Ordeal is the hero’s death and rebirth.

So I had to throw out all the assumptions I had about the story up to that point. I had to look at each and every part of it and decide whether to keep it, toss it, change it, or put it somewhere else. It was time to brainstorm.

As with the most violent storms, like hurricanes and tornadoes, everything in the story was at risk: characters, scenes, settings, action, even premise. Then I unleashed the gale. Some parts were ripped away, while others right next to them remained virtually untouched. Whole swaths of the story were decimated, while others were picked up gently and set down intact in an entirely different place.

When the storm was over, many of the individual pieces were still identifiable, but the overall rearrangement gave the story a completely new life. While real storms bring tragedy, my brainstorming was as beneficial as it was difficult. Yes, there’s a lot of cleanup still to do, but I can build something long-lasting from the wreckage.

So my question for the writers out there is, how do you get out of writer’s block? Do you unleash the brainstorm, or is there a less turbulent method to dislodge the block?

Boyd Morrison—November 5, 2012

I love the NaNo vibe. Writers writing. Newbies trying. Keyboards clacking. Coffee brewing. Possibilities awakening. It’s a major accomplishment to finish a novel. To do it in one month is astounding.

Of course, it’ll only be a first and very rough draft. But it will exist. You can let it sit for a month and then figure out what to do with it. One likely outcome is that you’ll use it as a “discovery draft” that now allows you to structure a re-write. Another is that the novel never sees the light of day. That’s fine, so long as you get some writing lessons out of it. Analyze the draft. Judge your craft. Make a plan to strengthen your skills.

At the very least you will have proved something to yourself. Unless you’re a full-time writer, averaging 1667 words a day is hard. Doing so for a month stretches you. When you get back to your normal rate of production, try to up it by 10% now that you’ve gone through NaNo.

Here are three other NaNo tips:

Plan

NaNoWriMo is catnip for pantsers. But a little planning (starting today) can make all the difference in your final product.

First, take a day to do some free-form journaling on your idea. Who it’s about, why it matters, why anybody should care. Jot down scene ideas that come to mind, in random order.

Second, take one day to define your concept with a three sentence “elevator pitch.” This will be your plumb line, what keeps you from getting too far away from the essence of your story. Even if you go down rabbit trails, you can use this to get yourself back on the main track. (On the form of an elevator pitch, see my TKZ post here.)

Finally, brainstorm a tentative “mirror moment” for your main character. This beacon of light will help you find your way if you get stuck in the dark.

Write

Check out my 10 tips for powering through NaNoWriMo.

Try to get a “nifty 350” words done the very first thing in the morning (or second, after you get the coffee going … hey, maybe invest in a coffee maker with a timer!)

Don’t edit your work except for a quick review of your daily pages. If you can do that review right before hitting the sack, so much the better. Your “boys in the basement” will work through the night and you can dive into writing the next morning.

James Scott Bell—October 15, 2017

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Additional resources:  BICHOK Words of Wisdom

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Along with the questions asked above, have you ever lost your own writing mojo? If so, what helped you reclaim it?

Revisited: “Your Brain on Writing”

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Kay DiBianca is on leave from the Kill Zone for a bit, so today I’m sharing one of her previous posts, which discusses how writing benefits your brain. It’s well worth revisiting. If you missed it the first time, definitely don’t miss it today 🙂

Your Brain on Writing

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“The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.” –Anne Lamott

* * *

Simply put, writing is good for you. Just as physical exercise enhances your muscles, writing is strength training for your brain. And the more you practice, the better your brain adapts to writing.

In a September 2021 article on writingcooperative.com, Kristina Segarra addresses the effects of writing. She indicates our brains are fully engaged when we write. The more you write, the more neural connections are created within your brain. The brain actually grows, adapts, and makes continued writing easier. I think it’s similar to playing the piano. The more the student practices, the stronger and more nimble his/her fingers become. Musical pieces that were difficult to master at first become easy as the student progresses.

Ms. Segarra goes on to list other benefits of writing:

  • You develop organizational skills — from crafting and sequencing your thoughts and ideas
  • You boost your reasoning and problem-solving skills
  • You integrate a wide range of vocabulary words and grow your word bank

* * *

Even more encouraging is a July 2021 article by Annie Lennon on medicalnewstoday.com showing research that indicates a cognitively rich lifestyle of reading, writing, and playing games can delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders.

* * *

And there’s more! A February 2017 article by Erika Rasso at craftyourcontent.com describes an interesting experiment conducted by researcher Martin Lotze of the University of Greifswald in Germany.

Using MRI data, Lotze analyzed the brain activity of 28 writers. First they were asked to brainstorm ideas and then write their own stories. He found the occipital lobe of the brain was more active during the brainstorming session, possibly indicating the writers were visualizing their ideas.

On the other hand, the hippocampus became more active in the actual writing session, possibly meaning the subjects were gathering the information they wanted to use and organizing it into a story format.

Ms. Rasso lists specific suggestions of things you can do to keep your brain in shape:

Free write every day for at least two minutes a day. You can write whatever you want in those two plus minutes. You could write a haiku, a diary entry, or something a little more ambitious. (That isn’t to say haikus aren’t ambitious.) The goal is to get used to the act of writing and coming up with content as you go.

Read your #writinggoals. If you’re a writer, you’re a reader, and all readers have their idols. Read the kind of content you aspire to write, and read a lot of it. Your brain will absorb the vocabulary, syntax, and general style of the writing you’re reading and naturally incorporate it into your own work.

Look things up. Artists, athletes, and even scientists are always learning new techniques to help them get better. Writers can do the same. Expand your vocabulary by flipping through a thesaurus or a dictionary, study grammar books, and definitely look something up if you don’t know it. Push yourself to learn more about your craft, and you’ll grow because of it.

Overwhelm your brain. The brain is pretty damn powerful. If you push it, chances are it will rise to the occasion. Test your limits by writing for an hour longer than you think you can. Read Derrida. Write a haiku! Treat your brain like a muscle and do reps until you just can’t do it anymore. Just like a muscle, your brain will grow.

Don’t think about it too much. If you put in the work, your brain will grow on its own. Your subconscious will pick up on what you are doing and adjust accordingly. Trust your brain. It’s gotten you this far, hasn’t it?

* * *

So TKZers: How do you keep your brain in shape? Do you practice specific writing exercises? Do you have favorite word games you play?

The Watch Mysteries. Three thought-provoking novels to exercise your brain.

Your Author Bingo Card

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For a while now I’ve imagined various writing and publishing accomplishments and events as various boxes on an author bingo card you could fill.

Unlike conventional bingo which looks at getting five numbers in row, the goal in author bingo is to see how many achievements you can check off. Successes, setbacks and failures, they all count. It’s as a fun way to deal with the ups and downs of publishing and being an author, as well as a device to acknowledge those hard won accomplishments and experiences.

Below are candidates for your author bingo card, in many cases grouped by progressions or types of publishing experiences. I’ve personally checked off many of these on my own author bingo card, but nowhere near all of them.

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Writing a short story. Getting your first rejection. Getting your first acceptance.

Seeing your story published. Having a second story published. Seeing one of your stories appear in an anthology. Having a collection of your stories published.

Writing a novel. Receiving feedback on your novel. Working with a developmental editor. Working with a copy editor.

Sending out a query. Landing an agent. Getting a publishing deal from a NYC publisher. Being published by a small press.

Setting up self-publishing.  Novel published. Publishing a book that bombs, either trad or indie.

Getting a positive review. Getting a negative review. Getting no reviews for a particular book. Getting a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly, or the equivalent in Booklist or Library Journal.

Having an audio book produced from one of your works.

Finding your books in your public library or in a bookstore.

First email from a reader. Being emailed by a reader pointing out you got a detail wrong. Two bingo boxes if the emailer alleges you got a detail wrong about firearms.

Having a book reach the top 100 in a category on Amazon. Having a book reach the top 20. Having a book reach the top 100 on Amazon. Becoming a New York Times Bestselling author. Becoming a #1 New York Times Bestselling author.

Completing your first series. Completing your second. Your third.

First convention appearance. Being a guest of honor at a convention. Serving as toastmaster at a convention.

Receiving an award nomination. Winning an award. Serving on an awards committee.

Being interviewed on a podcast. Being interviewed on the radio. Having a book be highlighted /reviewed in a YouTube video or a BookTok.

Changing editors. Being dropped by a publisher. Having your agent drop you. Landing a new agent.

Discovering your books have been pirated. Discovering your books have been used to train AI. Getting a scam email about marketing and publishing “opportunities.”

Switching sub-genres. Publishing in an entirely different genre. Returning to a genre you’d previously published in.

Presenting a writing or publishing workshop. Teaching a class on writing or publishing.

Selling foreign rights to one of your works. Having a story or book optioned by Hollywood. Having a story or book become a movie.

Relaunching a previously self-published book. Self-publishing a previously trad-published book. Having a self-published novel appear in a multi-author box set. Landing a traditional publishing deal for a book you originally self-published.

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Again, while these external outcomes are largely outside of your direct control, I believe it’s important to recognize what you’ve achieved, noting the milestones on your writing and publishing journey. It’s also a way to enjoy that journey.

How about you? Do you like the idea of an author bingo card? How do you acknowledge or celebrate your own publishing milestones and experiences?

Yet More Short Story Words of Wisdom

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Despite all the changes in publishing, new short stories are still appearing in print and digitally. Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen magazines continue to publish short stories, as do various anthologies, and of course they are also an option for indie authors.

Short stories can also be a proven way to level up your writing, helping you improve existing skills and forge new ones in just a few thousand words. Typically much less writing time is at stake with short stories versus novels, and even if your latest story doesn’t work, it can teach you something in the process.

Today’s Words of Wisdom reaches into the archives for insights on writing short fiction from posts by James Scott Bell, Reavis Wortham, and John Gilstrap.

As you know, we’ve been celebrating the release of Fresh Kills here on TKZ. It’s been a pleasure working with my blogmates, pros all, to bring you these new stories, at an attractive price. Look for Fresh Kills at amazon, scribd or smashwords.

My contribution to the anthology is “Laughing Matters,” a title that has more than one meaning, as you’ll find out. And that’s sort of what the best short stories do; they work on at least a couple of levels.

Certainly, the literary short story is like that. In college I got to take a writing workshop with Raymond Carver, and that’s what his stories are famous for. They have something going on up top, on the surface, but when you finish you realize there’s a rich layer underneath that you’ve missed (and I have to confess, I usually did, and would have to re-read each one a couple of times).

In the suspense or mystery category, you need to deliver a story that has a surprise in it somewhere, to keep the reader guessing. Jeffery Deaver has written two volumes of such tales in his Twisted series, and even challenges the reader to try to outguess him. It’s cool when it works, but it’s hard to do. Which is why this kind of story is every bit as challenging as the literary sort.

The germ of “Laughing Matters” came one day when I was thinking about all the standup comics in LA who never make it. I must have just seen some clip of a comedian doing post-Seinfeld observational humor (one of thousands) and just thought, this is dull. This is derivative. This guy’s not going to go very far.

Which reminded me of a time when I was living and acting in New York, and went to a comedy club for “open mike.” There were some funny guys, and then there was this one kid who was obviously onstage for the first time. The sort whose grandmother must have told him, “Sonny, you are so funny! You should go tell your jokes on television!”

Anyway, the kid comes out, he’s nervous, and tells a joke. It fell to the ground with a thud that echoed through the club. He got rattled. And you know what happens when you get rattled in front of the 11 p.m. crowd in New York City on open mike night? It was brutal. The kid made it through maybe two more jokes, neither of which worked, and then froze. As the crowd piled on with jeers and snorts, he stood there, choking the mike stand, unable to move or speak.

The emcee, noting what was going on, jumped in from the wings with his big smile, clapping his hands, shouting “Let’s hear it for _____ !” and then took the guy’s arm and guided him off the stage.

There must have been public hangings easier to watch.

So all of that came to me as I wrote the opening lines:

He died. 

Pete Harvey, “The Harv” as he billed himself, just flat out died in front of the 11 p.m. crowd at the Comedy Zone. 

Then I have Pete sitting at the bar afterward, drowning his sorrows, when a most interesting gent sits down next to him. And the story came to me in a flash, twists and all. This is, I’d wager, how the best short stories usually appear. But then you write, re-write and polish, and hopefully come up with something that works.

I’ve reclaimed my love of the short story, and have decided to keep writing them. Maybe I’ll put out my own collection sometime. It’s nice to have a market for stories again. Because short stories matter, it seems to me. A good story can deliver a hugely satisfying reading experience in small span of time.

FWIW, here are some of my favorite short stories, based on the wallop I felt at the end:

“Hills Like White Elephants,” Ernest Hemingway

“Soldier’s Home,” Ernest Hemingway

“The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze,” William Saroyan

“A Word to Scoffers,” William Saroyan

“A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” J.D. Salinger

“The End of the Tiger,” John D. MacDonald

“Chapter and Verse,” Jeffery Deaver

James Scott Bell—February 7, 2010

Joe laughed and took a sip of iced tea. “There’s your short story.”

I came home thinking about it, but haven’t yet written it down. But it’s there, perking along until the day I write the first sentence, “The boys finished their Schlitz beers and decided they were going to meet Elvis Presley, come hell or high water,” or something like that.

Those stories come easier than I expected. Maybe it’s because I write mini-stories every week for my newspaper columns in The Paris News, Country World, and now for Saddlebag Dispatches magazine. They come to mind as a single sentence, and then I watched as my fingers type out 950 words in one sitting that will “go to press” the next day. They’re mini-short stories, a snippet of time or experience, in which I give readers a quick glimpse into the view from my own hill.

When we’re working on novels, authors create whole new fictional worlds and can revel in taking their time to describe these worlds and establish character backgrounds and settings. In a short story, we create a can of condensed soup in a sense that, if we wanted to, could sometimes expand into a novel.

I think of them as that tiny world inside a globe, those glass spheres containing a tiny piece of a mythical world. In this case, these miniature scenes don’t always have snow, unless it’s essential to the plot.

Essential to the plot. In short stories, every element, word, character, and bit of dialogue has to be informative, moving the story forward, and must relate to everything else. The logic of the narrative has to be short and concise.

To me, it’s like flipping through the pages of a novel and picking out the necessary bits and pieces to write a book report. A quick read of what could be more, but isn’t.

There’s no room for sweeping descriptions and extensive development. In my view, the author has to know the character’s entire backstory at the outset, and the setting’s history that’s revealed by bits of information dropped in a sentence or two, or as action dialogue tags.

Readers must be swept into these juicy stories with the right words, phrases, and pacing. I suppose it’s like satisfying our need for immediate satisfaction these days. In other words you have about 6,000 words to set up the story arc, very short Acts 1 and 2, before that last couple of pages in which the bombshell drops. In fact, some authors set off that climax bomb in a couple of paragraphs, or even one breathtaking sentence.

Writing short stories is an excellent way to warm up, to refill the creative basket between novels, and to achieve the personal satisfaction of a job well done.

Reavis Wortham—April 12, 2025

 

“All Revved . . .” is, hands down, the darkest story I’ve ever written. You can find it in the recently published anthology, Bat Out Of Hell, edited by Don Bruns, and the story is inspired by the title of one of the songs on the famous Meat Loaf album from the 1970s. The story tells the tale of Ace Spade, an off-duty firefighter and search and rescue operator who’s trying to impress a young lady with his four-wheeling skills in the back woods of West Virginia when things go terribly wrong. After he wrecks his Jeep in the middle of nowhere, the man who they think is there to lend assistance turns out to be a killer who wants to hunt them down and kill them.

As regular Killzoners know, I don’t outline, so even I was surprised by the lengths to which our characters would go to stay alive. I don’t want to give to much away, but let’s just say that in the end, everyone acts in his or her best interests.

As a writer who’s carved a niche for myself by writing stories with moral clarity where good triumphs over evil, it was kind of refreshing to clean the creative pipes with a story where there really are no good guys–just . . . survivors.

Here’s my take on short stories: They’re not really part of an author’s permanent record, in the sense that I think they don’t necessarily reflect their true storytelling sensibilities. In a short story, I can feel free to kill a cat or cavort with vampires. I could even write a romance–even though I don’t think I’m actually capable of doing that.

This is why I cringe when I hear writerly advice given to newbies that they should cut their teeth writing short stories before they take on the burden of a novel. To me, that’s like telling a budding cook that they need to perfect the art of scrambling eggs before they bake Thanksgiving turkey. One has nothing to do with the other–or where the skill cross, the intersection is so tangential as to be meaningless.

It’s equally important to note that novel-writing skills can get you in trouble when crafting a short story. I was fortunate that submission rules asked for an approximate submission length of 8,000 words for Bat Out of Hell. If I’d had to turn in flash fiction, or anything under, say, 3,000 words, I would have considered myself unqualified from the start.

John Gilstrap—August 20, 2025

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There you have it, three more insights on writing short stories and why short fiction matters.

Here are links to the two previous Words of Wisdom on Short stories: https://killzoneblog.com/2024/01/words-of-wisdom-short-stories.html and https://killzoneblog.com/2025/05/more-short-story-words-of-wisdom.html

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Do short stories matter to you, and if so, how?

If you write short fiction, have you ever started from an event you witnessed or experienced personally?

Do you agree with John Gilstrap short stories don’t count on your “permanent record?”