Author Archives: James Scott Bell

About James Scott Bell

International Thriller Writers Award winner, #1 bestselling author of THRILLERS and BOOKS ON WRITING. Subscribe to JSB's NEWSLETTER.

Your Writing Routine

Posted on by
16

by James Scott Bell

Ian Fleming enjoyed a writer’s dream life. He owned an estate he called Goldeneye on the northern coastline of Jamaica, with a house on a cliff overlooking the ocean. It was here that he wrote all his James Bond novels. (Goldeneye was named for a secret operation Fleming planned for British Naval Intelligence during WWII.)

A meme recently circulated that describes his writing routine (click to enlarge):

More details can be found here.

This daily schedule of producing 2,000 words a day enabled Fleming to finish a first draft of his novels within approximately six weeks. After that, he would spend a week going through and correcting the errors as well as rewriting passages. Then the manuscript was sent off to his publisher.

Fleming said, “I find that unless I stick to a routine, if I just wait for genius to arrive from the skies, it just doesn’t arrive. I just get on with the work.”

Back in 1988, when I decided I had to follow my inner compulsion to write, and began devouring books and articles in Writer’s Digest, the first lesson I took to heart was to set myself a quota of words. Not time, because it is quite possible to sit in front of a computer for a couple of hours without getting many words done at all. I started aiming for 1,000 words a day. Later I modified that because, let’s face it, not all days are the same, and life has a way of intruding upon you, unbidden.

So I settled on 6,000 words a week, taking Sunday off to rest and recharge (essential, IMO). I kept track of my words on a spreadsheet (still do). That way, if I missed a day for some reason, I’d do a little more on the other days. If I got to the end of the week short of my goal, I forgot about it and started fresh the next week.

As I look back on the books I’ve managed to write, I can honestly say it was made possible only because of the quota system. Like Fleming, I couldn’t wait for “genius”  or “the muse” to arrive. Indeed, I came up with ways to “goose the muse.”

My writing routine was not as time-clocky as Fleming’s, but has remained roughly the same.

I wake up early, while it’s still dark, and make the coffee. I spend an hour or so getting the motor running. I used to do that by reading a book or newspaper, but I regret to say the smartphone era has crowded in with emails and scrolling.

Anyway, I then get some writing done. If I can knock off 250 words (a Nifty 250) or even 350, it makes meeting my quota so much easier.

My wife awakens and we spend time together sipping brew, doing some devotional reading together, planning the day to come. The hours between 7 and 11 a.m. are my sweet spot. I write on my main WIP, first by doing a light edit on yesterday’s output, then charging ahead until I’ve hit my quota. If I’m going good, I keep on going. Or I do some development on other projects. I keep everything in Scrivener.

Around 11 I do some exercise and strength training (I need to up these) and have lunch. While I munch, I watch half an hour or so of an old movie (have you discovered Tubi yet?) and then take care of business matters.

I love to work in a power nap. When I had a law office I got real good at putting my feet up on my desk and nodding off for 20 minutes. The afternoon is open time for anything that needs to be taken care of, and is the best time for me to get some reading done. I have a big TBR pile, and usually am in one fiction and one nonfiction book, with several others in various stages of ingestion.

From 4–5 I might get some more words in.

From then on it’s wife time, meaning dinner, games, and watching a movie or show (we’re currently going through Person of Interest again). On occasion we’ll go out to dinner with friends, after I take out a home loan.

Then bed, and then the whole thing starts over again.

And that, for what it’s worth, is my writing routine. What’s yours?

Act First, Explain Later

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell

We have a thriller first page for critique today. Read it and join me on the other side.

At first the sound didn’t trouble him. The lake’s placid. Minimal wind.At least two miles away. Maybe a chainsaw.Still … Anthony grabbed his military-grade binoculars from the wooden chest. He knew details would be hazy in the mountains in mid-October, especially at dusk. But it was worth a look.

Not a chainsaw.

A motorboat. Sprinting north. Maybe five minutes out.

Anthony King had enjoyed three years ofperfect solitude. No phone calls. No visits. Few concerns. Three more weeks until the first hard frost. Need to split more wood, check the roof for loose shakes, maybe head into Stehekin for supplies.

A decade ago, he’d been the only Asian in his Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL class. At five feet nine and a hundred sixty pounds, he was an average-sized well-muscled Korean American. But BUD/S—the first phase of a program based entirely on merit—hadn’t conferred brownie points for his ethnic background. That’s how he liked it. In school he never cheated on tests. He preferred actually earning his grade, even if it meant settling for a C instead of an A. To him, garnering kudos for grade he didn’t deserve was stupid, asinine. Cheaters were losers.

At age nineteen, Anthony was one of 114 young men who signed up for the rigorous SEAL program. Many were exceptional athletes. But most quickly learned that outrunning someone at a track meet or pinning a wrestling opponent or grabbing the most rebounds in a basketball game didn’t guarantee success. A year after starting BUD/S, Anthony was one of only six from the original cadre to receive the coveted SEAL trident. Most dropped during “hell week”—day after day of sleeplessness and chilling cold, when they’d struggled to steer rafts along the turbulent Pacific coast and jogged down the Coronado beach until their sand-covered thighs ached from chaffing and strain. Some quit because of injuries. Others settled into supporting roles. Several restarted one of three training phases. But the majority threw in the towel—or, more precisely, rang the brass bell three times—signaling their intent to “drop on request.” For them, the dream—or nightmare, depending on one’s perspective—was finally over.

Anthony raised the binoculars again. The boat was drawing closer. Definitely heading toward his dock. He stepped into the cabin and lifted the Glock 19 from his holster on the nightstand. Checked the chamber—loaded, as always.

***

JSB: Writer, in our archives are years of first-page critiques, many of which deal with how do deal out backstory (which makes up the bulk of your page). Click here and do some reading. See also John Gilstrap’s  post on managing backstory, and my post wherein I say:

A wise writer (I’m not sure who) said, “A story begins when you light the match, not when you lay out the wood.” Give us some heat from the get-go.

It doesn’t have to be high heat. Just something that disturbs the Lead’s ordinary world. A portent of things to come.

I’ve critiqued many a manuscript at writers conferences, and when I find a “lay out the wood” opening it’s usually because there’s too much backstory. The author thinks the reader has to know a certain amount of information to understand what’s going on.

Not so! Readers will wait a long time for background information if they’re seeing a disturbance happening on the page. My axiom is: Act first, explain later.

You begin promisingly. And then it’s like you drop in a character dossier writers sometimes prepare in their pre-planning. Let’s do your opening this way (with minor tweaks by me):

At first the sound didn’t trouble him. The lake’s placid. Minimal wind.At least two miles away. Maybe a chainsaw. Still … Anthony grabbed his military-grade binoculars from the wooden chest. He knew details would be hazy in the mountains in mid-October, especially at dusk. But it was worth a look.

Not a chainsaw.

A motorboat. Sprinting north. Maybe five minutes out.

And definitely heading toward his dock.

He stepped into the cabin and lifted the Glock 19 from the holster on the nightstand, and racked the slide.

Now we’re cooking. Immediate threat. What do we know about Anthony? He’s hiding in the mountains, has a military background (or equivalent) and can handle weapons. That’s enough to keep us reading.

But wait, you say, we don’t know about his background and training. You’re right! And that creates mystery, which is what keeps readers reading. (Hint: All page-turning fiction runs on mystery, meaning we want readers wondering Why is this happening? What’s going to happen next? I need to keep reading to find out!)

My suggestion to you is write this whole chapter/scene with nothing but action. Make it work like you were watching it on a screen.

Then step back and look at all your backstory information and ask yourself:

  1. What part of it is absolutely essential for the readers to know on the first pages? (Hint: Your answer should be Not that much.)
  2. How can I provide that info in the fewest words possible?

Save the rest for later.

One exercise I’ve given to writers is this: In your first 5,000 words, you can have three sentences of backstory, used all at once or dropped in separately. In your second 5,000, you can use three paragraphs of backstory, all at once or separately.

At the very least, this will force you major in action. You’re writing a thriller, after all. And the material you have here is promising. Now comes the skill part: how to deliver on the promise in the most effective way. That, of course, is the meta-task for all us writers. Welcome to the club!

And now I will leave it to our community of commenters to chime in with their suggestions.

Fear Not the Tsunami of Manure

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell

Entertainment news this week has been dominated by the blockbuster success of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. “Boffo BO,” as industry wags put it (also Matt Damon’s costumer).

Of course, it has generated some online heat, because what doesn’t these days? But there is also substantive discussion among Classics scholars, some of whom say that whatever the movie’s merits, it’s not Homer. (Reminds me of the line from a college essay years ago: “The Odyssey was not actually written by Homer, but by another man of the same name.”) Others have no problem with a “re-imagining” of an ancient epic.

I have no opinion either way, for I have not seen it. But I do extend a laurel and hearty handshake to Nolan for a couple of reasons. This is the first feature film shot entirely with IMAX cameras. IMAX is almost always used for loud set pieces, because the cameras themselves make a lot of noise. They are not good for quiet, intimate scenes.

But Nolan, working with his cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, designed a soundproof housing, called a “blimp,” to cover the camera. It suppressed the noise and allowed them to film soft exchanges.

But that created another problem. The blimp casing was so large that two actors couldn’t look at each other eye to eye, which is essential for emotional connection. So Nolan came up with the idea of using mirrors to let the actors see each other’s faces. Love it.

What I appreciate most is that Nolan eschewed all AI (and most CGI) in order to capture the traditional look of classic “cast of thousands” movies. That’s worth championing. Nolan believes, and the anecdotal evidence suggests, that young audiences are quick to reject AI slop. He says:

“They [Gen Z] see it for what it is very quickly – and it’s much easier for them to identify it, because it grew out of an online world they know really well,” he explained. “And while that doesn’t mean that every aspect of the technology is useless or meaningless, in filmmaking it’s hitting at exactly the wrong time. After years of driving towards heavily virtual environments, we’re seeing a renewed interest in more tactile, more real forms of storytelling.”

I think what Nolan says applies to AI-slop books. Yes, they can be churned out, but readers are rejecting them. There are a millions of slop books on Amazon with zero reviews. Because they suck. Oh, they’re made out of competent sentences, because that’s what LLMs do. But they’re missing a human soul. It’s just so obvious. For want of a better phrase, they “ring hollow.”

Here’s the opening of a slop novel on sale now:

The city doesn’t sleep. It just changes tempo.

You learn that if you stay up late enough.

There’s a moment—somewhere between two and three in the morning—when the traffic thins, when the noise drops from a constant roar to something more honest. Tires on wet asphalt. A distant shout that might be laughter or might not. The hum of streetlights that have been buzzing longer than anyone remembers.

That’s when I work.

That third paragraph is a hoot. What’s dishonest about a constant roar? Is it hiding something? How are tires on wet asphalt more honest than tires on dry asphalt? In what language is a shout the same as laughter? When was the last time you heard a streetlight buzz? How about never?

What’s happened here is an AI word salad, only it’s made out of the poop lettuce that’s been in the news of late. This is why people churning out 300 “novels” a year are just wasting their time on earth. Maybe some of them make a little Starbucks money, but what kind of existence is that?

My conclusion is that we who actually write (not prompt) fiction don’t have to fear the tsunami of manure being shoveled up to Amazon on a daily basis. That stuff goes nowhere. Write with your soul and that alone will set you apart from the stink pile.

Your comments are most welcome.

Is This the End of Reading?

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell

The earliest stories and myths were passed along orally. There were no books or libraries. Most people couldn’t read. That was left to the scholars and monks, who wrote enough down to preserve our developing world (see Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization). The Visigoths weren’t into reading.

Then a guy named Gutenberg invented movable type, and the book business began. The Renaissance bloomed. It was also a bloody time, but as Harry Lime explains in the classic film The Third Man:

Orson Welles as Harry Lime

“Don’t be so gloomy. After all it’s not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love. They had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

All that to say, we paid a price for literacy, but it was worth it. The United States was born by way of a single-page written document (for you kids playing at home, identify the document without Googling or Grokking). We became a land of readers, voraciously gobbling the printed word, set down in everything from cheap wood-pulp magazines to beautifully bound volumes with gilt-edged pages.

Perhaps the height of our reading prolificacy was in the 1950s and its robust market of “middlebrow” fiction, exemplified by the Book-of-the-Month Club. This was a vast realm between mass market and high literary. The books were more “challenging” than the former, and more accessible than the latter. Every middle-class home had a bookshelf. The one in my parents’ house was stocked with hardbacks, one of which was a book called Ulysses (that no one seemed to have finished).

But there was one called Gone With the Wind which I picked up one summer in junior high and was, as they say, transported. I can still feel myself lying on the front-room sofa getting truly “lost in a book.” It was a transformative moment. (Tarzan of the Apes was another such experience.) I had become a dedicated reader of books.

Now, I fear, such transformation may be going the way of the Dodo. A chilling article in The Atlantic has been the subject of much online discussion. Get this:

According to the National Endowment for the Arts, which conducts the most comprehensive survey of the nation’s reading habits, fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022. Only 38 percent read a novel or short story. A study analyzing 236,000 responses to the American Time Use Survey found that the proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023. (The study looked at people who had read a book, magazine, or newspaper; listened to an audiobook; or read an e-book.) Gambling has become a more common leisure activity than reading a book: Last year, 57 percent of Americans placed a bet.

The decline in reading cuts across age groups, gender, and education levels. Even the demographics that traditionally read the most—retirees, women, and college graduates—have seen a collapse.

And this:

In 2024, in a national test, just 35 percent of high-school seniors were “proficient” at skills such as analyzing complex fictional themes and evaluating the effectiveness of an author’s argument. About the same number scored below “basic,” meaning that they may struggle to draw conclusions from concepts explicitly included in a text, or to use context clues to determine the meaning of an unknown word. Adult-literacy scores have also dropped: Nearly 30 percent of American adults cannot paraphrase or make inferences from a multipage text. In 2017, that number was less than 20 percent.

More:

Things are about to get worse, and fast. The next generation reads much less than today’s adults did when they were kids. Kindergarten teachers say that many of their students don’t know nursery rhymes or fairy tales, Benjamin Powers, the director of Yale and the University of Connecticut’s Haskins Global Literacy Hub, told me. (In the study of 236,000 American adults, only 2 percent read to a child on a given day.) From 1984 to 2025, the percentage of 13-year-olds who said they rarely or never read for fun rose from 8 to 29 percent. Every year older a child gets, the less they like to read. Robert Townsend, a program director at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, recently ran focus groups asking high-school students how they felt about reading for pleasure. He told me that most thought of it as an alien practice.

Now, with AI taking over all life forms and media, my head spins like Linda Blair’s (can you kids identify this reference without Googling or Grokking?) Every day on X or TikTok or Instagram there is a flood of visually stunning videos created by 13-year-olds in a bedroom without books.

I have no conclusions. I only have a keyboard, and each day I type words for the creation of books. But my back feels like it’s pressed against the gates of Rome circa 410 A.D.

What’s a writer to do? I ask you.

[Note: I’m on the road today, and don’t know when I can check in, but I will. Meanwhile, have a robust discussion amongst yourselves!]

The Wow Factor

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell

In a 1948 booklet, Pulp Fiction, Robert Turner gave straight-dope advice on what it took to break into the pulp market. In one section he explains what happens to a manuscript when it comes in to an editorial office. What he says here has, I shall in a moment contend, application to writers in the age of AI-slop.

There are, says Turner, two piles in the office. One pile is for authors whose names are “known.” However—

If your name is not known—which makes your stuff an unknown quantity—the script is put at the bottom of the other pile, which is often huge. This is called the “slush” pile. It consists, I’m sorry to say, of about 98 percent junk. This is the fault of the writers, please understand, not the editors. It is also an advantage to you, if you have anything on the ball, because your script will then stand out like a rose on a garbage dump and the editor will make happy little noises.

This is true today, as it has always been true in this game. Most writing is junk. That is an advantage to writers who want to step up their game (which is why TKZ exists!)

The busy editor, says Turner, will always go to the “professional pile” first, as the odds of finding a good story are greater than with the slush. But he adds this note about the pro pile:

The casualties here are often heavier than you would expect them to be. Nearly all of these stories are “useable.” That is, they are professional pieces of work, with not too many outstanding flaws. But the editor doesn’t want merely “useable” stories. He wants damned good ones. He wants to get hold of a yarn that hits him so hard while he is reading it that he can hardly sit still. When he finishes reading he wants to be able to say: “Here’s a hell of a good Smithers story!” This does not happen very often. It takes a wow of a story to get an editor excited. He’s seen them all.

That is true of readers, too. They want a wow story, which is the rarest kind. Add to that all the AI-slop, which is competent. But is it ever wow? Is it ever unforgettable?

Our job is to become the rose in the garbage dump. May I suggest doing a “wow check” at every stage of a project, starting with—

Idea

I have a large file of ideas, things I’ve written down over the years when I’m sparked. I know you get these, too. Don’t ignore them, record them. Revisit them from time to time, seeing what still excites you.

I used to have a box for newspaper and magazine clippings. When something jumped out at me, I’d clip it and toss it in the box. Every now and then I’d go through them, seeing what still had a spark. One of them was a story about cops in L.A. stopping a driver of a convertible. He was a 6’4” guy, had an open container of Jose Cuervo Gold, and was dressed only in a Santa Claus hat and a G-string. This I clipped and threw in the box. Later it became the opening of my Ty Buchanan legal thriller Try Fear.

Development

Idea in hand, I’ll proceed (like a movie studio) to development. My favorite technique is that suggested by the great writing teacher Dwight Swain. I call it “the white-hot document.” It’s a free-form letter to myself, writing down as many plot and character and scene ideas as come to mind, following random threads and rabbit trails. I write without stopping in ten-minute chunks. I rest my brain, then come back to the document the next day.  I highlight the things I like best, and write some more. I do this for three or four days. If I’m still feeling the wow, I move on to—

Structure

I’m a plot and structure guy, so I lay out my “signpost scene cards” in Scrivener, including the “mirror moment.” The mirror moment is, for me, the key to it all. When I nail that—when I feel it—I know what the through-line of the whole book is.

Beginning

Then the day comes when I start writing. The first leg of the journey! This is fun, the scenery is new and fresh. I whistle a tune behind the wheel. But I know at some point I will probably hit—

The Wall

I’ve written before about hitting a “wall” at around the 30k mark. Other writers I know report the same thing. I usually pause here and review my first act, making sure it’s got the death stakes solid and the first Doorway of No Return clear. I make sure my heart still feels the wow factor so I can push on to the finish.

Editing

And then there’s the editing process. I do a read-through in hard copy, make changes, give it to my exacting editor (Mrs. B), incorporate her notes, then off to a beta reader, more changes, a proofreader, then my final polish. What keeps me going at this stage is the opportunity to put in more heart. I know my story now, see the big picture, know the characters, and I look for ways to increase the emotional impact of the whole thing.

So why go through all that when I can just prompt Chat or Claude to do the heavy lifting? Because I need to feel the wow, for myself as a writer and for my readers. Because, as Robert Turner says in Pulp Fiction, “to entertain a reader—in other words, to write a good story—is to play upon emotions, through the things that you make happen to your story characters.”

You don’t get that from a machine, in my (mostly) humble opinion.

Comments welcome.

Quotable

Posted on by

[Note: had a double Quotable a couple of weeks ago. I’m running this one again for comments. Do you relate? Can you ever “take a vacation” from your writing?]

“Writing is a full-time job, it really is, and you never really take a vacation from it. I could go through a whole day and show you how every conscious moment—and the unconscious ones as well—were part of the business of being a writer. I could, but I won’t….I’ve got work to do.” – Lawrence Block

That Old-Time Omniscient

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell

We all know about the “rules violation” known as “head hopping.” This is where we get the thoughts (inside the head) of one character, then suddenly “hop” into another character’s head within the same scene.

Technically, however, this isn’t a sin. It’s Omniscient POV (though it usually happens by mistake).

POV is broken down into First, Second (rare!), Third, and Omniscient (though some label Omni a type of Third, but let’s not confuse things right now). The main deal with Omni is that it can float above the action and dip into any character’s head. The Omni voice can be “objective”  (straight description) or “editorial” (the author offers opinions or insights).

Omni POV is not so much in fashion these days (just don’t tell that to Delia Owens, author of Where the Crawdads Sing.) But it was the default choice of most fiction prior to the twentieth century. Here is a clip from Jane Austen’s Emma, where she hops into three different heads in the same scene:

“Emma,” said Mr. Knightley presently, “I have a piece of news for you. You like news—and I heard an article in my way hither that I think will interest you.”

“News! Oh! yes, I always like news. What is it?—why do you smile so?—where did you hear it?—at Randalls?”

He had time only to say, “No, not at Randalls; I have not been near Randalls,” when the door was thrown open, and Miss Bates and Miss Fairfax walked into the room. Full of thanks, and full of news, Miss Bates knew not which to give quickest. Mr. Knightley soon saw that he had lost his moment, and that not another syllable of communication could rest with him.

“Oh! my dear sir, how are you this morning? My dear Miss Woodhouse—I come quite over-powered. Such a beautiful hind-quarter of pork! You are too bountiful! Have you heard the news? Mr. Elton is going to be married.”

Emma had not had time even to think of Mr. Elton, and she was so completely surprised that she could not avoid a little start, and a little blush, at the sound.

The above is an example of objective omniscient. There’s no author voice “intrusion.” With editorial omniscient we are more aware of the voice. Here is one of the most famous editorial-omniscient openings:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)

That is, of course, Dickens giving us his opinion on matters. Compare that to Margaret Mitchell’s objective-omniscient opening for Gone With the Wind, limiting herself to description:

Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin, square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a touch of hazel, starred with bristly black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her thick black brows slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line in her magnolia-white skin—that skin so prized by Southern women and so carefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia suns.

The knock against Omni POV is that it removes immediacy and intimacy. When the narrator is “telling” the story, the action is slowed, and when it “hops” the reader is distanced from any one character.

I think both notions are wrong. In the hands of good writer, Omini can actually increase intimacy and connection. That’s what makes Theodore Dreiser a great novelist despite being a clunky stylist (“The world’s worst great writer” some wag wrote).

Let’s look at a bit of Dreiser’s Jennie Gerhardt. Jennie is a poor working girl employed by an older man, a U.S. Senator. He becomes infatuated with her, and one day draws her to him and gives her a kiss on the cheek.

“Oh!” she cried, straightening up, at once startled and frightened.

It was a new note in their relationship. The senatorial quality vanished in an instant. She recognized in him something that she had not felt before. He seemed younger, too. She was a woman to him, and he was playing the part of a lover. She hesitated, but not knowing just what to do, did nothing at all.

“Well,” he said, “did I frighten you?”

She looked at him, but moved by her underlying respect for this great man, she said, with a smile, “Yes, you did.”

“I did it because I like you so much.”

She meditated upon this a moment, and then said, “I think I’d better be going.”

“Now then,” he pleaded, “are you going to run away because of that?”

“No,” she said, moved by a curious feeling of ingratitude; “but I ought to be going. They’ll be wondering where I am.”

“You’re sure you’re not angry about it?”

“No,” she replied, and with more of a womanly air than she had ever shown before. It was a novel experience to be in so authoritative a position. It was so remarkable that it was somewhat confusing to both of them.

“You’re my girl, anyhow,” the Senator said, rising. “I’m going to take care of you in the future.”

Jennie heard this, and it pleased her. He was so well fitted, she thought, to do wondrous things; he was nothing less than a veritable magician. She looked about her and the thought of coming into such a life and such an atmosphere was heavenly. Not that she fully understood his meaning, however. He meant to be good and generous, and to give her fine things. Naturally she was happy. She took up the package that she had come for, not seeing or feeling the incongruity of her position…

Dreiser then “hops” into the Senator mid-sentence:

…while he felt it as a direct reproof.

“She ought not to carry that,” he thought. A great wave of sympathy swept over him. He took her cheeks between his hands, this time in a superior and more generous way. “Never mind, little girl,” he said. “You won’t have to do this always. I’ll see what I can do.”

Dreiser’s An American Tragedy (a whopping 900 pages) is, for me, unforgettable (as is the movie version A Place in the Sun with Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor). He takes us deep into Clyde’s head and heart, step by step tracing the choices he makes that take him down, down, down. It’s like watching a terrible traffic accident in slow motion, starting with the first wrong turn.

One final note. An intrusive Omniscient POV is perfect for an author with a singular and humorous voice (e.g., Douglas Adams, Tom Robbins, Kurt Vonnegut). But that kind of voice is the hardest of all to pull off.

All that to say, I wonder if classic Omniscient POV could make a comeback. It requires a writer of great skill and intention…and readers with an attention span longer than seven seconds. In this age of apps that’s quite a challenge.

What say you?

News: BookBub Deals, Anthropic Dough, and Audio Add-Ons

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell

BookBub Introduces New in Kindle Unlimited Deals

 If you have books in Kindle Unlimited (KU), BookBub has added a promo called New in Kindle Unlimited. The benefits:

  • Drive revenue through increased page reads. Partners who ran early New in Kindle Unlimited promotions reported immediate spikes in page reads, and long tails of increased activity that continue to boost revenue well past the feature date.
  • Boost visibility across the Amazon store. New in Kindle Unlimited engagement drives improvements in rankings that maximize your book’s discoverability across the Kindle store, leading to organic visibility beyond BookBub subscribers.
  • Expand your readership. Reach hundreds of thousands of KU users in BookBub’s audience to hook new fans and increase engagement across your catalog.
  • Highlight a new release or revive a backlist title. Maximize your new book’s momentum in its critical early weeks after launch, or engage thousands of new readers when enrolling an existing title into KU.

You can read more about it here.

Anthropic Settlement Money on the Way

The Bartz v. Anthropic class action, filed August 2024, is just about at the payout stage. The $1.5 billion settlement was reached last year, reportedly the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history. Anthropic agreed to pay rights holders approximately $3,000 per qualifying title (i.e., pirated book). There’d be a 50/50 split with the publisher (assuming the publisher had actually registered the copyright, which they should have), unless the author got rights reverted, in which case they’d get the whole caboodle.

Initial settlement checks (or direct deposits) are expected to be disbursed in the next couple of months. 

Unless the author chose to opt-out of Bartz in order to hunt larger game, namely “statutory” damages of up to $150,000 per title. A few law firms offered to take these on a contingency basis. The ka-ching ka-ching sound is tempting, but in the real world of deep pockets and protracted litigation, the prospect of getting significant dough is, in non-legal terms, dicey.

Cinematic Audiobooks

Like the rise of the machines (see Terminator, The) there is apparently a move by major publishers toward more “immersive” audiobooks, as opposed to solo narration. That means adding things like music, sound effects, and different voices for each character. You know, more like a movie. We are such an audio-visual culture now that the move makes sense. Or does it:

Excessive sound effects or dramatic performances can distract from the writing, making the production feel artificial….Voice actors must understand their characters, the emotions they convey, and each relationship. One poor performance can ruin the experience, even if the rest excel.

Personally, I like a good solo narrator, which means they don’t try to “do” a voice for each character, or put their idea of method acting into the reading. This is one area where an AI Virtual Voice may fare better than a human, bad-actor voice.

Comments welcome.