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Author Archives: James Scott Bell
So Your Self-Published Novel is Just Sitting There
by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
Frank Gruber
Heard from a writer the other day who is frustrated that his two novels are sitting somewhere near the bottom of the Sea of Amazon, with nary a fish swimming by. He wondered if he should even bother writing another.
You know what I told him? Be thankful you’re not trying to break through back in 1934!
Yes, the Great Depression and the era of the pulps. You think you’ve got it hard? How about all those writers wearing out their fingers on manual typewriters, hoping to sell a story for a penny a word? How about the ones who pulled their life savings so they could move to New York for as long as the money lasted and make the rounds of the publishing offices?
Let me introduce you to one of them. His name was Frank Gruber. He was a successful pulp writer, then came out to Hollywood to write for the studios. In the 1950s he hit it big as a TV writer for Westerns. In1967 Gruber published The Pulp Jungle, a memoir of his time trying to break into that market. He moved to New York in July of 1934 with a plan to get published within six months.
My physical assets consisted of one portable Remington typewriter and my wardrobe which, aside from what I was wearing, fit very comfortably into one medium size suitcase. I had sixty dollars in cash, but paid out ten dollars and fifty cents of it for a week’s rent in advance at the Forty-fourth Street Hotel. I squandered another ten dollars over the long weekend, so that on Tuesday morning, when I went out to size up the pulp jungle I had approximately forty dollars.
I had one thing else … the will to succeed.
Because money was tight, Gruber ate a lot of “tomato soup” at the Automat (these were popular in the city, like cafeterias, where you put money in a slot to open a window that held a sandwich or whatever). Hot water for tea was free. So what a lot of people did back then was get a bowl for soup, fill it with hot water, pick up some cracker packs (free), sit down at a table and pour half a bottle of ketchup into the water. Voila! Tomato soup. There were days when this is all Gruber ate.
During his first five months Gruber completed forty stories.
All were rejected.
It was desperation time. Then Gruber got a call from an editor who liked him, but hadn’t bought his detective fiction. He asked Gruber to try a Western. So he wrote two stories and submitted them. Then he got a call from an editor he’d pestered, who knew Gruber was a fast writer. The editor said they needed an adventure story the next day to fill out the magazine. Could he do 5500 words overnight? Of course, Gruber said, without any idea of character or plot.
Twelve hours later, at eight in the morning on a Saturday (when the story was due) he had the 5500 words, but no time for corrections. He took the pages to the offices himself.
Then didn’t hear anything.
He went back on Tuesday to see if they had rejected it. The editor said, “Oh, sorry, we forgot to call you. We pay on Friday. Can you give me another story for next month?”
Then the two Westerns he’d submitted earlier sold for a grand total of $34.
He was in!
But this was just the beginning. Even a successful pulp writer (who was writing for a living) was usually just a step or two ahead of the landlord. They had to keep producing, keep selling.
I poured it on in 1940, producing more than eight hundred thousand words. The more I wrote, the more I had to write. I was making commitments all over town and I had to deliver.
This was a common theme among the pulpsters. Gruber tells about a writer named George Bruce who used to throw parties in his small Brooklyn apartment. One night the place was jammed with thirty-plus people. At ten o’clock Bruce announced he had a 12,000 word story due the following morning. He went to a corner where his typewriter was and pounded it for four hours, ignoring the party swirling around him. At two o’clock in the morning he announced he was finished and poured himself a glass of gin.
Gruber also got to know perhaps the most prolific author of all time. His name was Frederick Faust, but you know him by his most famous pen name, Max Brand. When Gruber met him they were in Hollywood working at Warner Bros. Studios. Faust had, by that time, written and published approximately forty-five million words.
Frederick Faust, aka Max Brand
When Gruber asked him how on earth he did it, Faust asked Gruber if he could write fourteen pages in one day. Gruber said he’d certainly done so (fourteen pages is about 4,000 words), but had also gone two or three weeks without writing a line.
That was the secret, Faust said. He wrote fourteen pages a day, every day, “come rain or shine, come mood or no.”
That works out to one and a half million words a year.
The really remarkable thing about Fred Faust’s output was that he was the “biggest drinker” Gruber ever met. Faust would put away a thermos of whiskey during his morning writing hours. His lunch would be washed down by several more drinks. “When he went home at five-thirty,” Gruber writes, “he had a light supper and then settled down to his serious drinking.”
Faust was one of those extremely rare individuals who could drink like that every night and still operate in the morning. I do not recommend this method.
I do, however, recommend Faust’s seriousness about a quota. I’m a piker compared to guys like Faust and Erle Stanley Gardner. I aim for 6,000 words a week! But I can tell you my yearly output for the last 15 years. I keep track on a spreadsheet. This is the most important writing advice I know. [My best year, by the way, was 2010 – 347,768 words.]
So here’s my message for you if you’re tempted to pull a woe-is-me:
- Your pulp forbears would shake their heads at how good you’ve got it. You can publish yourself and to a virtually unlimited market! Without cost! They would have thought that possibility was science fiction back in ’34.
- If you don’t write to a quota, they’d have no sympathy for you.
- If you don’t pay at least some attention to the market, they’d think you were daft.
- If you don’t try to get better at your craft, they’d tell you you’d be better off as a plumber, and the sooner the better.
- If you want to make it, they’d tell you to keep working, because the work never stops.
I wrote a little book some time ago called Self-Publishing Attack! In it are my five “absolutely unbreakable laws” for self-publishing success. While some of the technical items have changed since I published it four years ago, the laws that make up my system remain unalterable.
And the last law is: Repeat over and over the rest of your life.
Are you prepared to do that?
If you are, then somewhere Frank Gruber is smiling.
[NOTE: Gruber would be pleased as pulp to know that his signature series character from the 1930s is still around, in both digital and print. I refer to Oliver Quade, the Human Encyclopedia.]
So what do you think of Frank Gruber’s Depression-era work ethic? Still valid today?
Reader Friday: How Do You Read?
How to Write an Eating Scene
by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
In my workshops I warn students about scenes where two friends sit down for dinner or
coffee and talk about life, the universe and the plot. The temptation is to have it all easy-peasy because, after all, they’re friends. The danger for the writer, though, is that without conflict or tension the scene takes on the dreadful patina of dullness. Which means it is the readers who lose their appetite … for reading on!
Sometimes I will hear the rejoinder that this is what we do in life. We have coffee with friends, we have dinner with pals. Why can’t we put that in our books?
Well, I say, you have fuzzy slippers in your life. Do you put them in your books? (Okay, well, if you do, put snakes inside them.)
Then I say that fiction is not a reproduction of real life. It’s a stylized rendition of life for a fictional purpose. And the most important part of that purpose is keeping readers glued to the page! A scene featuring “happy people in Happy Land” doesn’t stick.
Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t do a quiet scene with friends or allies in a Starbucks or a restaurant. The trick is to have something going on that gives off a vibration of tension. It’s not that hard to do, either. But the effect on readability is palpable.
Let’s have a look at an eating scene from Michael Connelly’s Echo Park. Harry Bosch is investigating an old murder for the Open-Unsolved unit of the LAPD. He’s asked FBI agent and profiler Rachel Walling for help. Bosch and Rachel had once been intimate, and have started up again, though they are uncertain about the wisdom of this.
In this scene, Connelly wants to give us a lot of information and theorizing about the case. That could easily make this a “talking head” scene. But Connelly knows better than that. Bosch has arranged to meet Rachel at a fancy downtown restaurant. The scene begins:
Bosch had lost track of time while in the library. He was late. Rachel was already seated and waiting for him. She was holding a large one-sheet menu that obscured the look of annoyance on her face as Bosch was led to the table by a waiter.
“Sorry,” Bosch said as he sat down.
“It’s okay,” she replied. “But I already ordered for myself. I didn’t know if you were going to show or not.”
She handed the menu across to him. He immediately handed it to the waiter.
“I’ll have what she’s having,” he said. “And just the water is fine.”
He drank from the glass already poured for him while the waiter hurried away. Rachel smiled at him, but not in a nice way.
So here’s the first tip: find some form of TENSION between the allies. In this case, Bosch is late for his meeting. Rachel is annoyed. We want to keep reading to see how this will play out.
Rachel then warns Bosch that he’s not going to like what he ordered. It was sashimi. She knows Bosch wants his fish cooked. Oops. But Bosch decides he better let it go and give Rachel the info he has.
This leads to the second tip: make the FOOD a source of discomfort. Bosch has begun his summary of the events:
It took him fifteen minutes and during that time their lunch was served. Of course it came fast. It didn’t have to be cooked! He felt lucky to be the one doing all the talking. It gave him a ready excuse not to eat the raw fish put down in front of him.
[As the scene moves on, Rachel finishes her sashimi. Bosch then pushes his own plate, which he hasn’t touched, over to her.]
“No, I’m not saying that Olivas was the killer. I am saying he was gotten to by the killer. He and O’Shea. The real killer came to them and made some sort of a deal.”
“Harry, this just sounds so …”
She didn’t finish. She pushed the sashimi on her plate around with her chopsticks but ate very little of it. The waiter used the moment to approach the table.
“You didn’t like you sashimi?” he said to her in a trembling voice.
“No, I –”
She stopped when she realized she had almost a full portion on the plate in front of her.
“I guess I wasn’t very hungry.”
“She doesn’t know what she’s missing,” Bosch said, smiling. “I thought it was great.”
Third tip: Use the servers to provide a well-timed INTERRUPTION. Here, Rachel was about to tell Harry how his theory sounded. But before she could continue, the waiter comes back to the table. This is a clever ploy, delaying the payoff, which is another way to say that Mr. Connelly knows how to make us read on.
Here is a slice from my novel Romeo’s Way. Mike Romeo is under cover in San Francisco, trying to get hired as security for a political campaign. Kat, the campaign aide he has made contact with, is interviewing him. Mike proved himself earlier that day, and now Kat takes him to dinner at Fisherman’s Wharf on the campaign’s dime.
“I can only get back so far into your past,” she said. “I get back to when you were fighting, but before that there’s virtually nothing. There was some fluff of a bio in a program once, but to be quite honest with you, it didn’t sound believable.”
“That’s because it was fiction,” I said. “They needed something, so I made something up.”
“Okay, then what’s the real story?”
“It’s not something I choose to publicize.”
“And that,” she said, “is what interests me.”
“I also believe in privacy. What I choose to keep private is nobody’s business.”
“Which means you have something to hide.”
“Everybody has something to hide,” I said. “Tell me about your sex life.”
Her cheeks flushed, obvious even in the candlelight.
“See?” I said.
“I could get really mad at this point.”
“But you won’t,” I said. “Because it’s not a good move. And my impression of you is that you make nothing but good moves.”
Before she could answer, the waiter appeared with the bottle of wine.
In this clip, I have used a fourth tip: CONFLICTING AGENDAS. Kat wants Mike’s full background. He doesn’t want to give it. They both want to test each others’ boundaries. And then the waiter interrupts.
So there you have it. Four simple ways you can turn a sitting-down-for-coffee-or-food scene into readable fiction: tension, food, interruptions, agendas.
Mix and match according to taste. Your readers will enjoy the meal.
Reader Friday: Waiting for Inspiration?
Don’t Drive Your Readers to the Dictionary
by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
Thomas Wolfe
I have a good friend who’s a college English prof. He’s an expert in American Lit, with a specialization in Thomas Wolfe. I made some attempts to read Wolfe back in college, but quickly got over it in favor of his contemporary, Ernest Hemingway, and one of his heirs, Jack Kerouac.
But I’ve long had it in my mind to give Wolfe another try. What stopped me was the steep decline in his literary reputation over the past fifty years or so. No less a literary light than Harold Bloom considers Wolfe a “mediocre” talent who has no (as in zero, zilch) “literary merit.”
Now there is a major motion picture out about Wolfe and his editor, the legendary Maxwell Perkins. The movie (which I have not seen yet) is called Genius, based on A. Scott Berg’s award-winning book about Perkins.
So it seemed like a good time to break out my old copy of Look Homeward, Angel and try again. Almost immediately I got frustrated. There is a lot of prose (Wolfe once admitted that his great fault was “too-muchness.”) that is mostly narrative summary. I knew this was supposed to be a novel about a boy named Eugene Gant. But I was not picking up any reason to care about Eugene, the Gants, or the town of Altamont where everything takes place.
After about 150 pages I sent an email to my friend, asking him what I was missing. He sent me a paper he’d done for a conference on how we should approach Wolfe. Wolfe was not interested in writing a traditional novel with an identifiable plotline, my friend explained. Wolfe was, rather, writing to immerse us in a world. He wants us to live there, experience moments and settings. He wants us to feel life deeply even through mundane details.
Okay, that helped. I’m fine with experimental fiction. But in the nitty-gritty of Wolfe’s words I often stumble and grab the dictionary for support. Here, for example, is a clip from a section where Eugene Gant wakes up in the morning and gets dressed:
With sharp whetted hunger he thought of breakfast. He threw the sheet back cleanly, swung in an orbit to a sitting position and put his white somewhat phthisic feet on the floor. Standing up tenderly, he walked over to his leather rocker and put on a pair of clean white-footed socks. Then he pulled his nightgown over his head, looking for a moment in the dresser mirror at his great boned structure, the long stringy muscles of his arms, and his flat-meated hairy chest. His stomach sagged paunchily. He thrust his white flaccid calves quickly through the shrunken legs of a union suit, stretched it out elasticly with a comfortable widening of his shoulders and buttoned it. Then he stepped into his roomy sculpturally heavy trousers and drew on his soft-leathered laceless shoes….
I found myself talking to Wolfe. “C’mon, Tom, really? Phthisic feet? WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?”
I looked up phthisic. It means a “wasting disease” like tuberculosis.
“Tom! Are you telling me Eugene’s feet had a lung disease? Can feet even look tubercular? Why are you making me stop to think about all this?”
A few pages later Wolfe writes about nacreous pearl light. Back to the dictionary! And guess what? Nacreous means pearly. So it’s not just a ten-dollar word, but I think Wolfe used it redundantly.
And then there are times when Wolfe pops in with author intrusion. To be fair, that’s part of his experiment. But we have things like this: The seed of our destruction will blossom in the desert, the alexin of our cure grows by a mountain rock, and our lives are haunted by a Georgia slattern because a London cut-purse went unhung.
Back to the dictionary! Alexin? (n., a defensive substance capable of destroying bacteria.)
Slattern? (n., an untidy, slovenly woman; a slut.)
But then … what does that passage even mean?
One more: Eugene got back his heart. He got it back fiercely and carelessly, with an eldritch wildness.
Good thing I had the dictionary right next to me! Eldritch, adj., weird; eerie.
Come on, Tom! Why do you do this? Why do you slatternly drive the alexin of phthisic prose eldritchly before my white-footed socks?
Yet in deference to my friend, I’m going to darn well finish Look Homeward, Angel. But I have to say it ain’t easy.
Does that mean I only prefer books with stripped-down style?
Far from it. I do want some style, some voice. But I want it the way John D. MacDonald described it: unobtrusive poetry.
It’s sort of like actors. I’ll confess: I’ve never been a big fan of Laurence Olivier. I always feel like I’m watching an actor working a bit too hard. I admire the craft, but I see the craft. I never feel that way about, say, Robert Mitchum. Mitchum’s performances always look easy. Which is why he is often underrated as an actor.
Mitchum actually had a terrific range. He could be cool (Out of the Past), vulnerable (Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison), menacing (The Night of the Hunter), scary (Cape Fear), funny (What a Way to Go). He could be a man of the West (El Dorado), a man of the cloth (5 Card Stud), or a man after a girl’s heart (Holiday Affair). [Also, I find that Mitchum movies have a great deal to say about true manliness, lessons we need to recover. So much do I believe this that I wrote a little book, Manliness: The Robert Mitchum Way.]
How does all this translate to your writing?
- Don’t use a word that a majority of readers will have to look up. Get the story to your audience without needless obstacles, like phthisic feet.
- Major in the voice “formula” of character + author + craft. See my post on that subject here.
- A heightened style is fine if we don’t stop to stop and try to figure out what you mean. I like high style and even lyricism – when it works. For instance, in Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion. It’s Wolfeian in heft and experimental in style, yet it doesn’t require a dictionary. And it has a plot!
- It’s okay to overwrite when you draft. That’s often how you get the right touch of emotion and deepen a character. Write like you’re in love.
- But cut mercilessly to make the final product accessible to the reader. This is where you buckle your tool belt and get down to the real work. Edit like you’re in charge.
Now, I don’t want to leave poor Thomas Wolfe hanging out there with Harold Bloom sauce all over him. The guy was in love with writing. It was his life. I can’t deny his passion. So I’ll give him a fair hearing. But when I’m done with Look Homeward, Angel I have a feeling I’ll want to crack open a Travis McGee.
So are there books out there you’ve tried to like, but can’t? You don’t have to name names **COUGH**Middlemarch**COUGH**, but tell us why the book didn’t work for you.
Reader Friday: Celebrate!
Short Fiction, Satisfying Endings and Reader Expectations
by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
This month a writer named James Patterson (who has had some 
success and may break out soon) began a new enterprise. It’s called BookShots. These are to be what he calls “short novels” and what everyone else calls “novellas.”
Patterson, the former advertising man, is nothing if not strategic, even visionary. He is always looking for ways to expand his product line and this plan is brilliantly counterintuitive –– find new places for physical books.
According to a story in the New York Times, Patterson “wants to sell books to people who have abandoned reading for television, video games, movies and social media.” He wants to write fiction that is “shorter, cheaper, more plot-driven and more widely available” than full-length books. But here’s the part that really intrigues me:
[E]ventually, Mr. Patterson and his publisher want to colonize retail chains that don’t normally sell books, like drugstores, grocery stores and other outlets. They envision having BookShots next to magazines in grocery store checkout lanes, or dangling from clip strips like a bag of gummy bears.
“Those venues are very inhospitable to traditional publishing, but we think this is a type of book that could work very well there,” said Michael Pietsch, the chief executive of Hachette Book Group, which publishes Mr. Patterson’s books in the United States through its Little, Brown imprint. “He has enough recognition that his name can make it work.”
In some ways, Mr. Patterson’s effort is a throwback to the dime novels and pulp fiction magazines that were popular in the late 19th and early 20th century, when commercial fiction was widely available in drugstores.
It’s an ambitious plan, and I doubt any writer except Patterson, backed by mega-publisher Hachette, could pull this off. Maybe Stephen King if he also branded his name as Patterson does. For that is part of the strategy as well:
Hachette is betting that Mr. Patterson is famous enough to overcome … obstacles. The company is planning to publish 21 BookShots in 2016, including thrillers, science fiction, mysteries and romances. The first two, out in June, are “Cross Kill,” a book by Mr. Patterson starring his popular recurring character Alex Cross, and “Zoo II,” a science-fiction thriller written by Mr. Patterson and Max DiLallo. All the books will be written or partially written by Mr. Patterson, except the romances, which will be labeled “James Patterson Presents.”
All well and good. This is a business, after all, and no one has been a more astute businessman than James Patterson. He provides a product. That product entertains. There is an exchange of money for perceived value. And everyone’s happy.
Well, almost everyone. I hopped over to Amazon to have a look at the first BookShot, Cross Kill. Some of the reviewers have a complaint: the ending is incomplete. As one reviewer put it: The story is good, typical Patterson but it ends with a huge cliffhanger and that is what I do not like. … I had expected a short book, like a short story and I liked the idea but now I must say I am disappointed. It would be good if it could be explained where in the Cross Universe these Bookshots fit.
Had the book been advertised as the first part of a serial, all would be well. That’s what Stephen King did back when he and his publisher released The Green Mile. It was done in six installments, and that’s how it was advertised. So readers knew when they purchased one of the short books there would be another to come.
So what does all this mean?
It’s a great new era for short fiction. Short stories (up to 7k words or so); novelettes (7k – 20k); novellas (20k – 50k); and short novels (50k – 70k). You can use these to hone your skills, establish a digital footprint, and make new readers. I’ve been pleased that my series of novelettes about a vigilante nun, Force of Habit, which I did purely for fun, has generated its own little fan base. That’s the pulp fiction idea, and I love that it’s available to us now via direct digital publishing.
But write your stories to completion! No matter the form, the ending has to satisfy the reader. They expect an ending, unless in your marketing you are absolutely clear that you are writing a serial.
I remember years ago when my wife was reading a thriller and kept telling me how good it was. I would say, “But what about mine, honey?” And she’d say, “Shh, I’m reading.”
Anyway, she got to the end and … there was no ending! She was at first confused, then ticked off. I had a look at the book. It was a bit shorter than a “big” novel. And it indeed left off right in the middle of a crucial moment.
Only later did I learn that the publisher had decided to take a “really big” thriller and divide it in two. Their thinking was, “Hey! This is a good novel, and we can double our money by making it two books! The readers will be panting for the rest!”
Only they did not pant. They punted.. They did not want to be “tricked” again. The second book went nowhere.
So don’t treat your short fiction as a throwaway. Over the last few years most of the A-list writers, at the behest of their publishers, have dashed off short ebooks to augment their series or help sell an upcoming release. In several instances these have been less than stellar efforts, garnering a spate of 1-star reviews from fans. Maybe the A-list can get away with it, but the rest of us can’t. We need, more than anything, to establish “trustability.”
So, kids, write the best short fiction you can, every time out. And that means –– unless it’s a serial and the readers know it –– that you give them a satisfying ending.
Have you ever been burned by a story you thought was going to end, but didn’t? Or ended in such a fashion that it ruined all the good stuff up to that point?
And what do you think of this new pulp fiction idea? Do you think there’s a market for it?
_____
Speaking of thinking strategically, if you’d like to pick up a book on how a writer can do that very thing, here it is..
The Doctor Will See Your Novel Now
by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
My doctor is a sharp young guy. He seems impressed that I’m a writer of fiction 
who manages to make a living that way. He once wistfully mentioned he would like one day to write a book.
I told him he should do it. Then I asked him if one day I could take out a gallbladder. He said, “Probably not.”
I guess the barriers to entry into the medical profession are a bit higher than it is for would-be scribes. Too bad. Just once I’d like to say to a surgical assistant, “Scalpel … Sponge … Junior Mint.”
In any event, I go in yearly to get checked, even if I feel in the pink. I talk to the doc, get my blood drawn, then wait for the reports. Every now and then he makes a suggestion and I try to follow it, unless it involves red meat.
Your novel needs a checkup, too. I like to schedule mine at around the 20k word mark. I’m not so far in that I can’t do some remedial work if necessary. There are some tests I like to run. Let me commend them to you.
Blood Test
Is your story’s lifeblood healthy? Here’s how you can tell: Your Lead is facing an issue of life and death –– physical, professional, or psychological. That raises the stakes to the highest level. That keeps the blood flowing and the reader reading. Even if you’re writing a comic novel, the characters have to believe the central question is of the utmost importance.
Heart Rate
Are you connected emotionally to the story? I don’t mean you have to end up like Joan Wilder finishing her book at the start of Romancing the Stone (for more on that, see Rob’s post from last Wednesday and especially P. J.’s comment.)
What it does mean is that you must have some connection to the characters that makes you, the author, care about what happens to them. If you haven’t got that, find it before you move on. Feel something before you write anything.
Character Endoscopy
Those little endoscopes (“viewing tubes”) enter your body via … through a … just take my word for it, in they go, to get a picture of what’s inside you.
You need something going on inside each main character, too, under the surface. We usually refer to this as motivation. Often that’s enough, but I like to know what’s behind it, what created it.
I don’t do extensive character biographies. Those never quite worked for me. But I do want to know a few key things, including a “wound” from a past trauma that haunts the character in the present (sometimes we call this “the ghost.”)
Joint Pain
Are your scenes working? They are the connections, the things that hold your story together. Having a dull scene is like having a knee go out on you. Everything stops. You can’t move forward.
Pain, the doc will tell you, is a good thing when it tells you Hey! You gotta take care of this, buddy!
And that’s what dull scenes are telling you.
Now, it’s true that you sometimes are too close to your story to know what’s dull. Often, it’s not until someone else looks at your manuscript that the pain is revealed to you.
I think it’s best if you know what to look for and fix it yourself, and soon.
First, do you have a feeling that a scene you wrote isn’t quite right? Go there and ask:
Do the characters in this scene have conflict, even if it’s subtle, with one another?
- Is there anything surprising in the scene? Unexpected?
- If the character is alone, is there some form of fear inside him? (From simple worry to outright terror?)
- Does the scene drag on too long?
Second, if the scene still doesn’t work treat it like a tumor and cut it out.
Hearing Check
How does your dialogue sound?
If the characters sound too much alike, no good. Each character deserves a distinct voice.
If your dialogue is always in complete sentences, you’re missing the power of compression.
If your dialogue attributions (said, asked) are being propped up by adverbs (he said haltingly; she asked imploringly) you’re diluting, not adding to the emotion of the scene.
(I will modestly hype my book, How to Write Dazzling Dialogue, because I believe dialogue is the fastest way to improve a manuscript.)
Eye Exam
Do your descriptions paint a vivid picture that pulls a reader into the story world? We are a visual culture, so you need to think and write cinematically. Like this:
The sun that brief December day shone weakly through the west-facing window of Garrett Kingsley’s office. It made a thin yellow oblong splash on his Persian carpet and gave up. (Robert B. Parker, Pale Kings and Princes)
Sol Stein counsels, “Have something visual on every page.” We’re weaving a dream, after all, and dreams are movies in the mind.
So what about you? Is your manuscript in pain? Where does it hurt? The medical staff of TKZ is here to help!
Letter to a Discouraged Writer
by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
My man,
Here’s the thing. You got yourself good enough to get a publishing contract back in the “old days” when you needed to impress an agent, get repped, get shopped, and then sign on with a house. Your books came out with nice covers, some marketing, some placement. You did book signings and conference appearances. Three books I think it was, right?
So what happened? Sales weren’t enough to earn back the advance. And not enough to get another contract from the publishing house.
There’s an author support group for that. It’s called “Practically Everyone” and they meet at the bar.
I don’t know the exact percentage, but most fiction authors who ever lived never caught on in a big way. Many used to manage a “midlist career” which meant at least enough sales to keep on publishing, though not enough buy a yacht.
So you went through a dry period. Your agent shopped you but without success. So you parted ways. That was a tough time for you. You wondered if you’d ever get published again.
A couple of your colleagues, myself included, suggested you ought to look into self-publishing. That was four or five years ago. You said you didn’t have the desire to learn “all that stuff.” You just wanted to write.
Then you found another agent, a newer one, and he thought you ought to start over with a pen name. So you did. And he got you a contract. (See? You are still good enough!) Yes, it was a smaller house, so the advance and marketing were minimal. You got some good reviews for the new book, which was to be the start of a series.
But the book went nowhere. And the publisher decided not to bring out the next book. (To hear more stories like this, go to the next Practically Everyone meeting at the bar).
Then your agent got out of the business.
You told people, That’s it. I’m done. Goodbye, writing. No use. Never again.
Your colleagues gave you a pass the first time you expressed this. We all understood. But when you did it again, I decided to write you this letter.
Look, bud, are you a writer or aren’t you? I’m not talking about someone who has a contract. I’m talking about someone who has this yearning to tell stories because you’ve been caught up in storytelling dreams and you want to do that for other people.You long to move them, entertain them. Is that you? Then you’re a writer.
And as such, you’re subject to the slings and arrows of this crazy business. The question is, what are you going to do when you get a few arrows in the keister?
You can give up. Or you can go see Miracle Max. (You’re only mostly dead!) And when you can sit comfortably again, self-publish.
Sure, it takes effort to learn what to do. But no more effort than it took you to learn how to write a good scene.
I know, I know. You’ve heard about that massive “sea of content” out there. Yes, you’ll be starting out as a minnow. But at least you’ll be alive and swimming. The beach, meanwhile, is covered with rotting kelp and flies and the bones of writers who gave up.
When you self publish, you’ll instantly be better off than you are now. Like the old prospector said, “A handful of somethin’ is better than a cartload of nothin’.”
It’s within your power to make it happen. Think about that. You’re not at the mercy of a corporation or committee, or the shrinking shelf space in bookstores. You are your own captain, your own boss.
You say you’re not a particularly fast writer. Well, fine, here’s my advice: write to a quota and stick to it. Find out how many words you can comfortably write per week. Then up that by 10%. You have to have extend yourself a little. Even the lowly oyster needs a bit of grit to make a pearl.
Do you want to be outclassed by an oyster?
Get out of your shell, man. Start by putting out short stories and novellas. Get them out there and in the Kindle Select program. Use the free promotion to move units. Set up an email list with a service like MailChimp or Vertical Response, and make it easy for readers to sign up on your website. Put a sign-up link in the back of your books.
This is your foundation. Meanwhile, work on a full-length novel. Continue your series if you like. Or write that book that’s been tugging at your heart. Keep at it—quota, steady pace. The pages mount up like magic.
You will make some money. How much? It depends. The formula is quality + production + time. Do your best every time out. Keep on doing it.
For the rest of your life.
That’s what I said. Because you’re a writer.
Am I right?
You’re bloody well right I’m right.
So write! You’ve come too far to give it all up now.
Your pal,
Jim
P. S. You still owe me that ten spot, but if you write a thousand words tomorrow, we’ll call it even. Deal?