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.

Once Again, The Future of Publishing

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psychics-1026092_1920It happens every year or so. A bigwig from the traditional publishing world takes a look at the data—usually some sort of downturn in the industry—and writes a piece predicting the future of publishing.

Recently Michael Pietsch, CEO of Hachette, took a turn (Wall Street Journal, Dec. 1, 2015. Link may expire). It’s always good to hear from inside the walls of the Forbidden City. Mr. Pietsch begins thus:

I’ve been hearing about the demise of book publishing since the first day I stepped through the doors of a publisher back in 1978. But here we are still, publishers like Little, Brown, with histories going back 100 and 200 years. What other American industry has companies still in existence after two centuries, evolving and modernizing but still doing much the same work? The most recent variant of the death watch: A digital revolution would cause e-books to replace printed ones, authors would overwhelmingly choose self-publishing, and publishers would follow carriage makers into oblivion.

Mr. Pietsch then notes that e-book revenue for major publishers has “topped out” (this datum has been misreported in the media as reflecting a downturn in the overall e-book market. Such is not the case).

What of the boom in self-publishing? Mr. Pietsch gives it a nod, but also notes:

But writers like to be paid, in advance, for their work. Publishers are investors and risk takers. And a publishing company with longstanding media and marketing relationships is far more capable of getting attention for a new book than a writer working alone.

This deserves a closer look. Writers like to be paid period. And they like payments to be a fair exchange. Currently, big publishing is holding firm with its contracts, the boilerplate of which hearkens back to when the industry was an oligopoly, “a state of limited competition, in which a market is shared by a small number of producers or sellers.”

Indeed, the Authors Guild has begun an initiative that seeks more equitable contract terms. But this effort is running into the merciless force field of big business, which is electrified by the need for profit. And an enterprise does not generally increase its profits by raising its own costs.

So a writer looking at a modest advance (the norm these days) must make a decision. Yes, a big publisher can get a book “attention.” But not for every book. Not even for most books. And a book that does not get the big push and doesn’t sell well means the author will probably be let go—without, by the way, retaining the rights to his work.

Still, there are writers who want to spin that Wheel of Fortune. If they win, they win big. If wheel4they lose, there is at least an alternative for them that never existed before. As indies they’ll be starting from square one (or maybe square two or three, with a bit of a readership), but at least they won’t be outside the walls of the Forbidden City, in the cold, blowing on their hands, begging to be let back in.

Mr. Pietsch insists that a publisher’s “essential work” is “identifying, investing in, nurturing, and marketing great writers.” I would ask: how much of an investment? How lasting the nurturing?

Sometimes a deal pays off and a book is a smash and the author moves to the A-list. But this doesn’t happen often. And it doesn’t happen at all for midlist authors who are dropped by their former nurturers for lack of numbers.

Yet many of these midlisters are now making good money by going indie. Some have secured rights to their backlist (though publishers are digging in their heels these days)—or they are being productive with new work on a consistent basis.

On the future of the business, Mr. Pietsch says:

Ever-larger retailers and wholesalers bring significant margin pressure, which will lead to continued conglomeration. Social media will continue to expand the writer’s ability to connect with readers; publishers will deepen their relationships with writers, but they’ll also create content of their own. As runaway books sell ever-larger numbers, publishers will earn more on their biggest sellers—which will keep driving up the advances they pay for potential hits. At the same time, publishers will need to innovate and challenge assumptions about every aspect of the business.

I would like to hear some details on how publishers can “deepen their relationships with writers.” I have a large number of professional writing friends, and for all of them the relationship with a publisher has been based, over and above all else, on the counting of beans. When the beans are flowing, the author and publisher are a regular Mike and Carol Brady. But when the beans dry up, it’s Al and Peg Bundy … usually ending in divorce.

This, by the way, is not a knock on publishers. It’s simply the way things are, and always have been, for big business. You can’t keep sinking dollars into a widget that isn’t selling. And in this day of market disruption and volatility, there is no longer the patience to hang on to a once-promising author to see if he can make a comeback.

Which is why Mr. Pietsch is correct that the only way forward for the industry is to hope for more “runaway books.” I just wonder about the assumption that they will sell in “ever-larger numbers.” And how many times a big bet can be placed on a “potential” hit.

In any event, I do think a robust, traditional publishing industry is a good thing to have around. When it scores, it brings books and authors the attention they deserve.

But the landscape is now in a permanent state of disequilibrium. Meaning, yes, that big publishers must “innovate and challenge assumptions about every aspect of the business.”

Kind of like the ever-increasing corps of authorpreneurs who have been writing and innovating for years.

So what is your take on the future of the publishing business? Can the Bigs survive in their present condition? Will self-publishing continue to provide serious revenue to enterprising and productive authors?

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Force_1

 

Speaking of the present, the first Sister J vigilante nun novelette, FORCE OF HABIT, is FREE through Thursday on Amazon. Get in on the kicks!

How to Bring Characters in From the Cold

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Cold CharacterVirtually all books on character creation contain a list of questions, a “dossier” to fill out which starts with how a character looks, where he was born, and so on through his family circumstances, education, likes and dislikes, etc.

I have not found such forms helpful. It may just be a personal quirk, but I’m never excited about filling out answers to questions.

First of all, too many answers too soon might hinder the development of a character. A book is a living, breathing entity. If I have a long list of facts for a character before I begin writing, it hamstrings me. I may want the character to do one thing or another, but the dossier is set and works against me.

Characters I create using the dossier method seem cold and distant. I want characters who are hot and close.

Consequently, I’ve come up with my own way of bringing story people to the page. It starts with my protagonist and finding a visual (a head shot) that resonates with me, that says to me, This is her! I copy that image and paste it on a character card in Scrivener (this way, I can look at a corkboard of all my characters at once).

Next, I want a unique voice, and that comes from a Voice Journal, a free-form document of the character talking to me. I let the character go on and on until I hear a distinct and surprising voice. It always happens, bubbling up from my basement without me being overtly conscious of it.

From here I usually go to my “mirror moment.” I brainstorm it by making a list of possibilities, until one clicks. Then I let the character talk to me in the Voice Journal. When I nail that moment, I know my pre-story psychology (and can brainstorm that, again with the journal) and the transformation at the end (I try to visualize a scene to prove the transformation. All this is explained in my book, Write Your Novel From the Middle).

I’ll spend almost as much time with my antagonist, but relatively little with the other characters I’ve cast in the story. Why? Because I want to be able to manipulate them as needed. God complex, don’t you know?

As I write to my “signpost scenes” I’ll be creating characters along the way. Instead of stopping for each and filling out a form, I just ask the character to tell me what I need to know!

For example, let’s say I’m writing a scene about a lawyer interviewing a witness. The lawyer is the main character, a female public defender. The witness is an old man who used to be a … I’m thinking about it … I want him to be blue collar … how about a machinist?

I know my Lead pretty well. Now I’ve come to this old man. He’s going to be an important player, so I start by giving him some basics—age, looks, vocation. I’ll find a head shot to match.

Now to the scene. My lawyer is questioning him in his home, and he doesn’t want to talk to her at all. Why not? So I can have conflict, of course. But the question now is why? Why would he refuse?

I asked him.

You wanna know why I don’t want to talk to a lousy lawyer? Well I’ll tell you. The minute you start flapping your gums is the minute you’re going down, because the whole system is rigged against you. I was going good there when the aerospace boom was on in L.A., out there in the San Fernando Valley, and I was good at what I did, I could operate anything, and I had a friend, Buck Franklin, that was the scum sucker’s name, he took me to a couple of meetings where a guy wanted to know if I could use some more scratch, and of course I could’ve, we all could’ve, and before I know it I’ve got a couple of Gs in cash but this guy wants me to give him some information about what’s going on inside Rocketdyne, and I say sure, but instead what I do is go to the FBI, right to ‘em, and tell ‘em what’s going on. But before I can say Jack Robinson, they turn around and arrest me because of some evidence that got planted, because the agent on the case was dirty, but I was never able to prove it, not even to the L.A. Times who wouldn’t touch my story. And I end up out of a job and out of a pension, and can’t get hired, and Buck Franklin ends up farting through silk. So yeah, I’m not talking, I’m clamming, I don’t care if I see the Queen of England walk up to a drug dealer and blow his brains out and take his money. You’ll get nothing from me.

This all just came out as I wrote. I kind of like it. I can tweak it as I will. But the big thing is this: I now feel this character. When I render him on the page he will alive for me––and thus, I hope, for the reader.

So there’s my tip for today: Don’t fill out forms. Let the characters tell you about themselves. And if what they say is Dullsville, dig deeper. Make them reveal a secret to you. Ask them what the one thing is they don’t want anyone to ever know about them.

That’s how you bring your characters in from the cold.

So what about you? What is your process for character creation? Do you like the dossier method? Or are you more of a “character pantser” who creates on the fly?

The Writer and The Market Should Be Friends

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FriendsTo market to market to buy a fat pig,
Home again, home again jiggity-jig.
To market to market to buy a fat book,
Or download that sucker on Kindle or Nook.

– (apologies to Mother Goose)

Today we ask one of those perennial questions anxious authors pose to agents and editors at conferences or online, viz., How much attention should I pay to the market when deciding what to write?

A couple of blogs recently addressed the issue. Dean Wesley Smith seems to fall on the side of writing what you want without too much consideration of the market. If you don’t watch it, he warns, you might develop an “addiction” to sales numbers, which is “deadly to your writing and your career for the long term.”

When you are sitting at your computer, your creative voice really, really wants to write a certain story or a new book in a certain series, and you hear yourself think, “What’s the point? It won’t sell.”

Oh, oh…

Trust me, folks, I am not immune from this in the slightest. When I realize that one of my books or series is selling better than others, and yet I am firing up a book that is in the poor-selling series, I hear myself ask that question.

How I get around it is tell that tiny part of my critical voice that is trying to stop me that maybe this book in this lower-selling series will be the one that explodes. That answers the question, “What’s the point.”

And makes the critical voice crawl away whimpering.

But over at Writer Unboxed, Dave King recognizes that there is a reason to consider what is selling in the market:

Of course, in some ways you can’t help writing to market. The point of writing is to give readers something they’ll want to read. This is especially true if you’re writing in a particular genre. Readers of romance, science fiction, horror, fantasy all expect their novels to deliver certain tropes, and it’s up to you to provide them. If you give your readers a mystery without a crime, detective, or denouement, then you really aren’t giving them a mystery.

Yet King rightly notes that mere formula is not enough. Otherwise a story can become what he terms “hack” work. To avoid that:

When you bring something original to the mix – an approach to your characters that stretches the boundaries of the genre, a plot that doesn’t simply string together the usual twists – then you are more likely to reach across genre lines to a larger market.

However, some market consideration is essential:

Completely ignoring the market can be as dangerous as pandering to it. If you deliberately turn away from your readers to follow your own, eccentric vision, you might wind up with something no one else will understand — or think is worth the bother.

King’s conclusion:

I understand the temptation to focus on the market. If you’re having a hard time breaking into print, the siren song of the hack – boil down readers’ expectations to a formula, then never color outside the lines – can be hard to resist. But bending your story to the market’s will is a shortcut that won’t get you where you want to go. The best way to reach the market is to throw everything you’ve got into telling the story you want to tell.

My conclusion is as follows:

First, the pro writer always considers the market, because it’s just another way to refer to people who buy books. If you don’t want to reach people who buy books you can certainly write for fun or therapy or to keep your fingers limber. But I’m going to assume you do want readers to buy your stuff. If so, it’s essential to find out what’s being bought.

But then! Marry those considerations to what you love to write. Figure out that area where love and commerce come together.

It’s like this Venn diagram. The sweet spot for you is right in that middle.

Venn diagram for books

Definitely “tell the story you want to tell” but tell it with VOICE. As I argue in my book VOICE: The Secret Power of Great Writing, voice is what elevates and distinguishes one novel from another, and turns readers into fans.

So it’s not a matter of what you love versus what will sell. It’s a matter of finding that exquisite intersection where you’re happy to park yourself and hammer out stories readers are actually going to buy.

Of course, selling (or selling a lot) may not be your goal. Maybe you’re more interested in absolute, insular creativity, and damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.

Great! You can write despite the market. You can decide to take that risk. You might even hope that big publishing, which is suddenly placing some risky bets, has a look at your novel. Once in a great while such a book goes huge. Most don’t. But if you don’t mind those odds, go for it.

(One nice thing about self-publishing is that you can experiment a bit, with short-form work, and see what takes wing.)

But there are many writers, as in the old pulp days, who are doing this to put food on the table and kids through college. They write for a market and they figure out how to love what they write.

Since I began this post with a ditty, it seems fitting to finish with another (with profound apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein):

The writer and the market should be friends,`
Oh, the writer and the market should be friends.
The writer likes to spin a plot,
The market likes to sell a lot,
And that’s the reason why they should be friends.

Now it’s your turn. How do you go about deciding what to write? How much do you study your genre and the market? How do you propose to do more than what’s been done before?

Your Novel’s Greatest Danger

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Bored catA TV show is about to be cancelled. Not exactly headline worthy, I know. Happens all the time. Only this time it was a series I was trying to get into, mainly because I’ve liked the lead actor in the past.

The ratings were okay for the opener, but have gradually declined. I am one of those decliners. After four episodes I stopped watching.

The show has a unique setting, a cast of beautiful people, and an ongoing criminal investigation. What went wrong?

I’ll tell you what went wrong: I just did not care about any of the characters. 

I didn’t care who was trying to cheat whom. I didn’t care who was hopping into who’s bed. I didn’t care who made money, lost money, was rich or poor or desperate or in love.

On the surface––and this must have impressed the network suits––the show had “everything.” Glam, glitz, beefcake, cheesecake, a star. But after four hour-long episodes there was not a single character I bonded with.

Which, dear writer, is the greatest danger to your own novel.

You simply must connect reader and character, and right out of the gate, too.

How? By knowing that this is all a function of two essential dynamics, which are … wait for it … plot and character.

Wow, earth shattering!

Ah, but so often missed because one is often emphasized at the expense of the other.

Character alone won’t do it. If it did, maybe I’d be able to get through more than twenty pages of A Confederacy of Dunces (I’ve tried three times and never made it).

Plot alone doesn’t do it, because events have to matter to a character who matters to the reader.

Now, there are lots of techniques professional fiction writers utilize to make a character someone we care about. In my 27 Fiction Writing Blunders I have no less than five chapters attacking the problem from different angles.

But today, I want to suggest a single, powerful question you should ask about all your main characters.

You need to set yourself up for this, because it’s a question not to be tossed out lightly.

So find a comfy spot. I like to use a corner table at my local coffee palace.

Have a notepad ready.

Spend ten minutes thinking about anything except your novel. Observe people, read some news or a blog, or watch “Charlie Bit Me” a couple of times.

Next, turn yourself (as much as possible) into a fully objective reader who is considering buying your book.

Here comes the question:

If I were at a party and someone told me about this character, what she’s like and what has happened to her, would I want to spend two hours listening to her tell me her story?  

Be merciless in your answer. Write down the exact reasons you would want to hear more. If you don’t come up with good ones, you’ve got work to do.

If someone described to me a selfish, flirty Southern belle, I wouldn’t want to spend two seconds with her. But when I hear that she is the only one in her family with the grit and guts to save her home during and after the Civil War, I think I’d want to hear more.

If someone tells me about an unsure FBI trainee, who came from poor circumstances, I’m mildly interested. But make her the only person in the entire bureau who can get the most devious, intelligent, and malevolent murderer in the annals of crime to talk, then I’m down for the whole story.

PIs are a dime a dozen. But if it’s Philip Marlowe narrating, I want that two hours just to listen to how he describes all the twists and turns.

It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.

She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks.

You have your assignment. Would you, as a perfect stranger, feel compelled to listen to the story your main character wants to tell?

If not, make it so.

If so, make it more so!

And then the greatest danger to your novel will be no more.

How to Be a Prolific Writer

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Got an email the other day from a writer I met at Bouchercon. We’d chatted a bit about the craft, and he wanted to thank me. He’d just completed his first novel and was raring to go on his second. He wrote, “I’m amazed at how prolific you are.”

That was nice to hear, because when I started out that’s what I wanted to be—prolific. I was 34 years old and hadn’t written much of anything for ten years (I’d been told in college that you can’t learn how to write fiction, and since I couldn’t write fiction—fiction that was any good, anyway––I figured I just didn’t have it). So when I made the decision to finally go for it, even if I failed, I wanted to make up for lost time.

Now, according to traditional standards of the writing life, I am prolific. I’ve produced around fifty books, hundreds of articles, several stories and novellas. I’m happy with my output.

But I’m no Nora Roberts! Seriously, she is amazing. She may not be your cup o’ noodles, but as a highly successful professional writer, there is something awe inspiring about her production. And there are many other writers out there I could point to with the same wonder.

We all have our floors and our ceilings. The trick to the writing life is to get yourself up to the ceiling and stay there. Stay there long enough, and maybe you can blow out that ceiling and put in another story (wordplay intended).

I heard from a young writer recently who said he was having trouble getting started. He has a wife and young child at home, is working long hours, and when he gets some time to himself he is easily distracted by social media, and is too much of a perfectionist to get many words done.

For those who have these sorts of constraints, let me offer some advice on becoming more prolific, for it can be done!

1. Commit to a quota

Nothing has been as beneficial to me as a professional writer than writing to a quota. In the early part of my career it was a thousand words a day. Later on I made it a weekly quota: six thousand words a week, with one day off, usually Sunday, to recharge. I still aim for a thousand words a day, but I make it a weekly quota because if life intrudes one day, I can make up those words by upping my output on the other days.

I’ve heard some writers say they just can’t write to a quota, that it’s too much pressure, that it squeezes the creative juices right out of them. Look, if you want to be a pro, you produce like a pro. That means writing even when you don’t feel like it. Imagine a brain surgeon muttering, “I’m just not into my operation today. I can only operate when I’m inspired! Besides, this guy’s a lawyer. I don’t even want to operate.”

If you want to be prolific, you need a quota.

My advice for years has been this: figure out how many words you can comfortably write in a standard week. Maybe, because of job or other duties, you can only squeeze in half an hour a day during the week, with a two-hour chunk on Saturday. Whatever. How many words can you do without much effort?

Now, up that total by 10%. You need some slight pressure to become a prolific author. And ten percent more ain’t that much pressure!

Keep track of your word count on a spreadsheet. I can tell you how many words I wrote every day and week and year, and on what projects, since 2000.

I’ve not always hit my mark, but I’m batting about .880.  If you don’t make your quota one week, forget about it. Just start the new week fresh.

Periodically review your weekly quota and see if you can adjust it up. Only adjust it down if you have another child or join the Marine Corps.

2. Commit yourself to a Nifty 250 every morning

For most of my career I’ve used the Nifty 350 or Furious 500 as my standard morning practice. That is, before I do anything else (except make the coffee) I tap out 350 or 500 words of my daily goal. It’s amazing how much easier the writing day gets after that.

I’m going easy on you here in suggesting you aim for 250 words. Why? Because a Ficus tree can write 250 words in the morning. Do you want to be outclassed by a Ficus tree?

“But I’m just not a morning person!”

Oh really? You’re a person, right? And you get up in the morning, yes? And you find a way to get some coffee and hop on Facebook, don’t you?

I don’t want to hear that morning person jazz anymore. DO NOT OPEN ANY SOCIAL MEDIA, INTERNET BROWSER, OR EMAIL until you have written 250 words!

“But I’m so foggy, I just can’t think…”

Good! Don’t think at all. Just write! The discipline of writing your 250 will train your brain to get up and at ‘em.

This is where my young perfectionist will learn to let go. Don’t get it right, get it written is sage advice. Do not edit, spell check, correct, or otherwise stop your flow until the 250 is done. (Here’s a little secret. When you get to 250 you’re going to want to keep going. So go!)

You can also help your writing brain along by doing this:

3. Leave off your day’s writing mid-scene

This lets your subconscious cook during the night, and when you sit down to write on your WIP you’ll be back in the flow immediately. Hemingway even used to stop mid-sentence. I can imagine him writing:

He saw the fish and the fish was good. It was a good fish. It was a fish like the good bull in Spain that summer with Stein. Yes, and the beer was warm that summer, but it was good beer, it was

How easily he could continue the next day: beer that was brave and true.

4. Plan five or six projects ahead

Be like a movie studio. Have one greenlighted project going (your WIP) and have two or three “in development” and two or three “optioned.”

In development means you’re doing some planning, some notes, some character backstory, some plotting. If you’re a pure pantser, at least take some random notes about the plot and keep them in a file or notebook. If you’re wise, you’ll develop your idea into an elevator pitch that would make a reader lust after your book. That’s right, lust. See my post on that topic.

By optioned I mean having a simple What if premise that seems promising to you. I have a file with about 100 of these, and periodically I look them over and re-prioritize them. If one keeps sticking to the top of the heap, that’s the one I will move into development.

5. Don’t ever let rejection stop you

Not everything you write is going to turn out great. If you’re submitting to agents and editors, you’ll get the cold shoulder often. If you’re self-publishing, you’ll get the 1-star reviews. You may even give your first draft to your significant other and then endure a blank-eyed stare and the words, “I love you, but I just don’t get this.”

Know that this will happen.

But don’t ever let it stop you from producing more words.De Niro pillow

When a rejection hurts—and it will—try my sixty-minute-comeback.

Take thirty minutes to completely feel what you’re feeling––shout, talk to yourself, cry if you must, splash water on your face, eat a large bowl of ice cream, or shoot a pillow like Robert De Niro in Analyze This. Whatever it is, let yourself feel the feelings for thirty minutes.

Set a timer for this.

When the timer beeps, set it for another thirty minutes. During this second thirty minutes, you write. I mean it. Write! Write anything.

• Write the next scene of your WIP.
• Write in your journal.
• Write a song.
• Write something random.
• Write a letter to your future self explaining what just happened.
• Start an entirely new story or novel, not knowing what it will be (IOW, be a thirty-minute pantser!)

Whatever it is, give yourself fully to it. Write. Don’t stop, except to take a few breaths or refill the coffee.

After this writing stint, something interesting will happen. The rejection will still hurt, but it won’t be as bad. I guarantee you it won’t.

And tomorrow, if it tries to come back in full force, head it off with more writing. Five, ten, thirty minutes.

Writing, you see, is the best medicine.

Always.

The most wonderful thing of all is this. A year from now you’ll look back at your production and be amazed at what’s there. Do this for ten years and you’ll be blown away.

You will be a prolific writer.

So how about you? Are you happy with your output? How have you gotten around the obstacles to continuous production?

Embrace Your Weirdness

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NaNoLogoIt’s day one of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) 2015, and all over the world writers are clacking away in an initial rush of writing joy. The journey has begun. The climb up the mountain is on. Yes, there will need to be some oxygen intake along the way, but right now everybody’s yodeling.

To me, that’s the great benefit of NaNo. For one month there’s a community of writers engaged in the same pursuit—completing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.

Of course, it’s not all sweetness and light. Life sometimes intrudes (it tends to do that). But those who keep on producing the words will feel an exhilaration that proves at least one thing: they are not chairs. They are writers full of passion and ideas and fervors and dreams. Some people never get to feel that way about anything.

That’s why you, writer, need to appreciate the gift you’ve been given, the gift of being slightly weird.

Yes, writers are weird. We’re weird because we do things like this: A friend has been in a terrible accident. We rush to the hospital. We enter the room. The friend is hooked up and bandaged. We go to him and take his hand. “I’m here for you,” we say.

At the same time, half our brain is thinking, This would make a pretty good scene. I wonder what they call that machine over there? Maybe I can ask a doctor some research questions before I leave. Maybe—

“What’s that? Oh, yes, yes, I’m here for you!”

And we wouldn’t have it any other way! I mean, who wants to walk through life in the tight shoes of the ordinary? We lie for fun and profit! Remember that great line from A Knight’s Tale, uttered by Chaucer: “Yes, I lied. I’m a writer. I give the truth scope!”

There’s nothing more joyful than giving the truth scope.

Let’s see it in your pages! In my recent book, VOICE: The Secret Power of Great Writing, I include a clip from John Fante’s 1939 novel, Ask the Dust. Here it is, and can’t you just feel what it’s like to want to be a writer?

Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town. A day and another day and the day before, and the library with the big boys in the shelves, old Dreiser, old Mencken, all the boys down there, and I went to see them, Hya Dreiser, Hya Mencken, Hya hya: there’s a place for me, too, and it begins with B, in the B shelf. Arturo Bandini, make way for Arturo Bandini, his slot for his book, and I sat at the table and just looked at the place where my book would be, right there close to Arnold Bennett, not much that Arnold Bennett, but I’d be there to sort of bolster up the B’s, old Arturo Bandini, one of the boys, until some girl came along, some scent of perfume through the fiction room, some click of high heels to break up the monotony of my fame. Gala day, gala dream!

“Zest. Gusto. How rarely one hears these words used. How rarely do we see people living, or for that matter, creating by them. Yet if I were asked to name the most important items in a writer’s make-up, the things that shape his material and rush him along the road to where he wants to go, I could only warn him to look to his zest, see to his gusto.” (Ray Bradbury, Zen and the Art of Writing)

So whether you’re NaNoing or not (this year I have to transfer my gusto for NaNo to a project with an end-of-November deadline) make this month one where you surrender yourself to the joy of being that strange bird, a writer. You get to create fabulous worlds, unforgettable characters, blistering dialogue, scenes full of tension and conflict. You can write about zombies or lawyers (though some people think there is little difference between them). You can write about great loves and losses, go to Mars or New York.

And if perchance you are in one of those places in your mind, with a glassy stare on your face as your characters begin improvising––or maybe your lips are moving as you make up the dialogue––and someone happens to mention that you’re acting a little weird, simply say, “Thank you!”

Carpe Typem everyone. Have a wild and wonderful November.

 

The One Thing Every Protagonist Must Have

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wonder-woman-533667_1920What is it that every protagonist in a novel must have? I’ll tell you on the other side of this email I recently received:

Dear Mr. Bell

One of the main pieces of advice that you give in your Plot and Structure book, for a commercial novel, is that the character should always be doing something. Have an active Lead.

In my manuscript, I have a Lead who is at first more passive. Things happen to him more than he takes action. he reacts more than he acts. When he does take action, he fails. My hope was to built sympathy for the underdog.

Then, about the halfway mark, he digs deep and starts taking action and being less passive. I really am hoping to show the reader that this kid has some special spark deep down. It is something you see glimpses of in the first half, but he is never successful. And then after about halfway through, he decides to take the reins.

I know that this is a very short sketch and it may be impossible to advise me based on such little info. Having said that, am I working against your advise TOO much here? Is there evidence to suggest that novels with initially passive main characters rarely sell well?

I wrote back, telling the writer that passivity is a killer. A character may start out passive, but very quickly you must show that he has something, or at least the capacity to develop this something.

And that something is: Strength of will.

There is no novel, no drama, no conflict, no story without a Lead character fighting a battle through the exercise of his will.

As Lajos Egri states in his classic, The Art of Dramatic Writing:

A weak character cannot carry the burden of protracted conflict in a play. He cannot support a play. We are forced, then, to discard such a character as a protagonist … the dramatist needs not only characters who are willing to put up a fight for their convictions. He needs characters who have the strength, the stamina, to carry this fight to its logical conclusion.

Let’s think about Scarlett O’Hara for a moment. Do we want 200 pages of her sitting on her porch flirting with the local boys? Do we want to listen to her selfish prattle or watch her flit around in big-hoop dresses?

I’m not sure we want anything to do with her at all after seven pages or so, but then! She learns that Ashley Wilkes, her ideal, her dream husband-to-be, is going to marry that mousy Melanie!

She immediately lays plans to get him alone at the big barbecue. She’ll tell him of her love and he’ll dump Melanie. Through strength of will she draws him into a room where they can be alone.

Only her plan does not work out as intended. Which is good! For strength of will must be met with further obstacles and challenges and setbacks. The protagonist has to keep fighting, or the book is over.

That’s why, after the setback with Ashley, Scarlett faces a further complication—a little thing I like to call the Civil War.

For the rest of the book Scarlett will have to show strength of will to save the family home and fight for the man she loves (NOTE: strength of will does not always mean strength of insight. Scarlett does not realize until it’s too late who she really loves. Of course, we could have told her. It’s the guy who looks like Clark Gable!)

Now, a character can start passive. But she cannot stay there for long. In Stephen King’s Rose Madder, the opening chapter depicts a wife who is horribly abused by her psycho husband. The chapter ends with the chilling line: Rose McClendon Daniels slept within her husband’s madness for nine more years. 

Wise storyteller that he is, King does not give us more pages of abuse. No, he quickly gets us to a blood stain. It’s what Rose sees on a sheet as she makes the bed one morning, a reminder of her most recent beating. Nothing she hasn’t seen before, only this time it triggers something inside her:

She looked at the spot of blood, feeling unaccustomed resentment throbbing in her head, feeling something else, a pins-and-needles tingle, not knowing this was the way you felt when you finally woke up.

Then comes Rose’s strength of will. She finally does what her husband has strictly forbidden—leave the house. Do that, he warns, and I’ll track you down and kill you.

For us, walking out a door is a small thing, but for Rose Daniels it is the biggest risk of her life. But she does it.

And that’s why we want to watch her for the rest of the book. She will have to exercise her will many times in order to survive.

I told my correspondent, give us something, anything, early in the book, to show that your Lead has strength of will. It can be small at first, but at least it will show us he has the capacity to fight his way through an entire novel.

Look at your own manuscript. Have you given us an opening disturbance for your Lead character to deal with? Show us his determination to do something about it, and you will have accomplished the first task of the storyteller—getting the reader hooked on a character and wanting to turn pages to find out what happens next!

The Power of Voice

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Fist of lightningIt’s the most mysterious part of the fiction craft, but the one thing agents and editors say is most essential.

It’s something writers talk about––and readers respond to––but no one seems to know how to teach it.

Indeed, there are those who say it can’t be taught, because you either have it or you don’t.

It’s voice.

Writers hear about it all the time at conferences. Yet no one can agree even on a definition.

Over the years I’ve jotted down the ways agents and editors describe voice. Here are a few:

  • A combination of character, setting, page turning.
  • A distinctive style, like a Sergio Leone film.
  • It’s who you are.
  • Personality on the page.
  • It’s something written from your deepest truth.
  • Your expression as an artist.

You’ll often hear these same people say they turned down a book because the voice was “weak.”

So how the heck do you find your voice when the very definition is so vague? Is it something that can be developed? Is it something you’re just born with? Do you have to find it by trial and error, if you find it at all?

What if you write in different genres? Is your voice in a noir thriller going to be the same as your voice in a romance? Should it be?

In my new book, VOICE: The Secret Power of Great Writing, I provide the answers.

voice-cover small

And it starts with a stunning realization: voice does not come from the author.

I’ll let you chew on that a moment.

Now that I have your attention, let me explain. I mean that we should not conceive of voice as coming from the author alone, without any other considerations. The best fictional voice is an interplay between the characters and the author, and then between the author and his craft as he puts the words on the page.

My definition, therefore, is as follows:

CHARACTER background and language filtered through the AUTHOR’S heart, and rendered with craft on the PAGE = VOICE

In the book, I explain how this relationship works, and give you specific techniques to put it into practice. The goal is to make every book you write unique and compelling on its own terms.

I call this the CAP Method.

CAP

C is for Character. I describe five key questions a writer must answer for every POV character. Then we proceed to the best ways to both see and hear the characters before you write them.

A is for Author, and this is all about achieving symbiosis, that mysterious connection between creator and character. It’s similar to how great actors approach a role. I’ll show you how to do it.

Finally, P is for Page, the craft part of the writing, and here I offer you a writing technique that I’ve never seen taught before, something I developed from my own days as an actor. It’s a way to feel your character’s emotions every time you write a scene.

Which is when the magic happens.

And magic is what you need. Because the main complaint I hear these days from readers is that such-and-such a book was “okay,” but felt like the “same old, same old.”

Tapping into the power of voice will obliterate that objection.

Let me give you an example. Below is a paragraph from a published thriller describing a bit of New York City:

There were sidewalk vendors and bustling clothing stores and lines of people in front of curbside food carts. There was also a lot of scaffolding and cranes from new construction and building renovations. I even saw a Times Square-style double-decker bus go by filled with wide-eyed tourists.

Ugh. There were and There was in two consecutive sentences. Then simple reportage that could have come from a brochure. There is no voice here, no sense of character. Anyone could be describing this scene.

Now look at a master at work:

Some days hang over Manhattan like a huge pair of unseen pincers, slowly squeezing the city until you can hardly breathe. A low growl of thunder echoed up the cavern of Fifth Avenue and I looked up to where the sky started at the seventy-first floor of the Empire State Building. I could smell the rain. It was like the kind that hung above the orderly piles of concrete until it was soaked with dust and debris and when it came down it wasn’t rain at all, but the sweat of the city.

That’s the opening of Mickey Spillane’s The Killing Man, and from the get-go we are inside the character. We see the city through his eyes, feel it through his heart.

It’s the difference between fiction that is fine and fiction that is unforgettable.

An acquisitions editor for a major publisher, Marian Lizzi, once said, “As my first boss used to warn us green editorial assistants two decades ago, the type of submission that’s the toughest to spot – and the most essential to avoid — is the one that is skillful, competent, literate, and ultimately forgettable.”

That’s why voice is so important. It takes you from skillful, competent, literate, and forgettable to the kind of book we all love to find—unputdownable.

Which is why I felt we needed a book on the subject. It can be found at:

AMAZON

AMAZON INTERNATIONAL STORES

BARNES & NOBLE

KOBO

PRINT VERSION

So what characters come to mind when you think of a compelling voice? I nominate Holden Caulfield. What about you?