By John Gilstrap

I’ve heard writing instructors over the years tout the three elements of storytelling: plot, character and setting. We all know what the words mean, and we know how they apply to creating entertaining fiction, but all too often, I think that new writers think of the elements as craft silos instead of the strands of a craft cable–intertwined elements that must work together if a story is going to resonate with the reader.

I prefer to think of the elements this way: interesting characters doing interesting things in interesting ways in interesting places. (If you’d prefer, you can replace “interesting” with “compelling”.)

Character is king. A plot by itself is merely an outline. It doesn’t come to life until the reader experiences the plot through the eyes and feelings of a character they care about. Setting is merely a descriptive essay until a character interacts with it.

Let’s say, for example, a section of your story is set in a desert on a hot afternoon. An English 101 professor would likely be happy to reward an essay that presents a mental snapshot of the bright sun, colorful rocks and sparse flora. That reporting of facts might please a newspaper editor as well.

But look what happens when we inject characters into the equation:

Bob pushed the door open and climbed out into the brilliant sunshine. Shielding his eyes, he scanned the horizon.  The beauty of the place took his breath away.  Rock formations glistened in shades of copper, gold and bronze. The vegetation, while sparse, seemed to vibrate with intense reds and blues and yellows.  He was stranded in an artist’s paradise.

The description, as presented to the reader, also lets us learn about Bob’s worldview. We don’t have to say that he thinks the place is beautiful, because that’s all in the narrative voice.

Here’s another description of the exact same scene, but filtered through the worldview of a very different character:

Opening the car door was like opening a blast furnace.  Superheated air hit Danny with what felt like a physical blow.  The desiccated ground cracked under his feet as he stood.  As he took in scrub growth and the rocky horizon, he understood that he no longer rested at the top of the food chain.  Now he understood why we tested nukes in places like this.

A desert is a desert, right? From a plot perspective, each description takes the story to the exact same place, but by filtering the observations through the characters’ souls, the reader gets to know them better, and they don’t have to endure a disembodied descriptive paragraph.

That voice of the character can infect every paragraph of every scene. I like to say that I make a point as the writer for MY voice to be invisible throughout every story. Every scene is presented to the reader through the voice and view of the scene’s POV character. This is less complicated (note I didn’t say easier) in a first person POV, I think, because the narrator tells the entire story. When writing in third person, one of the critical decisions the writer needs to make for every scene is to determine to whom the scene belongs.

Consider this: Your story requires a scene where a thirteen year old boy steps out the back door of a bar at midnight and lights a cigarette. Let’s say that the kid is signaling someone with the match.

If we present the scene from the kid’s point of view, if he chokes on the smoke, we have a character detail that is different than if he were to inhale deeply and find peace. Is his heart pounding, or is he calm?

If we present the scene from the point of view of the guy being signaled to, his voice will tell us whether he likes the kid or hates him. Is the signal a happy event or a troubling event?

Perhaps we present the scene from the point of view of a passing cop. That would put the story on a different path–unless, perhaps, the cop was the one being signaled.

Assuming that any of the points of view would advance the plot to the same point, we need to decide whose POV is most compelling for the reader. Let’s say now that the scene ends with the kid getting shot. Perhaps we start the scene from the kid’s point of view, and then switch after a space break to the shooter’s POV. Or, vice versa.

These decisions make all the difference between a compelling story and a ho-hum one.

So, TKZ brain trust, what are your thoughts? Do your characters drive every beat of your story?

By John Gilstrap

Folks, I’m not going to try and bluff my way through this post. As I write this, I have what I believe is the flu. Remember the flu? That other respiratory malady that has been around for years? I did get tested for the new malady, and with negative results. So, as I enter my seventh day of fever, I find myself at a loss for writing advice that anyone could possibly find interesting.

Instead, as we here at The Killzone Blog wander up to our annual holiday hiatus, I’ll take this opportunity to express my gratitude to our subscribers and lurkers for all your support over these many years.

Next time we see each other, we’ll be in the embrace of a brand new year. I wish everyone health, prosperity and happiness.

By John Gilstrap

I think of a book as an engineered product. The premise comes to me via the magic that I don’t understand, and then it’s less about asking “what if?” then it is about “why/how would that happen?”

In Crimson Phoenix, the entire premise depended on the aftermath of a nuclear war. The reasons behind the war aren’t really important to the larger plot, but it needed to be addressed. I had to work backwards: Who fired first? Why? How do I justify my main characters surviving? All actions have consequences, so I had to select carefully to put together a plot that gave me what I needed without straining credulity.

In the case of my first novel, Nathan’s Run, I started with a theme I wanted to explore. I wanted to write a story about someone who had to make the binary choice between doing his job and doing the right thing. He couldn’t do both. Full disclosure: The premise of a kid escaping from a juvenile detention center arrived as a gift of circumstance that’s too complicated to go into here, but once it burrowed into my head, it was there to stay. I knew that the kid needed to be about 12 years old. And if the kid was an escapee, then he needed to be pursued, and it made sense that the pursuer needed to be a cop.

This is the point where creativity meets engineering:

How does a kid (I made him an orphan to make things easy on myself) escape a juvenile detention center? Answer: He steals keys from a guard.

How does he steal keys? Answer: In a fight.

How does a 12-year-old (Nathan) win a fight with an adult guard? Answer: The guard is drunk.

How does Nathan cross paths with a drunk guard? Answer: the guard is trying to kill him.

Why is the guard trying to kill him? DING DING DING: I had no idea, but I knew that I had the mystery that would drive the story and keep it from being one-note.

How does Nathan win the fight? Answer: He kills the guard. DING DING DING: Now a character we care about has crossed a line that can’t be re-crossed. The plot was cooking, even before I put a single word on the page.

At this point, in my head, Nathan’s journey is on its way. He’s got a sustainable story. I didn’t know the details yet, but enough parts were in motion to give the character a mission to survive. I could wing those sections during the Great Pretend that is writing.

Now I had other questions to address:

How would cops and the rest of society react to the news of an escaped cop-killer? Answer (in the fictional community of the book): Politicians would posture, the media would play for ratings, and the cops would double-down on the efforts to bring a cop-killer to justice. DING DING DING: Subplots defined.

When the evidence shows that Nathan is the bad guy, what will cause a grizzled police detective to soften his heart for the kid? The answer is too much of a spoiler.

Okay, now that I had defined both the the pursued and the pursuers, now what? How does a little kid hold his own against the rest of the world? First things first: Where does he find shelter? Answer: He breaks into the homes of people who have newspapers stacked in their driveway, an indication to him that they must be on vacation.

How do I keep a burgling killer sympathetic in the minds of the readers? Answer: He does the laundry.

At this point the plot was nothing but vignettes in my head. They were just disconnected scenes. This was the problem that torpedoed the three novels I wrote before Nathan’s Run. I needed a through line.

How could I make the plot bigger–something more than just a straight line chase? Answer: Media manipulation. I could have Nathan listen to a radio and hear the terrible things that people are saying about him. Callers want him to be thrown in jail forever. Others want him to be executed. [NOTE: When I wrote Nathan’s Run, OJ Simpson and the attendant media frenzy drove every news cycle, and Rush Limbaugh was just beginning to change the face of talk radio.]

I knew I had a great character opportunity here. The talk show host, Denise Carpenter (radio name: The Bitch) is stoking the fires against Nathan. We’ll learn as we go on, just how insecure and frightened she is of her own success.

How does Nathan change people’s minds? Answer: He calls the show himself, and gets to tell his side of the story.

From that point on, the story propelled itself.

I don’t want to imply that this is a simple process. Each answer to each question is a choice from a flood of discarded alternatives, and any given one of them may turn out to be a mistake for the story. In my experience, though, they rarely (never, actually) turn out to be a mistake because I make them work. You wouldn’t tear down a nearly-completed house because a couple of doors were out of plumb, right? That’s what furring strips and leveling compound are for.

How many times have we all heard that storytelling is driven by the Great Question: What if? To be sure, that’s a great starting point to define a premise, but from then on, Why and How take the lead.

So, TKZ family, do you consider yourselves to be story engineers?

By John Gilstrap

Last week, in her debut post here on TKZ, Kay DiBianca asked why we write. As I was typing my response, I realized that she’d inspired me to write a longer bit about writing and motivation.

I avoid asking myself dangerous questions.

Where do my ideas come from?

I have no idea. Where does air come from? Where does emotion come from? Love? Desire? Anger? All of those things are just there. I’m sure there are those who can reduce it all to elements of the endocrine and autonomic nervous systems, but I worry that too much knowledge would take away the specialness. I will say this, though: I am not one who is awash with novel-worthy ideas. They arrive more or less when I need them, but never when I’m trying to think of one.

Why do I write?

I have no idea. It’s certainly not because I have to, in the sense that I would explode if I didn’t. In fact, not writing is a lot like relaxation. Like a vacation. For the past 25 years, writing has been an important part of the family’s income stream, but that’s not why I write. It might be why I sign contracts to produce books, but the actual stories have to come from different folds in my brain. When the time comes, I sit down, and the imaginary friends clock in to go to work.

Is writing fiction an important job?

I have no idea. Having spent thirty-five years of my life as an emergency responder and a safety engineer, I can point to a few specific instances where people didn’t die because I was there to help them, and I can reasonably imagine that systems I engineered prevented harm from befalling people who never knew that the systems were in place. I can talk myself into believing that those things were more important than making up stories and romping with my imaginary friends.

Then, I hear from readers who credit me for making their time in a war zone more enjoyable, or for making their time at a loved one’s bedside more endurable, and I think that this storytelling gig is more than a mere treacle. Maybe entertainment in itself is as noble a profession as any other.

It doesn’t hurt if I don’t think about it.

A few years ago, I had some surgery in my cervical spine that left (very) minor nerve damage in my left thumb. Day to day, I don’t notice it, but when someone asks, or I mention the surgery, the tingling thumb is truly annoying. Along the same lines, I never learned to touch type. I don’t even use all my fingers. When I’m in the zone, I can churn out ten or twelve pages in a few hours, with surprisingly few typos. Until I realize how well I’m typing, and then the virtual strikers get all jammed up at the virtual platen.

For me, the witchcraft that is writing rarely rises to the front of my mind. When it does, I seem to screw up. I go to work, pound out words and pages, and somehow, when it’s all over, I’ve got a finished manuscript. I don’t want to think about my process because I’m not entirely sure I even have one. I worry that asking the dangerous questions might trigger intellectual constipation.

I don’t worry about why what I do works for me as much as I worry that it continues to do so.

When I need a breath, the air will be there. When it’s time to go to work, the imaginary friends will show up.

By John Gilstrap

I recently finished Lethal Prey, the latest edition in my Jonathan Grave thriller series (July, 2022), and as a subscriber to Microsoft Office 365, I noticed a function for the first time during my first-round edit of the manuscript. If you click on the Review button, and then on the Editor button, you can open up a world of useful editing functions. I am the king of typos, so it’s wonderful to be able to search by spelling errors, those underlined-in-red words that I never see because I watch my hands when I type.

You can also search by grammatical errors, and by “clarity” errors. It’s a pretty useful function, and it gives you the opportunity to add words like “gotta” and “friggin'” into the dictionary so the program learns.

This time around, though, I noticed a new function. I can search for “inclusivity errors.” This is, after all, 2021, which looks more and more like George Orwell’s version of 1984.

By way of background, I recently dealt with a Facebook PM exchange wherein a distressed reader complained that I had not included trigger warnings in by latest book. When I told her that the title Stealth Attack, combined with a cover image of a bullet and gobs of barbed wire, should have carried that water, she maintained that such was not enough.

Perhaps the gods are telling me that the time to retire is approaching.

Anyway, back to inclusivity. Here are the suggested changes, presented in the order they appear in my manuscript:

Cocky should be overconfident. I confess this one made me laugh. It had never occurred to me that the root of “cocky” was actually a root . . . Okay, did you hear the filters fall into place? My wife isn’t sitting next to me, but if she were, I’d have just been pinched.

Countrymen is bad. Compatriots is better.

Gunmen really should be shooters. Is this really a point of friction?

Alderman is exclusionary. It should be council member. Except, you know, the character is an alderman.

Middlemen is a triggering word, apparently. I should go with intermediaries or go-betweens. But for the fact that this particular bit occurs in dialogue, I don’t have a lot of argument with it. I’m just not sure it’s worth a highlight.

Manned. Well, crap. I have sinned. Staffed is the Microsoft-approved alternative. “Staff the ramparts, humans!”

Man of the house should be head of the household.

You guys should be shortened to you. But for the fact that the “you guys” are both guys, this might have some merit.

In a description of a topographical map in which I describe contour lines as indicating elevations and tiny dots indicating manmade structures, Microsoft cautions me to choose between manufactured or synthetic as the better alternative.

Bottom line: I didn’t make any of these changes. That said, I’ve mentioned before that I spend a fair amount of time mentoring new writers on Facebook’s Fiction Writing group, and people are taking this stuff seriously. “People with prostates” and “people with ovaries” are a growing trend to describe what we used to call men and women.

Here’s my question to the TKZ family who is no doubt terrified to go on the record for an issue like this: Is all of this a passing fad, or is it going to stick?

By John Gilstrap

When I was younger, I thrived on horror stories. I read every word Stephen King wrote, and I’d be first in line for the slasher movies of the ’70s and ’80s. I lost my taste for them during my fire service years, and abandoned them entirely once I started a family. I don’t know if there’s a nexus in there, but that was the timing of it.

That’s also about the time when I realized that energy lives on past the lives of some, and that those energies are drawn to me. Or, maybe it’s the other way around.

Two stories (of many I could share):

CHRIS DORST | Gazette-Mail

Ten, maybe fifteen years ago, I signed on for a midnight tour of Moundsville State Penitentiary in West Virginia. It’s supposed to be one of the most haunted spots in America (aren’t they all?), and I thought it would be a hoot. I talked Jeffery Deaver into coming along. We climbed onto a bus around 6 pm and drove off into the night.

The tour was led by a self-proclaimed ghost hunter who channeled Van Helsing, complete with the floppy fedora and flowing great coat. When we arrived at the prison grounds, Van saw ghosts everywhere, just hangin’ around the yard. “There’s one! There’s one!” Jeff and I thought it was a hoot.

Then we entered the hospital wing of the abandoned fortress. If you’ve seen One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, you know what the place looks like. There’s a common room that was overseen by a nurse’s station, beyond which there are a couple of operatories and then another common room. This repeated five or six times.

Remember, the only lighting we had were the flashlights that we brought with us, so eerie doesn’t quite touch the atmosphere at zero-dark-early. We walked into the first one or two of the operatories, looked around, checked our watches and began talking about how we might work our way back to the bus.

The mood of the evening changed when we crossed the threshold of what I believe was the third operatory. I stopped about three steps in and could not go any farther. A dark energy surrounded me–that’s the best way I can put it, a nearly electrical feeling on my skin, but more than that, I felt so terribly sad. It was the kind of sadness that comes after the loss of a loved one. It was unbearable.

I turned and walked back out into the hallway, and the feeling vanished, as surely as if a switch had been flipped. Deaver reported feeling “something” but he night have been humoring me. Everyone else seemed to be fine. I went to Van Helsing and asked if that room was particularly energized? His response: “You notice I stay in the hallway, right?”

As the tour moved on, I told Jeff that I needed to go back. I needed to know if it was some kind of trick that Van was pulling. We parted from the group and walked back. This time, when I crossed the threshold, my knees nearly buckled. The feeling was beyond awful. It felt soul stealing.

That was the only notable incident on that tour, but later research showed that that room was used to perform lobotomies back in the ’50s or ’60s.

Now, fast-forward a few years. I was in Boston, staying at one of the fancy chain hotels to attend a board of directors for the trade association I worked for. (I’m not sandbagging on the name. I really don’t remember which one, and given the story to come, it’s best not to guess and be wrong.)

About 2:30 in the morning, I was sound asleep, alone in my room, sleeping on my left side, as I am wont to do, when someone grabbed my shoulder with both hands and placed his face about an inch from mine.

I shot out of bed, ready for war. I don’t think I’ve ever been so startled, before or since. Nobody was there, but I could still feel the imprint of his hand on my shoulder. I turned on the light, and the first thing I did was check my door. Not only was it closed, it was locked on the inside.

This was not a dream. It could not have been a dream. I saw him, for God’s sake. But several thorough searches revealed that I was still alone. The most vivid goddamn dream in the history of nightmares.

It takes a while for the body to process that much adrenaline, but ultimately, I fell back to sleep. Shortly after the sun came up, I rose, showered, tied myself into a business suit and headed down to the staff breakfast room. I was the last to arrive, but that wasn’t uncommon, given my relationship with mornings. As I sat down with my banquet eggs, I relayed the story of my nightmare, and conversation stopped.

My boss paled and asked, “What room are you in?”

“Twenty-one forty-four,” I answered. (I don’t remember the real room number.)

A gasp went around the table. By boss was staying in 2244, and one of our VPs was staying in 2344. All of us had the exact same “nightmare” within minutes of each other.

Creepy, eh? Okay, there’s a coda to the story. I was on the hook for a very important, very serious presentation to a filled ballroom at 8 am the next morning. After an endless string of meetings, I returned to my room at around 11 pm. Out loud, I said, “Okay, look. I know you have a job to do, and I respect that. I respect that I am in your space, but I really need to sleep tonight, so I’d appreciate it if you’d leave me alone.”

In general, I’m not a deep sleeper in a hotel, but that night, I slept like, well, the dead.

I haven’t studied this stuff, and I don’t pretend to understand it, but I’ve come to believe that something about what makes us human projects energy, and I think that some people are better tuned to it than others. I think I’ve posted here before that I have a very strong Spidey sense about others. My first impressions of people rarely prove themselves wrong. (Truthfully, I can’t remember a single time.)

When my son was 14 or so, he got separated from the group on a camping trip and became the focus of a National Park Service search party. (In case you’re wondering, parents are not informed of ongoing searches when they are in their early stages.) He and a buddy were lost in Washington National Forest all night. Everybody turned out fine, but he tells a great story of what it’s like being in the middle of nowhere on a moonless night as the batteries in your flashlight begin to die.

We learned about the search after he returned home a week or so later. Here’s the thing, though: On the night he was lost–at the hours he was lost–I couldn’t sleep. Instead, I got up and wrote about a young teenager lost in the woods.

Okay, now that I’ve revealed my crazy card, what say you, TKZ family? In this season of spooks and witchcraft, do you have any stories to share?

By John Gilstrap

Top left is Ann Hawkins of John Hawkins & Associates. Center bottom is my editor, Michaela Hamilton of Kensington Publishing.

I don’t think I’ve posted this here already, but if so, it’s probably worth another look from people who are interested in an insider’s view of the traditional publishing game. In this video from my YouTube channel, I sat down with Anne Hawkins, my agent, and Michaela Hamilton, my longtime editor at Kensington Books to get industry professionals’ views on the kinds of topics that are often discussed here on The Killzone.

I thought it was a bit of a coup to get everyone together at once, so the video is admittedly a bit long, but I also think it’s well worth the time. If you want to jump around, here are links to the individual topics:

00:00 Introduction

02:00 Do editors and agents work well together?

04:09 Managing author expectations

05:16 Do publishers nurture new authors?

08:33 The slush pile: What happens with unsolicited manuscripts?

10:16 Do authors need agents?

10:53 Deal points: the author’s advance is only one consideration

12:53 Deal breakers, clients from hell, & you’ve got to do your research

16:12 Traditional publishing is starving for new writers

19:09 What it means for an author to have a platform?

23:20 Are conferences important?

I hope you find something useful in the video. If nothing else, you can watch really great people hanging out with me.

By John Gilstrap

There was a time in my life when I thought I wanted to be an actor. As I mentioned in a post back in January, I was cast as Lamar in one of the world’s first amateur productions of “Godspell.” (In the picture, I’m the guy with the striped pants and socks.) Every performance was sold out. In fact, we had to add additional performances, and those, too, were sold out. My solo song was “All Good Gifts” and every performance got a standing ovation. I even got a fan letter from a freshman cheerleader–much younger than I, who, at the ancient age of 17, could not be seen fraternizing with a lower classman (classperson?). It was very heady stuff.

I didn’t think I was very good in the role, but who was I to judge, right? And what a rush! Applause was SO way more exciting than lots of speaker points from the judges of debate tournaments. I was writing stories pretty steadily even back then, and I remember speaking to my buddy Steve (he’s the guy in the yellow pants and sport coat) that maybe one day I could write a play and star in it.

The next play on the schedule was Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town”–quite a pivot from “Godspell”–and I won the role of George Gibbs. Buddy Steve (who went on to a wonderful career on Broadway and later in TV commercials) was the Stage Manager. Those are arguably the two male leads in the show.

For those who are unfamiliar with the “Our Town”, the titles of the three acts pretty much describe the story, which is set in Grover’s Corner New Hampshire in 1901: Act One-Daily Life; Act Two-Love and Marriage; Act 3-Death and Eternity. George Gibbs (my character) falls in love with Emily Webb, who ultimately dies, leaving George bereft.

Yeah, the feel good play of the year.

(I hear you purists out there already, warming up your computers to tell me how superficial my interpretation of the play is, but stand down. If you read on, you’ll see that that’s kind of my point.)

In “Godspell”, I got to perform. I got to sing and dance and do pantomime, but I never really had to act. Sure, there’re the crucifixion scene, but that was designed as a scene-chewer. Plus, it was sung, and ultimately danced.

“Our Town” flipped that formula solidly on its head. That role was all acting. I was expected to make other people’s words come to life, and I had no idea what I was doing. There’s a scene in Act 3 where George is alone at Emily’s gravesite, speaking to her, and he comes unglued. This is the Big Moment of the play, and I had nothin’. Not only had I never experienced real loss–hell, even my first dog was still alive at the time–but I grew up in a family where crying was shameful.

Now I was supposed to cry in front of all my high school buddies? I couldn’t do it.

Full disclosure: I guess I faked it okay because we got more standing O’s from the audience and no one kicked my ass for my performance. (Full disclosure redux: Parents and friends are not the most punishing reviewers.)

I hated the whole experience. I hated the emotional exposure, and I hated the notion of making a fool of myself live and in color on the stage. It wasn’t the crowd that bothered me–hell, I’ve always liked a crowd. It was the notion of someone seeing behind the curtain to reveal the real me, who was far different than the me I worked very hard to project.

Did I mention that I was 17 years old?

As an aside, about 25 years later, I was on the staff of the Virginia Governor’s School for the Humanities and Visual and Performing Arts. It was a monthlong residential program where rising juniors in high school gathered at the University of Richmond with the best fellow singers and dancers and actors from high schools throughout the state. I was teaching screenwriting at the time, but we had to teach an interdisciplinary course as well, so I developed one called “Truth and Labeling” in which kids explored the differences between who they pretended to be and who they really were. The course was a big hit. Just sayin’.

So, what does any of this have to do with writing? Here it is: Just as actors have to learn to bare their emotions and their feelings to the audience, we fiction writers have to find a way to do that on the page. If the sad parts don’t make us cry when we write, and the funny parts don’t make us chuckle, then we’re just phoning in our performance, and the reading audience will see right through it.

To be believed, you need to live the moment on the page. We talk about first lines and inciting events and characterization, and all of those things are important, but none of them are as vital as true emotion spilled onto the page. On those rare occasions when you find yourself squarely in the zone, the words are flying onto the page and you know that you are channeling something raw into the characters on the page, understand that you’re flirting with your bestseller moment.

Once it’s committed to the page, save it, print it, do whatever you have to do to preserve it, and then promise yourself not to touch it. Not to edit a word. That is your heart, as recorded live and in color as it presented itself. It’s important stuff, even if you never use it in your story, because it documents you. The real you.

When you return to the WIP and you write the second (or fifteenth) draft, you can edit and change that magical piece however you want, or not at all, to fit the story’s needs, but treasure the raw source material it came from.

Now that I’m more than a few years older than 17, I think that I would like to try my hand at acting again. I have a lot more life to tap into, and after a few million words in print, I think I’ve pretty much peeled the curtain away.

That audience is very enticing. I still like the sound of applause.

Now, if I could just find a way to edit my performance live on the stage.

What say you, TKZ family? Do you have it in you to get honest on the page?

By John Gilstrap

As I read Reavis Wortham’s post last Saturday on how his characters evolve in his head, I marveled at how vastly different our writing processes are. I often tell people that my characters are all day workers: they hang out at the social hall drinking beer and having fun until I call on them to do something. Then, they’re like, “Don’t ask me what I should do, Mr. Writer Man. This is your gig, dude. I just do what I’m told.”

My stories are told from a very close third-person point of view. I don the character like a costume and and live the story from the inside. I know what the character wants to do (or wants to stop, depending), and then I go on the great pretend. I document what that scene’s POV character sees, feels, and smells. Somehow, through that process, I become close to those characters, and they come alive for me.

In any given scene, then, the most important choice is assigning POV ownership. It becomes especially critical when two or more POV characters are interacting. While they all can speak and emote, only one of them can feel. The POV character knows that his heart is racing and that his face feels flushed, but he can only observe or surmise that the other characters in the scene appear to feel emotion.

I’ve written in this space before that I have never described my character Jonathan Grave in any detail. In part, this is because if he is in the scene, he is 99% likely to be the owner of the action. As I write this, I have no idea what my facial expression is as I type, but I do know that my back is sore from where I tweaked it the other day. If we were having this discussion live and in person, you wouldn’t know about the twinges of pain unless I mentioned them.

As for plot, I have to know where I am going before I start–or at least before I get too deeply into the story. What I discover along the way is the most fun route to take me there. It’s like knowing you want to drive from DC to Los Angeles, but not knowing till somewhere in Indiana whether you want to take the southern route or the northern route. Or, maybe you want to park at a train station and finish the trip by rail.

Because I write on tight deadlines, there’s no such thing as a mistake. If I push Jonathan and his crew into a corner that I shouldn’t have, I don’t have the luxury of going back and rewriting a week’s worth of work. Instead, I climb into the POV character’s skin, and I figure out the solution from behind his or her eyes. And you know what? Some of the most poignant, memorable scenes in my books grow out of those “mistakes.” It happens frequently enough, in fact, that I’ve come to trust that the subconscious somehow knows what has to happen, and if I relax, I’ll get there.

Which is good, because those lazy-ass characters love to chuckle at me and guzzle suds and eat wings while they watch me try to figure things out.

All of this harkens back to my oft-stated and heartfelt belief that there are no rules to this writing thing. What works, works. Hard stop. I don’t understand the need to outline and do character sketches before I start, but if they work for another writer–and I know such things work for many other writers–God bless them.

But here’s some food for thought: If you are an outliner or character sketcher, and you find yourself plagued by writer’s block, consider the possibility that your outline is the problem. Perhaps your preproduction vision of the story is not the best one, and that your real problem is trying to join parts that aren’t sized properly, or have simply fallen out of fashion. Try putting the outline away and going on a great pretend.

By John Gilstrap (But not really)

A couple of weeks ago, I posted in this space my observations about writing for translation to audio books.  Well, wouldn’t you know it? Basil Sands, the voice of Jonathan Grave, my literary alter ego, paid attention and agreed to pen a guest post about an audio guy’s view of audio books.

Basil has been a frequent poster here on TKZ since the beginning, and he’s a crack author in his own right.

As you read this, I will be supervising a team of movers who will be packaging pretty much everything we own for six months’ of storage before we move to the dream house in West Virginia. My inevitable silence will have everything to do with the lack of an internet connection.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, from the great state of Alaska, I bring you Basil Sands:

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Seanchaidhe – n. – literally “a bearer of old lore”. A Seanchaidhe is a traditional Irish storyteller/historian.

I like to imagine that somewhere in my past there is an Irish ancestor who made his living travelling from village to village telling stories to both teach and entertain. Having been a voracious reader since I was five years old, and according to my parents was a storyteller even longer, having come to the world right off screaming a tale on my first breath after being ripped from the warmth of my mother’s womb.

Okay, maybe I wasn’t acting at quite that young, but not much later I am told.

I have always loved telling stories. My stories. Other people’s stories. The stories the Leprechauns tell me around the fire at night. Factual, fictual, historical or fantastical. I love hearing stories and I love telling stories. And so I believe do you dear reader of this blog.

After John Gilstrap’s article of a couple weeks ago on the topic of writing for audiobooks he invited me to come and talk a bit more on the topic from a different aspect of the gem of storytelling. That of the narrator/producer.

I have been an avid follower of TKZ since not long after its founding. My Leprechauns and I have happily been leaving our marks in the comments below when we can. From a hidden cabin fortress built into the side of a mountain in Anchorage Alaska I have been writing thrillers and recording audiobooks since 2006. John’s books were among the first of my professional step into the world of “books on tape” and I have not looked back.

From what I have seen, creating audiobooks seems to appear relatively simple to a great deal of the population, including a surprisingly large number of writers. This is particularly true when an author balks at the cost of having a pro create one. For a ten-hour novel without tons of research heavy material this can range from $6000+ upon delivery for a ‘per finished hour’ (PFH) contract to zero out of pocket up front with a fifty/fifty split in a ‘royalty share’ (RS) contract. The latter of which can potentially entail the author sharing even more significant dinero if the books sell well. Of course, that share can also be zilch if it doesn’t, the narrator is taking 100% of the actual risk on a RS deal aka 50 hours of labor for no return.

“How hard can it be?” I’ve heard from more than one author, “You just sit in closet and read the book into the microphone. I think I will just save the money and do it myself.”

Following is an excerpt from an actual email an author sent to me when they realized just how much their book was making on a royalty share contract (it was a lot) and thought maybe they didn’t want to share 50% of that kinda money for the whole series, but they also still didn’t want to pay the standard rates for a narrator producer.

“I decided to record book 2 on my own. I’ve always had an ear for voices (or is it a tongue?) and figured I read well enough–It’s turns out I hate it. It’s very much like real work. It will be my last, guaranteed.”

And much like work it is! Very, very much!

Here is a breakdown of the process it takes to make an audiobook:

• Book is published
  • self or traditional
• Audiobook is contracted
  • Traditional publishers usually own the audio rights and have their own folks that do this
  • Self-pubbed authors and small-press authors choose from a variety of audiobook self-publishing companies and do the whole thing themselves
• Narrator is selected
  • Self-pubbed and small-press authors typically pick the narrator themselves based on recorded auditions
  • Traditional audiobook production houses most often have a stable of narrators they choose from to narrate particular genres
    • authors seldom have a say in the matter
      • But might
    • Narrator receives materials and production begins
      • In trad houses the only thing the narrator does is ‘prep read’ the book and then narrate the book
        • All of the remaining production work is done by directors, producers, editors, proofers, sound engineers and marketing teams
      • In self/small-pubs the narrator is responsible for everything but the writing, artwork, and marketing bits
        • Although if it is RS the narrator has equal responsibility for marketing if they hope to get paid
      • Completed materials are proofed and edited
        • Proofing = reading the manuscript while listening and annotating all mispronunciations, missed words, extra words
        • Editing = listening through book, removing extraneous sounds, odd breaths, thumps and mouth clicks, weird noises*
          • Self-produced narrators most often hire out these two functions to a single person
        • Corrections recorded by the narrator are inserted by the editor and final files returned for mastering
      • Mastering = making the audio sound pretty, this takes an audio engineer to get really superb sound
        • Audio engineers have a really good ear and sense of space, and some pretty expensive gear
        • Often a narrator will hire an engineer to get their sound settings right for their recording space, then little if any final mastering is needed
          • Very few editor/proofers are also sound engineers
        • Final book is uploaded and eventually comes up for sale.
        • Everybody gets paid…hopefully

That is the very basic process right there. Those steps, in some form or another, all must be done for every single audiobook to brought into existence.

How long does it take to make an audiobook?

A general idea of finished length of any audiobook is typically going to be in the range of one finished hour for every 9500 words. Therefore a 60k word book will be about five hours long at the end. A 100k word book comes in at a bit more than ten hours. But those lengths are only the finished product. The time it takes to create that product is variable based upon several factors, some controllable others not. Depending on the experience level of the narrator it takes between two to five hours on mic to create one finished hour of audiobook. And that is just the narrator’s part!

Here are a few of the things that can affect the time it takes to record an audiobook:

• The heaviness of the writing
  A typical thriller usually reads much easier than a PhD level tome titled Capturing Non-Markovian Dynamics on Near-Term Quantum Computers.
• Language, IE how it is used
  A 600K word fantasy epic (first of 12 volumes) with entirely reconstituted laws of phonetic pronunciation and every person and place name having added ‘eth’, ‘el’ and ‘ae’ randomly to names and otherwise common words throughout is much more challenging than the vast majority of, perhaps all, cozy mysteries.
• Character Accents and Dialects
  If your characters have regional accents, that usually takes extra prep and may also require several takes for a scene. Like the time I had Canadian, South African, Dutch, English, Australian, and New Zealand characters all together in a single high-speed conversation. That scene took me a few extra moments to get through.
• Regional Spellings/Pronunciations
  Schuykill River in Pennsylvania. Houston Street in Manhattan. Worcester in Massachusetts. Look them up if you think you know them but aren’t from them.

Writing your novel with an audiobook version in mind

Several years ago I narrated a dozen or so titles for Sci-Fi author Piers Anthony, his whole backlist of books published before he became famous with his wildly popular Xanth series in the 80s. In his Cluster series, about a Tarzan-like interplanetary hero who takes on the form of whatever species he is sent to help, Anthony has a number of characters with names spelled like #>@<}, and ]**(#), and ^…–~ and so on. I contacted him directly and asked how those were to be pronounced.

He replied, “When I wrote those in the sixties and seventies audiobooks were not a thing. I never even imagined those being pronounced out loud. Feel free to just make something up, I trust you.”

These days audiobooks are a huge industry, and it is expected to continue to rise in popularity for the foreseeable future. Whether or not you as a writer enjoy, or can even withstand, listening to audiobooks you can bet that 30%-40% of your audience does. Many folks, myself included seldom are able to read for pleasure due to busy schedules, but have plenty of time to listen to audiobooks while doing physical tasks or familiar chores that occupy hands and eyes, but not so much the brain. For the last decade or so I only read for pay, and then seldom get to choose the materials but get assigned. I do however ingest several hours of audiobooks most days while working my big boy job.

So for writing your books with the idea of having an audiobook recorded here are a handful of suggestions that will make it not only easier for a narrator to get it right, but will ultimately bless your print readers as well.

• Read your text out loud to yourself.
  This is one of the greatest methods of self-editing in my experience. When we read our manuscript aloud, we have to make our lips and tongues say the actual words in the order they are on the page rather than letting our minds read the words as we think they should be. If you the writer stumble saying a sentence out loud, that is likely how the reader is hearing it in their heads.
• Use Dialogue Tags appropriately.
  That multi-national conversation above could not have turned out as well as it did had the author not put tags or action descriptors on nearly every line of dialogue to make the speaker obvious. If your conversation is a rapid fire back and forth between only two characters, you may not need as many tags, but will still need to make sure there are sufficient ones to keep the narrator aware of who is saying what.
• Announce accents and any speech related quirks early and clearly
  There are few things as angina-inducing for a narrator as having read hundreds of pages of a particular cowboy character’s dialogue only to discover on page 369 the single mention of the aforementioned character’s posh British accent and how it was so out of place riding the range in 1870s Texas. If there is an accent mention it upon or as close as possible to the character’s first dialogue. Do not assume the reader will pick up on it based on place and setting if it is not a single location story. Even then don’t expect the reader to hear it in the same voice you heard in your head when you wrote it.
• For the sake of your narrator’s health please keep strained sounding voices to a minimum
  I am not referring to emotional strain as that goes with the story, but actual physical strain on the vocal folds of the narrator. Gravelly, raspy, rough, harsh, etc. Attempting such a sound in the booth for extended periods can cause actual lasting damage to the voice. I once did a 6-book series of romance-thrillers that followed a group of five studly former Marines and their retired boss as private detectives. Each book focused on one of the characters, with the others all appearing in support roles in that story. The voice of the fifty-something retired Master Gunnery Sergeant “sounded like he maintained a diet of gravel washed down with tar coffee as he chain-smoked cheap cigars”. He only appeared a handful of times in each of the first five books, so I was able to sustain almost exactly the sound I thought the author imagined. It was all just fine until I got to the last book and the entire thing was Gunny’s story, including almost 50% of the dialogue. After that sexology of stories** I had to take a month off narration to let my voice heal.
• Prepare a list of special details and potential surprises
  If you have any special pronunciations, accents or dialects, uncommon words, and so on and want your narrator to be dedicated to you for life, make a list of such things for them in advance. This not only saves the narrator time, but saves the continuity of the story by not having excessive pickups***.
• Write Well!
  This is probably the single most important thing for any author to have success with audiobooks. The text has to have the capacity to become real in the mind of the reader both via manuscript reading and audible storytelling. This means something quite different from one genre to the next, but in all cases a well written story will literally flow off the narrator’s tongue and sound natural to the ear.

Finally, here are a couple of things related to self/small pubbed authors specifically, where the author has more control over the process.

• Fit the right narrator to your project
  A gentle voiced kindergarten teacher narrating an alpha-male biker gang vs cop thriller probably won’t seem realistic. Likewise, don’t hire a male former Marine turned lumberjack turned actor to narrate your cupcake centric cozy mystery unless you want all of your characters, male, female and children alike, to sound like chain-smoking-gravel-eaters.
• Do not ‘direct’ the performance
  Unless you are an actual experienced acting director managing that project in the studio looking through the booth glass, physically or virtually, unless you are that person then once you have accepted and approved the initial 15-minute sample of the recording the remainder of the narration, including voicing of characters, styles of reading, anything performance specific are up to the narrator. In most contracts by legitimate audiobook publishers, this is actually stipulated in some manner.

And lastly here is a bit for those intrepid adventurers among you who think you want to narrate your own books for sale.

• Radio/Broadcast experience does not translate to audiobooks
  While they all use voice as the medium, audiobooks are nothing like radio, I know as I have done both. First off, “radio-voice” is not welcome, nobody wants to listen to non-stop announcer voice tell a story. The other big difference is comparable to that of a sprinter versus an extreme distance runner. Radio is 1-5 minute sound bites with commercial breaks interspersed while audiobooks are hours upon hours of uninterrupted you talking in different voices while all alone in a small dark box.
• Audiobook Narration/Production is a Marathon
  My shortest audiobooks are a couple short stories about 30 minutes long that took a couple days to fully produce. The longest is The Bible, at just over 86 hours completed, which took well over a thousand man-hours to make ready for publication. If you have ever done public speaking, you know that even a short speech or sermon, 20 or 30 minutes, can wear you out. Imagine talking in hour long segments, five or six times a day with only a ten-minute break for water to go in and out. It can be utterly exhausting.
• Get Coaching first
  If you are an experienced stage or film actor be advised, audiobook acting is only remotely similar. You will need coaching of some sort to ensure you are delivering the best product you can create with your voice alone. Every single part of the listener’s understanding of the story comes from the narrator’s vocal delivery. Audiobooks are 100% actor delivered, there are zero sound effects or mood setting musical scores in true audiobooks.

A Test: The Narrator’s Crucible

If you think you may want to narrate your own books, following in the footsteps of such greats as Neil Gaiman, Carrie Fisher or Oprah Winfrey before you spend your hard earned dollars on a fancy microphone, pre-amp, computer upgrades and software try this test.

1. Pick your favorite book, eBook or paper doesn’t matter.
2. Close yourself in a small dark room, like a walk in closet or half-bathroom, with only a single light to read by
3. Read out loud for 1 hour, doing different voices for each character and stopping every time you make a mistake in the read and re-reading that line until you get it correct before continuing.
   1. Record yourself on your phone or laptop, etc. so you can listen back at the end
4. Take a ten-minute break at the top of each hour
5. Repeat for 2-3 one-hour sessions each day
6. Do this every day for a week
7. If you have not become disgusted by the sound of your own voice and given up by the end of the week, you might stand a chance at actually enjoying this narrating gig.
   1. Maybe.

There is a lot more detail trying to pour out of my fingertips than I could ever put into a single blog post, but this provides a 15,000 foot view, with a handful treetop skimming dives as a bonus.

If you are interested in learning more about the process, either as an author who wants your piece of the audio market or as a someone interested in becoming a narrator or producer here are some very helpful links that can get you in swimming toward the deep end fairly quickly.

Audiobook creation Exchange (https://www.acx.com/) – Audible’s division for self/small publishers, like KDP for audiobooks.  ACX is a marketplace where authors, literary agents, publishers, and other Rights Holders can connect with narrators, engineers, recording studios, and other Producers capable of producing a finished audiobook. The result: More audiobooks will be made.

Narrator’s Roadmap (https://www.narratorsroadmap.com/) – the amazing Karen Commins’ extremely informative website – If you’re new to this career, every resource on this page — articles, books, connections, and videos — answers the question “How can I become an audiobook narrator?” You’ll find invaluable advice from industry pros that you will want to read and absorb. Success leaves tracks!

Audiobook Publishers Association – https://www.audiopub.org/ – APA is a not-for-profit trade association that advocates the common, collective business interests of audio publishers. The APA consists of audio publishing companies and suppliers, distributors, and retailers of spoken word products and allied fields related to the production, distribution, and sale of audiobooks.

Being me and the way I am it seems I have probably already used more than the number of words I should put here, therefore let’s move this thing to the chat below for conversifying and questionizing!

*Weird noises – Do not fart while recording, they might miss it in editing, but the listeners certainly will not. Trust me on this.

**Sexology – that may not be the mathematically correct word for a series of six but is fairly accurate to the storylines

***Pickups – small corrections re-recorded and pasted in, hopefully matching the surrounding original sound. May be done in a bar but only if you’re desperate.

BONUS! BONUS! BONUS! BONUS! BONUS! BONUS! BONUS! BONUS!

If you made it this far in my ramblings you deserve a treat.

I have US & UK Audible coupon codes for several of the books that I have both written and narrated.

ICE HAMMER BOXED SET

APPETIZERS OF THE GODS

THE NEW TESTAMENT, DARBY TRANSLATION

Drop me an email with your title preference and whether you are a US or UK resident and I will send you a code for a free download.

All I ask in return is an honest review on Audible.

Check out more about my narration and voice work at www.sandmanstudiosak.com