Epic Intimacy and Point of View

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

We have a first-page critique today, from which I want to draw a lesson about intimacy in Point of View, especially in epic fantasy novels. Here’s the clip:

REBORN

Chapter 1

Back arched, pointed ears swept backwards, Archenon knelt before the High Queen in the Great Hall of Êvina.

“Please—I beg you. Let me go.” An intricate braid of ebony hair lay heavy along his spine. The piece of parchment crunched between his hands, folded and read so many times that it had begun to crumble.

The High Queen of Aradria, his mentor Rhonja, looked down on him. “You know I can not.” She smoothed out a fold on her silky dress, which was fitted to perfection. It hugged her slender form, mirroring the blinding hall in its purity. Her hair, shining like starlight, wafted about her shoulders.

His imploring emerald eyes met hers from the bottom of the crescent staircase leading up to the white throne. A vast mosaic of Her Majesty’s Royal Crest lay fixed in the wall behind her—four petals aligned to the cardinal points held each other under the protection of a circle representing Spirit, the High Queen’s element.

Archenon swallowed hard. “I have given you my life, and now the last tie to my heritage is to be torn away. Is there nothing I can say to make you change your mind? I want to see my mother one final time.”

Rhonja had never reciprocated Archenon’s feelings, but he thought she cared for him enough to allow this one request. She was the epitome of hope for her subjects, yet she would crush his.

“You do care for me, don’t you?” he asked.

“Of course. I treasure you,” she replied, her brilliant gaze a calm ocean at twilight. But her words were scant comfort.

Shafts of light pierced between the half-drawn purple drapes hanging over the arched windows. Elegant pillars of creatures, cunningly carved, held up the vaulted ceiling. Gryphons, mermians, dragons, elves and other beings stared at him with marble eyes. It was as if they fought to keep the very building from crashing down on him. More than ever, the immensity of the white hall felt intrusive and distinctly foreign.

Archenon was afraid he would never belong anywhere. Not here, in this land where the trees were few and the ocean lapped around every edge of the border. Not even in his first home, deep in the woods of Elfen Harrows, in the realm of fire. Not an easy thing for an elf to admit, and he shivered with a sudden fear.

***

The genre here appears to be epic fantasy, so I’ll be making my remarks based on that assumption. The excerpt has a rich style (which we’ll discuss in a moment) and what I like about it is that everything is woven into an immediate scene, with great tension–a disturbance, which is the best way to hook a reader from the start. I’ve seen too many manuscripts of this type that begin with some meandering journey down a mountain, through a valley, or on a horse. Nothing much happens as the world is built. I like this author’s approach much better.

So let’s talk about how to render this approach as effective as possible.

POV

The first four paragraphs are Omniscient POV. You can tell because the author describes things that the main character, Archenon, cannot see. He cannot see his own ears, his ebony hair, or his imploring emerald eyes. It’s only when he swallows hard, and we get a glimpse of his thoughts, that we move into the more intimate Third Person.

My main suggestion is that the author render the entire section in Third Person POV. That will create more empathy, more connection, between reader and character. No matter the genre, we want to do everything in our writerly power to deepen the reader-character bond. I don’t see a reason to keep distant via Omniscience.

Let me quickly add that in epics I do think Omniscient POV can be well utilized, but it’s usually when the author describes setting (world building) or recounts a history. I also recognize that epic fantasy fans are tolerant of long passages of Omniscient-style narrative. But for those of you contemplating that style, my suggestion remains: set us first inside a character, and then do the building. This is what James Clavell does in the opening pages of Shogun. He gives us some history and description and context but only does so after this gripping opening line: The gale tore at him and he felt its bite deep within and he knew that if they did not make landfall in three days they would all be dead.

Now we’re set. We’re inside a character. And when Clavell recounts historical detail, we get the impression it is coming from the protagonist’s own knowledge.

So, author, can you get us into Archenon with more immediate, sensory, deeply-felt detail? I think you can!

Let’s take a look at this paragraph:

Shafts of light pierced between the half-drawn purple drapes hanging over the arched windows. Elegant pillars of creatures, cunningly carved, held up the vaulted ceiling. Gryphons, mermians, dragons, elves and other beings stared at him with marble eyes. It was as if they fought to keep the very building from crashing down on him.

Notice that we don’t get the POV clue until the middle, with stared at him. See how that keeps us at a bit of a distance? These little things add up. Instead, do something like this:

Archenon winced at the shafts of light piercing the half-drawn purple drapes having over the arched windows. He averted his gaze to the elegant pillars …

Let me suggest you go through your entire manuscript looking to make the POV more intimate. Watch for paragraphs the open without a POV clue in it.

STYLE

I do think the author has an innate handle on fantasy style. It’s rich and evocative. I liked a lot of it.

One suggestion I do have is to look over every description and make the tone consistent with the feeling you want in the scene. For example, these lines: Gryphons, mermians, dragons, elves and other beings stared at him with marble eyes. It was as if they fought to keep the very building from crashing down on him. More than ever, the immensity of the white hall felt intrusive and distinctly foreign.

Look how the sentence in the middle works against the other two. Rather than fighting to keep the building up, try: It was as if they were waiting for the right moment to bring the building crashing down upon him.

That way the sentence adds to the menace of the scene, rather than relieving it.

Also––and I only mention this because it’s the very first sentence––I was thrown off by the pointed ears swept backwards. It’s a jarring image. If they are sweeping backwards, that’s one big set of ears! I know it turns out Archenon is an elf, but we can wait for that information. (You could insert a bit about Archenon feeling the heat in the points of his ears…)

These are the sorts of things you pick up when you revise. I’ll say again, this is a good foundation––an actual scene and a rich style. Make it more intimate and I’ll want to keep reading.

Your turn, TKZers. What did you think? 

The Legos Theory of Storytelling as Applied to Turkish Television. Seriously.

Posted on by

Happy 2017! I spent the holidays reading almost nothing, writing a lot, and engaging for better or worse in self-reflection.  I concluded that the best thing I could do for myself and for my work was to go back to basics.

What follows is aimed more at those folks in our audience who are struggling with getting that first novel done. It is easy enough to explain in the context of childhood: rather than struggling to build a motorized crane using an Eitech Erector Set, I need to grab a box of Legos and start building little cars and and people and such, working my way forward by starting with the small and simple and building gradually, but steadily.

I came to this conclusion after watching two television series. You’ve almost certainly heard of one, and probably have never heard of the other. Our own Kathryn Lilley discussed Westworld on this blog a few weeks back. It was beautifully filmed, intricately plotted, startling, and full of surprises. The major rub against it was that it was difficult to understand what was going on from episode to episode. I still have a little callus on my thumb from rewinding it to pick up certain plot nuances that I missed. There were several — maybe a dozen — plot lines that spun off in different directions, some of which were relevant to the story, others which seemed to have been included simply to create a mood. All of them were interesting, but only a few minutes were devoted to each at any one time. Characters? More characters had been introduced by Episode Three than I could keep track of. I found it to be worth working through it — it raises some stunning and yes, frightening issues concerning reality, mortality, and other areas — but the general consensus seems to be that it arguably is a series that more people heard about than actually watched.

The anti-Westworld, if you will, is a series available on Netflix called Kacak (“The Fugitive”). If Westworld  is the result of the Eitech erector set I referenced at the beginning of this post, Kacak comes from the basic box of Legos, and it is wonderful. Kacak is a genre-blurring television series produced in Turkey, throwing together elements of thriller, suspense, romance, drama, and yes, a bit of comedy to create a slow-boil story that sucks you in and doesn’t let you go. It is subtitled, but the story is simple enough, and the acting is good enough, that one could glean the context without it. It begins in a remote Turkish village where a man named Serhat operates a tea shop. He is loved by everyone around him, and one gets the sense of “why” from his interaction with his clientele and another shopkeeper. For his own part, Serhat is devoted to his wife and their young son, who somehow in a few moments becomes the cutest little guy to ever walk the face of the earth. All of this communicated with a few minutes of interaction here and there over the course of a day or so. Just when you think you’ve stumbled into an episode of Lassie, however, Serhat interjects himself quite forcefully into a dangerous situation. He is immediately hailed as a hero throughout his village; when news of Serhat’s heroism spreads to Istanbul, however, a danger from his past — a past of which even his beloved wife knows nothing — quickly intrudes and irrevocably blows up Serhat’s perfect life. Does this sound familiar? Sure. The movie A History of Violence explores a similar theme, as does Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Kacak goes further, however. Serhat vows revenge. As Serhat carries out his plan — and attempts to put what is left of life back together — the audience learns about his past, in dribs and drabs, not in meal courses but in tapas or dim sum, small portions which are easily digestible and brought out over the course of the very long meal, where the surprises keep coming. To put it another way: just when you think you’ve reached the smallest Russian nesting doll, there’s another one within.

Kacak does all of this without a big budget, or, interestingly enough, without nudity, graphic sex, or (much) gratuitous violence. Some of the acting is a bit stilted, and there are momentary but noticeable lapses of continuity, to the extent that on occasion the series is unintentionally funny. That is part of the charm of it, however. It isn’t subtle or nuanced for the most part. What it does, however, and does very well, is tell a story.

I will be the first to acknowledge that I am not much of a teacher. If I have a strength in the area of education it’s the ability to point people to something that will illustrate, quickly, how something is done. If you are having trouble getting your story off of the ground, or that you are getting bogged down under the weight of your own plot, or are having trouble keeping your characters straight, hijack the family Netflix account from your teenager and watch at least the first few episodes of Kacak. I have watched the first ten — Netflix lists fifty — but you can learn a lot just by watching and studying the first three or four. I think, however, that you will want to eventually watch the whole series, which takes that little box of Legos and slowly builds from it, using just a few parts at a time.

My question for you: is there a television series you use to jumpstart your writing, to clear the cobwebs, whatever? My own answer: in addition to Kacak…True Detective: Season One, which I have practically committed to memory (time, indeed, is a flat circle). You?

 

First Page Critique: “A Stranger”

Posted on by

 

Critiqued by Elaine Viets

The writers at TKZ regularly volunteer to critique the first page of a novel. We have a big backlog. Congratulations to the brave writer who submitted this first page critique. My comments follow the work.

A STRANGER

This is a story about Timothy Frame, a man who saw the world in decimals and dollar signs. A man who, unable to prescribe himself with any wondrous adventures of his own, was often fond of basking in the adventures he could find inside of his television set, or his relatively new cellphone, which shined just as much now as it did when he first bought it.
This is a story of a man who wore his tie in a single-Windsor knot and could tie it with his eyes closed. A man who could never bring himself to care enough to fork over the seventy-five cents for a local newspaper, but was often bored enough to gaze upon their front pages during his time spent in the queue at his local Starbucks.
This is a story of a man who was proud of the urban-themed wall hangings and area rugs that he had decided, after a long and arduous debate within himself, would define his personality far better than any of the other eclectic, mass-produced items found in that particular section of the Pier One store, located down the street from his one-bedroom apartment.
This is the story of Timothy Frame, who had planned his entire existence, down to the last retirement dollar, and even down to the very slab of stone that would inevitably bear his name and a couple of dates, separated by a single hyphen. Timothy Frame, who had proportioned his life evenly and would measure those proportions accordingly on a day-to-day basis. Timothy Frame, whose teeth had always bled when flossed.
He threw the bloody clump of thread into the wastebasket and carefully placed the box of floss into the wooden drawer beneath his enamel-coated sink. Spitting one final time into the pricey-looking bowl, he thought to himself.
“$99. Money well spent.”
It wasn’t marble, though that didn’t bother him. It looked enough like it to satisfy him. If anyone else were to ever come over, they might fall for the lie at a quick glance.
“This guy owns a marble sink,” they would think. “He’s going places.”

ELAINE’S COMMENTS: You have an interesting essay here. You’ve given us a character sketch. I like your observations, and the careful details. It’s an entertaining exercise, but it’s not the beginning of a novel. I’m assume that’s what you’re writing.
Help us out, please. Your readers haven’t a clue what kind of novel you’re writing: Is it a crime novel? If so, what kind: a thriller? A cozy? A novel of psychological suspense? A hard-boiled mystery? Give us a hint.
Who is Timothy Frame? Is he a victim? A killer? A detective? How old is he?
Nothing happens, except Timothy flosses his teeth. A novel needs action, but there’s nothing to propel this description forward and let the story unfold.
Please let your readers know that something will happen. You can build on that last line:
” ‘This guy owns a marble sink,’ they would think. ‘He’s going places.’ Too bad the only place Timothy was going was prison. For murder.”
Or, “There was one thing Timothy could not plan: that his carefully measured life would be destroyed by . . . .”
Your readers are lost in time and space: Where are we? In a city? A small town? What is the time of day? What time of year?
We’re not even sure enough about Timothy to know his social status. We get hints he’s working his way up. That’s why he’ s so proud of his faux-marble sink. It looks real. But we need to believe he’s real, too.
There is fine writing here, but we writers often fall in love with our own descriptions. Take a hard look at this description and figure out where you want to go. I’d love to see these questions answered and have you turn this into a real novel.

********************************************************************************************

Time for a Caribbean cruise! Win an autographed hardcover, Final Sail, my 11th Dead-End Job mystery. Enjoy Helen Hawthorne’s adventures on a luxury yacht as she tries to catch a jewel smuggler. Click Contests at www.elaineviets.com

How Not to Treat a Writer (and a Bonus Guide on Building Good Anthologies)

Posted on by

Let me tell you a story.

On December 19th, I received an email through my website contact link suggesting that I might submit a story to an upcoming anthology of “dark and speculative fiction.” Okay, I thought. Sounds like me. Reprints were okay (if the work was requested, and it appeared that mine had been), and there was actually money involved. The stated theme of the anthology was vague and used the phrase “we may be looking for…” But I’m always game for submitting work, and women’s sexuality was one of the mentioned subjects. Okay, I thought. That sounds like me, too. Knowing that the publisher was a legit literary fiction house, I clicked through to the open call for submissions page.

I don’t want to embarrass anyone in this story, so I’m not going to get specific about all of the submission details. The story I had in mind was one I had published in Patricia Abbott’s Discount Noir, and I had long thought of expanding it. I was pretty sure it fit the women’s sexuality/female protagonist bill. Except: The deadline was to be December 30th. Yes, twelve days after I received the email, and only eighteen days after the date on the submission page.

Twelve days! It’s madness to think anyone but a few very motivated writers could put out a finished 2-5K word story in that brief amount of time. Still, I had the story on hand and was thinking of adding only a thousand words or so. As I said, I’m game. Christmas got busy, and I put it on the back burner. After a very relaxing holiday, I worked on it on the 29th and 30th. I’ll confess that I submitted it after midnight on the 30th, but it was still the 30th in Alaska, so I figured I was good. And, if not, no big deal. It was a fun exercise to work on the story.

I received the acknowledgement immediately. All was well. Then, later that same day, the 31st, I received a polite form rejection email.

There’s nothing like receiving a rejection for a story on New Year’s Eve. It was disappointing, as all rejections are. I had a lot of confidence in the story, so it was a little surprising. I went through six stages of story rejection grief, and enjoyed the seventh (an extra glass of wine), and decided the story would be a good addition to the ebook short story collection I want to do later this year.

But, wait! Less than an hour later, I received an email that I had been sent the wrong form email. They actually meant to send the one telling me they were considering the story and would get back to me in a month. They were sorry for the confusion, they said.

Ha! Ha! said I. And forgot about it the very next day.

This past Monday, nine days later, I received my response. They “love” the story, but “have since decided on a theme” that this story doesn’t quite fit. Oh, by the way, maybe I have another one that would suit their newly chosen theme? They only need it by January 16th.

*sigh*

There are so many possible responses. But the one that immediately comes to mind is a less lovely version of WTH? (That’s not the one I sent.)

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

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

Here’s a handy list for creating an anthology:

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

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

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

 

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

As a writer, what’s the worst submission experience you’ve ever had?

Have you ever put together and anthology? How did it go?

 

Laura Benedict is the author of the Bliss House trilogy of novels. She blogs daily at her website. Visit her on Twitter, too.

Writers Dish On The Topic Of Being “Almost Famous”

Posted on by


A few years ago, I took an LA-to-Tokyo flight. Upon deplaning, I was met by something totally unexpected: a group of smiling Japanese ladies. They surrounded me and shook my hand, while handing me pieces of paper and pens. They kept smiling, while repeating something which sounded like “Ba-ba.” So of course I smiled and nodded back at them, which made the ladies beam twice as enthusiastically.

It eventually became clear that the Japanese women thought I was an American celebrity–some blondish middle-aged celebrity, I guess, whose name sounds like “Ba-ba”. Later my friends and I tried to figure out the name of my mystery-celeb doppelgänger.

I was reminded of that experience yesterday after reading an article about the subject of being “almost famous.” Because let’s face it–we writers seldom become famous, not in that celebrity-level, red carpet read, paparazzi-magnet kind of way. I think Ernest Hemingway might have been the last fiction writer who could legitimately claim celebrity pop culture status.

Imagine yourself as an A-list celebrity. What would that experience be like, do you think? Share with us!

What Happens When You “Just Write” Without Truly Understanding How a Story Should Be Written

Posted on by

By Larry Brooks

There is an article in the latest edition of Writers Digest Magazine about story structure (written by a story coach), built upon this assumption: human beings innately understand storytelling, because we’ve experienced stories all our lives. It’s in our DNA. This is why stories work, why they touch us and teach us and entertain us.

But it doesn’t remotely empower us to write one. That article, however, would have us believe otherwise. To be fair, the article is otherwise valuable and useful, especially the seven questions put forth about a story, the answers to which will pave the to a structure that will work. Trouble is… the article seems to suggest that it is that natural instinct that will empower the reader to know what to do with the answers.

And that’s where it falls apart. Knowing what your character wants and what blocks the path is different than understanding the key principles of story structural that are already there – you don’t have to, nor should you, try to reinvent them every time you write a story – that propell those answers into the story with dramatic effectiveness.

The article and this assumption imply that anyone can, in fact, sit down and write a novel, presumably by tapping into this natural gift, which, like riding a bicycle, is available only to human beings. Never mind that with other natural gifts, some of us end up being better athletes or musicians or professors… with storytelling, it seems, we’re all in the same creative boat.

To which I say… what is more true is that we all have equal access to learning the principles that could result in you writing a crack story worthy of publication and readership. My hypothesis here, my counter argument, is that unless you engage in a dance with those principles—which are deep and wide and clearly evident in the books you read—you are nowhere near knowing what you need to know to make your story work, at least without spending years trying to get there.

And you can get there, draft after draft, feedback upon feedback, year after year. But even then, your ability to comprehend and implement the feedback that will facilitate how your story needs to change—or simply realize what needs to change on your own, which certainly can and does happen—depends on your understanding of those very same principles.

This is no different than your family doctor of forty years knowing more about medicine than your nephew who just entered med school. Natural DNA gifts aren’t part of the equation.

If you’ve tried this “just write” DNA approach to writing a novel, you may already have formed an opinion about the natural state of the ability of human beings to write publishable stories, versus the accepted principles of storytelling that professionals end up abiding by, almost every time. Perhaps, upon realizing how challenging this is, that you didn’t win the DNA lottery after all. It’s why so many of us have a novel we started and couldn’t finish, or a drawer full of manuscripts that nobody wanted, and perhaps we now understand why.

Or not.

Look Ma, no hands! I’m a natural!

The WD article contends that, using our innately informed sense of story, we are all equipped to sit down and write a story that is within revision-distance—which is a little like shouting distance, only further, like yelling a message from Miami to Houston—from being able to take what you’ve assembled from the first pass and actually suddenly, tapping into that secret DNA, know enough to credibly fix it.

Analogy: you open a jigsaw puzzle without studying the image on the cover, you pour it out on the floor… and then you fix it. But you have to look at the picture to do that within a reasonable lifetime.

Another analogy for those who don’t do jigsaw puzzles, or don’t agree than a novel is at that level of complexity: Imagine you are on an airplane. Suddenly an announcement comes over the PA asking if anyone knows how to fly, because the pilots are inexplicably unconscious. So, because you’ve flown so many times—equivalent to having read a lot of novels in this analogy—and you are the hero of this story, you volunteer to head up to the cockpit, pausing only to throw up in the unoccupied mile-high bathroom next to the cockpit door.

What the heck, you rationalize… if it doesn’t work, I’ll just fix it later.

I’ll just fly.

There is no shortage of writers who adopt this approach toward the writing of a novel. They’ve read hundreds if not thousands of them, so they believe they possess the natural sense of story required to get it right. They regard craft with a grain of alcohol, betting that they can get there from the seat of their pants.

Meanwhile, the clock keeps ticking away.

There are actually three assumptions at work here. 

First, that there actually are expectations and standards and forms and functions within the craft of storytelling, principles that published novels abide by. Principles that all such books demonstrate, once you know what to look for. A published author can explain, for example, why The Girl On The Train works (discussing setup and foreshadowing and subtext and structure and emotional resonance and narrative arc and thematic weight… all the stuff that article contends we innately already grasp), and do so in writerly technical terms.

Readers, however, explain it in a way that only skims that surface: It held my interest. I felt for the girl. I wanted to see how it turned out. I couldn’t’ get it out of my head.

The reader experiences… but the writer knows.

There actually are things we need to know and understand… a deep well of knowledge, in fact, before we can reasonably expect to drive the literary bus. The good news is that it is learnable and accessible, and when you do finally wrap your head around it, you’ll see it bursting from between the covers of every novel you read and film you watch.

Second, that we do indeed—all of us, endowed equally—possess such an innate understand.

Pigs are flying everywhere in the light of this assumption.

Let’s agree that our high school freshman offspring is not yet able to do this, so we can therefore assume that somewhere between the appearance of pubic hair and finishing one’s first pass at Lord of the Rings, the ability to naturally craft stories manifests in our brain cells.

And third… other is that the same sense that results in the brain-drain draft that is part of the initial assumption, is equipped to then fix it through revision. As if this supposedly natural gift, the one that we all possess, can think “oh, that’s what I should have done the first time,” and move toward publishability from there.

Tick tock.

The article then goes on to suggest…

… that anything beyond a learned modeling of story (from the same reading experience that fed the story DNA, I suppose) is reduced to mere formula. Which is assumptively regarded—disregarded, actually—as a bad thing indeed.

Tell that to the halls full of successful romance and mystery authors who are on their twentieth title. Tell them that what they do is formula—because nobody will argue, the linear contextual unfolding of genres in those and other stories is nearly identical in every book—and that it is a bad thing.

It’s not formula. It’s form. Narrative flow. Context. Story arc. Dramatic theory.

We are pressured to abide by the truism that there are no rules in storytelling.

All the Big Names tell us this.

But, ask around. Ask those halls full of successful authors. Ask the crew here at Killzone. “Rules” is just a word. What is present within the storytelling proposition is the looming, story-saving imposition of principles, including those that relate to story structure, that are the very thing that become the benchmarks, criteria and targets for which we strive—and must reach—as professional storytellers working genre fiction.

All successful writers use them, even if they don’t have names or labels for them, even if they claim to have summoned the story forth from the depth of their gifted genius.

On top of the basic principles, there are specific principles that create expectations within the various genres. The author doesn’t tell us that we are born with those, too… that Nora Roberts was a born romance author, but not so much when it comes to… wait, she is a killer mystery writers, too, and I bet she could know a time travel story out the part, too.

Because of what she knows.

Literary fiction… there are principles there, too. A bunch of them, in fact, just like us. It actually gets more airtime out there, which becomes a sort of toxin in the learning experience of new authors, who buy into the notion that it is all about the hero, and the other characters. But that’s a loaded statement… not wrong, per se, but in genre not yet right enough. In genre fiction, it’s all about the dramatic arc, fueled by something conceptual, that becomes a window through which we manifest and observe characters and their story arc.

Where in the DNA mind-map does that little subtlety show up?

No, that is something we must learn.

Without a plot fueling our genres (thrillers, mysteries, romances, fantasy, science fiction, and all the mashups you can think of) that is infused with a hero’s problem/quest/journey, in the face of something antagonistic that seeks to block their path (or kill them), and with significant, emotionally-resonant stakes motivating everyone on both sides… without all that, we are left with the biography and episodic adventures of a fictional character, with little to root for.

Without rooting, all that’s left is observing. And outside of literary fiction, that doesn’t work.

We must learn that, as well.

It’s like the difference between staring at and analyzing a still photo, versus being swept away by a motion picture driven by those same story elements and essences.

So no… we’re not born with that sensibility. I’ve worked with hundreds of new writers, really smart people with big brains and big ideas, who didn’t have a clue. Who write 200 pages of setup in in 380-page manuscript. That write “the adventures of” their own life, or a span of it, that amount to nothing more than a diary, without the slightest connection to a dramatic spine or the posing of a dramatic question.

Did you know, when you started, deep in your gut, in your DNA, the same storytelling DNA that the WD article claims will take you the promised land… that a story unfolds in a series of differing contexts which are non-negotiable (labeled as parts or acts), one bleeding into the next, and that there are optimal places for the insertion of escalation and twists? That these things aren’t random, but rather, the very thing that one cleans up—moves toward—when the story isn’t working, when it was poured from the box of your brain onto the floor of your manuscript to become a pile of disconnected notions and intentions?

You didn’t know that upon finishing your first read of Lord of the Rings. You had to learn it. If not through craft, then through assimilated experience that never saw a shred of that magic DNA.

You must learn this stuff.

Sometimes over years of experience and feedback. Sometimes—often both—with the eventual embrace of story modeling that impart all this craft into the same brain cells, in the right way and right order, that this article author claims you possess naturally?

What we’re talking about here is story sense.  That author claims you have it already, that you only have to ask yourself the right questions (seven of them, included in the article) to tap into it and empower your ability to navigate the narrative path that will ultimately make the story work.

But consider this: all of the craft out there that awaits you, on this site and others, in books like my three writing titles and training videos, and those of Jim Bell and Robert McKee and Michael Hague and Art Holcomb and a bus full of other so-called writing gurus… all of it has one purpose, and one purpose only: to ignite and empower your sense of story.

To render you capable of the just write approach.

Once fully ablaze with a full awareness of the principles of craft, then you actually can take your story idea to your keyboard and just write. Because with those principles grinding and vetting and molding the narrative before it reaches your fingertips, the story will appear in your first and early draft in a vastly elevated form… something you actually can fix using those same awarenesses.

Some clarification is in order here. 

Our friend and my colleague here on Kill Zone, Jim Bell, has a new book out entitled Just Write. It’s terrific, robust and empowering. But don’t be fooled by the title (just as you should not be fooled by the title of another book by another guru, “Story Trumps Structure,” which it absolutely does not), Jim is not remotely suggesting that as your first line of attack on a story you should just write, nor is he saying you’ll be fine because of that secret storytelling gene that will unlock the story upon command.

Rather, he’s saying pretty much what I’ve said here. Jim and I occupy the same space on the writing shelf at your local Barnes & Noble. We are craft guys. We preach it, teach it, model it, deliver it as best we can. What I believe Jim is saying in his book is this: armed with some awareness of the principles of storytelling, and fueled by a vibrant idea that this awareness allows you to vet, then one of your options in the continuing process of discovering and developing your story is, in fact, to just write.

Another option—because it leverages the same body of awareness—is to just outline. Just line your walls with yellow sticky notes. Just compose as much of the narrative shape of a story in your head before you sit down to a draft.

All of these processes are viable. Because they are all equally dependent upon an understanding of story. To “just write” without that awareness is to step into the forest without a map, an umbrella, or a stun gun, or even without shoes. Many writers use drafts as their vehicle of story discovery, years and years of them—this being another, very different context of “just write”—versus a separate track of more principle-based training, or at least a concurrent focus (which gives you two avenues of evolution as a writer, versus either one alone).

It’s all story discovery and development.

It’s all process.

And while the principles will put you in a specific lane defined by specific story criteria—this is a certainty; if you deny it or fight it off, ask yourself if you can find a published commercial genre story that doesn’t abide by the principles of craft… you actually can’t, any more than you can find a bird or an airplane without wings—you will actually be more empowered to trust your gut as you… because now your gut is in a different league of capability.

Versus, say, the writer who doesn’t know a setup quartile inciting incident from a midpoint context shift.

The physics of stories is no more flexible or forgiven than, well, the physics of gravity. We can harness gravity, we can manage it to fly and dance and play, we can optimize it for specific purposes, but without wings that harness that power, we end up on the floor, right next to that pile of story that you tried before you knew.

It’s time you learned how to play this game, regardless of the state of your natural literary genius.

Tick tock.

*****

Are you interested in learning more about craft, framed in a fresh and empowering way?

Over the break I’ve launched a series of hardcore craft training videos for writers, called The Storyfix Virtual Classroom. At this writing there are FIVE topic focuses (one of them on structure), from 61 to 118 minutes in length. These include a classroom-style lecture, with “live” talking head and PowerPoint data points, all instructionally-designed and optimized.

Go to www.vimeo.com/ondemand/storyfix to check them out. Or to read more, go to my new training website at www.storyfix-training.com.

Here’s a 25% discount for Killzone readers: use this code – Killzone25off –during checkout to receive this deal.

 

 

State of the Publishing World 2017

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

There is a publishing industry. And there is a publishing world.

The Big 5 publishers, along with the Medium However Many, form the industry.

All of them, plus every self-publishing author, form the world.

Here in 2017, what does that world look like? Your humble correspondent now takes his shot.

Self-Publishing is Not Rodney Dangerfield

Back around 2010-2011, the internet was aflame with screeds arguing all sides of the self-publishing boom. Such jeremiads have mostly disappeared. But every now and then, like a California aftershock, we get a fulmination that rattles the furniture.

One such appeared recently in HuffPo, wherein author Laurie Gough referred to the self-publishing enterprise as “an insult to the written word.” As of this morning, the piece has well over 600 comments, and at least one solid “fisking.” What a stroll down Memory Lane! It was like the good old Joe Konrath-Barry Eisler blogosphere of yore.

Ms. Gough believes that “gatekeeping” is essential for the consumer. “Readers expect books to have passed through all the gates, to be vetted by professionals. This system doesn’t always work out perfectly, but it’s the best system we have.”

Is it? Sarah Nelson, Executive Editor at Harper Collins, seems to think so:

There will always be a market for good writing and storytelling, whatever the format, and there are always going to be “gatekeepers,” no matter how much people complain about them. In fact, the more self-published stuff that’s out there, the more imprints, the more books, the more regular people (i.e. people who buy books) are going to need a filter, a curator, a gatekeeper. Nobody can read everything, after all: people still want to hear what’s the best of the bunch.

Methinks this does not reflect how readers actually decide to plunk down their discretionary income. Almost always it’s by some form of word-of-mouth that a book is purchased. These days, word-of-mouth is not only by way of a friend, but also reader reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.

In other words, readers are the gatekeepers.

Besides, attempts to form some sort of new, official gatekeeping locale have been going on for years, without success. Remember Bookish? It started off as a joint venture between the (then) Big 6 publishers to create an Amazon-style footprint on the internet. This was back during the industry fight over Amazon’s increasing dominance, and before the Department of Justice stepped in to stop the brouhaha. In any event, Bookish did not catch on. There was simply not enough incentive or reason to latch onto a new form of “approval.”

Self-publishing continues to get a few slings and arrows from the establishment, but the force of the blows is largely spent. “With my dog,” Rodney Dangerfield once said, “I don’t get no respect. He keeps barking at the front door. He doesn’t want to go out. He wants me to leave.”

Well, self-publishing authors aren’t leaving. And those who keep producing and growing as writers, and who take a business-like approach, will fare nicely.

The Future of Print

Back in 2013 you could find fields of blooming blogsters predicting the imminent demise of traditional print publishing. (I was not one of them, likening trad-pub to the fighter who would not go down, Jake “Raging Bull” LaMotta.)

Last year Publishers Weekly wrote a story about the Codex Group’s April, 2016 survey of booksellers. The main finding was that “e-book units purchased as a share of total books purchased fell from 35.9% in April 2015 to 32.4% in April 2016. The Codex survey includes e-books published by traditional publishers and self-publishers and sold across all channels and in all categories.”

What was the cause of the decline (or stagnation, if you’re a half-full kind of person)? It might be “digital fatigue,” especially among the young—the future book buyers.

[T]hough book buyers stated they spent almost five hours of daily personal time on screens, 25% of book buyers, including 37% of those 18–24 years old, want to spend less time on their digital devices. Since consumers almost always have the option to read books in physical formats, they are indicating a preference to return to print … Overall, 14% of book buyers said they are now reading fewer e-books than when they started reading books in the format, and 59% percent of those who said they are reading fewer e-books cited a preference for print as the main reason for switching back to physical books. The share of print books purchased was also the highest among the heaviest screen users, the so-called digital natives, ages 18–24 (83%), and lowest (61%) among 55-to-64-year-olds.

That’s a bit of amazing, isn’t it? A few years ago all the old codgers were thinking this younger generation was going to be all digital, all the time. Apparently, the trend is the other way! Don’t those Millennials know how to listen to us?

And in another bit of print-preservation news, one of the original indie firebrands, Joe Konrath, announced a print-only deal with Kensington:

I’ve always known that I’m leaving money on the table because my books aren’t in brick and mortar stores. There are a whole lot of readers who shop at bookstores, airports, department stores, and convenience stores, and I’m not available in those outlets. My POD titles are $13-$17, which is pricey compared to my $4.99 ebooks. Wal-Mart won’t ever carry me. Neither will B&N.

This Kensington deal will let me reach an audience I haven’t reached since 2009.

So is this a portend of things to come for self-pubbed authors?

Kensington has shown themselves to be nimble and forward-thinking. I have yet to see any evidence that the Big 5 are smart enough to try something like this, save for that big Hugh Howey deal years ago. Writers waited for more opportunities like that (me included), and none happened.

It will indeed be interesting to see how this plays out. Kensington specializes in mass market editions, a segment of the industry that has been in steady decline. If Kensington can figure out a way to make it work for Konrath, maybe others will follow…but only those with significant ebook success, a la Joe.

Add one more datum, from the aptly named “Data Guy” (the mastermind, with Hugh Howey, behind the Author Earnings Reports). As quoted by Mr. Porter Anderson in the new Digital Book World white paper, Mr. Guy states, “Adult fiction sales in the US are nearly 71 percent digital now, and that is also the category where indie sales have made the deepest inroads: today, 30 percent of all US adult fiction book purchases are of titles self-published by indie authors.”

When it comes to fiction, then, E is eating away at P. And it is voracious.

And don’t let us forget about the fastest-growing medium for “reading” books: audio. According to one source, audio book downloads increased by a whopping 38.1 percent in 2015. An executive of Audible, Inc. is quoted in the story thus: “Audible members globally listened to 1.6 billion hours of audio content in 2015 (up from 1.2 billion in 2014).”

So A now encroaches on both E and P. That’s the alphabet soup of current publishing.

However, print will hang in there. As one editor told me, “Flat is the new up.” And there’s some good cheer for print in the mini-boom of independent bookstores. As Borders closed down and Barnes & Noble cut back, mom-and-pop bookstores started springing up. According to one report, 550 indie bookstores have opened since 2010. That makes me happy.

The Rise of Amazon Publishing, and How it Affects Indies

Amazon continues to expand its own imprint publishing program. They now have thirteen (13) imprints, ranging from mystery & suspense (Thomas & Mercer) to StoryFront, a venue for short fiction. Wow.

This expansion has been the subject of interest to many pure indie writers, who have reported a downward trend in their sales. John Ellsworth, for example, a bestselling legal thriller authors, wonders if APub is the major reason behind this decline.

Well, APub is an arm of the world’s largest bookstore, and therefore it makes sense that it would use the power of its algorithms to feature titles it publishes. It’s like front-of-store placement.

Amazon Publishing is turning out a high-quality product, and so will continue to expand. Heck, Amazon is even opening up physical bookstores to shelve them!

Writers, as the corks atop  the roiling sea of change, will continue to adjust. Indies are always experimenting with things like Kindle exclusivity versus “going wide.” There are also scads of startups who want to partner with authors for publication and distribution. All I can say to that is, caveat scriptor! Do your homework before signing over your life’s work. For while there are top-notch companies like Brach Books, there is also a cautionary tale in the shuttering (and withholding of royalties) by AllRomance.

Are We All Part of The Gas Lamp Industry Anyway?

The larger question is whether book publishing itself is in its last phase as a human enterprise. There was a need for gas lamplighters 120 years ago. Electricity killed that need. Human beings were out of jobs. Fast food franchises are moving to ordering kiosks, with more jobs lost.

Will the same thing happen to authors when AI starts churning out books? What Patterson does with co-writers now, AI will do by itself, a million times faster and perfectly tailored to the various market niches.

Hugh Howey predicts that AI will become “the holy grail for readers, the end of writing as a profession, and I give it anywhere from 50 – 200 years.”

Entire novels will be written from scratch by machines, a million novels spurting out in the blink of an eye, and they will be tailored to individual readers, win major awards, and be as sublime and moving as anything we’ve ever read before. We balk at the idea now, but just as manually driving a car will seem insane one day (unless on a closed track by daredevils with death wishes), a handwritten novel will also seem bizarre. Why do with long division what a calculator on our phone can do for us? Sure, people will still write, but very few will read these works. And the process will happen so gradually that hardly anyone will understand what has happened.

Sure, machines will try to take over. We’ll Sarah Connor them! And we’ll keep writing. Because what we do. Never despair over trends. We are the storytellers!

With apologies to Dylan Thomas, let me adapt his most famous poem for our purposes:

Do not go gentle onto that good page,
True writers burn and rave at gloomy news;
They type, and never think to disengage.

They know it’s hard to make a living wage.
But harder still it is to mute the Muse
Or keep their heart’s desire in a cage.

So writers, though they are of drinking age,
Will not allow surrender to the blues!
They’ll up the heat, and burst the pressure gauge!
They won’t go gentle onto that good page!

So what are your thoughts about the state of publishing-writing-print-reading these days? Any predictions for the year ahead? 

A Checklist For Writing A Great Ending

Posted on by

Jordan Dane
@JordanDane

I don’t always write a “happy” ending. In the romance genre, that’s called HEA, or happy ever after. My main goal is to stay true to my character(s) and motivation. The plot can spring from the flaws of a character or be influenced by those imperfections. Since I like conflict between my main characters, that can mean their happy ending doesn’t neatly happen by the end of the novel. I don’t want to force it or contrive an ending that doesn’t remain true to my character’s story arcs.

“Happy ever afters” are popular and even if you’re not a romance reader, a satisfying ending can be important, especially if it makes the reader feel good at the turn of the last page. But there’s nothing wrong with an ambiguous ending if it fits with your character and your world. An author writes the story he or she wants to tell.

A Checklist For Writing A Great Ending

1.) Tie up the loose ends – One of my final edit reviews is when I search for subplots and key elements to tie up to make a satisfying ending. If I introduced a DNA lab result earlier in the plot, did I bring the results in later? Are all my subplots resolved? Are all my character motivations justified enough? Nothing make a more hearty meal than a good, solid ending. Don’t leave loose ends.

Word of caution – Don’t tie up everything in one long character dialogue scene. This reminds me of the cheesy Charlie Chan movies or older Sherlock Holmes films where the hero regurgitates all the clues with answers. Try to be more subtle or break up the loose end tie-ins so it doesn’t feel too contrived. Another pet peeve of mine is the villain who feels compelled to answer all the detective’s questions on his motives, gloating. Break apart these disclosures and don’t turn your diabolical villain into a chatty girlfriend who wants to bear his or her soul. Find a more realistic way for these disclosures to come out in subsequent scenes when the investigators are closing their case.

2.) Restore the world even if it’s not perfect – Redemption at the end of a book can be good as well as uplifting. I like the idea of restoring the world that an author creates, but it doesn’t always have to be the same world. Crime affects people in a bad way and it radiates out like ripples on still water with many people affected—from the victim to the family survivors to cops investigating the case. Don’t be afraid to show the aftermath. A story can feel positive if the protagonist survives, but don’t be timid in portraying how much your character has been affected.

3.) Consider your series endings – There are many ways to end individual books within a series. You can have a major cliffhanger. You can hint or foreshadow something coming in the next installment. Or you can have each book end completely, yet have the growth and story lines of the characters weave a tapestry through your series. How an author develops a series (and the books within it) can be a conundrum. A key decision element might be if you plan on releasing each book back-to-back with a short period between book launches. Your readers won’t have to wait too long for each installment. But if you’re a new author and want a traditional house to consider your work to publish, unless the house is interested in buying the whole series, it might be better to write a more conservative ending without a major cliffhanger (in case the publisher doesn’t not buy the whole series).

4.) Do not clutter your ending with last minute conflicts – I would consider a last minute distraction or entanglement to be a cheat for the reader. When such a beast springs from the pages, a reader might sling your book at a wall with the contrivance. Give the reader an ability to solve the case on their own. They can’t do that if the author springs unexpected characters or plot twists that haven’t been introduced earlier. Many times I will have a certain twist in mind, but go back and lace in different clues in several spots so the reader can decipher the puzzle before the big reveal, but I never make it easy.

5.) Foreshadow a realistic future to come – If you don’t want to write a blatant romantic happy ever after, you can “hint” of a future for your characters. Often a forced romance or a contrived relationship can end with a marriage proposal that doesn’t “feel” real. But if the author foreshadows a more realistic relationship with the promise of a tomorrow, that might be enough for a reader to get the idea and feel positive about the ending.

 

6.) Stay true to your voice – If your author’s voice through the story is dark or starkly realistic, don’t explode pink glitter and unicorns all over your ending. A reader will feel betrayed by this. Whatever ending you choose for your character, make it realistic for the vibe of your book.

7.) Know your ending by genre or choose to be different – There’s always the exception to a general rule, but certain commercial genres have endings readers will expect. For example, an amateur sleuth will be expected to find who the killer is, or a romance relationship story will have the lovers together or with a future by the end. A thriller story will have the maniacal villain thwarted and the world restored. Not all successful stories follow this idea. I’ve written endings where the bad guy gets away with his crimes (Evil Without A Face & No One Left to Tell & No One Lives Forever), but if you dare to do this, you must have a reason (a potential teaser for a series) or a villainous character that the reader might accept such an ending.

8.) Don’t be afraid to explore ambiguous endings – If you’ve written a carefully plotted book that’s stays true to your character study, don’t be afraid to explore an ambiguous ending. A favorite book I read called The Piano Man by Marcia Preston is a women’s fiction book that has a realistic yet ambiguous ending. At first I wanted the ending to mean an HEA for the two main characters but that would’ve been a cheat. After I thought about it, the way it ended was perfect for the nature of the two characters and it was a beautiful story of two people whose lives crossed in a moment of tragedy. If the author gets the emotion right and the character motivation, there could be a variety of endings possible. Don’t be afraid to explore more than one ending that can add depth or a thought provoking conclusion.

 

Discussion:

1.) Have you ever written a forced ending that didn’t feel right to you? Did you correct it?

2.) What makes a good ending for you (as a reader or an author)?

3.) What are some of your favorite (most memorable) book endings? Were they happy endings or not?