The role of publicists in indie publishing

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Recently I received an email from a TKZ’er. He wanted to ask a follow-up question about our post discussing the Recomended Resource List for indie authors:

I have  a problem not addressed in your post–help with marketing. A clean  manuscript with a great cover means little without knowing how to  get the word out. I am more than willing to do my part in terms of  marketing my books, but as an older writer who isn’t savvy about  social networks, etc., I need someone in my corner. Can you offer  any suggestions or guidance? Thanks a lot.

I might not be the best person to address this topic since I haven’t used a publicist in a few years. But since the question came to me, I’ll give it a shot.

When I first signed my contract with a Big 6 Publisher a number of years back, I knew that the large publishers have in-house publicists who handle author promotion. But like many of you, I’d heard horror stories about new authors who’d been ignored, neglected, or otherwise left to rot on the vine by their in-house publicists. I decided to get proactive. I hired an independent publicist. The PR company I hired offered its publicity services “A La Carte”. Clients paid for a specified number of print interviews, broadcast interviews, book reviews, signings, speaking engagements, etc. I liked that approach.

Here’s what I got out of the experience of using a publicist, the good and the bad:

PRO

Reduced need for self-promotion
I don’t like selling myself. So I loved how the publicist freed me from the burden of arranging my own book signings and interviews. And so what if most of those interviews were with minor outlets in places like Kalamazoo? I was a newbie, so it wasn’t like I was expecting Oprah to be banging down my door.

Time saver
I had spent years writing my first book, and all of a sudden I had to adjust to the demand of producing another manuscript within nine months. Had I been left to my own devices, I probably wouldn’t have done a single promotional event that year.

Organization
The publicist kept everything on track for me, emailing me nifty little calendars with every event’s details outlined. 

Re-introduction to media

Even though I have a (distant) background in broadcasting, it was extremely helpful to do all those radio shows (plus the rare TV appearance). I was able to hone my “author act” during those events. And it was fun. I loved talking to overcaffeinated radio hosts during their drive-time morning shows. (Since I live on the West Coast, the timing meant I usually had to down a couple of Red Bulls to project enough peppy “author energy” at 4 a.m.)

TKZ dividend
When I decided to start a writing blog in 2008, I didn’t know many other writers. My publicist gave me the names of many of the writers who joined me in launching TKZ. I’ll always be grateful for that assist!

Con

Cost
The publicist’s services didn’t come cheap. It cost about $4,000 to have them arrange a semi-active calendar of book-related events. Considering that the average new author’s advance (for those who even get advances anymore) is somewhere in the neighborhood of $5,000 to $15,000, that’s a considerable chunk of change.

Bang for the Buck
Did all those paid-for radio interviews, book signings, and other events translate into increased book sales? There’s no way to know, frankly. I certainly felt like I was doing a lot to spread the word that year. But there’s no real way to judge the effectiveness of all that activity.

Final question: Are publicists useful for indie authors?
Could some of you here, legacy, indie, or some combination thereof, share your experiences with using a publicist? How do you think paid PR fits into the evolving indie publishing landscape?
And if you’ve had a positive experience with using an independent publicist, let us know in the comments. And if you’ve had a horror story about paying lots of money for little outcome, please share that as well. (Although it would probably make sense to omit the publicist’s name in that case!)

Note: I haven’t mentioned the name of the publicist I used in the past, only because I’m not sure how active she is in the industry anymore. If I get an update about her status, I’ll let you know.

Immerse Your Readers with Sensory Details

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by Jodie Renner, editor and author  

How often do you hear — or feel — about a rejected novel, “I just couldn’t get into it”? A story might have a great premise and plot, but if we “just can’t get into it,” we’ll put it down and look for another one.

What are some aspects of a novel that make you yawn, go “meh,” or start thinking about what else you could be doing? I would bet that most times it’s because the author hasn’t succeeded in engaging you emotionally, in effectively sucking you into their story world, making you feel like you’re right there with the characters.

I read for entertainment and escapism, so I want to lose myself in a novel, not be a detached observer of the characters and events. Don’t you?

In my editing of fiction, I sometimes see too much general, factual exposition (“info dumps”); or neutral, mostly visual description; or a page or more of straight dialogue (“talking heads”), with little or no indication of where the characters are, what they’re doing, what they’re seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, or tasting, or how they’re feeling/reacting to others and their environment.

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader – not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” ~ E. L. Doctorow

In order for your story and characters to come to life on the page, your readers need to be able see what the main character is seeing, hear what he’s hearing, and smell, taste and feel along with him.

And to empathize with and bond with the character, readers also need to see/feel her reactions and thoughts.

“If you write abstractions or judgements, you are writing an essay, whereas if you let us use our senses and form our own interpretations, we will be involved as participants in a real way.”  ~ Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction

So if you’ve written a half-page or more of nonstop dialogue, neutral information-sharing, or description that’s mainly visual, it’s time for some revisions.

To bring your scene and characters to life and engage the readers, evoke all or most of the five senses in almost every scene.

~ SIGHTS. Readers need to see what your viewpoint character sees: pertinent visual impressions of the scene and people around him. And best to include only relevant information, the things that character would actually notice in that scene. We don’t need a detailed description of everything in a room, for example — they’re usually too busy acting and reacting to study the room thoroughly.

Zoom in on some telling details, like smudges on a mirror, sweat on a brow, condensation on a glass, steam from a coffee cup, fists clenched, hands shaking, shoulders hunched, etc.

A small sampling of visual descriptors: glaring, faded, dim, bright, dingy, flashing, dazzling, blurred, sparkling, brilliant, flashy, radiant, shadowy, smudged, streaked, glistening, shiny, gaudy, gleaming, glittering, gloomy, glowing, hazy, misty, shimmering, streaked, twinkling, tarnished

Example of effective visual description:

“…people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.”
– Bleak House, by Charles Dickens

~ SOUNDS. We need to hear anything your POV character can hear, including tone of voice.

Some sound verbs: swish, rattle, crash, whack, crackle, gulp, slam, hoot, clatter, crunch, fizz, grind, gurgle, blare, chime, slap, chirp, chortle, thud, chuckle, clash, croak, rumble, croon, drone,  groan, howl, jangle, knock, ping, jingle, plop, roar, rustle, sizzle, slurp, thunk, tinkle, twang, whine, whistle

Example of sounds:

“…the storm came rattling over the Heights in full fury. … a huge bough fell across the roof, and knocked down a portion of the east chimney-stack, sending a clatter of stones and soot into the kitchen-fire.”
– Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte

~ SCENTS – anything that might be pertinent or bring the scene to life —fresh coffee, an apple pie baking, bacon frying, a suspicious chemical smell, fresh-cut grass, the stench of a dead body decomposing, etc.

Some possible descriptors for scent: musty, damp, stuffy, sweet, sickly, rank, spicy, acidic, perfumed, fetid, musky, suffocating, putrid, tantalizing, mouth-watering, noxious, sharp, foul, rancid, stinky, funky, pungent, piney

Example of smells:

“…they were crammed in a tiny apartment that smelled of burning rubber and foot odor.”
~  Holes by Louis Sachar

~ TOUCH . We should feel any relevant tactile sensations of the viewpoint character.

Some tactile sensations to consider: sticky, fuzzy, slimy, clammy, hairy, silky, smooth, rough, soft, hard, rigid, fluffy, starchy, crisp, corrugated, rippled, abrasive, cracked, tough, bristly, burning, cold, cottony, damp, dry, feathery, furry, gnarled, hot, knobbed, knotted, leathery, limp, lumpy, oily, puffy, ribbed, rubbery, sandy, sharp, smooth, velvety, wet

Example of touch:

“On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy.”
– Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens

~ TASTE.  Let us vicariously taste some of the things the character is eating or drinking.
Some descriptors for tastes: sour, bitter, oily, salty, acidic, spicy, fiery, sweet, rich, buttery, sugary, revolting, biting, fruity, full-bodied, gamy, gross, juicy, sharp, succulent, syrupy, tangy, tart, zesty, zingy

Example of taste:

“Slimy water that tasted like blenderized fishsticks slid down my throat.”
– Crown Me! by Kathryn Lay

So if you want to write riveting fiction (and who doesn’t?), don’t keep your readers at a distance, impassively reading the words on the page. Suck them right into your story world, your fictive dream, by making them feel like they’re right there with your character, like they are your character. Evoke sights, sounds, smells, and tastes from the readers’ own memory banks, which will trigger emotions. Scents especially bring back feelings and memories, which readers can draw upon to be active participants in your story.

And show us what the characters are thinking and feeling, too — their inner and outer reactions to what’s going on around them. All of this enhances the readers’ experience and deepens their emotional investment with your story.

Check out these related posts by Jodie: “Show Those Character Reactions” and Phrasing for Immediacy and Power” – State Cause before Effect, Action before Reaction, Stimulus before Response. And see James Scott Bell’s excellent post yesterday on drawing on your own memory bank of emotions to enhance your fiction.

Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction editor and the award-winning author of three craft-of-writing guides in her series An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: Captivate Your Readers, Fire up Your Fiction, and Writing a Killer Thriller. She has also published two clickable time-saving e-resources to date: Quick Clicks: Spelling List and Quick Clicks: Word Usage. You can find Jodie at www.JodieRenner.com, her blog, http://jodierennerediting.blogspot.com/, and on Facebook, Twitter.

Love, Loss and Emotion in Our Writing

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James Scott Bell

Her name was Susan and we were in the third grade. I saw her for the first time on the playground. She had blonde hair that was almost white, and eyes as blue as a slice of sky laid atop God’s light table.

She looked at me and I felt actual heat in my chest.

Remember that scene in The Godfather where Michael Corleone, hiding out in Sicily, sees Appolonia for the first time? His two friends notice the look on his face and tell him, “I think you got hit by the thunder bolt!”

When it happens to us at eight years old, we don’t exactly have a metaphor for it, but that’s what it was––the thunder bolt. Love at first sight!

I remember the ache I felt the rest of the day. My life had changed, divided into two periods (admittedly of not too lengthy duration)—before Susan and after Susan.

Now what? Having no experience with love, I wondered what the next step was supposed to be. How did love work itself out when your mom was packing your lunches and your allowance was twenty-five cents a week?

I’d seen The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn. He climbed up the vines to Maid Marian’s balcony. Was that a plan? Not in Woodland Hills, California, a suburb of mostly one-story, ranch-style homes. Clearly, the balcony strategy was out.

I had also seen the 1938 version of Tom Sawyer(I was getting most of my life lessons from movies and Classics Illustrated comic books) and was enamored of his love for Becky Thatcher. And what had Tom done to impress Becky? Why, he showed off, of course.

There was my answer. I would show off in front of Susan.

What was I good at? Kickball. Athletic prowess would be my ticket into Susan’s heart. So out on the playground I made my voice loud and clear when I came up for my kicks. Susan was usually nearby playing foursquare.

And every now and then we’d make eye contact. That’s when I’d kick that stupid ball all the way to the fence.

Yet I was shy, afraid to talk to her directly. I mean, what was I going to say? Want to see my baseball cards, baby? How about joining me for a Jell-O at lunch? Hey, that nurse’s office is really something, isn’t it?

Flummoxed, I thought of Susan for weeks without ever exchanging a word with her.  She had no problem with that, it seemed. But she knew I liked her. The rumor mill at school was a fast and efficient communication system. Which only made me more embarrassed.

I considered running away and joining the circus, but my parents were against it.

Then one day circumstances coalesced and the stars aligned.

School was out and kids were heading for the gates to walk home or get picked up. I usually went out the front gate. Susan went out the back, and this day I fell in with that company and quickened my pace to get next to her. Heart pounding, I said something suave like, “Hi.” I don’t recall that she said anything, but at once I found we were side by side, walking down the street.

I started talking about our teacher, Mr. McMahon, who was tall and imposing and a strict disciplinarian (thus, in hallways and safely out on the playground, we referred to him, in whispered tones, as “Mr. McMonster.”)

Susan said nothing. I started to get more confident. Maybe, just maybe, she was interested in what I had to say. And maybe, just maybe, oh hope of all hopes, she actually liked me back.

All of that showing off was about to pay dividends!

And then came one of those moments you never forget, that scorch your memory banks and leave a permanent burn mark. Susan turned to me and spoke for the first time. And this is what she said:

“Just because I’m walking with you doesn’t mean you’re my boyfriend.”

It was the way she said boyfriend that did it. It dripped with derision and perhaps a bit of mockery. If I could have found a gopher hole I would have dived in, hoping for a giant subterranean rodent to eat me up and end my shame.

This all happened fifty years ago, yet I can still see it, hear it and feel it as if it were last week.

Is that not why some of us are writers? To create scenes that burn like that, with vividness and emotion, rendering life’s moments in such a way as to let others experience them?

Even if it’s “only entertainment,” the emotional connection that takes us out of ourselves is something we need. “In a world of so much pain and fear and cruelty,” writes Dean Koontz in How to Write Best Selling Fiction, “it is noble to provide a few hours of escape.” And the way into that escapism is to create emotional moments that are real and vibrant and sometimes even life-altering.

The best way to do that is to tap into our own emotional past andtranslate moments for fictional purposes. Like an actor who uses emotion memory to become a character, we can take the feelings we’ve felt and put them into the characters we create on the page.

Thus, Susan was part of my becoming who I am and how I write.

So Susan, my first love, wherever you are, thank you. Maybe I wasn’t your boyfriend, but you taught me what it’s like to love and lose. I can use that. All of life is material!

I hope you’re well. I hope you’ve found true and lasting love, like I have. I want you to know I hold you no ill will.

But always remember this: I’m still the best kickball player you ever saw.

Inspiration on Two Wheels

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By Mark Alpert

I used to bike in Central Park, but it got too crowded. The tourists, so blessedly oblivious, don’t look where they’re going. They step into the bike path, gawking at everything except the cyclist bearing down on them. You can try yelling, “Watch out!” but it never works. It only startles them. They stand there in the middle of the path with their eyes wide open and their mouths agape. After experiencing several near-collisions, I realized I was fighting a losing battle. So I started biking in Riverside Park instead.

The bike path in Riverside runs next to the Hudson. I ride about five miles north, from 72nd Street to the George Washington Bridge, then turn around. There are good views of the river and the Palisades on the New Jersey side. I can outrace the barges when they’re moving against the current (which sometimes goes north, sometimes south, depending on the tides). If I’m riding during rush hour, I blow past the cars stuck in traffic on the West Side Highway. And sometimes, if I’m lucky, I find inspiration. Herman Melville was right: New Yorkers are obsessed with the water surrounding their city. “Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries.”

Last May I saw a corpse lying on the strip of grass between the bike path and the river. It was a Saturday evening and I was exhausted because I’d just gone fifty miles instead of my usual ten. My son’s baseball team (the New York Gothams, hooray!) had traveled to a tournament in Demarest, New Jersey, that morning, and I’d had the bright idea of biking there to watch the game. It didn’t look that far on the map. All I had to do was cross the George Washington Bridge and go up the bike path in Palisades Interstate Park. Suffice it to say, my knees were in great distress by the time I re-crossed the bridge and returned to the city. I just wanted to get home and lie down for the next 24 hours. But as I neared the part of Riverside Park that’s unofficially set aside for weekend barbecues (between 145th and 155thstreets, approximately) I saw a crowd of people standing around a heavyset, middle-aged African-American man who lay supine and motionless on the grass. There were several cops in the crowd but no paramedics. That’s a bad sign, I thought as I sped past. No one in the crowd knelt beside the supine man to give him CPR. They just stared at the body and kept their distance. My suspicions were confirmed a moment later when I saw a van marked MEDICAL EXAMINER parked about fifty feet farther down the path. I checked the newspapers the next day and didn’t find any mention of a homicide, so the man must’ve died from natural causes. Still, it freaked me out. Although I’ve finished off scads of unlucky characters in my novels, I haven’t seen more than half a dozen corpses in my life.

In August, Riverside Park gave me another piece of macabre inspiration, although I didn’t witness this incident firsthand. I read a newspaper story about a pack of muggers who’d strung a rope across the bike path, just south of the George Washington Bridge. They waited until they saw an expensive Cannondale bike come down the path, and then they pulled the rope taut to clothesline the cyclist, knocking him off the bike. He wasn’t badly hurt, but the muggers took his Cannondale, as well as his iPhone and the five hundred dollars he was carrying.

My first reaction to the story: Well, that could never happen to me. The victim was biking at 11 p.m. and I would never ride that late. Plus, no mugger would want to steal my bike because it’s a rusty, twenty-year-old piece of crap. And why the hell was the guy carrying so much money?

This reaction is so typically New York. Whenever anything bad happens in this city, we try to distance ourselves from it. We say to ourselves, “That guy got in trouble because he was an idiot. And I’m not an idiot, right?”

Just a few weeks later, another local news item shattered my complacency. An emotionally disturbed homeless man wielding a pair of scissors went on a rampage in Riverside Park near 65th Street. He slashed two joggers, a dog-walker, and a father pushing his two-year-old in a stroller. A bystander wrestled the man to the ground before he could attack anyone else. Luckily, no one was killed. My first reaction to the story: Thank God for New York’s gun-control laws. The carnage would’ve been a lot worse if the assailant had been carrying a semiautomatic.

It was much more difficult for me to distance myself from this crime. It happened at eight in the morning, less than a mile from my home. I could so easily see myself standing in the shoes of the father, throwing my body between the disturbed man with the scissors and the two-year-old in the stroller. I know that New York’s parks are, on average, very safe; that’s why the incidents got so much ink in the newspapers, because they were anomalies. Crime rates in New York have plunged to record lows over the past twenty years. Nevertheless, I felt a mixture of fear and fascination. And as we all know, those emotions are good fodder for thrillers.

Maybe I’ll start a novel with a scene in Riverside Park. “He didn’t see the rope until it snapped up to his neck.” “He didn’t realize he’d been stabbed until he saw the hole in his jacket.” Or maybe not. I’ll think about it some more the next time I go biking.

First Page Critique – A Game of Days

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Jordan Dane
@JordanDane
 
For your reading enjoyment, we have “A Game of Days,” another first page critique entry from an anonymous author. My comments on the flip side. Enjoy.

Purchased image from Shutterstock by Jordan Dane

 
I kicked a piece of loose gravel down the street.

Buzz punched my arm and frowned. “Get over it. It was a history quiz, for crying out loud. A quiz!”

Spencer nudged me in the ribs, a sly hint of a grin on his face. “Yeah, Jackson. B minus is a decent grade from Camilla the Hun. There are kids in Africa who would be thrilled to have that grade.”

I stopped walking. “The point is, she told us the quiz was tomorrow. I had a paper due today in biology, so I didn’t study. It’s like she lied to us.”

Spencer stared at me. “No, she didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“She didn’t say the test was tomorrow.”

I frowned. “Did.”

Spencer crossed his arms. “Didn’t.”

“Yes, she did. You write it in your notebook when she said it.” I spun Spencer around, and dug through his backpack.

“Hey!”

“Hold still.” I fished out a dog-eared blue notebook with the word HISTORY surrounded by Spencer’s cartoon vikings and knights battling on the cover and opened it to the last page. Spencer’s eyes crossed as I shoved it under his nose. “Read it.”

He took a step back to focus his eyes. “But—”

“Read it.”

He shrugged. “History test Monday. Study or take the consequences. Mwha-ha-ha—”

“No way.” I flipped it over. Spencer’s cartoon lettering stretched across the top of Friday’s history notes.

“This is wrong. She wrote it on the board.”

Buzz snapped her gum hard. “Did you write it down?”

“No, but—”

“Then you got it wrong, Einstein.” She riffled through her own backpack and came up with a small calendar. “History test Monday. Read ’em and weap.”

“Didn’t,” I growled, kicking another rock.

“Look, Jackson. Maybe you should forget about history anyway and be a doctor like your dad. History’s just old news.”

I stared at Spencer while he shifted back and forth. “After what we’ve been through, you can say that?.”

“It’s just not meant to be changed, Jackson. You know what I mean.” He glanced nervously at Buzz. She didn’t meet my eyes.

The time piece hung smooth and warm against my skin under my T-shirt. Never to be used, never to be lost. It was almost like they didn’t trust me, and the feeling hovered in the air, unspoken.

“I’m not going to use it. I wouldn’t do that.”
 
My Critique:
 
WHAT I LIKED – This reads like a Young Adult book since the characters here are high school aged kids. I liked the natural banter between them and the line about “kids in Africa” brought a smile. The description of Spencer’s notebook with its cartoon drawings and lettering was vivid. I also loved the snap of Buzz’s gum. I know how hard it is to juggle three teen voices in one scene and the author made this look effortless. Kudos.
 
There is an intriguing plot about a time piece that Jackson has in his possession that can alter time. Time travel? We don’t know, but the premise of kids being in control of time can be intriguing. Their limited understanding of the risks and ramifications of abusing the time piece could make for a compelling read.
 
The intriguing premise reminded me of a YA book I read and enjoyed – Thirteen Days to Midnight by Patrick Carman. A boy by the name of Jacob has a power transferred to him by his mysterious foster father when the man says, “You are indestructible” at the moment they are in a horrific car crash. Jacob survives. His foster father saved him by dying and transferring his power to be indestructible. Jacob slowly reveals his secret of invulnerability to his two closest friends and experiments with his ability to transfer that same power to them. Ophelia, a gutsy and daring new girl in town (who Jacob has a crush on), suggests they can use his gift for good—that they all can share it. You can imagine how the story ends. Loads of conflict and the experimentation of kids who aren’t thinking about the risk of changing the course of people’s lives…and their own. This book was a YALSA pick for Reluctant Readers.
 
Bottom line is that I see potential in this story for a touch of kid humor as well as a lesson learned with plenty of conflict. Below are my suggestions for areas to improve.
 
Suggestions:
 
1.) CHOICE OF STARTING POINT – The biggest issue I have with this opener is that the banter of a quiz detracts from the mystery we see only slightly at the end. I would think there could be a more intriguing start to this, to incorporate the time piece into the story faster. How does Jackson get his hands on this time piece? The story hints at a time it was used before. That could make a better place to start. If kids had a time piece where they could go back and change things, I can imagine tons of fun (seemingly harmless) ways for them to test their abilities in the beginning, until the power of this gift goes to their heads and everything turns dark.
 
2.) WRITING STYLE – The writing style is very sparse. Normally that is not a bad thing, but this is almost too sparse for me to get a sense of where they live and a more vivid setting. Small town Americana or urban ghetto, the setting can really help define this story. But overall, I really like this author’s voice for YA. The story needs more layers in voice to make it more commercial in my opinion.
 
3.) OPENING LINE – The opening line isn’t memorable. I can see Jackson kicking gravel down the street to demonstrate frustration over the quiz, but the opening sense of any book should be more memorable to draw the reader into the story.
 
4.) TYPOS – In the dialogue line “You write it in your notebook when she said it” should be past tense. The word WRITE should be WROTE. The word “weep” is misspelled as “weap.” In addition, there is an extra period after a question mark at the end of the line, “After what we’ve been through, you can say that?” Reading your work aloud can help catch some of these typos, along with following your spell check cues. Spell check would catch the punctuation errors also.
 
5.) ADVERBS/PASSIVE VOICE – Kudos to the author for having so few of these, but I wanted to point out a warning about LY words, like “nervously.” The way the sentence is written, with one guy staring at Buzz who won’t meet his eyes, conveys their nervousness, without the embellishment. An example of passive voice is the last line, “I’m not going to use it.” This sounds like a kid, so I am a bit forgiving when it comes to the use of passive in dialogue since people talk this way naturally, but the sentence would read stronger like this, “I won’t use it.” The stronger line makes Jackson sound stronger as a character.
 
6.) EMBEDDED DIALOGUE LINES – I’ve seen authors do this lately, but as a reader, I prefer to have dialogue on their own lines and not embedded within a paragraph. The eye naturally looks for dialogue lines and white space on the page. Heavy, long paragraphs and embedded dialogue lines don’t give the eye relief and make it harder to follow. I’d like to hear people’s opinion of this, but I like seeing my dialogue lines in the open.
 
7.) GESTURES/TAG LINES – The author does a pretty good job of not tagging the dialogue lines with names and pronouns, but in place of tags of who says what, there are plenty of gestures that attribute the line to certain speakers. There are repeated gestures – two “frowned” and two “stared.” By the end of the book, words like “shrugged,” “crossed arms” and “growled” could add up. My suggestion would be to find a balance of gestures to tag lines, or make the dialogue more distinctive between the main characters.
 
Thanks to the author who submitted their work. The start to any story is hardest for me. I revise this part a lot. There have been times when I started a book in one spot before I realized I needed a Prologue of an earlier event that fueled the plot and became my new punchy beginning – or I write more than one start to see which one I like best. Beta readers can help give feedback on whether a beginning works. Good luck with this project, author!
 
What do you think of “A Game of Days,” TKZers?

First-page critique x 2

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By Joe Moore
@JoeMoore_writer

Today we present 2 first-page submissions– sort of a buy one, get one free or 2 for the price of one. You get the idea. My comments follow each.

CHAPTER 1.O

They say bad things happen fast but good things take forever, like saving up a hundred dollars one penny at a time.

I don’t know about that. Looking back it seems more like a cartoon avalanche that started with a pebble that hit a stone that hit a rock that hit a boulder that just buried me and everybody and everything I knew and loved.

Knowing what I know now I can see that it wasn’t a series of unconnected random events; even if that’s what they had meant for it to look like. Everything had been meticulously planned months – or maybe years – in advance.

They had contingency plans and had contingencies for contingencies.

The only thing they hadn’t counted on was Bill.

I like this one, particularly the voice. Although it’s short and there’s no sense of place or time, I know that the narrator is in trouble. “They” caused something bad to happen to him/her and others. There’s not a lot to pick at because it is so short. But I would definitely keep reading.

Friday, 3:08 am

Dan Taylor sat in the wingback chair next to his bed, watching the quietly dreaming form of his wife in the darkness. The pale sheets rose and fell ever so slightly as she breathed. Dreaming of starting a family, he was sure. Maybe that had been possible when they were living in Camden, but he couldn’t allow it now. Not until he felt safe in his work. He just wasn’t sure how to tell her that yet.

He hadn’t slept well since they moved to North Carolina. Vicki told him countless times how much she liked living in his hometown. She seemed really happy. He still hadn’t figured out how to tell her that he wasn’t. Not at all.

To be fair, Raleigh was a nice town. Always had been. And he had to admit that finally making detective at 33 was a relief.

Still, he left a lot of personal demons behind when he moved away. Every night for the last two weeks, they invaded his dreams to remind him they were still here. Lurking. The only solace he could take was that Vicki thought he slept as well as she did at night.

If only.

Glancing out the window, he watched the ghosts of past mistakes dance before him. Long gone, but still alive in his mind’s eye. He saw the anger, the handkerchief.

The blood.

He shut his eyes, but the images only became clearer. Too long ago, he thought. I should be over this. What the hell was he thinking, coming back here?

The blare of his cell phone in the stillness made him jump. He lurched for it, his pinky finger banging on the edge of the table. His eyes flashed at the sharp jab of pain. He bit his lip to stay quiet, involuntarily shaking the injured hand.

The phone rang again and Vicki twitched, groaned from somewhere in the depths of her slumber. He picked up the cell to keep it from waking her.

“You asleep, kid?”

Kid. Mark Harris, his partner, insisted on calling him that. Dan glanced at the face of his alarm clock, shining blue in the early morning darkness. He grimaced.

“Harris, it’s three o’clock,” he whispered. He considered going in the other room, but watching Vicki sleep was calming. Dan needed that calm right now.

OK, the good news is that I see this as strong writing. I feel the narrator’s pain. I have a vivid sense of place. I am aware of his mental and emotional tension including the conflict of family planning between the cop and his wife. Within a few sentences, I believe he is a three-dimensional character. There’s a wonderful sprinkling of backstory without explaining anything or slowing us down. And of course the proverbial call to action. We know there’s a dark past and more bad things are coming. We’ve been given a quick setup and now we’re ready. We read on.

Now the bad news. I’ve seen or read this central casting setup more times than I care to remember. Although it’s written well, it’s a cliché. There’s nothing fresh or unique or different here. Still, I see an excellent writer at work and would keep reading.

Thanks to both brave authors for submitting their work. Good luck to you both.

How about the rest of you Zoners? Any thoughts?

Transitions: Building bridgesbetween your plot islands

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Put on your waders because we’re going deep into the fiction-writing bulrushes today. I want to talk about one of my favorite micro-topics — transitions. Actually, maybe it’s quicksand we’re wading into, because if your book doesn’t have good transitions, it can sink faster than Janet Leigh’s ’57 Ford in Psycho.
We talk a lot here at TKZ about how important pacing is, and transitions go along way to creating that seamless narrative flow you need as your story shifts in time, location, or point-of view. But here’s the thing: Transitions look easy but they can be tricky to get right.
I think I dwell on transitions so much because I work with a co-author. Kelly and I write our books by talking out the plot then writing alternating chapters. So we don’t have the normal one-brain flow of a unified writing procedure. We always know the purpose of each chapter but often we write with no clear idea of what the links between the chapters will be. Sometimes we just leave red-ink pleas like this for each other —INSERT BETTER ENDING HERE — then we deal with links in rewrites.
I used to think this was nuts but then I read an interview with Katherine Anne Porter wherein she described her writing process as “creating scene islands” and “building bridges” between them. This gave me great comfort, knowing I could approach writing like a good engineer. Getting my chapters to flow became akin to making the long journey to Key West. 

It also made me think that maybe the island-bridge analogy is useful for those of you who work alone. Because the scene (and by extension chapter) is the terra firma of your plot structure and once you have that solid you can always go back and figure out the best ways to move between those plot clots. A consistent problem I see with critique manuscripts is that the writer often doesn’t know where to end a chapter for maximum impact. And that leads to not knowing where to pick up the next one. It is helpful, I think, for writers who struggle with this to concentrate on figuring out what the MAIN PURPOSE of each scene/chapter is, write that plot clot, and then fine tune the bridges later. I’ve often found that if I just keep telling the story — even if that means sticking in some really pedestrian transition just to keep moving forward — that when I go back later in rewrites the perfect transition jumps out at me.

So what exactly is a transition? Well, there are all kinds. Most are straightforward and literal; some are complex and sophisticated. But all good transitions do one thing: They strengthen the internal logic of your story by moving readers from idea to idea, scene to scene, and chapter to chapter with grace and ease. I’m going to move the lens out here and just talk about chapter transitions for now. Here’s some of the ones I’ve identified. Maybe you guys have some others?
Time Transition: This is when you want to move forward (or occasionally backward) in time with your story. These are pretty workmanlike but very useful in that they simply bridge time from your previous scene. (Unless noted, all examples here are from our latest book HEART OF ICE).

Chapter 4

It was nearly three by the time Louis met Flowers at the docks.

Chapter 7

Just over an hour later, Dagliesh had left the headland and was driving west along A1151. (P.D. James)

A word about time stamps. These are the tags you see at chapter beginnings ie “Sunday” or “November 1967” or even just “Later that day.” I have a slight bias against time stamps because too often they are a cop-out by a writer who can’t figure out how to gracefully weave time changes in the narrative. But sometimes you really need them, especially thriller writers who work on big canvases. If your story is happening at two different times, time stamps help the reader move between the threads, i.e. “New Orleans, 1855” or “Kabul 1999.” In his thriller The Phoenix Apostles, our own Joe Moore (with Lynn Sholes) pin-balls between Mexico, the Bahamas, Paris in present time and Reno, Washington D.C. and even 1899 Chicago. Without his time/location stamps we’d be lost!

Time/location tags can be pretty elaborate. In her complex novel about 9/11, Absent Friends, S.J. Rozan weaves multiple narratives together by using tags like so:

 PHIL’S STORY
Chapter Six
___
The Invisible Man
Steps Between You and the Mirror

This is grad school stuff; Rozan knows what she’s doing. Another good use of time stamps is found in Gone Girl. Gillian Flynn must find a way to bring the missing wife Amy to life so Flynn alternates the husband Nick’s present-day narrative with his wife’s diary entries, all clearly marked with time/name stamps.

Point of View Transition: When you move between characters, you could just pick up with the new character’s voice. But the flow can be enhanced if you find a way to subtly link them. Here is Louis talking to a police chief about the abandoned hunting lodge where they just found old bones at the end of Chapter 6:

“Nobody comes here. It’s just a broken down old dump,” the chief said.
Louis shook his head. “No, it’s important. It’s his Room 101.”
“What?”
“It’s from Orwell…1984.”
“Never read it.”
Flowers moved away and Louis looked back at the lodge. He could still recall the exact quote from the book – maybe because it reminded him of things in his foster homes he wanted to forget.
The thing in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.

Chapter 7

There were thousands of them. Small, black jelly-bean creatures crawling around the plastic bin, piggybacking one another to get to that one last shred of meat on the bone.
The beetle larvae were hungry today.
This skull would be ready by nightfall.
Danny Dancer made sure the lid was secure on the bin and left the room.

By using the Orwell “room” quote we tried to lead the reader to the horror of what they were about to see in Danny Dancer’s room. Change of POV but bridged with purpose.

Continued Narrative Transition: Here, the story simply continues from what came in previous chapter. The main artistic choice you makeis how much time elapses between scenes. It can be minutes, days or years. Here’s John Sandford ending Chapter 14:

“He tried to hang Spivak, for Christ’s sake,” Lucas said, exasperated.
“That was just part of the job,” Harmon said. “You can understand that.”

Chapter 15

Lucas couldn’t. He got off the phone, breathing hard for a few minutes, backed off the gas.

Sometimes, the continued narrative transition can be deep in a character’s pysche. Here’s a nice transition  from Jeff Lindsay’s Dearly Devoted Dexter at the end of chapter 10:

The only reason I ever thought about being human was to be more like him.

Chapter 11

And so I was patient. Not an easy thing, but it was the Harry thing.

The thing with this transition is that you the writer have to make calculated decisions on where to pick up the action  and what you can leave out in the lapse. Say you end a chapter with a cop getting a call at home to come to a  crime scene. Where do you pick up the thread? Do you show him strapping on the gun, getting in the car, walking up to the yellow tape? Or is it more effective to begin the next chapter with “As Nick took his first look at the woman’s body, he realized with a start he had seen her face before.” Here’s exactly such a passage from Val McDermid’s splendid A Place of Execution:

End of Chapter 11

The door to the caravan burst open and Grundy stood in the framed doorway, his face the bloodless grey of the Scardale crags. “They’ve found a body,” he said.

Chapter 12

Peter Crowther’s body was huddled in the lee of a dry-stone wall three miles due south of Scardale as the crow flies. It was curled in on itself in a fetal crouch, knees tucked up to the chin. The overnight frost that had turned the roads treacherous had given it a sugar coating of hoar.

Action/Reaction Transition: When you have a juicy action scene it can be very effective to break at just after the action peak and open next chapter with a character-focused reaction: Here is the end of our chapter 17, an ambush where Chief Flowers gets shot.

“Clear! We’re clear! Get the ambulance in here now!”
Louis’s heart was finally slowing but he still had to blink to clear his head. Joe was kneeling by Flowers, and from somewhere down the dirt road sirens wailed.
He heard a whimper and looked down at Danny Dancer. The bastard was crying. Curled up like a baby and crying.

 Chapter 18

How could he have been so stupid? He knew that anyone who showed an abnormal interest in a crime scene was someone who needed to be treated with suspicion.
Yet he had allowed Flowers, who was blind to the idea that anyone on his island could be a cold-blooded murderer, walk into a crazy man’s line of fire.

At beginning of Chapter 18, an hour has elapsed and Louis is waiting in the hospital as Flowers lays dying. We chose this transition because the “quiet” moment of Chapter 18 provides relief for the reader after the tension of the ambush, much like letting you catch your breath after the steep drop of a roller coaster. It’s all about pacing.

Descriptive Transition: This is another way to alter your pacing. Say you had a explaining-the-case chapter with heavy dialogue between investigators. It’s often effective then to go from staccato to legato and open the next chapter with a descriptive passage. And yes, you can use weather — in moderation!  It is also a good way of telling your readers where we are. I’m of the mind that description transitions should only be used early in your story because they can slow things down too much once your plot-engine gets really chugging. UNLESS, like Joe Moore, you are globe-hopping, and then a well-honed location description can be a sturdy bridge. Here’s Elaine Viets in Murder With Reservations, opening chapter 3 with a description that also slips in some protag’s backstory:

Helen grew up in St. Louis, where houses were redbrick boxes with forest green shutters. To her, the Coronado Tropic Apartments were wrapped in romance. The Art Deco building was painted a wildly impractical white and trimmed an exotic turquoise. The Corondado had sensuous curves. Palm trees whispered to purple waterfalls of bougainvillea. 

Echo Transition: This is a nifty little device wherein you end a chapter stressing a certain word then use that word again as your bridge to the next. It’s like a grace note in music. Lee Child is a master of this and here’s the end of his chapter 6:

“You have to do something.”
“I will do something. Believe it,” Reacher said. “You don’t throw my friends out of helicopters and live to tell the tale.”
Neagley said, “No, I want you to do something else.”
“Like what?”
“I want you to put the old unit back together.”

 Chapter 7

The old unit. It had been a typical Army intervention. About three years after the need for it had become blindingly obvious to everyone else, the Pentagon had started to think about it.

The Parallel Transition: This can be really cool but if you whiff on it, it just looks like you’re showing off. This is used when you are shifting POV’s. It is conscious repetition of an idea, image or symbol between two chapters. Like the Echo Transition, it creates an almost musical connection in the reader’s mind, like a good hook in pop music. And it doesn’t always come at the end/beginning of chapters. Here’s the first paragraph of Chapter 1 of our thriller A Killing Song. We are in the killer’s POV in Paris as he watches his next victim:

He couldn’t take his eyes off her. The last rays of the setting sun slanted through the stained glass window over her head, bathing her in a rainbow. He knew it was just a trick of light, that the ancient glass makers added copper oxide to make the green, cobalt to make the blue, and real gold to make the red. He knew all of this. But still, she was beautiful.

Here is the opening of chapter 2, from the protagonist’s POV as he watches his sister dancing in a Miami Beach nightclub:

I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. Maybe it was because I hadn’t seen her in two years and in that time she had passed through the looking glass that separates girls from women. Whatever it was, Mandy was beautiful and I couldn’t stop staring.

This was a calculated thing for us because the book’s theme is partly about the two men whose lives spiral out of control and the fine line between violence that is driven inward and outward. (And yes, we mixed first and third POV but that’s a different post for another day.)

Two last thoughts about building bridges. First, transitions are just a tool, a part of your writer’s technique, and as such you can learn to use them with flair and confidence. Study writers you admire. Go grab a book and open to the blank spots between chapters. Then analyze how the writer has moved through time and space, how he has bridged the gaps between his chapters. You’ll find that most of the time, the best writers adhere to the golden rule: KISS. They keep it simple, stupid. Which leads me to my last thought:

 Don’t over-think this. Resist the urge to build this:

When all you need is this:

Your first job as storyteller is to just keep the reader moving between your islands. You don’t want them to stop and admire turrets, filigree and gargoyles. More often than not, a sturdy little span is the best way across.

First Page Critique – A Rose to Love

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Here is today’s first page critique – ‘A Rose to Love’

My comments and feedback follow.


    “So, what’s she like?” Will asked as he took a sugar packet and stirred it into his coffee. They were sitting in a booth in the Coffee House next door to their private detective agency.
    Jesse, tapping on his laptop keyboard, barely looked up. “What’s who like?”
    “You know.” Will narrowed his eyes and leaned forward in the booth. “The woman who’s moving into the apartment upstairs. What’s her name again? And doesn’t she move in today?”
    Jesse took a sip of his coffee before replying. “Guinevere Russo and yes. She should be here any time now.”
    “So, what’s she like?” Will raised his eyebrows meaningfully.
    “I don’t know. I haven’t met her. I only did a background check on her.”
    “I thought that was the whole point of a background check.” Will had learned long ago to never doubt Jesse’s thoroughness. Because of his expertise, their clientele included several lawyers, various businesses and even the police departments in and around Chicago. Not only was Jesse expert at background checks, he was amazing at finding people who didn’t want to be found. 
    Jesse sighed and looked up from his laptop. “Yes, but sometimes, even with the best and deepest background checks, there are surprises.” In their detective agency, Jesse handled the ‘cyber-investigations’ and Will did the more ‘hands-on’ field work. His expertise was in noticing details about people and at crime scenes. They were a good team. Jesse helped Will to become more savvy on the Internet and Will got Jesse out of the office for surveillance work, on-site crime scene investigation, and other jobs that required two sets of eyes.  
    “Nah, you’re too good.” Will dismissed Jesse’s reservations. The man even did some work for the FBI and CIA. Will doubted there would be too many surprises. His partner was just very cautious. “So, is she pretty?”
    Jesse’s eyes widened and then he frowned. Will couldn’t tell if he had touched a nerve or if the man was distracted by whatever he was doing on his laptop. He tapped at his computer some more before replying. “No, she’s not pretty, not like Hollywood pretty. She’s …” He looked up at the ceiling then back at his laptop. “She’s beautiful, but that doesn’t mean much.”
    In all the years he had known Jesse, Will had never heard him describe a woman as beautiful. This should be interesting. 


         My comments:


    First of all, I’m proceeding on the assumption (based on both the title and this first page) that this is a work of romantic suspense. 

    My initial feeling, reading this first page, was that it was the start of a pretty clear (and possibly all too predictable) ‘set-up’ for a romance. Although I thought the style worked well – the sentences are lucid and the back story introduced succinctly and successfully – there wasn’t much in the way of real suspense. Not enough at least to get me intrigued from the get go. The fact that Jesse was a background checker extraordinaire who had never described a woman as beautiful wasn’t quite enough – at least for me. 

    The strength of this as a first page, however, is definitely in the writing style (I liked the fact it was clear and cleanly written). However, I needed more ambiguity and tension to feel compelled by the story. To me this page read more like a romance and less like a mystery/thriller/suspense novel. The fact that Will and Jesse own a private detective agency suggests that this book will involve both romance and suspense – so I think a first page needs to balance both elements to succeed. I also was a little confused as to why they felt the need to do a thorough tenant background check on the person  moving into the upstairs apartment – sounded like overkill unless there’s something more to the story than on the page. 

    It could be that the author needs to start the book off at a different point in time – perhaps when Jesse first sees Guinevere Russo and suspects there’s something that the background check missed. We need something that shocks, disrupts or at least throws us off guard as readers. We need to be shown, not told, that there’s something intriguing as well as beautiful about the new tenant upstairs. As Jim is always saying, the explanations can come later…

    BTW- One little nitpicking quibble – Coffee House should only be capitalized if this is actually its name – otherwise just coffee house… 

    So TKZers what’s your feedback on this as a first page?

    Supercharge your NaNoWriMo Novel With One, Simple Exercise

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    NaNoWriMo is in the air! The crisp bite of the breeze, the

    vibrations of leaves in trees, the upward tick in sales of books about how to write a novel in a month—can the sound of keyboards clacking like Flamenco dancers on Red Bull be far behind?

    Yes, it’s time once again for National Novel Writing Month. Each November, writers around the world commit to writing a 50,000 word novel in one month (an average of 1,666.6667 words a day). It’s a blast, a communal expression of the love of writing fiction. And a kick in the pants to produce the words and not sit around Starbucks all day talking about writing a novel someday.
    I’ve written before on how to get ready for NaNoWriMo. Today, I want to offer a simple exercise that will keep you from merely producing scenes without any coherence, which is the big challenge in this hard-charging contest. (I also commend to you an excellent post by Lisa Cron over at Writer Unboxed).
    I call this exercise “Because…”
    It has two parts. First, you hone your basic plot into a single sentence. Then, you add a “because” clause which explains what’s at stake.
    Your plot sentence consists of an adjective, a noun and a verb clause (the action). Thus:
    Gone With the Wind is about a Southern belle who has to fight to save her home during the Civil War.
    Die Hardis about a New York cop who has to save a building full of people from a gang of ruthless terrorists.
    Casablancais about an American cafe owner in French occupied territory during WWII, who has to battle Nazis and lost love and a corrupt police captain.
    Every plot can be rendered in this fashion, and it’s important that you know this much about yours.
    Now, once you have that, add a “because” sentence that explains what the stakes are. Don’t worry about the form of the sentence, just pack into it the reasons the Lead character in your novel has to succeed. Turn it into a paragraph if you want to. It’s all for you.
    Gone With the Wind is about a southern belle who has to fight to save her home during the Civil War….because if she loses it, she’ll be dependent on others for her existence and will never be a woman of strength or substance.
    Die Hard is about a New York cop who has to save a building full of people from a gang of ruthless terrorists….because if he loses, his ex-wife will die along with the other hostages, and he will have failed in his most essential cop duty, saving people from bad guys.
    Casablancais about an American cafe owner in French occupied territory during WWII, who has to battle Nazis and lost love and a corrupt police captain….because if he loses, the war effort will be harmed (the Nazis will win) and he’ll have destroyed the lives of several people around him. And also if he loses, he’ll have become a wretched individual with no concern about others, sadly drinking himself to death, having lost whatever ideals he once held.
    Believe me, this little exercise is going to pay big dividends for you. During NaNo, if you start to feel lost, simply go back to this controlling premise and think up fresh scenes for the Lead character, which scenes involve him taking steps to solve the main problem.
    Let’s say we’ve started writing Casablanca and we come to the point where Rick sees Ilsa in his cafe for the first time. What a great scene we’ve written! They look at each other, and Rick’s heart pounds with a mix of love and hate, desire and the pain of betrayal. Now what?
    We brainstorm some scenes. What could happen next?
    – Rick punches Ilsa’s husband, Victor Laszlo, in the face, and a big fight ensues
    – Rick throws a drink in Ilsa’s face, and Laszlo socks Rick
    – Ilsa runs out into the night and Rick chases after her
    – Rick gets drunk and waits for her to show up
    After some reflection, we decide on the last one. Gives us an opportunity for Rick to remember what happened in Paris. Then Ilsa comes in. We envision Ilsa falling into Rick’s arms….no, not enough conflict….how about she tries to explain what happened in Paris and Rick basically calls her a whore….ooh, that sounds right, because our premise tells us the novel is partly about whether Rick will end up as a wretched human being….
    And so on throughout the month of November.
    So who’s up for NaNoWriMo 2013?
    ***

    In honor of NaNoWriMo, my Knockout Novel program is being offered at a special price ($10 off). I highly recommend Knockout for both planning and editing, so it’s perfect pre- and post-NaNo…and on any project at any stage. I use it in tandem with Scrivener for my own books.