What’s the first book you can remember reading that really knocked you out? That carried you away into a story world that you didn’t want to leave? That got you hooked on reading?
I read The Hardy Boys as a kid, but the first “real” novel I remember getting hooked on was Tarzan of the Apes.
What about you?
Blogs vs. Vlogs
I recently branched out from “adult” novels to young adult, and with that transition has come a major shift in marketing strategy. One of the main differences is that a significant chunk of my book reviews have been done by vloggers: video reviews, in lieu of blog reviews.
I have to confess, I’ve only seen a handful of these. I don’t know if it’s a sign of my age, but I’m much more likely to read a blog post than to watch a video review, even if the blog post takes me twice as long to read as a vlog would take to watch. I’m not entirely sure why: I consume plenty of media, heck, I’m as guilty of wasting time on YouTube as anyone. I own an iPad, and watch most of the tv series that I follow on that, rather than on my tv. But for some reason, internally I draw the line at vlogs. Yet apparently that’s where the younger audience is. Many YA authors actually contribute to group vlogs, rather than blogs.
In the interest of full disclosure, I actually attempted to compose a video portion of this entry to show the difference. Three times. And each time, I was more than a little horrified by how it turned out. In my humble opinion, one of the great benefits of my job is that I can sit in the confines of my home in my pajamas, hair unbrushed, face unwashed, and log in a full day of work. Granted, I occasionally frighten the UPS delivery guy, but over time he’s learned to squint and focus above my head while I sign for packages.
All I can say is that vloggers are brave souls. Or maybe they’re just better about their personal hygiene.
What do you think? Anyone out there prefer a vlog to a blog?
There’s Nothing like the First Time: Getting Published
My critique group hit a double this week. Two members of the writing group announced that their short stories have been accepted for publication in an anthology.
You could feel the pride in their emailed announcements. Both of these writers had been struggling over the months and years to refine their writing; they honed their craft, bringing in pages week after week with revisions. Finally they got the payoff: officially dropping the “pre” from “pre-published.”
The rest of us in the critique group are thrilled for them. That’s the way it is with writers. The rise of one doesn’t diminish the others–we simply spread the joy.
So readers, let’s hear about your recent triumphs and struggles. Where are you in your own writing journey? And if you have any announcements, we hope to hear it here first!
Beach Reading
This week finds me sunning myself on a beach in Palm Cove so I’m effectively off the grid (and on mama duty) until I return. Next week we get to welcome Boyd Morrison who will be sharing Mondays with me and whose first post will be on the 24th – so I get also get an extra week of blog-vacation! I hope you will all join me in welcoming him on board.
In the meantime, I am hoping to read the latest Irish mystery by Tana French while I laze around – but as I am boarding another plane (this one bound for the States) very soon I’d also love to get more recommendations for great vacation reading. So, my fellow TKZers, what was the best beach read for you this year?
Now, back to the sun-lounger…
Writers and Coffee
James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
What do you brew to do what you do?
For most writers through the centuries, it’s been the coffee bean, the seed of the genus coffea. Nothing like a good cup of joe in the morning to get the mind rolling, the fingers pounding and the mind coming up with stuff to happen in the scene you’re working on.
Perhaps the greatest exponent of the jamoke treatment was Honoré de Balzac. He believed its properties were magical, and proved his devotion by writing over 100 novels, novellas and stories on what was, essentially, speed.
His practice was to wake up around midnight and have his servants cook up the thickest coffee imaginable. Think tar with a little sugar. He’d down brew after brew, for up to fifteen hours, letting the stimulant feed his imagination.
He died of caffeine poisoning at the age of 51.
In more moderate quantities, coffee has proved to be universal in its appeal since its discovery in the fifteenth century. According to the definitive treatise All About Coffee (William H. Ukers, 1922):
All nations do it homage. It has become recognized as a human necessity. It is no longer a luxury or an indulgence; it is a corollary of human energy and human efficiency. People love coffee because of its two-fold effect—the pleasurable sensation and the increased efficiency it produces.
Coffee has an important place in the rational diet of all the civilized peoples of earth. It is a democratic beverage. Not only is it the drink of fashionable society, but it is also a favorite beverage of the men and women who do the world’s work, whether they toil with brain or brawn. It has been acclaimed “the most grateful lubricant known to the human machine,” and “the most delightful taste in all nature.”
Personally, I have found coffee to be as Kipling found a good cigar: Thought in the early morning, solace in time of woes.
And a companion for every novel I’ve ever written.
So do you have any coffee rituals, favorite blends, or go-to coffee joints? If you don’t you have a speciality brew, you should look at websites like Little Coffee Place for some inspiration.
So do you have any coffee rituals, favorite blends, or go-to coffee joints? If you don’t you have a speciality brew, you should look at websites like Little Coffee Place for some inspiration.
And if the coffee bean is not your thing, what is your drink of choice for doing time at the keyboard?
An Introduction; and Found in the Translation
Please allow me to make an introduction. Next Saturday, September 22, as I make my way down to New Orleans for a legal seminar, movie role auditions, and a bit of urban spelunking, a gentleman named Mark Alpert will make his debut on this blog. He and I shall thereafter alternate in this space on Saturdays. Mark is one of those individuals who is the smartest person in any given room, even when he is several miles away from it. It’s a quantum physics thing, my friends. Mark is a contributing editor to a magazine that I am barely intelligent enough to read — Scientific American — and makes the incomprehensible understandable on a weekly basis. Mark has so far also published two thrillers, FINAL THEORY and its sequel, THE OMEGA THEORY. Both books deal with aspects of quantum physics, and what occurs when science and knowledge are used with evil intent. Pick them up, and prepare to lose several nights of sleep, reading and thinking and worrying. Mark’s third novel, EXTINCTION, which deals with a hostile artificial intelligence, is on its way in February 2013. I hear good things about it already. I am sure that in the interim Mark will keep us all educated, informed, and most of all entertained with his contributions here.
* * *
Let me now change direction. Does the name “Stieg Larsson” mean anything to you? It probably does, particularly if you are a fan of mystery and thriller novels. After all, it was the late Mr. Larsson who penned that famous trilogy of novels, the ones about the girl with the dragon tattoo who played with fire and kicked the hornet’s nest, which renewed interest in what is variously called Nordic Noir or Scandinavian crime fiction. You might also have read a novel or two by Jo Nesbo, such as THE REDBREAST or THE SNOWMAN. You are undoubtedly at least nominally familiar with SMILLA’S SENSE OF SNOW by Peter Hoeg, and THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. But…have you read any novels by Reg Keeland? Or Don Bartlett? What about Tiina Nunnally? How about Alan Blair?
Keeland, Bartlett, Nunnally, Blair and many other worthies I could name are the individuals who provided you with the opportunity to read Larsson, Nesbo, Hoeg, Sjowall, Whaloo, and…well, many other worthies I could name. It was Reg Keeland who translated The Millennium Trilogy. Don Bartlett did, and does, the honors for Jo Nesbo. Without Tiina Nunnally, Smilla would have still had a sense of snow, but you probably wouldn’t have known or cared. And Alan Blair made sure that the policeman didn’t laugh to an empty room. None of these people are household names. I think they should be. I think that they, and at least a dozen other individuals, should get some credit for what they do and for how well they do it. I submit that there is much more to translating a work of literature than simply doing a word for word interpretation; you have to…you have to taste it, and get the recipe right. Leave out the spice, add too much of this, and too little of that, and it might be bland, or watery, or inedible. Or, indeed, unreadable. Put something into Google Translate and see what I mean. I adore Google Translate, and it does a good job, but more often than not what you get has to be interpreted for context. What Kleeland and a number of others do is much more than translate Swedish or Nordic or language foreign to English; they take what would be indecipherable to most of us and make it understandable, and insure that the end result is still suspenseful, mysterious, and magical.
Every time I pick up a book by an author whose native language is other than English, I make a point of noting the translator of the work, and for a brief moment, thanking them. And so, to those who show and share us the magic of faraway places —those I have named, and those I have not — I thank you.
Reader Friday: I Wish I’d Written That!
We’ve all read (or heard in a movie) a line we wish we’d written.
Here’s one of mine. It comes from a classic hard-boiled noir by Dan J. Marlowe, The Name of the Game is Death:
I’ve been in front of X-ray machines that didn’t get as close to the bone as that woman’s eyes.
Okay, now it’s your turn. What line do you wish YOU had written?
Five Key Ways to Make Your Characters Memorable
by Jordan Dane
@JordanDane
On one of our first TKZ Reader Friday Posts, we asked for suggestions on posts you wanted to see. I went back to read a comment from TJC, a steadfast follower, and wanted to respond to this request:
I find the “first page” submissions and discussions informative and engaging. Any thought of other similar exercises, e.g. “character introductions”, “action scenes”, “backstory insertion” or other? ~tjc
I went back into our TKZ archives and found a post I did called “The Defining Scene – Character Intros,” but here are my thoughts on creating unforgettable characters.
Five Key Ways to Make Your Characters Memorable
1. Add Depth to Each Character—Give them a journey
- With any journey comes baggage. Be generous. Load on the baggage. Give them a weakness that they’ll have to face head-on by the climax of the book.
- Make them vulnerable by giving them an Achilles Heel. Even the darkest street thug or a fearless young girl with magical powers should have a weakness that may get them killed and certainly makes them more human and relatable.
- Whether you are writing one book or a series, have a story arc for your character’s journey that spans the series. Will they find peace or love, or some version of a normal life? Will they let someone else into their lives or will they be content to live alone? Will a villain have a chance at redemption? Do what makes sense for your character, but realize that their emotional issues will cloud their judgment and affect how they deal with confrontations. By the end of a book, they should learn something.
2. Use Character Flaws as Handicaps
- Challenge yourself as an author by picking flaws that will make your character stand out and that aren’t easy to write about. Sometimes that means you have to dig deep in your own head to imagine things you don’t want to think about, but tap into your empathy for another human being. You might surprise yourself.
- Stay true to the flaws and biases you give your characters. Don’t present them to the reader then have the actions of the character contradict those handicaps. Be consistent. If they have strong enough issues, these won’t be fixed by the end of the book. Find a way to deal with them.
3. Clichéd Characters can be Fixed
- If you have a clichéd character, you may not need to rewrite your whole story. Try infusing a weird hobby or layer in a unique trait/quality that will set them apart. Maybe the computer nerd writes porn scripts for a local indie film company with dreams of writing for a studio such as tube videos hd or the jock writes a secret blog under a girl’s name giving advice to teens on love and romance for the local paper. When that hobby is surprising and unexpected, that’s what will shine about the character and that’s what editors will remember.
4. Create A Divergent Cast of Characters
- Portray your characters in varying degrees of redemption—from the innocent to the “total waste of skin” characters.
- As in real life, not everyone is good or bad. They are a mix of both.
- Sometimes it’s great to show contrast between your characters by making them do comparable things. How does one character handle his or her love life versus another character?
5. Flesh Out your Villains or Antagonists
- Villains or antagonists are the heroes to their own stories—Spend time getting to know them.
- Give them goals.
- Give them a chance at redemption—will they take it?
- Give them a unique sense of humor or dare to endear them to your reader.
- The better and more diabolical they are, the more the reader will fear for the safety or well-being of your protagonist.
Character Exercise: A great way to explore what makes a memorable character is to analyze ones you see on TV or in the movies. Pull apart the layers of the depth of their personalities, warts and all, and share some of your favorites. Describe a character you found unforgettable and tell us why.
Books To Films
Do you read a book and then go to watch the movie, or vice versa? Have you enjoyed a film and then rushed to buy the book for a more in-depth experience? I am more of the latter persuasion. I’ve bought a number of books based on movies/TV shows I’ve seen first.
For example, I became a fan of Legend of the Seeker, a fantasy series on TV based on Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth books. It interested me enough to try his first title, Wizard’s First Rule. What’s it about?
Richard is a simple woodsman until his father is killed and he learns of his destiny as The Seeker of Truth. Reminding me at times of Star Wars (Episode IV) due to the hero’s journey structure of the novel (see Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey), I didn’t want to put the book down. The world building is so detailed that you feel you’re there. What keeps you turning pages, aside from the evil Darken Rahl’s attempts to kill Richard and the other nefarious creatures he encounters, is the forbidden love story between Richard and Kaylan. This weaves a spell on you to see if they can defeat the magic that keeps them apart. Their love is the driving force throughout the entire series. I’ve read everything Goodkind has written to date and eagerly await the next installment in his newest series.
I am happy to be a fan of some YA shows, too. Both my husband and I were enthralled by City of Ember, a YA scifi story and book one in The Books of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau. Twelve year olds Doon Harrow and Lina Mayfleet live in a mysterious city that depends solely upon a generator for light and power. When the lights begin to flicker and the city experiences blackouts, they know something is terribly wrong. They discover an old document that may provide clues to the city’s origins and an escape route beyond the forbidden boundary.
The Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz is another one my husband and I both got hooked on after seeing the film, Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker. Alex Pettyfer was cute as the teen spy in this action flick reminiscent of James Bond. Teenager Alex Rider is recruited by British Intelligence after his uncle, a spy, is murdered. Coerced into completing Uncle Ian’s mission, Alex proves his aptitude for the job. With his martial arts training, language skills, and courage, he is more than worthy of the role. We ran out to buy Stormbreaker, the first book in the series, after seeing this movie and now have all the rest of the books on our shelves.
After a glimpse at The Hunger Games, I am tempted again to read the book to fill in the thoughts and emotional reactions that are not evident in the film.
So which comes first for you—the movie or the book?
I get knocked down but I get up again
By PJ Parrish
Last week was a good one.
I finished a chapter of the novella, nudging it up past 17,000 words. I got a nice little royalty check that will keep my dogs in kibbles for three months. I turned in my edits for the next Louis Kincaid novel on time –- and the copy editor wrote this note on the last page: Great story! I’m so glad I was able to read it early. I truly enjoyed all the twist and turns. I haven’t read Louis Kincaid stories yet—but now I’m going to go back and do so!
This week…not so good.
Got some bad news about an upcoming project. Lost a foreign publisher. Can’t get any traction on the concept for the next book. The formatting on our Kindle eBook keeps screwing up the paragraphing. And some anonymous weasel-boy trashed us on Amazon.
You’d think after more than a decade at this writing biz, I’d be immune to the ups and downs. But I’m not. I still get discouraged and swing from ecstasy to agony. And like the cliché goes, I still go to bed some nights convinced I’ve used up all my good ideas and that the fraud police will cart me away in the morning.
I know I’m not alone. I know all writers are like crabs without shells, that the slightest kick, the smallest snub, sends us into spasms of self-doubt. I know this so well that it is part of every writing workshop I teach. Get out now, I tell those who wish to be published, if you can’t take criticism and rejection at every turn. Your queries will be ignored by agents. Your manuscripts will be turned down by editors. Your book will be snubbed by reviewers. Barnes and Noble won’t carry you. You won’t get a paperback reprint. You’ll be remaindered.
Jim Hall put it in perspective for me once. His newest book had just come out to glowing reviews. One day, riding high, he was in B&N and saw a woman reading the first pages of his book. He couldn’t resist and went over to her and said, “I wrote that.”
She said, “So?”
Rejection and dejection. How do you cope?
How do you keep your head above the waves as you tread water? How do you keep putting one word in front of the other every day until you’ve finished that lonely journey of eighty-thousand words? I don’t have the answer but I have learned this much:
You find support
I’m lucky; I have my sister and co-author. When one of us is on the ledge the other talks her off. If you’re alone, then you need to find others who understand what you’re going through. You need someone who knows that when you’re staring off into space yes, you really are writing. You need someone who will slap you upside the head when you’re whining, tell you the truth when you’ve lost control of your plot, and buy you two really strong martinis when you get dumped by your publisher. This someone is usually not your mom or spouse. They love you too much, poor dears.
You focus in not out
It is easy to get eaten up with envy in our business over who got the big contract, who got the award, who got the prime Saturday panel at Bourcheron when you got the 9 a.m. Sunday slot. You have to tune out all this noise. When I was just starting out, one of the best pieces of advice I got was from Jan Burke. “Keep your head down and just write your books,” she said.
You have faith
You have faith that you love the process and that you would probably do it even if no one paid you another dime and had to stand out on the Kindle corner and give it away. You have faith that some agent out there will read your proposal and take you on. That some editor will feel the same way about life that you do and buy your manuscript. You have faith that, despite all the bad things going on in publishing right now, that readers still need good stories. You have faith that you can still write them.
And if that doesn’t work? I will personally buy you that martini. And remember: There’s always the wise words of that great eastern philosopher Chumba Wamba: