The Chronology of Story: Flashbacks

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Time, like an ever-rolling stream,

Bears all its sons away;

They fly forgotten, as a dream

Dies at the opening day.

–Isaac Watts

 * * *

We live in a four-dimensional world. For most of us, the three dimensions of space can be manipulated at will because we can move around and change our position on the Earth. We can climb the stairs in our homes, sail across oceans, or fly through the air. However, we have no control over the fourth dimension: time.

Albert Einstein famously told us that time is relative, and I sort of understand that. But the clock on my office wall doesn’t know anything about relativity. It just ticks away, recording one second after another. And despite what our friends in quantum physics tell us, my time goes in only one direction. Yes, I’ve heard of Kurt Gödel, worm holes, and theories that say traveling backwards in time is possible, but to my knowledge, no one has accomplished that feat. I know I haven’t. So, for the purposes of this post, we’ll use this definition from dictionary.com:

Chronology – noun – the sequential order in which past events occur.

Unless you’re writing a time-travel fantasy book, the events in the story you’re creating occur in a chronological sequence. But the telling of it doesn’t have to. Authors are a lucky bunch because we can tell a story in any way we want to. Even in a non-fantasy novel, we can take time and twirl it around our little fingers, make it do somersaults, or leap forward and backward in great bounds.

But why would we do that? Well, to keep the reader interested, of course. And how do we do it? One way is by the use of flashbacks.

* * *

What is a flashback scene?

Smartblogger.com defines a flashback as

“a literary device where a story breaks away from the present narrative to delve into the past, by showing us a past event or a scene from the past.”

 

According to novelist James Hynes in his Great Courses lectures entitled Writing Great Fiction,

“One of the fundamental principles of plotting is the withholding of information.…  A plot is the mechanism by which the writer decides what information to withhold, what information to reveal, and in what order.”

If the reader knows there was some disturbance in the protagonist’s past, but doesn’t know the full story, he/she will be compelled to keep reading to find out. When the author decides to reveal that fact, it may be effective to use a flashback scene.

The Power of a Flashback Scene

According to writingmastery.com,

“The beauty of flashbacks is that they give writers the freedom to fully show instead of tell the details of a traumatic or significant event in a character’s history, at the moment when it will be most powerful.”

 

How to move from the present to the past

Transitioning to a flashback scene can be achieved by a character remembering something from his/her past. Or it can be a break in the story that presents some important background information that is crucial to the narrative. In either case, it’s important that the reader understand where he/she is in the story. To that end, transition can be accomplished in several ways:

A change in verb tense: If the story is written in the past tense, switching to past perfect will clue the reader in.

The use of italics: Although some readers don’t like long passages in italics, I’ve seen this device used and found it effective.

A specific date: A flashback can be a separate chapter or scene that is clearly dated to indicate a previous time.

However you decide to handle a flashback, it’s a device that can add strength to your story.

A Word of Caution

In his book Plot & Structure, James Scott Bell warns us about the overuse of this plotting device.

“There is an inherent plot problem when you use flashbacks—the forward momentum is stopped for a trip to the past…. If such information can be dropped in during a present-moment scene, that’s always a better choice.”

But if you feel the flashback scene is necessary, then JSB advises to make sure it works as a scene.

“Write it as a unit of dramatic action, not as an information dump.”

* * *

Examples of flashbacks in literature

The entire book is a flashback

Most of the articles I read about flashback scenes describe a character who remembers something, and the flashback scene ensues from that. One example is The Catcher in the Rye which starts with Holden Caulfield’s first-person account of his current situation. “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like,…”

Then the second paragraph begins with a transition to a flashback: “Where I want to start telling is the day I left Pencey Prep.” The rest of the book is a continuation of the flashback.

Other examples of stories written almost entirely in flashback are Wuthering Heights and To Kill a Mockingbird.

Flashback scenes sprinkled throughout the book

Another type of flashback is used by Jane Harper in her debut novel, The Dry. The story begins when Federal Agent Aaron Falk returns to his hometown to attend a funeral. As the story progresses, we learn that Falk left his hometown as a child after being suspected of the murder of one of his friends. As the reader gets more and more intrigued about Falk’s history, Harper fills in backstory through the use of flashbacks dropped in strategic chapters to show Falk and his friends as youngsters. These scenes are written in italics so it’s easy to know when you’re reading a flashback scene. The main narrative is written in Falk’s third-person POV, but the flashback POVs vary.

A single flashback scene to describe a life-changing moment in the plot

I included a flashback scene in my latest novel, Lacey’s Star. When Cassie Deakin’s uncle regains consciousness after being attacked and seriously injured by thieves, he explains that the assailants stole a package he had recently received from his unreliable and long-lost Vietnam war buddy, Sinclair. I wanted to include a flashback scene at that point in the narrative as a powerful display of Sinclair’s drunken despair changing to hope when he finds what he thinks is proof that his young sister was murdered 40 years earlier. In order to ensure the reader understood it was a flashback, I subtitled the chapter “Alaska – Three Weeks Earlier” and wrote it in italics. The novel is written in Cassie’s first-person POV, but the flashback is in Sinclair’s third-person.

* * *

And just in case those guys are right about time travel, here’s a clock that might be useful:

* * *

So, TKZers. What do you think about flashback scenes? Have you used them in your stories? What’s your opinion of the power of the flashback?

* * *

When Sinclair Alderson wakes up from a drunken binge to find himself in the home of a kind stranger, he pours out his despair over the death of his young sister 40 years earlier. Only then does he discover the note that could identify her killer.

Buy on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play. or Apple Books.

 

The Trapdoor on Top of Your Skull

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

In his early years as a writer, Ray Bradbury made lists of nouns based on childhood memories. Things like: The Lake, The Night, The Crickets, The Ravine.

“These lists were the provocations,” he wrote in Zen in the Art of Writing, “that caused my better stuff to surface. I was feeling my way toward something honest, hidden under the trapdoor on the top of my skull.”

I love that metaphor of the trapdoor. We need to flip that door open and shine a light down where all the “better stuff” is.

What did Bradbury mean by that? I think he meant what comes from deep, emotional resonance. It’s what you can’t put into words to define it; but what you must put into words to create it—first for you, then for your reader.

I’ve written some scenes that I’ve gotten emails about. When I look at those I find inevitably they came to me after I opened the trapdoor.

How do you do that?

You make a list like Bradbury’s. Find some time to get alone, take a some deep breaths, and just start remembering….write down all the images and smells and sounds that come to mind. Don’t judge any of it. You’re recording, not fictionalizing. When you get tired, take a break, then come back and add to this list. Put it aside for awhile. Then read it over and highlight the words that generate the most emotion inside you.

I guarantee you’ll find story gold. You can transmute those feelings into your Lead character. You can create moments in your book that will connect with readers in a powerful way. You can also mine the list for short story subject matter. That’s what I like to do most with my own list. (Hat tip to Dale for yesterday’s post which prompted this one.)

I was looking at my list a few years ago when I stopped on The Cigar. That word was there because of my father. To this day when I get a whiff of cigar smoke, I think of Dad. This time when I read the word I flashed back to a scene from my own life, involving me, a liquor store, and a box of Dutch Masters. The emotion of what happened—embarrassment—gave me an idea for a short story called “My Father’s Birthday.”

I published it. And apparently that emotional resonance I mentioned above was there for many readers. If you’ll allow me two clips from the reviews:

Then, in only 12 pages, he ties all his plot threads together to impart an emotional impact that a lot of authors wouldn’t be able to do in a book-length memoir. Indeed, other writers could have turned the bares storyline of “My Father’s Birthday” into an entertaining short story. Few could produce one with the same lasting impact.

***

I’m telling you, this author has the power to take a person on an emotionally resonant trip down memory lane.

I show you those simply to demonstrate what opening the trapdoor on top of your skull can do for a story. If you’d like to read the story itself, I’ve made it free today for your Kindle or Kindle app. Click here. Outside the U.S., go to your Amazon site and search for: B081THHSYL

Try this: Right now, write down three nouns from your childhood, pictures under your trapdoor. Go ahead. I’ll wait. 

Now pick one of them and share it with us. Why that word? What’s the emotional resonance for you? Have you used it in one of your stories?

Short Story Words of Wisdom

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One of my writing goals for 2024 is to write more short stories, something I used to do regularly. Early on, that was all I wrote. My first sales were with flash fiction, and my first indie publishing efforts were with short stories in 2012.

Today’s Words of Wisdom gives advice on writing short stories, and ways to publish it. First, PJ Parrish looks at Kurt Vonnegut’s tips on writing short stories. Elaine Vets follows with thoughts on how to get past being blocked when trying to write short. Finally, James Scott Bell shares what a good story does and where to publish short fiction today.

As always, the original posts are well worth reading in their entirety, and are date-linked from their respective excerpts.

When I started this post, I had forgotten that Vonnegut had — despite his disclaimer of having nothing to teach other writers — issued his Eight Tips For Writing a Good Short Story.  So of course, I looked them up. I think they work well for any kind of fiction, actually.  With a few caveats for us crime dogs, maybe. Some you might have heard before, but they bear repeating:

  1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
  2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
  3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
  4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
  5. Start as close to the end as possible.
  6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
  7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
  8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

The first one is great advice no matter what you’re writing — even a memo.

The second one I believe in wholeheartedly. Which is why I gave up on The Americans.  

Number three we’ve quoted many times here at TKZ when we talk about motivation. And the deeper you can plumb the depths of what a character wants, the richer your story will be.

Rule four is important. Every sentence should do something, be on the page for a reason. I read somewhere that Vonnegut disliked television, except for Cheers, which he called a comic masterpiece.  He said, “I’d rather have written Cheers than anything I’ve written. Every time anybody opens his or her mouth on that show, it’s significant. It’s funny.”

Now, we get to number five, which is critical for short stories but troublesome for novelists, given that we like to flap our gums sometimes before getting to the dramatic point. (ie weather, description, backstory).  But if you really think about it, you should never start your novel at too early a juncture. You should always find that prime dramatic moment to drop your reader into the action.

Six is a given. As James says here often, something must be disturbed in your protagonist’s world.

Number seven is about authenticity. If you set out to be James Patterson, you will fail. Yeah, be smart about today’s market, but write the book you were meant to write.

Now the last one is tricky. I am not quite sure what Vonnegut is talking about here. Because on its face, it goes against much of what we talk about here about NOT larding your early pages with too much information. You want some mystery in the beginning. You want to pose questions that beg answers. Maybe Vonnegut is just arguing for clarity in the writing itself?  The choreography (moving characters through time and space) must be clear. Confusion should be avoided. Maybe you all can help me out on this one.

P.J. Parrish—March 26, 2019

 

That happens to every writer. It certainly happens to me. Short stories are hard to write. In some ways, they may be harder to writer than novels. Here are a few tips for when you feel blocked working on your short story:

Think small – and think twisted.
There are good reasons why you can’t continue your short story. You could be blocked because you have too much going to on. In short, you may be writing a 5,000-word novel instead of a short story.
In a short story, you don’t need long, dreamy descriptions of the scenery.
You don’t need six subplots.
You don’t need to tell us your character’s awful childhood – unless it’s vital to the plot.
It’s a short story.
Think small.

Here’s another reason why your short story may be blocked: How many characters does it have?
If your short story has more than four major characters – you may — accent on may –have too many. It’s like being in a small room with too many people. You can’t move.

The short story is a small world.
Don’t make work for yourself. Giving all those people something to do is hard labor.

Think small. Cut back on your characters.
If your story is going nowhere, consider some pruning. Clear out all the extraneous details, the unnecessary characters, the descriptions of the weather.
If you’re still not sure, read the story out loud. Read it to your spouse, or your dog, or your wall. But tell the story instead of looking at it on the page.
That’s a good way to find out what works – and what doesn’t.

Lawrence Block is a master of the traditional short story.
Let me show you what he does in one paragraph – one – in a short story called “This Crazy Business of Ours.” It’s in Block’s anthology called Enough Rope. If you’re interested in traditional short stories, I recommend this anthology.

 “This Crazy Business of Ours”
The elevator, swift and silent as a garrote, whisked the young man eighteen stories skyward to Wilson Colliard’s penthouse. The doors opened to reveal Colliard himself. He wore a cashmere smoking jacket the color of vintage port. His flannel slacks and broadcloth shirt were a matching oyster white. They could have been chosen to match his hair, which had been expensively barbered in a leonine mane. His eyes, beneath sharply defined white brows, were as blue and as bottomless as the Caribbean, upon the shores of which he had acquired this radiant tan. He wore doeskin slippers upon his small feet and a smile upon his thinnish lips, and in his right hands he held an automatic pistol of German origin, the precise manufacturer and caliber of which need not concern us.

See how Block establishes a character in one paragraph? That is true economy of writing.
Make sure your story is about what it’s about. In a novel, you don’t have to get to the story right away. You have time to develop it. Time to build. Slowly.
In a short story, you have to hit them and run.

Elaine Vets—December 9, 2021

 

So what does a good short story do?

To make one strong impression on the mind of the reader, and to make that impression so powerfully that it will leave the reader pleased, convinced and emotionally moved is the principal aim of a good short story. To the production of that one effect everything in the story—characters, action, description, and exposition—points with the definiteness of an established purpose. All else is omitted, and thus all the parts of the story are both necessary and harmonious. Centralizing everything on the production of one effect makes every short story complete in itself. The purpose having been accomplished there is nothing more to be said. The end is the end.

Well now! If I may modestly mention my own book on the subject, How to Write Short Stories and Use Them to Further Your Writing Career, this affirms the “secret” I found by analyzing thousands of short stories. I call it “one shattering moment.”

What that moment is depends on the type of story you write. If it’s a crime or mystery story with a “twist,” that’s one kind of moment, and usually comes at the end (see Elaine’s post on that subject here).

Another type of story is the one that lays you flat with an emotional punch. Here the shattering moment may happen in the middle, as it often does in a Raymond Carver story. The emotional shattering can come at the end, as in Irwin Shaw’s classic “The Girls in Their Summer Dresses.”

Keeping one shattering moment in mind gives you all the direction you’ll need to write a short story worth reading. Just add your own stamp and creativity.

A good short story can be a gateway for readers to discover you and your full-length books. So where can you publish? There are established venues, like Alfred Hitchcockand Analog. These can be hard to crack and take a long time to hear from.

Some authors, like yours truly, use Patreon. (Hey, can I urge you to give it a try? No obligation, and I’d love to hear what you think!)

Many more use sites like Wattpad, Medium, and Comaful. Heck, you can start your own blog just for short stories.

Or why not go right to Kindle? Publish it in Kindle Select, price it at 99¢, and run a free promo every 90 days. Make sure you have links to your website and books in the back matter.

James Scott Bell—January 16, 2022

***

  1. Do you write short stories? What tips do you have?
  2. How do you “think small?” How do you get around blocks in doing so?
  3. Where do you publish your short stories?

My story collection Rules Concerning Earthlight is available in ebook and print. Stories of the science fictional, and stories of the fantastic including:

  • A young man lives alone on the far side of the moon, an artificial intelligence his only friend and companion.
  • A hex-slinger encounters his dead wife, sword in hand, standing at a twilight crossroads.
  • A young woman in prison for having superpowers is tested.
  • A former Martian marine and her brilliant husband investigate a mystery on a colossal space station orbiting Saturn.
  • A traveling medicine show where real magic happens faces evil in a frontier boomtown in 1901.

Good Reading

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By Elaine Viets

Reading is good for you.

That’s right. Reading is healthier than a bale of kale, according to the studies I’ve seen. Here’s a rundown on some:

Reading can help keep your brain sharp.

Can’t do Sudoku? Me, either.

But I do read. And a 14-year study of almost 2,000 people in Taiwan who were 64 and older, showed those who read one or more times a week had less cognitive decline at six-and 14-year intervals.

Wanna live longer? Read.

          Here’s a novel idea. Books are better for you than magazines and newspapers.

“Book readers also experienced a 20% reduction in risk of mortality over the 12 years of follow-up compared to non-book readers,” said a study published in 2017.  “These findings suggest that the benefits of reading books include a longer life in which to read them.”

Reading can improve your brain’s health.

          According to Bustle. The newsletter said, “Scientists looking into a six-month daily reading study at Carnegie-Mellon discovered that the volume of white matter (that stuff responsible for carrying nerve impulses between neurons) in the language area of the brain actually increased.”

Stay connected.

Business Insider says reading strengthens the connections in your brain.

According to Sabrina Romanoff, an NYC clinical psychologist, “reading creates neurons in the brain, a process known as neurogenesis. Neurons are cells that send messages and transmit information between different areas in the brain.

“Reading material that requires thought, consideration, and effort to metabolize what’s being described leads to the creation of new neurons in your brain,” Romanoff says. “These neurons also increase new neuronal connections, both with each other and older networks, which accelerates processing speed.”

Six minutes.

          Is all it takes to reduce stress. That’s according to researchers at the University of Sussex. They said, “People who read for just six minutes had reduced muscle tension and a slower heart rate.”

Tired of being told to eat your veggies?

A study of more than 15,000 Chinese age 65 years and older who didn’t have dementia were followed for about five years.

The study wanted to find out if intellectual activities could lower “the risk of dementia in older adults, independent of other healthy lifestyle practices such as regular physical exercise, adequate fruit and vegetable intake, and not smoking.”

The good news?  “Daily participation in intellectual activities was associated with a significantly lower risk of dementia several years later, independent of other health behaviors, physical health limitations, and sociodemographic factors.”

In other words, “Active participation in intellectual activities, even in late life, might help prevent dementia in older adults.” And yes, intellectual activities include reading.

Pass the zucchini, please. To someone else.

***

          Stay smart and healthy! Enjoy The Dead of Night, my seventh Angela Richman, Death Investigator mystery. http://tinyurl.com/mr33sc8e

Writing is Pretending While Taking Notes

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By John Gilstrap

Happy New Year, TKZ family! As much as I love the Holiday Season, with all the parties and the outrageous caloric intake, it’s always nice to return to the normal pace–and to return from our winter hiatus.

Here at the West Virginia compound, we got the first snowfall of the winter, which brings a whole different form of excitement. Last year, we got no snowfall to speak of so this storm served as our dog Kimber’s first experience with the stuff. Her first instinct was to bark at it, but once she stepped outside she became possessed, running full speed in circles, taking bites of it and rolling in it. In the picture, she and I are returning home after a romp in the woods.

Let’s talk about writing. More specifically, let’s talk about imagination.

I belong to a healthy few Facebook groups that focus on various elements of creative writing. Mostly, I lurk but I do post occasionally when I think I have something to offer. A few days ago, the subject of outlining came up. The general theme was that without an outline, a writer will get hopelessly lost in the plot and the book will never amount to anything. <Sigh>

Y’all might recall that I do not outline and I bristle at the mention of anything that sounds remotely like a rule that new writers–or old writers for that matter–must follow. I’m particularly intolerant of rules invoked upon newbies by fellow newbies whose body of knowledge and experience comes from a seminar they attended.

Telling a story to the page is the same process as telling a story to another person. Writing a story is a close cousin to the fantasy role play we used to do as kids. (It’s important to note here that thanks to the heroic efforts of my friends and me, every imaginary Nazi who dared to enter our street was quickly dispatched. You’re welcome.) When we played Army, there was always a story to what we were doing. It’s entirely possible that said story closely resembled that week’s episode of the Rat Patrol, but a story is a story. We didn’t outline and we didn’t pass anything through a panel of beta readers. We acted out our plot, never questioned that our guns never ran out of ammunition and accepted on faith that the kill radius of a hurled pine cone was fifty yards or more.

We are the same people we were when we were boys and girls playing with our friends. The imagination is still there. As we grow into our roles as adults, society demands that we tone down the time with imaginary friends. Sadly, we all know people who have embraced adulthood in a way that obliterated the free thinking of childhood and I feel sorry for them. For writers, though–all forms of artists, really–the childlike imagination never goes away. We learn to wrangle it, but we never let it die. We can’t let it die.

What we need to do is stop caring about where our Great Pretend will take us, and just go along for the ride. Let your mind take you where it wants to go and take notes along the way. Maybe it will peter out to a dead end, but so what? You’ll have had the mental adventure, and no one will ever be able to take that from you. For me, an outline is like asking permission to start out on the imagination adventure. It’s like trying to manage the fantasy that is the writing and reading experience.

If you’re stressing about the story you’re trying to write, you’re doing it wrong. I’m not suggesting that the process and craft of writing is not work because it very much is work. But letting the story unfold in your mind–and staying out of its way as it does–is pure joy.

 

Why Do You Do This?

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Every morning, every evening
Ain’t we got fun?
Not much money, oh, but honey
Ain’t we got fun?

By PJ Parrish

Well, I am feeling pretty flush today. Got our November royalty statement from Thomas & Mercer for our book She’s Not There and I made $46.27. Hey, not too shabby for a book that came out six years ago. Then I got a royalty check from my ex-agent for one of our early Louis Kincaid book for $4.56. To top things off, I found a five dollar bill while walking the dogs yesterday.

So I figure now I can almost afford that nice bottle of Sancerre I’ve been eyeing.

Seriously — and we must be serious if we are talking about book revenue — I’ve been doing some thinking about what motivates us poor souls to keep writing. And let’s be honest — because we must be honest when it comes to money, right? — making a living at the writing thing is what any sane person aims for.

But man, it’s not easy.

I read an article in Publishers Weekly the other day. It was about an Author’s Guild survey of novelists’ income for 2022. I almost wasn’t going to write about this today because, darn it, we don’t need any more reasons to be depressed. But I think there’s a nickel lining in this.

I’m going to give you the highlights of the survey here in plain-speak because PW tends to get obtuse when it comes to money. If you want to read the whole thing, click here. Here goes:

The survey breaks down its numbers by types of authors (full time vs part, traditional vs self). The nut takeaway is that most authors don’t come near to making a living from their craft. Well, duh…

In 2022, according to 5,699 published authors who responded, the median gross pre-tax income from their books was $2,000. If you combine that with other writing-related income, it jumped to $5,000. That’s actually up 9% from the year before, adjusted for inflation. Most that increase came from full-time authors. (Their income was up 20% vs part-timers who saw a 4% decline.)

You still there? Come on, stay with me. If you wanna be a pony soldier, you gotta mount up.

The survey points out that having other income-generating activities made a big difference — stuff like teaching, editing, ghost-writing, conducting events, or journalism. This is what the survey calls “combined income.”  The combined income of full-time, established authors (those who had written a book in 2018 or before) rose 21% from 2018 to 2022. But it was still only $23,329 — below poverty level. Income from books alone went from $9,997 to $12,000.  In other words, don’t quit your day job.

Our biz is still a story of the haves and have-nots. The survey found that the top 10% of established authors who participated in the survey had median book income of $275,000 last year. On the flip side, the bottom 50% had median book income of $1,300. The rich get royalties, the poor get sofa change.

I’ll wait while you go top off that scotch…

What about traditional vs self-publishing? Well, PW suggests there’s an emerging trend here. Book-related income for full-time self-published authors was $10,200 — much less than full-time traditionally published authors, who earned $15,000. BUT….full-time self-published authors more than doubled their book income in 2022 compared to 2018, to $19,000. Over that time, established full-time traditionally published trade authors’ book income only rose 11%, to $15,000.

What does this mean? That self-published authors are now significantly more effective at boosting their earnings than their experienced traditionally published counterparts. But we all here already sort of knew this, right?

And get this…

Publishers may be paying more attention to the threat from self-publishing. Newer full-time traditionally published authors saw their income rise in 2022 to $18,000, compared to $15,000 for their established counterparts. PW suggests that publishers have plenty of incentive to lure self-published authors.

Age plays part in this. The survey found that the overwhelming majority of authors under 55 earned their income by self-publishing. Even among authors 65 and older (which was the survey’s largest demographic), 41% reported earning the majority of income from self-publishing.

Some more takeaways:

● Traditionally published authors earned more in from nonbook writing-related income than book-related income ($5,000 vs. $7,400), while self-published authors earned more from book income.

● Romance authors had the highest median gross income from their books, out-earning mystery, thriller, and suspense writers by more than three-fold and literary fiction authors nine-fold. Graphic novelists ranked second.

● Black authors’ median book-related income was $800 vs. white authors’ $2,000. Participating white authors were 36% more likely to be traditionally published than Black authors (38% vs. 28%).

●The audiobook format is a dramatically underpublished growth opportunity: 55% of traditional and 64% of self-published authors have none of their books in audiobook format.

So, this brings me back to my question: Why do you do this?

True confession time: When I was starting out as a romance writer way back in 1980, all I wanted to make some money. I had read an article in a business magazine about all these housewives who were raking in the dough writing Harlequins.

{{Pause for laughter to subside}}}

I was working fulltime as a newspaper editor up in the management tree, but deep in my heart, I missed writing. Plus, how hard could it be to write a novel, right?

I wrote a partial manuscript called Her Turn To Dance, set in the New York ballet world. I shipped it off to all the New York publishers and sat back and waited for the offers to roll in. Seven months of crickets. Not even the dignity of a rejection form. I gave up and went back to doing employee evaluations. Then I got a letter from an editor at Ballantine Books. She apologized for taking so long, saying “due to the enormous volumn of admissions in the mail, I’m afraid we cannot keep up to date.” Then came this:

If Her Turn To Dance is still available, I would be very interested in reading the complete manuscript. Please send it to my attention here at Ballantine. Is this your first novel or have you published before?

Turns out that editor, Pamela Dean Strickler, was an ex-dancer. She found my partial manuscript in the slush pile. (Back then, you could send your stuff in without an agent). I still have her letter. They sent me a check for $1,250 (that’s me holding it below). A year later, retitled The Dancer, the book came out. 

I got lucky. An editor liked my stuff. Believe me, sometimes that is all it takes. Pamela died about ten years ago and I wish I had made an effort to reconnect and thank her. Because she turned me into a pro. And I was very lucky to go on, switch to mysteries, reconnect with my sister as a co-author, and have a long and successful career in publishing. I made some pretty decent money. But you know what? The money became secondary.

I was writing because I loved doing it. I was writing because it was what I had to do. That’s why I did it.

May your year be peaceful. May your pockets be full. And may you do it for fun.

Who Is In Control of What You Do?

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It’s no secret that I’m slightly obsessed with the brain. Okay, okay, it’s a full-blown obsession, but it’s such a fascinating organ!

The other day, I watched a neuroscience documentary (like I often do). One episode asked the question: Who is in control of what you do? The neuroscientist then said…

“Every action you take, every decision you make, every belief you hold is driven by parts of your brain that you have no access to. We call this hidden world the unconscious, and it runs much more of your life than you would ever imagine.”

Shocking, right? The entire episode blew my mind (no pun intended) and drove me down a rabbit hole of research. What I discovered shows just how many superpowers we writers possess.

Let’s dig in…

The conscious you, or conscious awareness, makes up the smallest part of your brain. The conscious brain believes it’s in full control of the body, when nothing could be farther from the truth.

Have you ever driven home and not remembered how you got there? One minute, a thought crosses your mind. And the next thing you know, you’re turning on to your street. It’s a wild feeling that we write off with, “I’ve driven this route so many times, the car knows its way.” But the truth is, this sensation occurs because the action is being done unconsciously and automatically. And somehow, you arrive home without harm.

Through clinical trials, Freud discovered that beneath the surface of each of us lies a swirling sea of hidden motivations, drives, and desires. The way we think and feel and act is profoundly influenced by our unconscious mind.

As the twentieth century progressed, many others dove into the brave new world of neuroscience. They were trying to uncover how much control the unconscious brain really has, but what they soon discovered was far stranger than anyone could have predicted.

In the 1960s, Eckhart Hess ran several experiments. In one, he asked men to look at women’s faces and make snap judgments about them.

  • How kind does she look?
  • How selfish or unselfish is she?
  • How friendly or unfriendly is she?
  • How attractive is she?

What the men didn’t know was how Hess manipulated the experiment. In half the photos, the women’s eyes were artificially dilated. Same women but with different sized pupils. Dilated eyes are, among other things, a biological sign of sexual arousal. This manipulation was meant to influence the choices made by the men, but without them being aware of it.

Can you guess the outcome?

The men found the women with dilated eyes more attractive. Here’s the important part. None of the men noticed the dilated pupils in the photographs, nor did any of the men know about the biological sign of sexual readiness. But somehow, their brains knew.

Hess and his team ran deeply evolutionary programs to steer the men toward the right sort of mate (the feminist in me is holding back here; please do the same). The subjects’ brains analyzed and recognized tiny details in the photos and then acted upon them. All of this occurred without a flicker of conscious awareness.

This type of experiment revealed fundamental knowledge about how the brain operates. The job of this organ is to gather information from the world, then steer appropriate behavior. And it makes absolutely no difference whether you (your conscious awareness) are involved. Most of the time, you’re not. Most of the time, you’re not even aware of the decisions being made on your behalf.

Check out these findings:

  • If you’re holding a warm cup of coffee, you’ll describe your relationship to your mother as closer than if you’re holding an iced coffee.
  • When you’re in a foul-smelling environment, you’ll make harsher moral decisions.
  • If you sit next to a bottle of hand sanitizer, it’ll shift your political opinions a little toward the conservative side, because it reminds your brain of outside threats.

Every day we’re influenced in countless ways by the world around us. And most of this flies completely under the radar of our conscious awareness. Though clueless to us, the unconscious brain is continually reacting to the outside world and making decisions on our behalf.

What separates us from zombie-like beings?

Even when we’re on autopilot, if we come across something we weren’t expecting, our conscious mind is called into action to figure out if this new thing is a threat or opportunity. It’s one of the jobs of consciousness—to assess what’s going on and make sense of the situation. When our expectations are violated, our conscious mind is summoned to work out the appropriate reaction.

But reacting is not its only mission. The conscious brain plays a vital role in resolving internal conflict among the brain’s many automatic sub-systems, each working on its own task.

Take, for example, if you’re hungry but you just started a diet to drop a few holiday pounds. This is when the conscious brain needs to rise above the unconscious and make an executive decision on what to do. Consciousness is the arbiter of conflicting motivations in the brain, with a unique vantage point that no other part of the brain has access to. It’s a way for trillions of cells to see themselves as a unified whole.

For writers, our unconscious brain stores our superpowers.

Our unconscious is capable of truly remarkable feats if we stay out of its way. Therein lies the rub. We can train our unconscious to do many skills automatically, and some of them can seem almost superhuman. Through intense practice, we can harness the brain’s ability to run on autopilot to achieve almost anything.

See where I’m goin’ with this? Note the words “through intense practice.” Meaning, the more we practice, the more we hardwire our brains to work on autopilot. And yes, that includes writing. Those who write daily or several times per week have an easier time than writers who step away from the keyboard for weeks or months at a time.

We also enter the zone more often.

When our conscious awareness relinquishes control to our unconscious brain, we enter the flow state—a form of brain activity experienced by different kinds of people, from elite athletes and meditation experts to professional writers and musicians. Many of whom call this state “the zone,” which arrives during total emersion in a task. In flow states, neural circuits run without conscious mind interference. Our perception clears, our unconscious awareness heightens, and feel-good chemicals flood the brain, which allows for intense focus and gratification.

Thanks to neuroscience, a distinct pattern in the brain emerges when we’re in the zone.

When we first enter flow, dopamine increases attention, information flow, and pattern recognition. It’s essentially a skill booster.

Norepinephrine speeds up the heart rate, muscle tension, and respiration. It triggers a glucose response to give us more energy, increase arousal, attention, neural efficiency, and emotional control, thus producing a high.

Endorphins (rooted from the word “endogenous,” meaning naturally internal to the body) relieve pain and induce pleasure. Strangely, these chemicals function like opioids, with 100 times the power of morphine.

Anandamide (stemming from the Sanskrit word for “bliss”) is an endogenous cannabinoid and feels like the psychoactive effect of marijuana. In flow states, anandamide elevates mood, relieves pain, dilates blood vessels, and aids in respiration. It also amplifies lateral thinking—the ability to link ideas together.

At the end of a flow state, serotonin floods the brain with an after-glow effect. This leaves us with a feeling of bliss and only occurs once we exit the zone.

Unlike many ordinary people, writers dip in and out of the zone on a regular basis. Did I just call us extraordinary? You bet I did! We have a pretty cool superpower. Don’tcha think?

Tips to Achieving Flow

  1. Balance challenge and skill.

If you’ve never written nonfiction, for example, you may find it difficult to enter the zone because your conscious awareness is stressed out. You’re too afraid of making a mistake to enter flow.

If something isn’t challenging enough, you’ll get bored easily. In turn, so will your reader. Not only will adding plenty of conflict improve your plot, but you’ll enter the zone quicker while writing.

  1. Establish clear goals.

I will write for three hours. I will write at least 1000 words today. I will write two scenes or one chapter. By establishing a daily writing goal, it relieves the pressure of having to finish the entire first draft by a certain date. How you choose to establish those goals is up to you.

  1. Reduce distraction.

You will never enter the zone if you’re checking for social media notifications or email every ten minutes. When it’s time to write, write. Save play time and the inbox for later.

  1. Stop multitasking.

Have you ever turned down the radio while searching for a specific house number or highway exit? You’re instinctively helping your brain to concentrate on a visual task. For more on why multitasking is so difficult and why we should avoid it before a writing session, see my 2021 post entitled Can Multitasking Harm the Brain?

  1. Don’t force it.

Some days, you’ll enter the zone. Other days, you won’t. It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. You’ll still produce words and make progress.

  1. Enjoy the process.

You won’t enter flow unless you’re enjoying yourself. Simple as that. If you view writing as a chore, it may be time to step away from the WIP for a while. Yes, penning a novel is hard work, but it also should be enjoyable. If it’s not, you may want to ask yourself why you do it.

What were your biggest takeaways from this research? Are you surprised that we live on autopilot most of the time?

My Favorite Writing Reminders

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Some years ago I make a list of the things I wanted front-of-mind as I wrote. Here is that list, with some added commentary.

EMOTION! That’s what your readers want! YOU must be moved in order to move your readers. WRITE WITH EMOTION!

One of the first truths about writing fiction I picked up from Sol Stein. He emphasized that the best fiction was first and foremost an emotional experience. You can have a clever plot with all sorts of twists and turns, but if the readers don’t care about the characters emotionally, it’s all for naught.

One of the things I do before I write a scene is get myself into the mood of the scene. The best way for me to do this is listen to music. I have several playlists made up mainly of movie soundtracks. If I’m going to write suspense, I’ll put on some Bernard Herrmann (Hitchcock’s favorite). If it’s deeply felt emotion in the character, I’ll choose something another movie, like A River Runs Through It or October Sky. And so on.

Better to put too much emotion in first draft, and cut back, than not enough and puff up.

Further, if I really want to capture strong emotion, I’ll open up a fresh doc and just write intensely and fast, forgetting grammar, sometimes producing a page-long sentence. Then I sit back and choose the best nuggets. Sometimes it’s only one line, but it’s one I wouldn’t have come up with without overwriting.

Major in conflict: Physical and emotional.

We all know conflict is the engine of fiction. This is just a reminder to keep piling on the trouble.

Always write lists of possibilities. Search for originality.

When it comes to making a choice of where to go in a scene or how to describe something, I’ll make a quick list of possibilities, pushing myself to avoid the clichés and stereotypes. It doesn’t take long to do this and the payoff is well worth it.

Write with eyes closed for description.

Before describing a location, I’ll close my eyes and let my imagination roam around like a movie camera. What is it showing me? I keep looking for original items. One “telling detail” is better than a dozen standard images.

Unanticipate. What would readers expect? Don’t give it to them.

Be aware of what the average reader might think will happen next. Then don’t do that thing!

STAY LOOSE! Always be learning the craft, but when you write, write fast and loose. Like Fast Eddie Felson plays pool.

You all know I believe in craft study. I credit it for my initial breakthrough and whatever success I’ve managed to have. But when I’m doing the writing itself, I don’t think about anything other than the emotion and conflict in front of me. Fast Eddie Felson is the character Paul Newman plays in one of the great American movies, The Hustler. When he has his big showdown with Minnesota Fats, which comes at a great personal cost, he says he’s not going to play it safe anymore. “Fast and loose,” he says, and proceeds to run the table.

When in doubt, freak the character out.

This is sort of a corollary of that famous Raymond Chandler idea that when you don’t know what to do next, bring in a guy with a gun. Do something that rattles the character’s world, turns things upside down.

Start a scene a bit later. End it a bit sooner.

This works wonders for readability and page-turning. Look at your chapter openings, and see if you can jump into the scene a beat or two later. Instead of setting up with description, give us dialogue and action. You can always drop back and describe later.

Then look at your chapter endings. See if you can cut the last line or two, or even paragraph. The feeling of momentum will prompt the reader to keep going.

Showing two conflicting emotions in a character heightens the tension and deepens the scene.

Often we give a character an emotional response that is rather predictable. Not that it is necessarily wrong. But, as with unanticipation, try to work in another emotion, unexpected and in conflict with the first. Readers are really drawn to emotional cross-currents. You will create a moment that is highly original.

SUES: Something unexpected in every scene, even if it’s just one line of odd dialogue.

Again, what makes for a boring or forgettable fiction experience? It’s when a reader subconsciously guesses what will happen next…and it does.

But when they are surprised, their interest skyrockets.

You can find a spot in every scene to drop in something they don’t see coming.

One of my favorite ways is to have a character say something that seems so off the wall that it doesn’t fit, then find a way to have it make sense.

There you have it. My favorite reminders. What about you? What would you add to this list?

 

Reader Friday: Public Domain

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The Mouse formerly known as Mortimer.

Steamboat Willie, the first Disney synchronized-sound cartoon, is now in the public domain. The 1928 short features Mickey Mouse (whom Walt was going to call Mortimer, until his wife voted thumbs down). Anyone can now use this version of Mickey…but not the later one where he’s put on a little weight and sports white gloves. You also can’t imply that your use is sanctioned by Disney corporate. The rules are spelled out here. A list of some of the prominent works now open to all is here.

Here’s something to look forward to: Seventy years after your death, your works will enter the public domain. So let’s go to a day in the future when a browser with a virtual reality headset happens across one of your books and decides to look up who you were. What would you like your short bio to say? Put it in the form of “[Your Name] was a writer known for ____” and go from there!