How Critical Distance Improves Writing

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The conversation about critical distance doesn’t come up often in writing circles. If someone does raise the point, critical distance is usually mentioned in passing as though other writers should inherently know what it is and why it’s important. Let’s change that today.

What is Critical Distance?

The phrase stems from researchers who lost all subjectivity in their analysis. To regain clarity (critical thinking), they had to step away from the project for a while.

Practitioner researchers have often been criticised for a lack of critical distance from their work often leading to conclusions which can be, in the field of objective research, critiqued for a lack of creditability and validity (Saunders, 2007). Also inherent in this type of research is the fact that the types of practitioners who come to this kind of research often have been thinking about the research topic for several years bringing with them a host of assumptions and ideas of what they want to find out and usually already having a theoretical stance for the project (Drake and Heath, 2011; Wellington and Sikes, 2006).

—Michelle M. Appleby, University of Derby

 

  • Surgeons aren’t allowed to operate on family members.
  • Cops aren’t allowed to investigate a family member’s murder.
  • Judges aren’t allowed to preside over a loved one’s case.

These rules are in place because the surgeon, cop, and judge cannot be objective if a personal connection exists.

What’s more personal than writing?

While drafting, we wear love goggles. We’re so wrapped up in our characters, we lose all objectivity. It’s only after we’ve gained distance that we can view the story through the proper lens. Also, we may miss plot holes or leave threads dangling while drafting.

I’ll give you an example…

When I wrote the first draft of Restless Mayhem, one of my anti-heroes mentioned two characters from a previous book. I’d originally planned to have these two characters play a critical role in the story, but then the plot twisted and turned and my original plan changed. Well, I forgot to change the conversation at the beginning of the book. Even though I read the manuscript a few times, I still missed it. After I set it aside for a month, those two names popped right out. And I thought, gee, why are they there?

At that point, I couldn’t recall what my characters did with that information, so I left myself a note and continued on. Guess what? No one ever mentioned those two names again. Never. Whoops! I ended up changing the names to two characters who did play a vital role in the plot. But what if I hadn’t set the manuscript aside? I’d have a lot of confused readers.

Does your character have an accent in chapter two that disappears in chapter twenty?

Does someone have green eyes that turn brown by the end of the book?

Did you name the cat Henry and then change it to Harry?

Did your character have a left arm injury that moved to the right?

Even though most of the above you’ll include in your story bible—you made one, right?—we can still miss seemingly insignificant details if we forego the critical distance stage. I know you’re excited to release your new book baby, but that puppy will shine even more if you allow it to sit a while. I’m amazed by what I find once I return to the manuscript.

How can we view our creations through an objective lens?

After you’ve written the first draft, set it aside for x-amount of weeks. The length of a break varies between writers. For some, two or three weeks may be enough. Others may need a month or more. There’s no right or wrong answer here. Whenever you’ve gained enough distance that you don’t recall every scene. The best way to do that is by working on a different project while the draft cools.

Benefits of critical distance…

  • Easily fix writing tics.
  • Catch typos and grammatical errors.
  • Seal plot holes.
  • Tie-up dangling threads.
  • Swap weak verbs for strong ones.
  • Correct passive voice.
  • Fix clunky words, awkward sentences, and/or phrases.
  • Deepen characterization.
  • Better ground the reader in the setting.
  • Strengthen your theme.
  • Make your writing more expressive.
  • Paint a more vivid mental picture.
  • Infuse more emotion.
  • Change body cues (1st drafts often include obvious or less-than ideal body movements).
  • Convey emotion better.
  • Rewrite to remove some dialogue tags.

Do you let the manuscript rest once you complete the first draft? How long do you let it sit?

Amidst a rising tide of poachers, three unlikely eco-warriors take a stand to save endangered Eastern Gray Wolves—even if it means the slow slaughter of their captors.

Preorder for 99c!

*Please note: 99c sale is only available on Amazon.

Restless Mayhem releases in ebook and paperback on April 26, 2023. Can’t wait!

 

Get That To-The-Bone Feel For Your Characters

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Some years ago, Kill Zone emeritus Robert Gregory Browne wrote this:

If my lead character is a divorced father of three who finds himself unwittingly involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the government, the first thing I ask myself when approaching a scene (even though I’m happily married and wouldn’t know a conspiracy if it jumped up and bit me) is this: how would I react in this situation?

Then I add the color (read: attitude/emotion). How would I react, if… I was a self-centered bastard… a no-nonsense cop… an officious political hack. And I apply this technique to every character I write.

In short, I’m like a method actor playing all of the parts. By using myself and a healthy dose of imagination, I can approach characterization from the inside out. And once I’m able to get into the skin of my characters, it’s much, much easier to create someone whom I, and hopefully the audience, can identify with.

As a former thespian myself, I’ve used (and teach) acting prep techniques for writers. This is the simplest, and perhaps the best one: first, be yourself.

Spencer Tracy in Captains Courageous (1937)

That is the sum and substance of the philosophy my favorite actor of all time, Spencer Tracy, used. He didn’t go for any of the fancy schools of method acting. He said he always started by imagining what it would feel like if he were a taxi driver….or a priest….or a Portuguese fisherman. That gave him attitude and emotion. From there it was just a matter of knowing his lines and listening to the other actors.

Back when I was lawyering I edited a little newsletter called Trial Excellence. It was a monthly dedicated to the lawyers who actually go to court and present cases in front of juries. In that role I had the opportunity to interview some of the top trial lawyers in the country. One of them was Don C. Keenan, who told me:

My rule of thumb is that I feel very strongly that the plaintiff’s lawyer, to be successful with the jury, you literally have to make the jury walk a mile in your client’s moccasins. They cannot be spectators. They cannot view their role as being a referee or a mediator. They literally have to fully understand and feel—and by feel, I mean, to-the-bone feel—what your client feels. So they then become an advocate in the jury room for you and not just some referee. As such, the only way that you can get strangers to walk a mile in your client’s moccasins is by you, the lawyer, not only walking a mile in the client’s moccasins, but sleeping in the same house, and washing the dishes, and going to the doctor’s visits with them, and living it with them. I’m a fanatic when it comes to up close and personal with your client.

I like that: to-the-bone feel. Spend time imagining yourself in your characters’ world, watching and listening to them, even being them. Do this until you feel your character in your very bones. Put that on the page and your readers will become participants, not just spectators.

What do you do to get that to-the-bone feeling for your characters?

NOTE: This post is adapted from my upcoming book Power Up Your Fiction (available for preorder). In other news, the book was kindly mentioned in The Saturday Evening Post!

The Big (or Little) Screen

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Based on my experience, when a collection of writers gather around drinks or the figurative campfire talking about books, current projects, and other authors, the conversation eventually gets around to movies.

Last August, I briefly touched on movie deals in my discussion titled, Those Little (and Big) Disappointments. When I was a green as grass author, my first novel attracted enough attention for a producer to reach out and offer a movie deal. The production company wrapped up filming Winter’s Bone liked The Rock Hole, and called me direct to offer a movie deal. However, my starter agent (which I fired not long after that offer) started playing games with the company and they quickly threw up their hands and backed away from the project.

At that time, I didn’t realize how lucky I was for movie people to consider my work, and for that, I’m honored. Other writer friends have movie deals, have seen their works turned into movies, and even have television series. Like books, film is another form of entertainment and all of us who write would like to see our projects on the big, or little, screen. Some are lucky and occasionally, lightning strikes twice and they get both.

Good for them!

Other friends receive option money each year, and it’s significant in most cases. These books are in the chrylaslis process of evolving into screenplays, or are under discussion. As I watch these colleagues twist on the hook I’ve come to understand this part is tedious and frustrating to most of those involved.

As my old man said a thousand times, “Almost, but not quite.” He also said, “Well, dog my cats,” when he was perplexed or frustration, which I’ve used on occasion to my daughters’ consternation.

A few years ago I wrote the screenplay for The Rock Hole, and that was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Distilling 90,000 to 100,000 words down into 120 formatted pages that are mostly dialogue almost made my head explode as I worked to preserve the tension, character arcs, sense of place, and relevant dialogue that made the book successful.

I read William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade and it was fascinating. Full of advice and anecdotes, it helped me get over the hump of finishing my own project because it has the complete screenplay of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In addition, a friend gave me a copy of the Lonesome Dove script back in 1990, and I spent a considerable amount of time comparing what was included, and excluded, from the novel.

With those guides in place, I hammered out the screenplay, and finished with the understanding that if it ever reaches filming, it’ll likely have someone else’s name on it, but at least I can see the characters I created moving and talking (hopefully) as I see in my mind.

At this writing, The Rock Hole is under consideration of an indie producer and we’ve spent quite a bit of time talking about the mechanics and funding for this future project. Am I excited. Nope. I don’t waste time on what if, but I continue to hope something will happen. Will it ever happen? I’m not holding my breath.

I ‘magine all authors would love to see their books on the screen. It would expand their exposure a thousand-fold and sell more books. But we can’t spend too much time on that possibility. We need to write instead and dream at night. It’s today’s project that requires the majority of our attention, not those finished titles on the shelf.

But good lord, be proud of them!

But back to writers’ conversations, we always express frustration that so many good books out there that could make excellent movies, yet Hollywood (an all inclusive term for movies filmed everywhere) continues to concentrate for the most part on superheroes.

Maybe it’s my bias against movies in which these characters just fight all the time, destroying cities and buildings, but not harming each other in any appreciable way. I’d like to see a bloody nose from time to time, at least, but I am of a certain age and grew up loving movies full of well-developed characters and believable plots. I doubt in my lifetime I’ll ever meet someone impervious to bullets, or can fly, or swing from spider webs, or ride on surfboards…

I don’t get it, but don’t get me wrong. I cut my teeth on comics and superheroes, and a few movies in that vein, but I’d dearly love to see original ideas.

I want great characters, interesting plots, and sweeping camerawork with inspiring music written specifically for the movie. Maybe like Last of the Mohicans, A River Runs Through It, Legends of the Fall, all based on books or novellas. Good lord, even thrillers like the original Indiana Jones movie, Alien (Aliens), Star Wars, or any others too numerous to list make me want to watch them over and over again.

But others pull me in again and again. Grosse Point Blank, because I just love that one. Tombstone, which might be an all-time favorite because it was one of the first movies the Bride and I ever saw on a postage-stamp-size screen in Arkansas, or Junior Bonner, which changed my life. They have something that hooks me every time, and this is the crux of our discussion over drinks. What is it that strikes a chord with us.

On the opposite side of the coin, Hollywood Reporter has an article I’ve pasted below that outlines the dangers of original content. Am I missing something here? When you’re hitching onto the train, maybe trying to recreate a series like Lord of the Rings (which of course was a novel) with another title including Rings, then you’re simply not getting it. Maybe if we had executives and producers who aren’t twelve-years-old, we might find adventurous souls who would like to branch out and produce movies with finite beginnings and endings, we might find something new.

Like 30 Days of Night. A vampire movie with an excellent twist.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/inside-amazon-studios-jen-salke-vision-shows-1235364913/amp/

What about you?

Why do you think authors are so interested in discussions as these when we get together?

Is it for the love of entertainment, or something else?

Or maybe we simply like quality movies and that’s all. Let’s talk about it at Bouchercon in San Diego. You’ll find me in the bar…

 

Prologue or Chapter One?

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By Elaine Viets

TKZ has had many discussions about whether you should start your novel with a prologue. Readers and editors both have mixed feelings about prologues. My editor prefers first chapters, so that’s how I write my mysteries.
For my new novel, The Dead of Night, the first chapter could have been prologue. It was about the Legend of the Cursed Crypt. The entire book is built on this story.
Please note: I am NOT saying all prologues are bad, just that I made this prologue work as my first chapter.


To start, here’s how the legend would have been as my novel’s prologue:

The Dead of Night Prologue
The Cursed Crypt was a story of love gone wrong. What started as ordinary adultery unleashed two hundred years of plague, fire, floods and, finally, murder at Chouteau Forest University. The school was founded in 1820. The first president, Hiram Thaddeus Davis, was a grim, grave man with a grizzled beard and unforgiving eyes. He promised a well-rounded education in Latin, Greek, history, the Classics, mathematics and “moral philosophy.” Nobody knew what that was, but it didn’t seem to matter. The school was immediately successful. By 1822, the fledgling university was housed in a fine red-brick building and needed another professor.
Davis hired a brilliant scholar with a European pedigree, Eugene Franco Cortini, to teach Latin, Greek and biology. Cortini was devastatingly handsome, with thick black hair and sculpted features. He spoke five languages. He discovered two new species of American wild flowers – and named both after himself.
Cortini championed the theory of evolution long before Darwin. He wrote that Native Americans were really the lost tribes of Israel. And he preached that monogamy was “not a natural or healthy state for the animal kingdom.”
Cortini demonstrated his theory by having a passionate affair with Dolly, President Davis’s eighteen-year-old wife. Poor, balding Davis caught his curvy blonde wife in flagrante with Cortini, running her fingers through the professor’s thick black curls. Never mind where his hands were.
Cortini was fired on the spot, and banished from the campus. Before he left, he cursed the school on a dark windy night. Cortini stood in a circle of stones in front of the school, his hair wild and his black coat flaring, and shouted over the wind, “My Italian grandmother was a strega – a witch – and I inherited her powers. I am a streghone, a warlock. As long as I am banished from this school, death and disaster will fall upon it. As long as I am on the school grounds, it shall be safe.”
President Hiram Davis laughed while the pregnant Dolly Davis, imprisoned in her room, wept bitter tears. After cursing the school, the romantically handsome Cortini left for St. Louis, some forty miles east.
Two days after Cortini left, yellow fever struck the campus, carrying off six of its twenty students. Each month, another disaster hit the campus: lightning destroyed the huge oak in front of the school building. Disease killed the school’s milk cows. Chouteau Forest Creek flooded the fields where the school grew its crops.
Each time, President Davis dismissed these occurrences as unfortunate events and proudly declared that he “refused to give in to superstition.” He was a man of reason – until a fire broke out in the stables and killed his favorite black stallion.
That’s when President Davis invited Eugene Cortini to return to the campus. Cortini could no longer teach, but he was given a brick house to live in and conduct his research. The school flourished for seven years, and expanded to two buildings and a new dormitory.
Then Cortini died suddenly at age thirty-seven in 1845.
President Hiram Davis was taking no chances. He decreed that Cortini must be buried on campus, but he didn’t want the man’s grave on display. Cortini was buried in a crypt under the steps of the Main Building. His final resting place was hidden by a heavy iron door, but Cortini wasn’t forgotten. Students and staff whispered about the late Eugene Cortini, and noticed that Hiram Davis’s oldest son had thick black hair. Both his parents were blond.
Shortly after Cortini was in his crypt, President Davis died. But his school lived on, and so did the legend of Mean Gene Cortini. Every seven years, a disaster struck the school. The school tried to placate Cortini’s restless spirit by lining his crypt with marble. In 1857, a Victorian administration added a marble divan with a tasseled marble pillow, guarded by two weeping angels. A marble slab on the wall proclaimed the tomb was “Sacred to the memory of Eugene Franco Cortini, scholar, teacher, and researcher.”
These improvements didn’t work. The seven-year disaster cycle continued. While the school prospered, the legend lingered like a cloud over the campus.

When I turned the prologue into Chapter 1, the legend became an efficient part of the mystery. It introduced my character, death investigator Angela Richman, and told readers about where she lived and worked, Chouteau County, Mo., home of the one-percent. The last few paragraphs showed readers how the fat cats made money off two hundred years of tragedy. Thanks to this first chapter, the novel was ready to unfold in Chapter 2.
The parts I added to the prologue to make it into Chapter 1 are boldface. The first bold paragraphs introduce the young Angela Richman and show you her place in local society. She’s an outsider, and will stay that way.
At the end of the chapter, the bold paragraphs bring the legend back to the present day and tease what’s going to happen.
See what you think.

 

The Dead of Night Chapter 1

Like everyone who grew up in Chouteau Forest, Missouri, I knew the legend of the Cursed Crypt. The crypt was at Chouteau Forest University, one of the oldest academies in Missouri. The stories claimed that the restless spirit of a professor nicknamed Mean Gene Cortini had been causing death and destruction in the Forest for two centuries.
I’m Angela Richman, and I learned the legend of Mean Gene and the Cursed Crypt the same way many local teens did: around a campfire in the woods that gave the town of Chouteau Forest its name. When I first heard the tale, I was a gawky fifteen-year-old, the daughter of servants who worked on the Du Pres estate. I didn’t get many invitations to mingle with the cool kids, so when I was asked to join them, I sneaked out of the house one Saturday night to drink beer in a secluded part of the Forest.
It was a chilly March night, and the bare tree branches scraped together like old bones. I hated the bitter taste of the beer, but I wanted to adore my crush, high-school linebacker Danny Jacobs. The firelight turned Danny’s blond hair molten gold and highlighted his six-pack – the one under his tight T-shirt.
Alas, the only sparks that flew that night were from the crackling fire. Danny was devoted to the glamorous head cheerleader. He told us an ancient tale of adultery and betrayal, and we shivered in fear. All except the cheerleader, who was snuggled in Danny’s strong arms.
Here’s the tale, distilled from a thousand nights around local campfires:
The Cursed Crypt was a story of love gone wrong. What started as ordinary adultery unleashed two hundred years of plague, fire, floods and, finally, murder at Chouteau Forest University. The school was founded in 1820. The first president, Hiram Thaddeus Davis, was a grim, grave man with a grizzled beard and unforgiving eyes. He promised a well-rounded education in Latin, Greek, history, the Classics, mathematics and “moral philosophy.” Nobody knew what that was, but it didn’t seem to matter. The school was immediately successful. By 1822, the fledgling university was housed in a fine red-brick building and needed another professor.
Davis hired a brilliant scholar with a European pedigree, Eugene Franco Cortini, to teach Latin, Greek and biology. Cortini was devastatingly handsome, with thick black hair and sculpted features. He spoke five languages. He discovered two new species of American wild flowers – and named both after himself.
Cortini championed the theory of evolution long before Darwin. He wrote that Native Americans were really the lost tribes of Israel. And he preached that monogamy was “not a natural or healthy state for the animal kingdom.”
Cortini demonstrated his theory by having a passionate affair with Dolly, President Davis’s eighteen-year-old wife. Poor, balding Davis caught his curvy blonde wife in flagrante with Cortini, running her fingers through the professor’s thick black curls. Never mind where his hands were.
Cortini was fired on the spot, and banished from the campus. Before he left, he cursed the school on a dark windy night. Cortini stood in a circle of stones in front of the school, his hair wild and his black coat flaring, and shouted over the wind, “My Italian grandmother was a strega – a witch – and I inherited her powers. I am a streghone, a warlock. As long as I am banished from this school, death and disaster will fall upon it. As long as I am on the school grounds, it shall be safe.”
President Hiram Davis laughed while the pregnant Dolly Davis, imprisoned in her room, wept bitter tears. After cursing the school, the romantically handsome Cortini left for St. Louis, some forty miles east.
Two days after Cortini left, yellow fever struck the campus, carrying off six of its twenty students. Each month, another disaster hit the campus: lightning destroyed the huge oak in front of the school building. Disease killed the school’s milk cows. Chouteau Forest Creek flooded the fields where the school grew its crops.
Each time, President Davis dismissed these occurrences as unfortunate events and proudly declared that he “refused to give in to superstition.” He was a man of reason – until a fire broke out in the stables and killed his favorite black stallion.
That’s when President Davis invited Eugene Cortini to return to the campus. Cortini could no longer teach, but he was given a brick house to live in and conduct his research. The school flourished for seven years, and expanded to two buildings and a new dormitory.
Then Cortini died suddenly at age thirty-seven in 1845.
President Hiram Davis was taking no chances. He decreed that Cortini must be buried on campus, but he didn’t want the man’s grave on display. Cortini was buried in a crypt under the steps of the Main Building. His final resting place was hidden by a heavy iron door, but Cortini wasn’t forgotten. Students and staff whispered about the late Eugene Cortini, and noticed that Hiram Davis’s oldest son had thick black hair. Both his parents were blond.
Shortly after Cortini was in his crypt, President Davis died. But his school lived on, and so did the legend of Mean Gene Cortini. Every seven years, a disaster struck the school. The school tried to placate Cortini’s restless spirit by lining his crypt with marble. In 1857, a Victorian administration added a marble divan with a tasseled marble pillow, guarded by two weeping angels. A marble slab on the wall proclaimed the tomb was “Sacred to the memory of Eugene Franco Cortini, scholar, teacher, and researcher.”
These improvements didn’t work. The seven-year disaster cycle continued. While the school prospered, the legend lingered like a cloud over the campus.
More than a hundred years later, Chouteau Forest’s crafty one percent figured out how to make money out of the ancient tragedy. In the 1980s, the University Benefactors’ Club started auctioning off “A Night in Mean Gene’s Cursed Crypt.”
The money went to benefit Chouteau Forest University, which soon had a fat endowment.
The prize was a big one: if any auction winner could stay the full night in the Cursed Crypt, they would be granted membership in the elite Chouteau Founders Club, which ran the Forest. The winners’ future in the Forest would be guaranteed.
So far, only one person had stayed the night in the gloomy crypt.
I was forty-one now, long past drinking beer while listening to ghost stories. I worked for the Chouteau County Medical Examiner’s office as a death investigator. That meant I was in charge of the body at the scene of a murder, an accident or an unexplained death. It had been more than a quarter of a century since I’d first heard the legend of Cursed Crypt in the night-struck woods, and I didn’t believe a word of it.
Until I saw the bodies.
© Elaine Viets and Severn House

The Dead of Night is hot off the presses as an ebook and a hardcover. Here are three ways to buy it:
(1) AMAZON. https://tinyurl.com/4846s7jr
(2) BARNES & NOBLE. http://tiny.cc/a876vz

(3) BOOKSHOP.ORG. Save $2 on The Dead of Night at Bookshop.org and support independent bookstores: https://tinyurl.com/2p8p9ze4

I’d love for you to buy my books, but please check the e-book and hardcover prices at each bookseller. Prices for both change.

 

 

An Interview with Narrator Steve Marvel

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An Interview with Narrator Steve Marvel
Terry Odell

Actor Narrator Steve Marvel head shotI’m pleased to have Steve “Captain” Marvel, the narrator of my Mapleton Mystery series, as my guest at The Kill Zone today. We’ve been working together for eight novels and a three-novella bundle and since I’m virtually clueless about how someone works with voice rather than fingers, I asked if he’d share a bit about himself and his process. He said he’d check in from time to time, so if you have any questions for him, ask away.

A little bit about your background qualifications as a narrator.
I studied Acting at a renowned university Theatre program and have had a four-decade stage career since. That time in the theatre has taught me how to create distinguishable characters, which lends itself very well to audiobook narration. Shortly after I started narrating, I won Audible’s Audiobook Narration contest. I’m only one of four narrators to have done so. I suppose you could say I’ve developed a skill in storytelling over the years which is serving me well in audiobooks.

How long have you been narrating audio books?
I started narrating audiobooks in 2013, although I had a regular job narrating a weekly financial newsletter for four years before that. So that’s about fourteen years, all told.

What other projects do you undertake?
For audiobooks, I go for titles that seem well-written by authors who like to collaborate. I tend to work mostly in detective fiction, thrillers, and sci-fi/fantasy, although I’ve done some fascinating non-fiction work, including a chronicle of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, which is surprisingly popular, and a history of Star Trek, in which I voiced the words of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. That was a hoot.

Where other voiceover is concerned, I do a fair number of video games, mostly of the lighter-hearted, more tongue-in-cheek variety. I’ve voiced a lot of silly characters, including a series of fish and one fully non-verbal game in which I played five different monkeys. Those are fascinating challenges.

What made you decide to become a narrator?
Demand rarely exceeds supply within the acting business, but I discovered audiobook narration at a time when their popularity was exploding and publishers were actively seeking voices with acting ability behind them that could effectively portray characters and not just read copy. Audiobook narration also presents the actor with the opportunity to be not only the lead of the story, but every subordinate character, as well. He often functions as director, too, so the opportunity to exercise one’s creativity is greater than in just about any other area of the business.

How do you decide what projects to pursue?
Besides the qualities I look for in both book and author that I mentioned earlier, economics play a role. I take projects that either pay an attractive rate (as a member of SAG-AFTRA, there’s an established minimum I’m allowed to accept), or which show prospects for royalty-share income adequate to compensate me for my time as a professional. Choosing the right book is part art and part science.

For audiobooks, how do you determine the voices for each character?
I look for clues within the book’s text. Obviously, gender and nationality (accent) factor prominently. Age and attitude can also come into play, as can physical characteristics—is the character described as rotund or slight, healthy or wan, etc.? The body affects how a person’s voice is produced fundamentally, so I use all clues to feel out the character’s spine, both literally and figuratively. I often adopt that physical posture as I voice the character, which changes the voice without my having to rely strictly on auditory memory.

How do you keep all the voices straight?
I typically concoct and record all the major character voices for a book after I’ve read it through and before I begin the narration. I keep a file of those audio clippings open on my computer as I record the narration and refer to it as needed to remind me of my choices for each.

How closely do you work with the author?
That tends to vary by author and publisher. For major publishers, one doesn’t always have access to the author (especially, as was the case in a narration last year, when the author had been dead for a decade!). With independent titles where author and publisher are typically one and the same, some authors are very “hands off” and only have something to say about the narration at the beginning and end of the project, and then usually about logistics. Other authors give feedback as chapters get recorded, generally about characters and specific line readings. I’ve been very fortunate to work only with authors who mostly give me creative freedom and intercede only when something really jumps out at them.

I always try to keep in close touch with the authors I work with and keep them in the loop as to my progress and any questions I might have.

What are your biggest challenges?
The sorrow of seeing worthy audiobooks go unnoticed. Many authors struggle to market their work effectively, and I feel for anyone who’s poured so much creativity into a project only to see it languish in the marketplace. Digital items can live a long time online, though, so hope springs eternal.

Steve Marvel, audiobook narratorWhat’s the favorite part of the job (not counting getting paid!)

Connecting with the characters and the story and performing an interpretation that comes out of my own creativity. Reading alone in the booth, in the dark, can have a decidedly meditative quality to it. As someone who enjoys spending his vacations on silent retreat, I find that aspect of the process very appealing.

What’s the least favorite part of the job?
Like many narrators, I find editing the audio tedious. I don’t mind voicing the edits, replacing a word or phrase here and there. What I do mind is the process of cutting out the “bad” sections to replace them with the “good.” I’m actually quite good at it, but it’s extremely time-consuming. I’d rather be narrating!

How long does it take you to record a “typical” novel?
My average audiobook runs about 10 hours in finished length. Figuring about four hours of recording/editing time per finished hour, a book takes about 40 hours of work to produce. It probably takes me another 10 hours to read the thing through initially and make notes.

As an author, I compose my manuscripts at the computer, using Word. I’m always moving things around, finding better words, and fixing mistakes. With a word processor, it’s a very simple task. I have copy, cut, and paste commands at my disposal. I can highlight a sentence or phrase and drag it somewhere else in the manuscript, or delete it altogether.
What do you do with the first narration of the manuscript before you return it to the author? Do you hire out to have someone clean up the sound quality? (And could you describe what kinds of things have to be cleaned?)
Because my recording environment is particularly quiet (I have my own “isolation” booth at home), I generally don’t have to do much to the audio before I send it off to the author. I edit out mistakes and misreads as I go along, using a technique known as “punch and roll” to erase the unwanted audio and replace it with the proper reading as I continue on with the narration. When I finish each chapter, I run the audio file through what we call an “effects chain”, which is just the software taking out any low-level hiss and normalizing all the volume levels in the file.

What about matching the narration to the manuscript? Do you have someone else take a pass through the manuscript to avoid as many missed bits as possible, or do you rely on the author for that step?
I tend to work with a proofer to check my audio after I’ve recorded it against the manuscript. That person specializes in proofing audio, so she picks up the vast majority of glitches and misreads. I’ve tried to do it myself, listening to each file after I’ve recorded it. I can say without qualification that I’m now happy to pay someone to do that for me.

Then, the bigger questions. If there’s a notation that you read a word/sentence wrong, what’s your process for fixing it? Can you drop in or replace a single word? Do you go back and re-read the sentence? The paragraph? Would you be willing to walk us through your process?
As I mentioned before, if I catch a mistake as I’m narrating, I immediately correct it and move on. For mistakes the proofer catches, it can be time-consuming to match newly-recorded audio to the old—distance between mouth and microphone and the condition of the voice can vary between recording sessions—so I prefer to re-record as little as possible to replace misreads or bad sound in a file. That means I typically re-read just the phrase containing the wrong word—that is, that part that falls between breaths, as those are natural pauses. So I tend to replace phrases and rarely whole paragraphs. Occasionally, I’ve re-recorded a single word, though mostly when the word stands alone for some reason. More common than replacing a single word is removing an extraneous one without having to re-record the whole phrase.

Also, rather than re-record a correction multiple times, I’ll sometimes “tweak” the correction I’ve read with a software tool—raising or lowering the volume or pitch slightly, for example. Over the years, I’ve developed a number of tricks I can use to reduce my editing time. One still has to listen to each edit itself, of course, to make sure it’s acceptable.

Audible doesn’t require a 100% match of audio with the ebook. Do you grumble when an author asks you to fix minor glitches, like “a” for “the”, etc.? Or do you discuss whether it’s worth changing with the author?
If the sense of the writing doesn’t change due to an omitted, added, or altered small word, I tend to leave it alone and try to prevail on the author to let it be. There is a cost, in time, to editing. Editing audio takes a surprisingly long time, due largely to the need to match old and new sound, as I mentioned previously. If I’ve requested the author to leave an “alternate read” as is and she pushes back, I go back and make the edit. Perhaps I’m lucky, but I’ve never yet worked with an author whose requests I’ve found to be unreasonable. Perhaps I’m also easy to get along with!

What about the less obvious parts of the narration? I know you and I talked about some of the characters and what they should sound like before you began the narration. But what if there’s a difference of opinion about things like inflection, or emphasis on a word when the author listens—things that aren’t obvious when you read a manuscript. Does it bother you to have to go back to fix those types of narration?
It’s funny—there’s a great deal of talk about “micromanaging” in the online narrator forums. Possibly due to luck, or possibly because I do so much preparation with the authors I work with beforehand, I’ve never had such a difference of opinion with an author that there were very many things to change. It’s rare that authors I work with request very much, so with what few requests for such changes I get, I’m usually happy to comply. You and I have had a discussion or two about pronunciations of certain words, which I believe we split about 50-50 to change or to not.

(An aside from Terry: An example from my work. “either” (and “neither”). I prefer “EEther, but Steve had recorded “EYEther” and I didn’t make him go back and change them.)

I think things also come down to a matter of confidence. I’ve narrated enough books to feel very confident in what I’m doing—and I’ve had a decades-long acting career to bolster the performance aspect—so I assume that confidence suffuses my dealings with the author. Having confidence tends to make one more accommodating, because he isn’t threatened by disagreement, and it also makes him sensitive to others’ wishes, because he’s not caught up in defending his own. Confidence tends to be contagious, so I suppose because of that, again, I just don’t encounter very many differences of opinion with the authors I work with.

Steve recently completed the narration of Deadly Relations, my newest Mapleton Mystery. You can listen to a sample on my website (upper left), and find buying options here.

For more about Steve, visit his website.

Cover image of Deadly Relations by Terry OdellAvailable Now in digital, paperback, and audio formats

Deadly Relations.

Nothing Ever Happens in Mapleton … Until it Does

Gordon Hepler, Mapleton, Colorado’s Police Chief, is called away from a quiet Sunday with his wife to an emergency situation at the home he’s planning to sell. A man has chained himself to the front porch, threatening to set off an explosive.

Terry Odell is an award-winning author of Mystery and Romantic Suspense, although she prefers to think of them all as “Mysteries with Relationships.”

First Page Critique – Special Agent Jonas Stone

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Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

 

By Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

Welcome to another Brave Author who’s submitted a first page for critique. The story is untitled so I used the name of the likely main character.

Please read and enjoy then we’ll discuss.

~~~

2 years ago, Port of Chicago

“All positions report in,” Special Agent Jonas Stone released the transmission button on the communicator attached to his wrist.

“Sierra 6, good to go,” the team leader of the Special Weapons and Tactics Team sounded off from their tactical vehicle.

“Sierra 3, on station and sighted in,” the sniper team responded.

“Sierra 5, off the shore and set up in case they try to break out of the port,” the Marine Unit called in.

The rest of the perimeter posts completed their check in.

“That’s all of them,” Jonas looked over at his partner in the passenger seat of their SUV.  Special Agent Michael Lock had been with Jonas since the beginning of their time together with the Secret Service.  These last twelve years Mike had become like a brother, something Jonas missed from his time in the military.

“Let’s just hope everything is going as planned for Eddie,” Mike said, the worry etched on his face.  “I don’t want to face the wrath of Linda if something happens to him.”

Jonas shook his head thinking about the firecracker that was Eddie’s wife.  The old adage of Murphy’s Law, “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong,” reared its ugly head right from the beginning of the operation.  The transmission wire set up on their snitch, or confidential informant as Mike liked to correct Jonas when talking about Eddie, completely malfunctioned.  Mike had a soft spot for Eddie, more so than even Jonas.

“What time is it?” Jonas asked.

“2200 hours.”

Eddie has always been reliable.  When it came to snitching, he was the best Jonas’ had ever worked with, the gold standard.  Some of the biggest cases in the Chicago Field Office, dealing with everything from counterfeit U.S. currency to child pornography cases, were thanks to Eddie.  Jonas and Mike looked out for him and made sure he got paid handsomely for his contributions over the years.

“It’s been over an hour, and we haven’t heard any word from him,” Jonas pressed, knowing the success of the operation will come down to the signal from Eddie.

This wasn’t just another case for Jonas.  This was personal.

“It’ll work out, Jonas,” Mike seemed to pick up on his anxiety.  “Eddie will come through, he always does.  Today, we will take down the bastards that killed Jade.”

Jonas’ eyes misted over, and he couldn’t speak.  He had investigated this human smuggling ring for the last six months.  They had been responsible for his daughter’s disappearance and heinous death, but the evidence was lacking.  The case finally got a shot in the arm thanks to Eddie.  He had provided information that there was a vessel in one of the harbors of the Port of Chicago that was going to be loaded with two CONEX boxes containing local kidnapped girls bound for New York City.

~~~

Okay, let’s get started.

2 years ago, Port of Chicago – This is evidently a chapter heading for what appears to be a prologue. It suggests within a few pages the story will jump forward to present day.

Some readers love prologues, some hate ’em. I don’t care either way. But consider deleting “2 years ago” and just use “Port of Chicago.” Then, if the story does jump forward, the heading of the next section could be, “Two years later.”

This story is about human trafficking and features a Secret Service team poised to arrest perpetrators in the Port of Chicago. The subject is timely and compelling, making it a good choice for what sounds like a thriller or police procedural.

Featuring the Secret Service as the lead agency is another good choice because it hasn’t been used as frequently as the FBI and other police agencies. That makes it stand out among other books in the genre, especially if the Brave Author adds fresh insights to the Secret Service’s particular duties, like counterfeiting and child pornography, that are also mentioned.

The Port of Chicago is a dramatic setting because it offers plenty of dangerous backdrops for action to unfold.

I had to look up CONEX boxes but that’s okay because the use of a specific type of shipping container lends authenticity.

When balancing between too much description vs. not enough, I believe it’s better to err on the side of not enough, especially at the beginning of the story, to not slow the action. However, BA might consider adding more setting details a bit later to bring the locale to noisy, colorful, smelly, vivid life.

BA selected an effective point to begin the story. The agents are in the middle of a tense operation, in media res, and they have a problem—their most reliable snitch hasn’t been heard from. The success of the mission rests on him and his wire isn’t working. The stakes are upped even higher because the villains are responsible for the death of the daughter of the POV character, Special Agent Jonas Stone.

Good job setting up the story problem and stakes!

A small aside: names that end with “s” can be inconvenient. You have to decide if the possessive is Jonas’s or Jonas’ (either is correct) then remain consistent. Also, it can lead to unneeded apostrophes such as the best Jonas’ had ever…

One last consideration: this might eventually become an audiobook. Jonas Stone is a mouthful for the narrator.

This doesn’t mean BA shouldn’t use the name, simply to consider it can add small problems.

Let’s look at characterization. Jonas Stone has been partnered for 12 years with Mike Lock and they are like brothers. Jonas was formerly in the military. Jonas cares about his “snitch” Eddie but not as much as Mike does. Jonas lost his daughter Jade to the traffickers they are now targeting.

This is all good background information, but it is TOLD to the reader, rather than SHOWN. Showing engages the reader more with Jonas.

Use the first eight lines then try reworking their conversation. Here’s a sample of SHOWING (in blue) more than TELLING.

“Everyone’s checked in.” Jonas glanced at Mike Lock, his partner of twelve years, sitting in the passenger seat of their unmarked Secret Service SUV. Jonas gnashed his chewing gum. “Still, this operation has Murphy’s Law written all over it.”

“Tell me about it,” Mike answered. “If something goes wrong, I don’t want to be the one to explain to Eddie’s wife that his wire didn’t work.”

“Yeah, he’s helped us close a lot of cases. Best snitch I ever worked with.”

Mike looked down his nose. “That’s confidential informant.”

“All right, all right, I get it,” Jonas snapped then regretted his sharpness.

Mike was right—some of the biggest cases in the Chicago Field Office, everything from counterfeit U.S. currency to child pornography cases, were thanks to Eddie. Jonas and Mike made sure he was paid well, and he always delivered.

After a few seconds of silence, Mike’s elbow nudged Jonas’s shoulder. “You OK, buddy?”

“Yeah.” No, Jonas wasn’t OK. This case was personal. These same traffickers had murdered his daughter, Jade.

“Eddie will come through for us. He always does.” Mike cuffed Jonas’s arm. “Today we’re gonna get the evidence to take the bastards down. For Jade.”

Same info but it’s SHOWN with dialogue, tone of voice, facial expressions, gestures, and internal monologue.

To ramp up an already-tense situation, consider adding a ticking clock. For instance:

Jonas asked, “What time is it?” 

“Twenty-two hundred hours.” 

“Wonder how long those kidnapped girls can survive in CONEX containers. Aren’t they air-tight?” 

A few typos and minor nits:

“2200 hours.” – Spell out numbers in dialogue: “Twenty-two hundred hours.”

Eddie has always been reliable. – Change of tense. Eddie had always been reliable.

…the best Jonas’ had ever worked with – delete apostrophe.

…word from him,” Jonas pressed, – pressed isn’t a normal verb to describe speech. Maybe stick with said but add a physical gesture like: Jonas clutched the steering wheel. 

…the operation will come down to the signal from Eddie. – change to the operation would come down.

Brave Author, you chose a timely crime with high stakes. The story starts with action, tension, and suspense. Putting your characters in the Secret Service offers a chance to explore their special duties that aren’t widely known to the public—a value-added bonus for the reader.

The main character has an urgent, driving need to put his daughter’s killers behind bars. If BA moves a little deeper into Jonas’s head and heart, the reader feels his loss more intensely and roots harder for his success.

This is a strong start that can be improved with minor tweaking. Good work and good luck with this, Brave Author!

~~~

TKZers: What suggestions do you have for the Brave Author? Would you turn the page?

~~~

 

Deep Fakes are illusion but death is real.

Debbie Burke’s new thriller Deep Fake Double Down launches on April 25, 2023. Available for pre-order now at Amazon.

Landing the Novel – The Story of the Gimli Glider

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“If you can walk away from a landing, it’s a good landing. If you use the airplane the next day, it’s an outstanding landing.” – Chuck Yeager

* * *

In July 1983, Air Canada Flight 143, a Boeing 767 airliner, took off from Montreal to fly to Edmonton with an intermediate stop in Ottawa. The trip ended somewhat prematurely.

Now, when you get ready to take a road trip, how do you handle the fuel? I’m guessing you go to the gas station and fill your car up, even if it’s a short trip, right? But airlines don’t do that. It’s common practice to load enough fuel into the plane to get it to its destination, and then on for another 45 minutes or so, to take care of any unforeseen circumstances. The reasoning is that filling the fuel tanks all the way adds a lot of weight to the plane, thereby making it more expensive to fly. There are tools to determine the amount of fuel to add to the plane before take-off.

That’s where the problem for Flight 143 began.

The fuel quantity indicator on the Canadian airplane was found to be defective, but there was no replacement available, so the crew manually determined the amount of fuel needed to fly all the way to Edmonton. This involved measuring the amount of fuel with a floatstick and doing some mathematical calculations and conversions. Mistakes were made. The plane took off on its journey and made the intermediate stop in Ottawa. As it departed Ottawa, no one knew that it didn’t have enough fuel onboard to make it to Edmonton.

The Boeing 767 is a two-engine aircraft. Flying toward Edmonton, it was at an altitude of about 41,000 feet when the left engine fuel pressure alarm sounded. The cockpit crew assumed it was a fuel pump problem and silenced the alarm, knowing the system was gravity-fed in flight. A few seconds later, the right engine fuel pressure alarm sounded. The crew decided to divert the flight to Winnipeg, but still had no idea about the real problem they were facing.

As they began their descent, the left engine stopped functioning. The crew began procedures for a single engine landing, but almost immediately, the right engine also failed. Air Canada Flight 143 was now a glider with a crew that had never been trained on a total engine-out emergency. The 767 emergency manual had no information on an unpowered landing.

Giving out of fuel in an aircraft at 35,000 feet is a problem. You can’t just pull over onto the nearest cloud and think things through. You have to land the plane. Whatever it takes, wherever you are, you have to put the plane on the ground, preferably in one piece.

Fortunately, an aircraft that has lost all power will not just fall out of the sky like a rock.  Even in a heavy airliner, the wings will provide enough lift for the plane to glide, however clumsily. Fortunately, the pilot of Flight 143 was also an experienced glider pilot, and he calculated what he thought was the best glide speed at 220 knots. That would give the plane a glide ratio of around 12:1, meaning the plane would fly forward about twelve miles for each mile it lost in altitude. Flying at 35,000 feet, they had a radius of around 80 miles to find a place to land.

The pilot instructed the first officer to locate the nearest airport.  They decided on the Royal Canadian Air Force base at Gimli. The base was closed, and the runway had been decommissioned, but the runway still existed. What the crew didn’t know was that the runway was used by car enthusiasts for racing, and there was an event in progress.

As the plane approached Gimli, the pilot realized they were coming in too high and too fast. One way to handle that in a normal airplane is to go around the field and approach at a lower altitude, but without power in the aircraft, the pilot didn’t think he had enough altitude to execute a complete turn, so he opted to perform a forward slip to land. This maneuver requires the pilot to cross-control by turning the rudder in one direction while the ailerons are turned the other way. The result is the aircraft continues its forward trajectory, but the nose is pointed at an angle to the side. The air hitting the fuselage will slow the plane and cause it to descend rapidly. The pilot will undo the cross control just before landing so the plane will be back in its correct configuration. It’s a maneuver that’s well-known to pilots of gliders or light aircraft, but is rarely to never performed in a passenger jet.

Fortunately, the people on the ground saw the 132-ton silent behemoth bearing down on them and were able to scramble clear of the runway in time.

Although the crew managed to get the landing gear down, the nose wheel did not lock in place. That turned out to be a bit of luck because, when the plane touched down, the nose wheel collapsed, and the friction helped slow the plane to a halt. It did not run off the end of the runway, and there were no serious injuries.

The aircraft was repaired and put back into service where it flew until its retirement in 2008. That airplane would forever be known as the Gimli Glider.

That was one awesome bit of flying by Captain Bob Pearson and First Officer Maurice Quintal. They deserved a medal for their piloting skill and calm in the face of imminent disaster, and they got one. In 1985, they received the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale Diploma for Outstanding Airmanship.

* * *

There are similarities between flying an airplane and writing a novel. In order to fly an airplane, there are two things you have to do:

#1 – You must take off

#2 – You must land

According to Heinlein’s Business Rules (and I hope Harvey Stanbrough is reading this) there are certain things you must do when writing a novel. The first two are:

#1 – You must write

#2 – You must finish what you write

But whether you’re flying or writing, there can be some turbulence and maybe even a few surprises in between those two steps.

The writing journey will certainly include a months-long effort of plotting, drafting, outlining (or not), editing, revising, and getting feedback. But eventually, the writer has to bring the novel in for a landing.

The checklist for putting it down safely may be long. There are final edits, cover design, formatting, endorsements, copyright, ISBN, Library of Congress, and so on. It may be stressful, but at some point, you just have to let go and land the thing.

Several of us are on final approach or have recently landed our novels. Terry Odell just published Deadly Relations and Debbie Burke’s Deep Fake Double Down is available on pre-order now. My novel Lady Pilot-in-Command is in the hands of the copy editor, and beta readers are sending me feedback. Other TKZ authors have recently touched down or are approaching the runway.

Whatever the status of your work, I wish you a good journey and a happy landing.

* * *

So TKZers: Have you ever run into problems with a novel in mid-flight? How did you solve them in order to land the book? Are you on final approach or have you landed a novel recently? Tell us about it.

Put Some Saga in Your Stories

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Around 850 A.D. a crew of Scandinavians was sailing around and got off course. They saw some land, and decided to check it out.

They didn’t know how cold this land could get, for if they had they might have turned right around and headed home. The place was packed with ice. “Let’s call it Iceland,” one of them said. And so it was claimed for good King Fairhair.

When word got to the king, he said, “The future is all about real estate. So let’s put in some family homes, a fish market or two, and a boat yard.”

The settlements began. It was hard at first to find a hospitable spot to set down roots. Whoever designed Iceland had put in lots of lava streams and glaciers, rocks and crags, and one strip mall with a tattoo parlor and the offices of the physician Dag “Dr. Leech” Gunnarsson.

Nevertheless, after several exploratory ventures, they found a place where at least the modicum of a village might be established.

But there was a modicum already there—with some strange fellows in cowls. These were Irish monks, who’d been there for over 100 years. These early inhabitants of Iceland were “Culdees.” Culdee comes from the Celtic Céile Dé, which means “God worshipper.” These monks lived lives of asceticism apart from human society, seeking entire sanctification. They had learned early, at least as far back as the 700s, that there’s not much sanctifying taking place in the world of human passions. Thus, they eschewed all video games, smart phones, talk shows, and Twitter.

The new settlers had to come up with their own form of entertainment. Life was taken up with catching foxes and ducks, reindeer and mice, whales and seals. These were often eaten at great feasts, where the conversation revolved mostly around the development of table manners. A century of this kind of palaver grew boring. So one night someone suggested, “Can somebody please tell a story?”

Thus was born the saga:

The original sagas were Icelandic prose narratives that were roughly analogous to modern historical novels. They were penned in the 12th and 13th centuries, and blended fact and fiction to tell the tales of famous rulers, legendary heroes, and average folks of Iceland and Norway. And they were aptly named: saga traces back to an Old Norse root that means “tale.” The English word first referred only to those original Icelandic stories, but saga later broadened to cover other narratives reminiscent of those, and the word was eventually further generalized to cover any long, complicated scenario.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1947 ed., the saga “in its purest form, extolled the life of a hero, governed by fixed rules, and intended for oral recitation.” The fixed rules were “simplicity of plot, chronological order of events, set phrases used even in describing the restless play of emotion or the changeful fortunes of a fight or a storm. The absence of digression, comment or intrusion of the narrator’s person is invariably maintained.”

Here you have plot, structure, restless emotions, and no author intrusion.

Further, these sagas display “the keen grasp of character, the biting phrase [style], the love of action and the delight in blood which almost assumes the garb of religious passion.”

The most popular of these oral tales were eventually written on scrolls. We have none of the originals, but copies that passed through various iterations: Editing and compounding (1220-1260), padding and amplifying (1260-1300), and the collection in large manuscripts (14th century).

Among the most famous Icelandic sagas are Vatzdaelasaga (890), relating to the settlement and chief family of Waterdale [historical fiction!]; Hord’s Saga, originally composed around 980 and telling the story of an outlaw named Hord [Anti-hero!].

We also have Havard (c. 1000), which recounts the titular character’s revenge for his son, murdered by a neighboring chief [revenge plot]; Heidarvigasaga (1015), the tale of a great blood feud [The Godfather, anyone?]; Eyrbyggia (1031), political intrigue; and Laxdaela (1026), a love triangle. Laxdaela features a female lead, Gudrun, who is the most famous of all Icelandic heroines. (Laxdaela spent forty weeks on the Icelandic Times bestseller list.)

All this goes to show how the fundamentals of storytelling seem innate throughout various cultures, and are still valid:

  1. A hero with whom we identify.
  2. A plot complication.
  3. Restless emotions.
  4. Action.
  5. Death stakes.
  6. Style (absent author intrusion). 

Saga has come to mean novel or series of novels that take place over a long period of time, usually in a historical context. The Trials of Kit Shannon is my saga series. I also wrote a long historical that covers World War I and takes us into 1920s Hollywood.

But the essence of saga, like that of myth, can apply to all genres of fiction. Think hero. Think big. Think action. Think emotions. Think death stakes (physical, professional, or psychological).

Most of all, think about telling a story to an audience that has worked hard hunting or fishing all day, and will fall asleep if you bore them!

Three Different Sorts of Readers

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I’m at the tail end of revising my cozy mystery (AKA “crunch time”), having gone over the helpful feedback from my beta readers, and preparing the novel for my copy editor, which inspired today’s trifecta of Words of Wisdom from the Killzone archives. Not only is what we write read by book buyers and library patrons, but our fiction can also be read by fellow writers in a critique group, and by copy editors going over our novels before publication.

First up is an excerpt from James Scott Bell’s 2015 post on The Five Laws of Readers, followed by another 2015 excerpt, this one from Debbie Burke on critique groups, and finishing with one from John Gilstrap’s 2019 post which provides a rundown on copy editing.

As always, check out the full posts, which are date-linked at the end of their respective excerpts.

 

  1. The reader wants to be transported into a dream

Fiction writers often hear from agents and editors that a reader wants an “emotional experience” from a novel. Or to be “entertained.”

True, but I don’t think those go far enough. What a reader really and truly longs for is to be entranced. I mean that quite literally. The best reading and movie-going experiences you’ve ever had have been those where you forgot you were reading or watching, and were just so caught up in the story it was like you were in a dream.

It’s like one of my favorite shows as a kid, Gumby. Remember Gumby and Pokey? (If you want to keep your age a secret, don’t raise your hand).

My favorite part of any episode was when Gumby and his horse jumped into a book, got sucked inside, and became part of the story world. I wanted to do that with the Hardy Boys. Jump in and help Frank and Joe solve the mystery.

The point is, when you read, you want to feel like Gumby, like you’re inside the story, experiencing it directly.

Hard to do, writer friend, but who said great writing was easy? Maybe a vanity press or two, but that’s it.

When I teach workshops I often use the metaphor of speed bumps. You drive along on a beautiful stretch of road, looking at the lovely scenery, and you “forget” that you’re driving. But if you hit a speed bump, you’re taken out of that experience for a moment. Too many of those moments and your drive becomes unpleasant.

One reason we study the craft is to learn to eliminate speed bumps, so the readers can forget they’re driving and just enjoy the ride.

  1. The reader is always looking for the best entertainment bang for the buck

In this, readers are like any other consumer. If they are going to lay out discretionary funds on something, they want a good return on that investment. Their judgment is based on expectations and experience. If they have experienced a writer giving them wonderful reading over and over, they will pay a higher price for their next book.

If, on the other hand, a writer is new and untested, the reader wants a sampling at a low price, or free. Even then, however, they desire to be just as entertained as if they shelled out ten or twenty bucks for a Harlan Coben or a Debbie Macomber.

That’s a challenge all right, and should be. But here’s the good news. If a reader gets something on the cheap and it enraptures them, you are on your way to a career, because of #3, below.

  1. If you surpass reader expectations, they will reward you by becoming fans

Fans are the best thing to have. Fans generate word of mouth. Fans stay with you.

So your goal needs to be not just to meet reader expectations, but surpass them.

How?

By doing everything you can to get better, write better. To do what Red Smith (and NOT Ernest Hemingway) said. You just sit down at the keyboard, open a vein, and bleed.

That’s not just romanticized jargon. It’s what the best writers do, over and over again.

So what if you don’t reach that high standard with your book? No matter. You book will be better for the trying, and you’ll be a better writer, and you next book will be better yet.

Jump on that train, and stay on it.

James Scott Bell—January 18, 2015

 

What are critique group strengths?    

Support – A CG provides much-needed camaraderie in this oft-lonely business. They throw us a lifeline when we get discouraged, nag us when we’re slacking off, and lend a shoulder to cry on when we receive rejections. They serve as our cheerleaders, therapists, and comrades in the trenches. They’re the first ones to open champagne for our successes. CG members are not only writing colleagues, they often become close friends. We develop a high level of trust and respect for each other, both professionally and personally.

Brainstorming – Here, critique groups really shine. If two heads are better than one, six or eight heads are exponentially better at throwing out suggestions. Feeding off each others energies and ideas, CGs solve many dilemmas that stymy a writer. I can’t count the number of dead ends CGs helped me work through.

Accountability – CGs exert pressure, either subtle or overt, to produce a certain number of pages for each session. They act as a de facto deadline for writers who don’t yet have an editor or agent breathing down their neck. If you show up empty-handed, you’re not meeting your obligation. Dozens of times, I’ve heard writers say, “I wouldn’t have written anything this week, except I needed to submit to the group.”

What are some CG limitations?

Diagnosis – CGs generally do a good job of homing in on a manuscript’s weak spots. If two or more people mark the same passage, you should pay attention. But while they recognize there is a problem, they can’t always diagnose exactly what it is or how to fix it. If CG suggestions don’t help enough, consultation with a developmental editor may be worthwhile.

Overlapping relationships – CG friendships may cloud our judgment of the story. A member of my group, psychologist Ann Minnett (author of Burden of Breath and Serita’s Shelf Life) recently offered a perceptive observation: “When I read A’s chapter, I hear her voice and accent. When I read B’s chapter, I think of her sense of humor, and can’t help but laugh.”

Which made me wonder…Does your CG like your story or do they like you?

When you’re face-to-face with your friends, you hear her charming British accent, see his playful wink. However, when a book is published, most readers will never meet the author, meaning the words must shoulder all the work. They need to be effective by themselves, without explanation or amplification.

Here is where online CGs might give a clearer, more “book-like” perspective. Without personal, visual, or auditory cues, their effort focuses entirely on the words.

Time constraints – My CG meets every two weeks, submitting 15-20 pages per session. At that rate, reviewing a novel-length manuscript takes six months to a year. By the time the group reaches the climactic chapter on page 365, no one remembers a subtle, but important, clue on page 48 that set up the surprise twist. This piecemeal approach is the most vexing limitation I’ve experienced with CGs.

Micro vs. Macro View – A corollary to the time constraint problem is the micro view by a CG. They examine your 20 pages per week and help polish each passage till it shines. When you string all these perfect chapters together, the resulting book should be excellent. Right?

Not necessarily. Close examination under the CG microscope may not adequately address global issues of plot development, pace, and momentum that require a macro view from an airplane.

Debbie Burke—November 17, 2015

 

Appropriate use of commas seems random to me and the commas themselves complicate language.  For example, the copy editor changed this sentence to include commas that I did not: “He and his brother, Geoff, were being driven . . .”  To my eye and ear, the meaning is clear without the commas, but I let it go because they tell me they’re correct.  (That comma before but shouldn’t be there either, should it?)

Then there’s this edit: “. . . scrolled through his contacts list, and pressed a button.”  Why? What does that comma do that its absence does not?  Aargh!

Comma Splices

First of all, I didn’t know that a comma splice was even a thing.  Here’s the note, verbatim, from the copy editor:

“There are some comma splices in the book, where two complete thoughts, that is, separate sentences, are separated by commas rather than periods.  Some people accept this in dialogue but not in descriptive text.  I have highlighted those I found like this (word-comma-word highlighted) so you can see where they are and decide what to do.  In many cases, the comma splice can be fixed by adding “and” or “but” after the comma.”

Here’s an example of what he’s talking about: “Questions never changed bad news, they only slowed it down.”  For me, it’s about the rhythm of the sentence and I think the passage flows better with the comma instead of a period.  Apparently, I do this quite a lot.  In most cases, I kept the passages as I originally wrote them.

Another example: “Their mom was just arrested, their dad is dead.”  The “and” is silent and I think the sentence is better for it.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I clearly need a good copy editor, and this one (the same as I had for Total Mayhem) is very good.  He’s just going to have to get used to me not comprehending the role of the comma.

With every set of copy edits, I also receive a “style sheet” that gets deeply into the weeds of my writing style, and that of the publisher.  The sections of the style sheet include:

Characters (in order of appearance).  With each character comes a brief description, based upon what I wrote in the book.  Here’s an example: Soren Lightwater: head of Shenandoah Station, smoker’s voice, mid-forties, built like a farmer, more attractive than her voice;

Geographic Locales (in alphabetical order).  Here again, there’s a brief description of the role the location plays in the story.  For example: “Resurrection House/Rez House, in Fisherman’s Cove, on Church Street, up the hill from Saint Kate’s Catholic Church, on the grounds of Jonathan’s childhood mansion;

Words Particular to Text.  Examples include A/V (audio-visual), ain’t, Air Force One, all-or-nothing deal, asshats . . .

John Gilstrap—November 20, 2019

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  1. What else do fiction readers want? How much do you think about what readers want when putting together a story or a novel?
  2. Have you been in a critique group? Any tips?
  3. If you use a copy editor, what sorts of things do they help you with, beyond catching typos and missing words?