Editor/Janitor

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By Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

From 1965 to 1985, the Kalispell Weekly News was great regional paper in northwest Montana. It was owned and operated by George Ostrom, a colorful character who’d been a smokejumper, mountain climber, journalist, author, radio personality, and legendary raconteur. His stories and op-eds were always entertaining and full of folksy, rustic humor.

The masthead of his newspaper read:

George Ostrom, Editor/Janitor.

That masthead always made me smile because it perfectly sums up the life of a small business owner. The title “owner” may sound impressive but that’s also the poor schlub who gets called in the middle of the night when the plumbing stops up.

Indie authors are small business owners and monarchs over their writing realm. My kingdom consists of a messy dining room table, littered with sticky notes, piled with draft manuscripts, cluttered with invoices, ISBN records, etc. My throne is a secretary chair on casters with a donut cushion. The royal duties are a to-do list that grows longer every day. As fast as I cross off one task, five more are added, each requiring a different skillset.

Today is launch day for Deep Fake Double Down, # 8 in my Tawny Lindholm Thriller series. By the eighth book, the publication process should be polished, refined, and trouble-free, right?

Wrong, dead wrong.

Each new book presents its own set of unforeseen and unforeseeable problems.

Deep Fake Double Down had its fair share of (mis)adventures.

Here’s a synopsis: A corrupt prison warden covers up the murder of an inmate by creating deep fake “evidence” against an innocent female corrections officer. The videos go viral on social media and soon every cop in Montana is gunning for her. 

Initial drafts went well with encouraging comments from critique groups.

Target release date was January, 2023. Notice the past tense.

The story was on a roll, about 75% done. Then in December, my beloved Windows 7 computer died. Here is the obituary.

Now I had to learn a new Mac computer with unfamiliar commands. At the same time, the all-important third-act climax of the story needed to be written. The process forced me to reach deep inside my creative soul…

…to come up with adequate curse words to express my frustration!

The working title “Deep Fake” was dramatic, punchy, and hinted at the story conflict. My initial research found only a few books using “Deep Fake” in the title. All were several years old, and one was categorized as “humorous erotica.” Whatever that is, it wasn’t a comparable for my story.

My talented cover artist Brian Hoffman designed an excellent cover here:

I checked off those tasks on the to-do list…or so I thought.

Now to research. Artificial intelligence and deep fakes are complex and rapidly changing. The more research I did, the more I knew I was over my head. I had to find experts to guide me. The story needed enough detail to give readers a taste of technology but without slowing down the momentum of a fast-paced thriller.

With seven previous books, I’d been fortunate to find experts easily. From drones to elder fraud watchdogs to fire lookout towers, specialists were willing and generous about sharing their knowledge.

Not this time.

I reached out to authors, engineers, and software designers whose articles I’d studied. I explained I was writing a thriller about deep fakes and asked if they’d review passages for accuracy and authenticity.

Two initially agreed. A month later, the first one ghosted me. Two months later, the other one, from a major university, unexpectedly had to clear it with the “compliance department.” She wrote back that the compliance department told her manuscript review was not permissible because they were an “FFRD center.”

What’s FFRD? I had to look it up.

Turns out it’s “federally funded research and development.” Not sure what that has to do with a fictional story but no means no. Scratch that source.

Contacted more experts in the field. No responses. Clock ticking.

Back to the title. If my book had launched in January as originally planned, the title Deep Fake would have been fine. But…

…in March, bestseller Ward Larsen released his new political thriller entitled…Deep Fake. With deep fakes prominent in the news, obviously I wasn’t the only writer eager to tackle the subject. Ward beat me to the punch and I’m glad he’s doing well with his book.

However, now my book needed a new title. I enlisted help from a focus group of trusted writing colleagues. They came up with a slew of good alternatives. Brian created a new cover with the new title, Deep Fake Double Down.

A month before release, I put the book up for pre-order, certain I could finish the remaining items on the to-do list before the deadline to upload the final manuscript.

Some parts of the process fell into perfect alignment. Steve Hooley came up with a terrific marketing idea. Recently he wrote about side hustles for writers, including his own hand-crafted legacy wood pens.

The McGuffin in my story is a secret mine of rare Montana Yogo sapphires, a treasure that’s worth killing for.

Deep Fake Sapphire Pen by Steve Hooley

Steve kindly offered to create a custom design as a marketing premium: the “Deep Fake Sapphire pen.” What a thrill when these arrived in the mail! For a chance to win a beautiful pen and a signed paperback, please visit my website.

Other marketing opportunities arose, including several speaking invitations, a magazine interview, and a radio chat with TKZ’s own John Gilstrap and his cohorts, retired Admiral Bill Stubblefield and Rob Mario.  Many thanks, John!

Meanwhile, the clock was ticking but I still hadn’t connected with any deep fake/AI experts.

Finally, an astrophysicist friend connected me with TED fellow Peter Haas, but he wasn’t available to talk until a week before the deadline. Gulp.

Peter’s input was worth the wait. He corrected info that was outdated because of new developments. He taught me cool new jargon like NerF (neural radiance field, not to be confused with those squishy game balls), Tor (a web browser that makes you anonymous), and exit node (a relay to anonymously send and receive traffic on the net).

The explosion of deep fakes has understandably led to increasing distrust of news sources. Peter talked about two groups with the mission to protect provenance of information. Content Authenticity Initiative and Project Origin are supported by Adobe and Microsoft/EDC/New York Times respectively, using digital watermarks to verify that videos, photos, and other digital data do indeed come from the sources they are purported to be from.

Don’t worry—the above won’t be on the test!

Needless to say, Peter’s input required frantic rewrites of several scenes.

At the dizzying rate that AI is changing, it’s impossible to stay current. The best a writer can do is choose a moment in time and set the story at that moment.

Remaining tasks on the to-do list:

  1. Read the entire book out loud.
  2. Final, final, final proofread (this occurs after copyeditor proofreads).
  3. Format the ebook. Here are screen shots of two formatting styles offered by Draft2Digital and Kindle Create.

Side note: you can format with D2D then upload the epub or pdf to Kindle. Although I prefer the appearance of D2D templates (this example is called “Grime”), the Amazon process goes smoother if you use Create to format the Kindle version.

 

 

 

 

 

 

4 Final, final, final read-through of the preview.

5. Upload to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).

6. Upload to other markets through D2D (using the Grime template).

Another side note: In a perfect world, the ebook and paperback would go on sale the same day. Rather than delay release until the paperback was ready, I decided it was more important to meet the April 25 launch date for the ebook.

  1. Format the paperback (formatting for ebook and print book are different).
  2. Upload the paperback to KDP.
  3. Order a proof copy, which is scheduled to arrive in a few days.

Two days before the deadline, I crossed off the remaining items on the to-do list except for:

10, After reviewing the paperback proof, hit the final “Publish paperback” button.

11. Order a box of author copies.

12. Stock the warehouse (otherwise known as the fireplace hearth in our home).

Yes, I proudly wear the crown of Queen in this Publishing Empire. My masthead reads: Author/editor/researcher/spell-checker/formatter/publisher/marketer/inventory control/warehouse stocker/bookkeeper/janitor.

Excuse me, Her Highness must now go vacuum.

~~~

TKZers: what are your various job titles? Which is your favorite? Which is the one you dread?

~~~

 

 

For a chance to win the Deep Fake Sapphire pen and a signed copy of Deep Fake Double Down, please join my mailing list here.

Buy links for Amazon      Other online booksellers

 

Revision and Omar Khayyam

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The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

* * *

That powerful verse from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam must surely resonate with every adult of a certain age who reads it.

Fortunately for us on The Kill Zone, however, Mr. Khayyam wasn’t writing about writing. Authors can indeed go back and cancel half a line, delete a few sentences, or even start the whole darn thing over from scratch. So, let’s talk about revision.

* * *

There are a variety of opinions on the need to revise a manuscript. Here are a few:

Clearly, not everyone agrees on the need to revise, or how much time should be spent on it. But for those who do favor spending that time, how should they approach the revision process?

* * *

In my limited experience, revision is a serious part of my writing. Although I don’t keep detailed time sheets, I’m guessing I spend at least half my time revising. (When I talk about revision, I’m not talking about fixing grammar, typos, or punctuation mistakes. Those can be fixed by software and good editors. To me, revision concerns the story itself, the way it ebbs and flows, how the underlying theme plays out, and the rhythm of the words.)

My first draft is an act of getting the story out of me and onto the page. Some of it may be good, but some of it is just plain vanilla story-telling without any spice. Revision is an opportunity to transform that first story idea into an entertaining, thought-provoking novel. But it’s also a balancing act. How do I keep the voice, the tone, the essence of the thing I created while changing it? It’s like trying to make sure you don’t spoil the wine while polishing the cup it’s in.

* * *

There are plenty of books and online resources with information about how to revise, but here are a few pieces of advice I’ve found helpful:

  1. To get a clear perspective of your work, take some time off between finishing the first draft and starting the revision process. (Sue Coletta wrote a TKZ post on Critical Distance last week.)
  2. After taking the break (which may last a week or a month), read through the first draft at one sitting, if possible. Some craft experts recommend printing the manuscript so that it’s easy to make notes on the pages.
  3. Review the overall arc of the plot: I use Scrivener’s outline feature to get the number of words in each chapter, and I add a sentence or two to describe the timeframe and goal for each chapter. Then I download this to a spreadsheet and calculate the percentage through the book for each milestone. I may rearrange the chapters (easy to do in Scrivener) or even delete sections that don’t serve the story. I may add new scenes or chapters.
  4. Revisit the characters. Is the main character well-defined and can you trace his/her arc through the plot? Do the secondary characters add spice to the story?
  5. Reread each scene. Does it tell a story in itself? Does it end with a reason for the reader to turn the page? Is the dialogue snappy?
  6. Check the pacing. Does the pacing give the reader a chance to catch his/her breath after a tense scene?
  7. Back to the beginning. Review the first sentence, the first paragraph, the first page of the manuscript. Will this hook a reader?
  8. Get feedback from Beta readers. Their first-time-through reactions are invaluable.
  9. Never Give Up

This list appears to be linear, but my process is more iterative. I go back through steps #3-#7 as many times as I think I need to, and I employ a developmental editor and a copy editor to help me refine my work. I also have the good fortune to have a novelist husband who listens to my concerns and helps me figure out how to solve all the little problems that pop up as I make my way through this labyrinth called Writing.

  • So, TKZers: How important is revision to you?
  • What steps do you take to revise your manuscript?
  • What percentage of your writing time is spent revising?

Becoming a Brand Name

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Power Up Your Fiction is endorsed by Betty Crocker.

Today’s post is brought to you by that new craft book, Power Up Your Fiction: 125 Tips and Techniques for Next-Level Writing. Yes, you too can write fiction that has the extras readers crave. Removes those ugly speed bumps, too. Don’t be the last one in your critique group to own a copy. Get yours today at a special price! And now here’s your host, JSB…

Brought to you by…

In the early years of television, most shows had a single sponsor paying the bills, e.g., Colgate Comedy Hour, Texaco Star Theatre, Goodyear TV Playhouse, Kraft Television Theatre. The shows that were “brought to you by” often featured the stars in a commercial.

“Father Knows Best, brought to you by Maxwell House Coffee. Good to the last drop.”

“Leave it to Beaver has been brought to you by Ralston Purina, makers of the eager eater dog food.”

“The Fugitive has been brought to you by Viceroy cigarettes. Viceroy’s got the taste that’s right.”

Speaking of that ubiquitous weed, a plethora of shows were sponsored by tobacco companies. Everybody smoked back then, even cartoon characters:

Even the pious:

Consistent quality was the key

The sponsors hoped the brand would be associated with a quality show and its stars, week after week. Not just quality, but consistent quality, directed to a target audience.

The most popular show of 1953 was I Love Lucy. It worked because Lucille Ball was a brilliant comedic actress, Desi Arnaz a perfect foil and also an astute producer who worked with a great team of writers.

The second most popular show that year was Dragnet, about as polar an opposite of Lucy as you could find. A police drama, it had a consistent style developed by its star, Jack Webb. That style featured staccato dialogue and underplayed acting. It became famous and easily parodied. Fortunately, Jack Webb had a sense of humor about it:

What if you want to write something “off brand”? In the traditional publishing world, this is problematic for obvious commercial reasons. You’re building an audience and helping bookstores know where to shelve your books. Publishers are investing in you, hoping for a long-term relationship that is profitable for all.

This is what hamstrung early John Grisham, whose massively popular legal thrillers made the big bucks. But Grisham wanted to write literary fiction, too. It was only when he had sufficient leverage that his publisher came out with A Painted House.

Indie writers have more flexibility, though they also want to build a brand. But we have short stories and novellas to try things out, and can publish them instantly. The old ad man saying applies here: “Let’s run it up the flagpole and see if anybody salutes.”

So…build your brand with consistent quality. Meet reader expectations in your genre, but also exceed them by adding unique and memorable touches. Everybody remembers Lucy and Ethel stuffing candy into their mouths, hats and down their uniforms.

Remember famed writer/director John Huston’s axiom: a great movie is made up of “three great scenes, and no weak ones.”

Which also means don’t flood the market with less than your best. For as another movie legend used to say:

Brave Words of Wisdom

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In my experience, a vital part of creating a fictional narrative is being willing to screw up when writing, followed by figuring out how to fix your mistakes, as well as understanding that very few stories are truly perfect, and, finally, knowing when to trash what you’ve written and begin anew. If I’m not careful, perfectionism and fear of failure can hold me back from creating fiction.

Today’s trio of words of wisdom is about being brave in your writing (and rewriting) and being willing to embrace mistakes, fixing what you can, and learning from what you can’t fix.

First Clare Langely-Hawthrone talks about her revision process. Then Boyd Morrison explains why it is important to not avoid making mistakes at all costs when writing. Finally, Joe Hartlaub shares another author’s courage in being willing to discard a novel that didn’t work.

I view revising as adding the second and third coats of paint to a project – each layer adds a subtly and a depth to the characters, to the setting, and to the themes that swirl around the plot. What I find the biggest challenge is avoiding what I call ‘tinkering’ – changing my mind over a minute plot point only to find it has rolling ramifications and then (in total disgust) I find I have to go all the way back and return it all to the way it was. I guess this is what people call a ‘learning process’ but I seem to be a bit ‘learning challenged’ when it comes to this – and still find myself adding complexity where NO MORE is needed! ‘Keep It Simple Stupid’ is a motto I need to have branded to my forehead.

Those who want to see the writing process in action can find me sitting in my writing studio, a converted garage in the back of our house, bleary eyed at one o’clock in the morning, determined to finish the next chapter as I’m ‘on a roll’. I might be on the internet checking on a historical reference, looking up the architecture for a historic home or searching The Times database for an event the latest fashions for that year. I might even be using the delete key to liberal advantage as part of the revision process involves getting rid of all the extraneous stuff that I find stops the flow of the narrative (sometimes bringing tears to my eyes if it was a point of historical research I spent hours on!)

Yesterday I deleted a whole chapter – painful but necessary. I then merged two minor characters to streamline the plot. I decided one scene moved like molasses and I got bogged down in worrying whether the house should have gothic archways or not…Time passed. It was one am…Time to call it quits till the red pen, the axe and the delete key were brought back out to do it all again.

Ah the joys of revision. You just got to be brave…

Clare Langley-Hawthorne—September 15, 2008

 

In writing, trying to eliminate mistakes is the mistake. Yes, there are objective errors that you want to avoid in a novel. Don’t put a safety on a Glock pistol. Don’t make your continuity and timelines inconsistent. Don’t change the name of a character halfway through. These are indisputable mistakes, and yet I have seen them all in novels. Bestselling novels.

In one of my own books, THE ARK, I explained that the elevators of a slowing airplane lowered to maintain altitude. Of course, this is incorrect. The elevators should go up to pitch the aircraft up. I’ve flown planes myself. I have a degree in mechanical engineering during which I studied fluid dynamics. I know that it was wrong, and I still made the mistake. No one—including my brother, who is a former Air Force pilot—caught the error until the book was in stores. No one died, and only one reader has ever brought it up (in fact, it’s the only reason I know the mistake happened). However, the error still bugs me.

What’s more insidious for a writer is the avoidance of subjective mistakes. We want to get everything right in a story: characters, plot, twists, literary merit, creativity, emotional resonance. We want the story to be perfect, and impatient people like me want it to be perfect from the moment we start typing it.

But it never is. It can’t be. Ever. I bet you’d only be able to come up with a tiny list of  stories that didn’t have a single thing you’d change. And even then, go look at the Amazon reviews for those books. You’ll find at least a few people (and sometimes hundreds of them) who don’t agree with your definition of perfection.

Voltaire is considered the originator of the phrase, “Perfect is the enemy of good.” We’re afraid that if our story isn’t perfect, it won’t be good enough. The idea for a novel that we have in our minds never comes out on the page like we imagine. Sometimes we can’t write at all because we’ll be disappointed that it won’t come out perfectly formed on the first try.

What we have to come to terms with is that making mistakes is part of the process. That’s how we learn. That’s how we make art. My wife, who is sometimes frustrated when I delay delivering pages to her to edit, gave me a T-shirt for Christmas that says, “Even if it’s crap, just get it on the page.” That notion can be freeing if you take it to heart. You can’t make it better if it doesn’t exist in the first place.

I’m getting more comfortable with making mistakes, but it’s a daily struggle. The lesson slowly worming its way into my head is that to fixate on creating the perfect novel results in creating nothing. So I’m learning to focus on the right thing: getting a story out that reflects my voice, where even the flaws and imperfections are unique to me.

Boyd Morrison—April 22, 2013

 

You may know of John Clarkson. He is an extremely talented author whose novels, particularly those in his current James Beck series, stand as an example of what the job of writing looks like when it is perfectly and professionally done. John intermittently blogs and recently told a story about his current work-in-progress. I will summarize it but you really need to read John’s brief dissertation to get the full flavor of what happened. John describes the process of writing what would have been the third novel in the Beck series, and realizing, upon completion, that it didn’t work (and why). He concluded that it could not be fixed so he trashed it and started over. His account is illuminating, tragic, hopeful, and ultimately inspiring. Oh, and it is very brave, too. John, in workmanlike, understated prose gives us the reasons why what would have been his latest novel didn’t come together. Ouch. How many of us would willingly and intentionally exhibit what we perceived to be a screwup on the internet town square in a forthright manner and without reservation? I know of at least one person who would pause before doing so. He’s typing these words right now.

The truth is that John is not alone in what he went through, though he is certainly walking point when describing the experience. Not every written volume of every successful series makes it to the finish line.  They lay on the blacktop and the finish line rises up to meet them. Sometimes being successful is as much knowing what doesn’t work as what does work, and being brave enough to pull the pin, rather than hoping that no one will notice. There is a term used for these books which don’t make pass the author’s own white glove test. Such manuscripts are called “trunk novels.” I am reasonably sure that every successful author has at least one. I daresay that we will probably not walk with Jack Reacher down every mile of middle America that he traverses, or that we see the account of every mystery that Spenser or Bryant and May encounter and/or solve. What is different here is that John takes us through the process of determining whether the book goes to the agent or the trunk. It’s not a pretty sight, but it’s an informative one.

Joe Hartlaub—July 13, 2019

***

  1. Do you revise bravely? How do you kill your darlings?
  2. How do you deal with perfectionism? Do you embrace your mistakes?
  3. Have you ever had to trash an entire novel and start over? How did you handle that?

***

Brand-new librarian Meg Booker is just supposed to be checking out books.

Instead, it’s the patrons who are being checked out–permanently.

A Shush Before Dying releases in ebook on April 29, 2023, with print to follow.

Preorder from these retailers.

Reader Friday: Advice

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“If you want to write fiction, the best thing you can do is take two aspirins, lie down in a dark room, and wait for the feeling to pass. If it persists, you probably ought to write a novel.” — Lawrence Block.

What’s the first word of advice you’d give someone who says to you, “I think I’m going to write a novel.”

Your Elusive Creative Genius

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What’s the source of human creativity? Where’s the house of imagination? The plane of intelligence where endless thoughts are stored and originality is delivered upon demand?

I’m sure every writer—alive or long gone—has pondered these questions, and I’m not sure if anyone’s discovered the truth. The truth, that is, whether there’s one single answer. I sure don’t pretend to have that answer, but I’m comfortable there’s some sort of… call it a non-tangible muse.

What got me going on this morning’s piece is spending the past two months experimenting with artificial intelligence (AI) as a writing aid. A creativity tool to help with writing research and, to some degree, with creative content production. The result is a new release titled OpenAI/ChatGPT—A Fiction Writer Talks Shop with a Bot.

My conclusion was simple. Although AI is a game-changer in the content writing world, it in no way comes close to what an inspired human being can produce. So that circles back to my opening questions. What’s the source of creativity, imagination, and original  thought? I’m certain it’s certainly not a bot.

I’ll defer to Elizabeth Gilbert. She’s the author of the successful (by anyone’s standards) book Eat, Pray, Love that became a movie starring Julia Roberts. I just rewatched a marvelous TedTalk given by Ms. Gilbert called Your Elusive Creative Genius. You can view it here.

Gilbert reflects on why her book was so successful. She also ponders a psychological follow-up where she felt she was doomed in never being able to produce better work. “I was afraid to top that. Paralyzed by rejection where I’d die on a scrapheap of broken dreams, my mouth filled with the ash of dismal failure.”

She felt her greatest success was behind her, and she talked of why artistry leads to anguish with so many creative minds fading away into a tragic death count.

Elizabeth Gilbert discusses the source of creativity. She talks of Greek and Roman history where the Greeks believed Damon entities inspired creativity and the Romans believed creativity dwelled with the Genius. Gilbert then speaks of the Renaissance where the enlightened were certain all human creativity existed right inside the person themselves, not with outside inspiration from their muse.

As Gilbert says, believing humans were at the center of the creative universe brought with it unimaginable expectations because the creative process doesn’t always behave rationally. Isn’t it better, she asks, to share responsibility with another force. Can we divide both success and failure with our muse and credit it when things go right and blame it when things go wrong?

Gilbert’s grasp shows as she speaks of African dancers who transcend into a detached state when inspired by a deity—an inspirational force not of this world. Then she brings it back to earth and wraps up with a look at writing reality.

To be creative and imaginative, Elizabeth Gilbert says, consistently do your job. Show up, do your piece, and the inspiration—the elusive creative genius will come to you.

Kill Zoners—What’s your creative source? Where does your creativity come from?

Finding The Beginning

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By John Gilstrap

It’s rare that the Chapter One I start with when writing a new book lives on as Chapter One in the final version. Usually, it’s a structural thing. I’ll realize after I’m a couple of dozen (or a couple of hundred) pages that I set the story up the wrong way. Sometimes, this leads me to move existing chapters around, and sometimes it leads me to write whole new sections. It’s all part of the process.

The lure of the prologue.

We all know that in the suspense genres, readers expect something big, plot-wise, in the opening pages of a book, yet as authors we have twenty pages of setup and backstory in our heads that we want to reveal so that the Big Moment will make more sense when it arrives.

“I know!” the writer says to himself. “I’ll start with a really exciting moment from Act 2 that will pique the readers’ interest, and I’ll call it a prologue. After that, they’ll endure those twenty boring pages because they know something exciting is coming.”

Sounds silly, doesn’t it? It’s the same silliness that explains why prologues are largely reviled and spell real danger coming from a rookie writer.

Action wins the day every time.

Here’s the opening (for now) of my current Jonathan Grave WIP (with apologies up front for the formatting glitch that I don’t know how to fix:

            JoeDog growled.

Jonathan Grave snapped awake and snatched his cocked and locked Colt 1911 .45 from the edge of his nightstand. As his right thumb touched the safety, his left thumb depressed the button for the muzzle light, launching an 800-lumen disk that revealed the entirety of his bedroom. If there’d been an intruder, the bad guy would be dead now.

But the room was empty, save for Jonathan and the ever-flatulent 65-pound Labrador retriever that shared his bed tonight.

I write every series book with the assumption that it is the first time a reader has encountered Jonathan’s world. At this stage, the action of the scene is everything. Readers don’t need any of the backstory. They know that there’s a guy who’s cautious enough to sleep with a loaded pistol on the nightstand, likable enough to share his bed with a big dog, and that the dog senses danger. If the first paragraphs drive readers to read the succeeding paragraphs, they have done their job.

Lessons from Harry Potter.

An exercise I love to lead when I do seminars is to ask students to tell me when Harry Potter’s story begins. (Spoilers ahead for the 5 people on the planet who’ve neither read the books nor watched the movies.) Hands shoot up and invariably, someone says the story begins when Baby Harry is delivered by Hagrid to the doorstep of the Dursley home.

Nope.

Okay, then it begins when Dumbledore sucks the light out the street lamps with his magical Zippo.

Nope.

Those events do, indeed, mark the beginning of the book and movie, but not the beginning of the story. The story begins 10 years before Harry was born, when James and Lilly Potter–Harry’s parents–were mean to a teenage Severus Snape. The backstory that emerges from those bygone years ultimately have a massive impact on the overall plot, but Rowling had the good sense not to start with that backstory.

In Medias Res

A quick peek into Encyclopedia Britannica, in medias res translates from Latin as “in the midst of things.” It’s a phrase used by every writing instructor as the place to begin a story for maximum impact on the reader. It’s worth considering. If you hook the reader at the beginning, and you keep the journey interesting, readers will follow to wherever you want to take them.

What say you, TKZ family? Does the proper beginning elude you at times? How do you find it?

How To Tell Someone
That Their Baby Is Ugly

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“I love criticism just so long as it’s unqualified praise.” — Noel Coward

By PJ Parrish

So your friend whips out the phone and before you can slither away, out come the pictures of the new baby.

“Look at that face! Have you ever seen a prettier little girl?” new dad beams.

She looks like Karl Malden. What do you say?

  1. “What a beautiful child!”
  2. “Yup, that’s some baby you’ve got there.”
  3. “Are you still within the return period?”

I ask this today because a good friend of mine has an ugly baby problem. The son of her best friend has just published his first book, a sci-fi thriller about the world maybe sorta coming to an end. She read the book while here and says it is terrible. Like terrible in cardboard characters and incomprehensible plot. And now she has to go back and face her friend. Avoiding the writer’s mom is no-go because they play pickleball every week. She asked me what to say because she knows I’ve done a ton of manuscript evaluations and I once made my living as a dance critic.

What did I tell her? I suggested that she say that the genre was not her cup of chai, and thus she isn’t the best person to judge. Which was a true lie. She never reads crime fiction, and the idea of the world ending in ether gives her the creeps. Just to be safe, I read the first couple chapters, and yeah, the book is awful. So I think I told her the right thing. I dunno. I hope so.

I have been in her position. Over the decades, many friends and co-workers have asked me to read their mystery manuscripts, and while none were butt-ugly, not a one was publishable. I gently told them their work needed work before it could be seen in the harsh light of day. (This was mainly in pre-self-pubbing era). Most took it well. Some kept trying, a few quit, one guy never spoke to me again. A good friend, who was trying to write a mystery about retired NFL players, switched to non-fiction and got published by a good small press to great blurbs and national reviews .

Ugly Dog winner Phoebe with proud parents

Brief digression. I don’t have any ugly kids. I have an ugly dog. So ugly she won the Ugly Dog Contest in Williamston, Michigan. First prize was three bags of golf-ball sized kibble, which I donated to the police canine unit. I also won a gift certificate to J&B Boots, which got me a nice pair of Italian kicks. They wrote a story about my dog in The Williamston Enterprise, which hangs framed in my office.

Giving criticism is a fine art. Our own John Gilstrap wrote about his adventures in critique groupland recently. Click here. It’s a little easier when the person you’re critiquing is a stranger and there’s no face-to-face time. But the basic rule still applies: You need to fair and you can’t crush someone’s spirit. I think about this every time I do a First Page critique here at The Kill Zone. I have a process I always go through:

  1. First, I read the whole 400 or so words quickly, without any eye toward editing. I try very hard to read it as only a reader would who has just bought the book. Does the opening pique my interest?
  2. Second, I ask myself: Do I have any prejudices against this TYPE of book that would make me unduly negative or even ignorant? For instance, I’m not a big sci-fi fan, and I’m clueless about what works in YA these days. So I read such submissions with that caveat.
  3. Next, I ask myself if the submission has something to teach all our readers. It’s not enough to just red-ink grammar mistakes or such. I look for a larger issue in each submission that can help all our writers learn.
  4. Sometimes, you get a submission that just isn’t up to snuff enough to critique. The writer hasn’t yet gotten the basics of the craft down. I decline to do these.
  5. Finally, I do a submission only if I can find something good to say about it.

That last one is important. Because I remember how hard it was to get any feedback when I was trying to publish my first mystery back in the late 1990s. Even though I had had four romances published by a big house, I was clueless about mysteries. When I showed my agent my freshman attempt, she told me I didn’t understand the unique structure of a mystery. “Go home and read,” she said. “Start with P.D. James and Michael Connelly.”

Today, when I do a critique, I use the Hamburger Method:

  • Start out by staying something nice.
  • Insert a big juicy slab of criticism.
  • End with saying something encouraging.

A few other things I’ve learned about giving criticism:

Resist the urge to fix the problem. Unless you really have the solution, it’s not a good idea to offer up the answer to another writer’s problem. You don’t know their book; you’re not inside their head. They have to find their way.
Watch your tone. Being snarky is, unfortunately, encouraged in our culture today. Be firm but kind.
Don’t take out your frustrations on someone else. Your own WIP is falling apart. Your plot has more holes than a cheese grater. Your Acer died and your geek can’t do a data retrieval. Don’t take it out on someone else’s baby.
Don’t boost your own ego. Don’t go all alpha dog, using criticism to show how sharp you are. Nobody likes a bully.
Be empathetic. You’ve probably had the same problems the other guy is having. So tell him how you fixed your book’s issues.

Okay, so you’re done reading a friend’s manuscript. Or you’ve been doing your part in the weekly critique group. You’ve been kind, you’ve been constructive, you’re offering up suggestions that you think might cause a light bulb to go off over the other writer’s head. And then…

They turn on you. You don’t understand their genre. You’ve missed their plot points. You’re supposed to hate their protagonist. You’re just biased against second-person omniscient. I call these folks the Yeah Buts. “Yeah, but if you keep reading, things will get clearer.” “Yeah but if you read more dystopian Victorian zombie fiction, you’d understand what I’m going for.”

You can’t help a Yeah But. They don’t want to hear anything except how great their stuff is. Don’t get angry. You did what you could. Smile and walk away. Sometime, an ugly baby is nothing but an ugly baby with an ugly parent.

 

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!