Writing best practice

good writing

Great Beginings

Posted by

0

On the Writers Digest website, September 2, 2024, Abigail Owen has some excellent ideas on how to begin a story in a way that captures the reader’s attention.

Abigail Owen

Abigail Owen is an award-winning author who writes NA/YA romantasy and paranormal romance. She is obsessed with big worlds, fast plots, couples that spark, a dash of snark, and oodles of HEAs! Other titles include: wife, mother, Star Wars geek, ex–competitive skydiver, AuDHD, spreadsheet lover, Jeopardy! fanatic, organizational guru, true classic movie buff, linguaphile, wishful world traveler, and chocoholic. Abigail currently resides in Austin, Texas, with her own swoon-worthy hero, their (mostly) angelic teenagers, and two adorable fur babies. 

She says: “Let’s be honest, in this social-media-driven world where our collective attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, grabbing a reader’s attention is getting harder. Or maybe, it’s more like not losing their attention is getting harder. 

Without a beginning that hooks them right away, they might not read the rest. So, if we’re all agreed that beginnings are very important, the next natural question is how to make beginnings great.

Twelve years, 50 books, and countless workshops and craft lessons in, I’ve gathered a list of tips over time that I hope you’ll find useful. Here are my top 4 tips for writing great beginnings.

TIP #1: FIGURE OUT WHERE TO START

Figuring out where to start a book is sometimes the hardest part. Starting too soon in the story you’re confusing the reader and not ground them. Starting too late and you’re giving large info dumps and backstory. Your opening scene is perhaps your most important, so let’s look at a few ways to approach it.

Show the “Before Picture”

Open with where the character/world is starting from but be deliberate about the snapshot you are showing. What does this moment say about the character or world they are in? Why does the reader care? What impact does this moment have on the character, the conflict, or the inciting incident? How will it be different from the “end picture”?

Make the “Before Picture” Not Boring

The reader isn’t going to care about a random character sitting around having coffee with their best friend. Not yet. So try one of these tricks to up the interest level:

  • Surprise the Reader: Do start with what looks to be a boring, day-in-the life moment, and then surprise the reader with unusual dialogue or characterization.
  • The Best Day Ever: The character is having a great day. Show the reader what the character is about to lose with the inciting incident, so it makes that moment more emotionally impactful.
  • A Very Bad Day: The character is having an “everything that can go wrong does” kind of day. Bonus: Make the worst day count by having it feed into the inciting incident in some way.
  • Drop Into Action: I’m not saying start with a battle, unless it works for the genre or story (look at every Mission Impossible movie ever). But give the character action. They aren’t just sitting and talking or thinking.

TIP #2: CONNECT TO THE MAIN CHARACTER

Many readers will put a book down if they don’t like the main character immediately. Even if your character is going to start from an unlikable place and grow, readers aren’t patient enough to read that far. Some things to try include:

Give the MC a Compelling Voice

Give your character a voice right off the bat. Show their personality through action, through dialogue, through short bursts of internal monologue, and through reaction.

Create Complex Motivation

Motivations, such as love, power, revenge, or self-discovery should be strong enough to drive the MC to action. Even better if their motivation conflicts directly with their own personal desires or needs or is tied to their conflict or to the inciting incident.

Give Them a Fatal Flaw

If a character is perfect, they have nowhere to grow. Also, perfect tends to stir up feelings of resentment in readers, rather than interest. Give the MC a relatable flaw which you can then tie to their character arc and even to the conflict.

Make Them Sympathetic

Give the reader a reason to take the character’s side. For example, we are naturally more sympathetic to a person who gets knocked down, and even more when they get back up.

“Save the Cat”

The well-known Blake Snyder technique. Give the character an action that shows them doing something “nice.” If they show even one tiny moment of empathy, kindness, thoughtfulness, or even astuteness, they immediately become more relatable and likable.

Show What They Love Most / What They Might Lose

Show the character with the person or doing the thing they love most. Even better, make it the thing they could lose when the inciting incident hits.

TIP #3: MAKE THE SCENES DYNAMIC

The biggest mistake I see in beginnings is paragraphs or pages of the same thing. Just internal monologue, or just exposition, or even just action, which can be disorienting. Even worse if all that same doesn’t drive the story forward. Here are a few ways to make sure you are keeping your writing as dynamic as your plot and characters:

Focus Beyond the First Line

A first line can be used to shock, to draw in, to set tone, to establish a compelling voice, and more. But often writers end up focusing so much on the first line, what comes after isn’t as good. Fine tune the entire beginning first, then go back and create that amazing first line.

Limited & Purposeful Backstory

James Scott Bell, gives this tip: Highlight any lines about the backstory a bright color. This will give you a visual clue where you’re spending too much time on it. Then whittle. Decide what’s most important for the reader to know right then to either ground them in the story so they aren’t lost, or to move the story forward. Trim the rest.

Every Scene Gets More Than One Purpose

Every scene should have a purpose that drives the story forward—establishing character, plot, conflict, tone, theme, setting, and so forth. But it’s even better if there’s more than one purpose to a given scene. Add layers of purpose!

Mix Up Your Narrative Modes

Use a quick hitting mix of exposition, description, internal reflection, internal monologue, dialogue, and action. Think of it as a playing a piano. If you hit the same note over and over, listeners will tune you out quickly. The goal is to play lots of different notes in a way that makes music.

TIP #4: MAKE THE INCITING INCIDENT HURT

This tip I got from a fantastic Pandemonium on Beginnings. The inciting incident is the moment that the character has the tables flipped on them, their world turns upside down, they are given an impossible decision, or what they love most is ripped away. It’s what sets that character on their journey and starts the conflict. Already this is an important moment. But you can punch it up by taking advantage of all the ways it impacts the MC.

Make It the Worst Possible Thing

By now you’ve established who your character is and what’s important to them. If the inciting incident can be the worst possible thing to happen, based on that characterization, it will hurt more.

Changes to Future, World, and Sense of Self

That fatal flaw you established earlier, was it involved? Does the inciting incident directly impact who they see themselves to be? What about their motivations or their internal conflict? Does it tie to their backstory? What is going to change about all those things?

Add Insult to Injury

Now make it worse. Find a way to add insult to injury and rub salt in that wound. What if the inciting incident is their fault? Or it’s served up by their worst enemy? Or it takes away the thing they care about the most?

If you didn’t know before, now you know that I’m a fan of lists. LOL. I hope a few of those were good arrows to add to your arsenal as a quiver. Now go out there and write your own great beginnings!”

Writing Advice

Posted by

0

Hannah (she doesn’t mention her last name) has a very good article on her website (Between the Lines Editorial) that provides a sensible rethink on several pieces of popular writing advice.

“I’m Hannah, an editor, author, and writing coach. I love helping writers like you polish their stories, enhance their craft, and chase their publishing dreams.”

She says, “There’s a lot of great writing advice, both free and paid, online these days. Whether you like to hang around the writing community on Instagram, surf Pinterest for new writing tips, browse your local bookstore for writing craft books, or find blogs (like mine!), there’s endless information available.

And while a lot of this advice is great, it’s not as black-and-white as many people make it out to be. I’m always talking about how writing is a gray area, and that’s true when it comes to certain popular pieces of writing advice.

We all work differently. No writing advice is ‘one size fits all.’ There are often elements that you can take and use, but nothing is absolute.

Let’s break it down into how some of the most popular writing advice isn’t absolute and what you can take away from those tips.

#1 “Real writers write every day.”

I’m not sure where this started, but you don’t have to write every day to be a “real” writer.

Writing every day can be helpful, and it’s great if you simply enjoy it! But it’s not realistic for everyone for multiple reasons. We don’t all live the same lives nor have the same amount of spare time to work on our craft. We also have different life obligations and energy levels that impact our writing time.

And yet…

You do have to practice if you want to improve your craft, and you definitely need to get words on paper if you want to finish your projects.

But taking days off–whether for school, a day job, family time, or a simple break–doesn’t mean you’re a ‘fake’ writer. Don’t stress out about writing all the time!

  • Not Great: Real writers write every day.
  • Underlying Nugget: Practicing your writing consistently is important to improve and get projects done! Find a pace and balance that fits your life.
  • Pro Tip: Even if you enjoy writing every day or are working on a big project, make sure you’re taking care of yourself and doing other activities outside of writing.

#2 “Show, Don’t Tell”

I’ve written an entire post about this one, but what this boils down to is that writing is about balance. That includes showing vs. telling!

I think this one is used a lot in beginner’s creative writing classes as a way to encourage newer writers to practice showing detail and emotion. That’s a huge part of how you build a scene. But what’s often neglected is that telling is okay sometimes–and it’s even encouraged when you need to add context or simple explanations!

  • Not Great: Show, don’t tell.
  • Underlying Nugget: Showing is really great, but don’t try to rework every sentence to be ‘showing.’ It’s okay to show and tell.
  • Pro Tip: Go read my other blog post about this for more details!

#3 “Writers must suffer for their craft”

This is said not just about writing but about art in general. Artists must suffer mentally, physically, and financially to be real artists, right? They must turn all of that pain into their art!

I think this is one of the most toxic things people say about writing and creative professions/pursuits. It’s not that writers don’t experience pain–as humans, we all do. It’s the idea that writers should or must be in pain to write good stories that’s the problem.

If writing is causing you excessive anxiety, depression, or other complex feelings you’re having trouble working through, I encourage you to speak with a mental health professional.

That being said, it’s okay to find inspiration from life and the journey you’ve been on. Great books and stories are about the human condition and how we can overcome struggle and pain to reconnect, grow, and heal. We can be happy, healthy, and handling life while also telling engaging, meaningful stories.

  • Not Great: Writers should suffer for their craft.
  • Underlying Nugget: The human condition will always be part of storytelling, and it’s okay to take inspiration from your life journey as you write.
  • Pro Tip: If writing is causing you excessive mental pain or discomfort, speak with a mental health professional in your area.
  • Pro Tip #2: If you find yourself talking really negatively about writing, try reframing it. For example, instead of saying. “writing sucks and it’s why I do it,” try saying, “writing is hard some days, but I do it because it’s important to me.”

#4 “Cut all adverbs”

There’s no denying that most of us overuse adverbs in the early drafts of our work. (Y’all don’t want to see some of the paragraphs I’ve self-edited in my current WIP!)

There’s even that famous quote about adverbs paving the path to hell.

As your friendly neighborhood editor, I want to remind you that you should cut unnecessary adverbs from your writing. But that means sometimes adverbs are necessary and totally fine!

  • Not Great: Cutting all adverbs from your project.
  • Underlying Nugget: Eliminate unnecessary adverbs, but keep ones that add to the meaning of your sentence. If you think there’s a verb that can be more descriptive/precise, use that instead.
  • Pro Tip: Search (Ctrl + F on Windows) your document for “ly ” (yes, include the space!) to find most adverbs in your manuscript. Make note of how many words it highlights, then evaluate each instance to decide if you should revise further.

#5 “Replace ‘said’ with strong verbs”

I see this advice often, and I think the idea is that strong verbs will make your writing more engaging.

While strong verbs are great, simple dialogue tags like “said” and “asked” are nearly invisible to readers. They’re a simple signal that doesn’t slow down the text like “shouted” or “murmured” can.

And obviously this section comes with the opposite advice as well. I see some advice urging writers to “avoid strong verbs and always use invisible tags.”

The truth is, there are many great ways to tag dialogue. Sometimes it’s with a strong verb. Sometimes it’s with a simple verb. And sometimes it’s actually no tag, or even using a sentence of action in place of that ‘said’ verb!

What’s really important is finding a flow and the right pacing for your scene.

  • Not Great: Replace ‘said’ with strong verbs.
  • Underlying Nugget: There are many great ways to tag dialogue, and you should strive for some balance that achieves the right flow and pacing for your scene.
  • Pro Tip: If you’re going to replace ‘said’ or ‘asked,’ try to use precise speaking verbs. In my editing work, I see verbs used as dialogue tags that don’t quite equal speech. This can risk readers being pulled out of your story to re-read your sentence. Just something to watch out for!

Bonus #6 “You have to be published to be a real writer”

Your writing is valid no matter why you’re doing it or what stage you’re at in your writing journey.

Hobbyist? Great!

Like to post fanfiction? Wonderful!

Want to self-publish? Awesome!

Agented and on submission? Very nice!

Sending out query letters? Amazing!

All of the above–and whatever is in between–makes you a writer. You don’t need to sell 50,000 copies of your book to be ‘legit.’ You don’t need to publish to be a ‘real writer.’ Work toward the goals you want to work on at whatever pace you want.

Because if you’re writing, you’re a real writer.”

Good advice!

Plot Design: Three Questions

Posted by

0

On the Writer’s Digest website, this article by Steven James appeared in Aril 24, 2018.

The writer claims that the answers to these questions will fix any problem you might be having with your plot.

Steven James is the critically acclaimed author of thirteen novels. He serves as a contributing editor to Writer’s Digest magazine, hosts the biweekly podcast The Story Blender, and has a master’s degree in storytelling. Publishers Weekly calls him “[a] master storyteller at the peak of his game.” Steven’s groundbreaking book Story Trumps Structure: How to Write Unforgettable Fiction by Breaking the Rules won a Storytelling World award as one of the best resources for storytellers in 2015. When he’s not working on his next novel, Steven teaches Novel Writing Intensive retreats across the country with New York Times Bestselling author Robert Dugoni.

Steven James

Steven says: “Initially, most authors land somewhere on the continuum between outlining and organic writing. If you try to fit your story into a predetermined number of acts or a novel template, you’re more of an outliner.

If you don’t care how many acts your story has as long as you let your characters struggle through the escalating tension of your story in a believable way, you’re more organic.

Both organic writing and outlining have their inherent strengths and weaknesses. (Yes, even organic writing can, in some cases, lead you astray if you don’t let all three questions listed below guide your writing.) Outliners often have great high-concept climax ideas. Their stories might escalate exponentially and build to unforgettable endings. However, characters will sometimes act in inexplicable ways on their journey toward the climax. You’ll find gaps in logic. People will do things that don’t really make sense but that are necessary to reach the climax the writer has decided to build toward.

Organic writers are usually pretty good at crafting stories that flow well. The events are believable and make sense. However, sometimes the narratives can wander, and although the stories are believable, they might also end up being anticlimactic as they just fizzle out and don’t really go anywhere.

So outlining often results in problems with continuity and causality, while organic writers often stumble in the areas of focus and escalation.

Outliners tend to have cause-effect problems because they know where they need to go but don’t know how to get there. Organic writers tend to have directionality problems because they don’t necessarily know where they’re going, but things follow logically even if they lead into a dead end.

Whichever approach you’ve been using, you can build on its strengths and solve its weaknesses by asking the following three questions and letting the answers influence the direction of your story.

1. “What would this character naturally do in this situation?”

This focuses on the story’s believability and causality—everything that happens in a novel needs to be believable even if it’s impossible, and because of the contingent nature of fiction, everything needs to follow causally from what precedes it.

2. “How can I make things worse?”

This dials us in to the story’s escalation. Readers always want the tension to tighten. If the
story doesn’t build, it’ll become boring and they’ll put it aside.

3. “How can I end this in a way that’s unexpected and inevitable?”

Here we’re shaping the scenes, and the story as a whole, around satisfaction and surprise. So the story has to move logically, one step at a time, in a direction readers can track—but then angle away from it as they realize that this new direction is the one the story was heading in all along. However, readers don’t want that ending to come out of nowhere. It needs to be natural and inherent to the story.

The first question will improve your story’s believability. The second will keep it escalating toward an unforgettable climax. The third will help you build your story, scene by twisting, turning scene.

Organic writers are good at asking that first question; outliners are good at asking the second one. As far as the third, organic writers will tend to have believable endings and outliners will tend to have unpredictable ones.

The way you approach writing will determine which of those questions you most naturally ask and which ones you need to learn to ask in order to shape effective stories. …

DIVE INTO THE QUESTIONS

I should mention that, in regard to the first of the three key questions listed above, some writing instructors teach that we should ask ourselves “If I were this character in this situation, what would I do?” rather than “What would this character naturally do in this situation?”

There’s a subtle but significant difference. One of these questions puts you in the scene, and the other emphasizes the character’s response.

It’s important that you move yourself out of the story and let the characters you’ve created take over. I don’t want to imagine myself as the character. I want to observe the character responding as she would, not as I would if I were her. Step further away from yourself, and remove your own views as much as possible from the situation.

Incidentally, the first two questions also help authors who strive to write books that are either character-centered or plot-centered (remember, however, that no story is character-driven or plot-driven because all stories are tension-driven).

The first question helps plot-centered authors develop deeper characterizations. The second question helps character-centered authors develop plots that are more gripping.

The central struggles of the main character (internal, external, and interpersonal) will only be ultimately satisfied at the story’s climax. As we write the scene-by-scene lead-up, we are constantly deepening and tightening the tension in those three areas.

Some climaxes implode because they lack believability, others because they don’t make sense or they’re too predictable, others because they don’t contain escalation of everything else in the story and end up being disappointing.

Let me reiterate: The solution to most of these problems is keeping the promises you’ve made to your readers by maintaining believability, creating endings that are inevitable and yet unexpected, tightening the tension, ratcheting up the action, relentlessly building up the suspense, heightening the stakes, and escalating to a finish that reaches its pinnacle at just the right moment for the protagonist and for your readers.

Let those three questions filter through every scene you write.

  1. “What would this character naturally do in this situation?”
  2. “How can I make things worse?”
  3. “How can I end this in a way that’s unexpected and inevitable?”

If you’re attentive to them, they’ll crack open the nut of the tale for you.”

Not a Review: Ulysses

Posted by

0

This isn’t a review, because I haven’t read the entire book. Call it “My Preliminary Thoughts on Having Read about 10% of the Book.” The problem was that 10% of the book was enough to discourage me from reading any further. In fairness to James Joyce, the author, I ought to take a stab at something else he’s written.

Wikipedia says this about Joyce: “James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. Joyce’s nove Ulysses (1922) is a landmark in which the episodes of Homer’s Odyssey Homer’s are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, particularly stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, letters, and occasional journalism.

Joyce was born in Dublin into a middle-class family. He attended the Jesuit Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare, then, briefly, the Christian Brothers–run O’Connell School. Despite the chaotic family life imposed by his father’s unpredictable finances, he excelled at the Jesuit Jesuit Belvedere College graduated from University College Dublin in 1902. In 1904, he met his future wife, Nora Barnacle, and they moved to mainland Europe. He briefly worked in Pula and then moved to Trieste in Austria-Hungary, working as an English instructor. Except for an eight-month stay in Rome working as a correspondence clerk and three visits to Dublin, Joyce resided there until 1915. In Trieste, he published his book of poems Chamber Music and his short story collection Dubliners, and he began serially publishing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in the English magazine The Egotist. During most of World War I, Joyce lived in Zurich, Switzerland, and worked on Ulysses. After the war, he briefly returned to Trieste and then moved to Paris in 1920, which became his primary residence until 1940.

Ulysses was first published in Paris in 1922, but its publication in the United Kingdom and the United States was prohibited because of its perceived obscenity. Copies were smuggled into both countries and pirated versions were printed until the mid-1930s, when publication finally became legal. Joyce started his next major work, Finnegans Wake, in 1923, publishing it sixteen years later in 1939. Between these years, Joyce travelled widely. He and Nora were married in a civil ceremony in London in 1931. He made a number of trips to Switzerland, frequently seeking treatment for his increasingly severe eye problems and psychological help for his daughter, Lucia. When France was occupied by Germany during World War II, Joyce moved back to Zürich in 1940. He died there in 1941 after surgery for a perforated ulcer, at age 58.

Ulysses frequently ranks high in lists of great books, and the academic literature analysing his work is extensive and ongoing. Many writers, film-makers, and other artists have been influenced by his stylistic innovations, such as his meticulous attention to detail, use of interior monologue, wordplay, and the radical transformation of traditional plot and character development. Though most of his adult life was spent abroad, his fictional universe centres on Dublin and is largely populated by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there. Ulysses in particular is set in the streets and alleyways of the city. Joyce is quoted as saying, “For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.”

James Joyce

The novel is 673 pages long. Here is a paragraph I’ve chosen from what I’ve read, at random:

“Mr Deasy looked down and held for a while the wings of his nose tweaked between his fingers. Looking up again, he set them free. — I am happier than you are, he said. We have committed many errors and many sins. A woman brought sin into the world. For a woman who was no better than she should be, Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten years the Greeks made war on Troy. A faithless wife first brought the strangers to our shore here, MacMurrough’s wife, and her leman, O’Rourke, prince of Breffni. A woman too brought Parnell low. Many errors, many failures but not the one sin. I am a struggler now at the end of my days. But I will fight for the right til the end.”

It is often difficult to follow Joyce’s train of thought, and his images are occasionally so unique as to be puzzling. There are frequent references to historic, ideas, events and people in Ireland, with which a casual reader may not be familiar. Then, there are bits of Latin and other languages which aren’t deciphered. For me it was very hard reading.

Review: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest

Posted by

0

I have now read the third book in this amazing trilogy. You can find reviews of the first two books in the Millennium Trilogy two and four weeks ago. Of the three, I think that the first volume, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is the best. It has a self-contained plot and is probably the clearest example of Stieg Larsson’s amazing talent for writing thrillers, which include: creating distinctive, memorable characters, building and keeping tension high, designing a plot which captures the reader’s interest, and keeping the reader guessing with surprises at critical junctures in the plot.

Stieg Larsson 1954 – 2004

The plot carries over from the second book in the series. Lisbeth Salander (the heroine) is in the hospital with serious injuries caused by her half-brother, Ronald Niedermann, who has a rare congenital condition which makes him insensitive to pain, and who is on the run with the cash of an outlaw motorcycle club which hired him to kill Lisbeth. Two rooms away in the hospital is Zalachenko, Lisbeth’s father, a former Soviet operative who tortured Lisbeth’s mother, and who was injured by Lisbeth with an axe. Zalachenko is shot to death in his hospital bed by Evert Gullberg, the head of a renegade section of Sapo, the Swedish equivalent of MI6, and who is terminally ill. Zalachenko is killed for fear that he will reveal the existence of the section which protected Zala, and instutionalised Lisbeth with the help of the corrupt psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Teleborian. Gullberg tries to kill Lisbeth, also, but is frustrated by her lawyer Annika Giannini, Mikael Blomkvist’s sister. Gullberg commits suicide. Section operatives murder Gunnar Björk, Zalachenko’s former Säpo handler and Blomkvist’s source of information for an upcoming exposé; the operatives falsify the death as a suicide. Other operatives break into Blomkvist’s apartment and mug Giannini, making off with copies of the classified Säpo file that contains Zalachenko’s identity.

Torsten Edklinth, a Sapo official is informed of the renegade section of Sapo, and begins a clandestine investigation with Monica Figuerola. Blomkvist, secretly arranges to have Lisbeth’s hand-held computer returned to her in the hospital and arranges a mobile phone hot spot to keep her in touch with the outside world. Blomkvist plants misinformation about plans to defend Lisbeth at her trial for the attack on Zala. The section swallows the bait, plants cocaine in Blomkvist’s flat and tries to have him killed.

On the third day of the trial, Blomkvist’s expose is published, causing a media frenzy, and leading to the arrest of section people. Giannini destroys Dr. Peter Teleborian’s credibility, and proves that the section conspired to cancel Lisbeth’s rights. The prosecutor realises that the law is on Lisbeth’s side, withdraws all the charges and the court cancels Lisbeth’s declaration of incompetence.

When she is freed, Lisbeth discovers that she and her twin sister are to share Zala’s estate which includes an abandoned factory. She goes to investigate the property and finds Niedermann hiding there from the police. During a struggle with him, she nails his feet to the floor with a nail gun. She informs the motorcycle gang where Niedermann is and then she informs the police of the resulting chaos. Mikael Blomkvist visits her at her apartment and they reconcile as friends.

This novel is 715 pages long, and, as such, the plot is far more complex than the above summary suggests. It is also richly populated with minor bit-part characters, whom I sometimes had difficulty keeping track of, even though each one had an essential role to play in keeping the story advancing, credibly.

All in all, this is a great story!

For Whom Do You Write?

Posted by

0

Jericho Writer’s Harry Bingham makes a good point in his Friday email. He says, “I mean, readers, yes, obviously. But who? Your mum? That old English teacher you loved? Crime fans in general? People who love Patricia Cornwell in particular?

There are two reasons to ask these questions. The first is marketing. If you’re writing people who want a fresh take on the Patricia Cornwell vibe, that would suggest a certain approach to book covers, titles, marketing slogans and so on. You might even refer directly to Cornwell, or her most famous character, Kay Scarpetta, in your marketing yadda.

The second reason has to do with the choices you make as you write the book itself.

As you write, and as you edit, you are faced with 1,000,000 choices: again and again and again. Are you happy with this sentence? What about this one? Does the attacker strike your heroine? Strike her with what? Does he hurt her? Does she hurt him back? Does she escape? How does she escape? Is her breath ‘hoarse and rasping’ afterwards? Or does it come in ‘juddering heaves of relief’? What phrase do you prefer? And what does she do next?

Now, obviously, you’re going to make all those choices on the basis of what seems right to you – you have no other option. But at the back of your mind, there’s always a sense that you’re writing for one set of readers rather than another.

For example, if I were writing forensically-led crime fiction, I’d have to assume that my readers knew Patricia’s Cornwell work and would be wanting me to break new ground. I couldn’t just reprise Cornwell’s tropes and expect success myself.

Indie authors – intelligently analytical as they are – often take this further, and try to conceive of an ‘Ideal Reader’ – a dog-loving, mother-of-two Kansas 40 year old housewife. Someone with plenty of friends and love of hiking, who watches true crime shows on Netflix, reads mostly crime, but will cry at soppy love stories too.

The idea is that if you know your ‘Ideal Reader’, you can craft your book and your marketing material to appeal perfectly to that one person.

And? OK. Very smart writers I know do just that and they say it works for them. In part, it works because book marketing works best when it’s micro-targeted. A good campaign is one that gets excellent conversions happening amongst a very tightly defined group of readers. A bad campaign is one that starts so-so conversions within a much broader group. So: a hyper-detailed picture of your Ideal Reader keeps your marketing focused.

But I have a somewhat different take.

I think you have to turn yourself into your own Ideal Reader.

Partly, that means bringing your own tastes to bear. As I say, when it comes to editing, you don’t really have a choice.

But you also have to ensure that you become your own readership. What books do you expect your readers to have read? What authors do they love?

You need to have read that book and know those authors. If you’ve read Patricia Cornwell as keenly as your readers have, you won’t just repeat that stuff. In the end, your desire for novelty will be the same as theirs.

These things go deep.

I know, for example, that more of my readers are American than British. So I have a particular love of giving my American readers a taste of Wales that’s very Welsh. So, for example, a few miles from where my Mum lives, there’s a village called Newchurch. Easy to say, easy to spell, right? But I’d pretty much never use that placename in one of my Fiona books. Near Newchurch, lie the settlements of Rhosgoch, Glascwm, Llanbadarn-y-garreg, and (where my kids go riding) Bryngwyn. I’d use any of those placenames instead, joyous in the knowledge that Kate from Kansas and Ali from Arkansas will struggle to pronounce any of them.

Or again: I wrote a book that had to do with the archaeology of the British Dark Ages. I know my readers to be literate and intelligent. Plenty of writers might have avoided a ton of ancient history detail, but I knew my guys would like it. (I know I like it. I’ve become them.) So the book is spattered with chunks of Latin, and late Celtic poems, and mournful Romano-British monks, and factoids about Anglo-Saxon vs British burials. (The main difference being that the Anglo-Saxon invaders were pagan, the ancient Britons were Christian, so their burial rites looked different. I am English, but I’m still on the side of the ancient Britons. Twll dîn pob Sais.)

One last example:

How fast or slow do you take a scene? Do you hurtle through? Offer a reaction shot or two, but still move at pace? Or do you allow yourself a paragraph or two of considered reflection?

My writing creates my readers, but my readers also create my writing. I know that my readers relish the Fiona character – they want more of her, not less. So, while I’m hyper-sensitive to anything that feels boring or self-indulgent, I’m happy to allow proper space for reflection. On the whole, my scenes go slow but deep, not fast and shallow. That’s respecting my readers, not ignoring them.

Over time, any difference between you and your readership gets snuffed out. You learn from them what they do and don’t respond to. You learn what books and authors they like. You follow down those trails.

You don’t have to like everything that every one of your readers like. I’ll get book recommendations from readers (either via email, for example, or from names cited in an Amazon review) where I read the book and don’t like it. But that’s fine too. What matters is knowing (roughly) the universe that your readers inhabit, and using that knowledge to shape your tastes and your choices. The process becomes a rolling, laughing, respectful conversation with a multitude.

And if you follow that path, things become easy. Your Ideal Reader? It’s you.

Review: The Girl Who Played with Fire

Posted by

0

So, I’ve finished the second book in the Millennium Series, and, at the moment, I’m two thirds of the way through the final book. As you already know, the series is by Stieg Larsson:

Stieg Larsson (born as Karl Stig-Erland Larsson) was a Swedish journalist and writer who passed away in 2004.

As a journalist and editor of the magazine Expo, Larsson was active in documenting and exposing Swedish extreme right and racist organisations. When he died at the age of 50, Larsson left three unpublished thrillers and unfinished manuscripts for more. The first three books (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest) have since been printed as the Millennium series. These books are all bestsellers in Sweden and in several other countries, including the United States and Canada.

Larsson witnessed a rape when he was 15, and was helpless to stop it. This event haunted him for the rest of his life. The girl being raped was named Lisbeth, which he later used as the name of the heroine on his Millenium trilogy. Sexual violence against women is also a recurring theme in his work.

Stieg Larsson

This book begins with Lisbeth Salander in a long trip to tropical resorts. She returns to Stockholm and buys a luxury apartment with money she siphoned off the accounts of a financial criminal. Nils Bjurman, who had previously raped Lisbeth Salander, focuses his attention on capturing her and destroying the film she made of his crime. He hires a motorcycle gang to capture her, but the attempt is foiled by Mikael Blomkvist, the publisher of Millennium magazine.

Millennium is approached by Dag Svensson and Mia Johansson, who have put together a report concerning sex trafficking in Sweden and the abuse of underage girls by high-ranking figures. Everyone is intrigued by recurring mentions of “Zala”, a mysterious figure heavily involved in the sex-trafficking industry. Salander, hacking Blomkvist’s computer, is taken aback by the mention of Zala, and visits Svensson and Johansson to ask questions. Later that same night, Blomkvist finds the couple shot dead in their apartment. With Salander’s fingerprints on the murder weapon, and her formal record establishing a history of violent instability, she is implicated in the double murder. Bjurman is also found dead, shot by the same weapon; Salander is the prime suspect.

Blomkvist confronts Gunnar Björck, a policeman on sick leave and one of the high-ranking abusers identified by Svensson and Johansson, who agrees to disclose information about Zala if Blomkvist leaves him out of Millennium‘s exposé. Visiting Bjurman’s summer cabin, Salander finds a classified Sapo (Swedish Secret Police) file and begins to make the connection between Bjurman and Zala, whose real name is Alexander Zalachenko. With information from Björck and Palmgren, Lisbeth’s earlier guardian, Blomkvist pieces together the history of Zalachenko: he is a former Soviet defector whose very existence is kept classified by Säpo. Initially an intelligence source, Zalachenko began to traffic in sex slaves on the side. He became the partner of a 17-year-old girl who became pregnant with twins, Lisbeth and Camilla. Zalachenko was an absent father who repeatedly abused his partner; Lisbeth, angered at her mother’s abuse, threw a petrol bomb into Zala’s car while he was in it, causing him near fatal burns. The authorities imprisoned Salander and declared her insane, since acknowledging Zalachenko’s crimes would require them to divulge his existence. Niedermann had killed Svensson and Johansson on Zalachenko’s orders; Bjurman, who was involved with Zalachenko, played a role in the murders and was killed to ensure his silence.

Separately, Salander and Blomkvist find Niederman’s address. Salander is captured there, and shot by Zalachenko, who is hiding out with Niederman. Niederman buries her alive, but she escapes, and attacks Zalachenko with an ax, seriously injuring him. Blomkvist arrives on the scene and calls the emergency services. He captures Niederman and ties him to a lamp post. The book ends at this point.

This second volume is nearly as good as the first: very difficult to put down. I have just two comments. The beginning of the book deals with Lisbeth’s time at resort hotels in the tropics and her purchase of a luxury apartment. Neither of these activities – while interesting – contributes to the plot. In fact the plot continues into the third volume, so that the second volume is not a complete story in itself

Business Rule for Freelance Writers

Posted by

0

There is an article by C. Hope Clark dated March 29, 2023 which will interest those of you who are freelance writers or are thinking to go in that direction.

C. Hope Clark is the founder of FundsforWriters.com, noted by Writer’s Digest for its 101 Best Websites for Writers for 20+ years. She is a freelance writer, motivational speaker, and award-winning author of 16 mysteries.

C. Hope Clark

Ms Clark describes the 25/50/25 rule of freelance writing. “You’ve been submitting to a few places, and you’ve published a few pieces. This freelance writing business is intriguing, but you’d love taking it from hobby level to professional, so what is the answer?

Submit more often? Of course. Your goal is to increase your acceptance rate, and that takes more submissions. Let’s say you do this for months, and you have some acceptances under your belt, but the income isn’t quite what you hoped it would be.

You do have a few regular markets that provide steady income. It might not be the best income, but it’s reliable. They’ll take almost anything you write, so you keep sending them pieces. They take up a major chunk of your time when you stay insanely busy writing, researching, and pitching. So busy, yet you can’t break the ceiling of mediocre pay.

Let’s visit the rule of 25/50/25 when it comes to pitching your talents.

The First 25

Twenty-five represents a percentage of your submissions. This first 25 are those lovely, easy markets you know you can pitch to and get accepted most of the time. These are the markets you are close to, most familiar with, and rely upon for money. They come through for you time and time again.

These markets are the easiest to get attached to and the hardest to say no to. They become all that you write for because they feel safe. Your rejection rate is minimal, and you waste little time on pitches that say no. While cranking out 100 of them might gain you an elementary level income, what if you want more than that?

These piece-of-cake markets are why your income is stagnant. They should comprise no more than 25 percent of your work. Let them give you some security but don’t let them consume your life such that you remain stuck at that level.

You want to be more than that.

The Second 50

Fifty represents markets that are much more difficult, and you expect to be rejected almost as much or more so than accepted. You feel you have a chance at these, and they usually pay more.

Remember, your goal is not only to gain in income, but in reputation as well. Your name is money as your portfolio builds. This 50 percent category should comprise your meat and potatoes part of your day. To make the math simple, think of a 40-hour work week. Researching, pitching, and writing for these markets should eat up half of your hours.

That sounds scary. That’s a lot of time to invest into a 50-50 chance of being accepted, but the payback for landing these is so much better than sticking to the first 25 percent. Not only are the checks usually larger, but once you land one, you have a connection to go back to. Then you have another. Then three or four or more.

You might be amazed at how you hunger more for these projects than the original, low-paying ones that got you started. These make you feel more alive, more talented, and hopefully, more financially comfortable.

The Third 25

These are the dream markets. These are the top-shelf opportunities you’d love to land but were too afraid to pitch. They now are on your calendar. You study them and believe you could grow to be as good as half of the submissions, but to run with that crew feels awful intimidating. The rejection rate surely has to be 70, 80, or 90 percent of the time.

But that also means an acceptance rate of 10, 20, or even 30 percent.

What if you won one of these markets? You’d dance, scream, buy yourself a wonderful dinner with drinks, and pat yourself on the back that you broke through that wall and proved you had some modicum of talent.

Why not try to make it happen again?

Then again?

Out of your 40-hour week, that’s 10 hours of stepping up your game. It doesn’t ruin your schedule, and it has way better odds than winning the lottery. With a quarter of your time devoted to what you feel is a gold-plated world, a level market you’d love to spend most of your time writing for, you haven’t shirked your other writing duties.

The Surprising Results

If you are diligent in this 25/50/25 search for freelance work, you spend a quarter of your day on the easy stuff, half on the difficult yet achievable, and a quarter on the next-to-impossible.

Stick with it for several months, long enough to pitch and receive replies . . . hopefully with contracts. The journey has to be long enough to see the big picture.

The surprising results are that you become magnetized to climbing the ladder to the more lucrative markets. With each acceptance, you unknowingly take another step higher. Before long, you find yourself sliding along the 25/50/25 scale.”

Believable Co-incidents in Fiction

Posted by

0

This post is from an article by Steven James on the Writers Digest website dated September 7, 2018. The focus of his article is making co-incidents believable.

“We’ve all read stories in which the cavalry arrives just in time to save the day, or the hero just happens to find the time machine/ray gun/escape hatch/shark repellent right when he needs it in order to survive the climax. Although coincidences may happen in real life, they can kill believability if they appear at the wrong time or aren’t handled the right way in a story.

Coincidence is necessary to get a story started, but is often deadly at the end. However, too many authors use it backward: They work hard to get readers to buy into the plausibility of the beginning, but then bring in chance or convenience at the climax—when readers’ coincidence tolerance is at its lowest.

For handling coincidence deftly, follow these seven strategies to unlock its power.

7 Clever Strategies for Harnessing Coincidences in Fiction

Strategy 1: Capitalize on the coincidence that initiates your story

We don’t typically think of it this way, but really all stories start with a coincidence.

Stories begin when the author dips into the stream of cause and effect and pulls out a moment that initiates all that will follow. Readers accept this without consciously identifying the event as coincidental:

  • The young couple serendipitously meets in a tiny Parisian cafe.
  • The suicide bomber ends up killing the president’s niece in the airline attack.
  • The woman’s fiancé is diagnosed with terminal cancer the day he proposes marriage.

Readers don’t say, “Yeah right. The detective who ends up being the protagonist just happens to be assigned to the case that this book is about. I don’t buy it.”

Of course not. Readers know that a story must start somewhere and, whether they realize it or not, an event that doesn’t require much in the way of explanation typically gets things rolling.

Use the story’s opening sequence to justify incidents that would otherwise seem too convenient. This is where coincidences will fly under your readers’ radar.

For example, a cryptic phone call can set up a number of storylines:

“So, is the meeting still on for 7?”

“No. We’ve had to move it back an hour so Fayed can make it.”

“And we’re still on target for tomorrow at the raceway for—”

“It’s all set. Everything is set. Now, no more questions.”

If this type of conversation occurs early on in the book, readers won’t much care why it was Fayed couldn’t come at the originally scheduled time, and you don’t have to explain. However, if the conversation were to happen later in the story, readers may very well be wondering why Fayed was going to be late—and they’ll be expecting a good reason.

If your story requires the inclusion of an unlikely event, move it closer to the start—or even use it as the inciting incident—to capitalize on your readers’ willingness to suspend disbelief.

Strategy 2: Avoid justifying what readers readily accept

In contrast to what we’ve just established—that the earlier a coincidence occurs in the story, the less it needs to be justified in the minds of readers—many authors spend excessive time trying to explain why the opening should make sense.

Often, they’ll include an exciting hook, then drop into backstory to explain what instances led up to the hook occurring. This not only hurts the flow of the narrative, but also decreases escalation and hampers your readers’ engagement with the story.

Can lightning strike the person standing beside your protagonist during the first scene of the story? Yes, of course. Is that a coincidence? Absolutely. Will readers accept it? Sure, because that’s how the story begins.

Can lightning strike the bad guy at the climax right when it looks like he’s about to kill the hero? Well, technically anything can happen, but if it does, it’s likely to solicit eye rolls and book throwing—unless the main character somehow causes that to happen through a conscious choice and in a way that readers will readily believe but not anticipate.

Does your hero need to know karate late in the story? Show him sparring early. You don’t need to explain why or when he started sparring; you don’t need to give a history of all the karate tournaments he’s been in since high school. All of that information is unnecessary. He’s a black belt. Got it. Now move on.

Strategy 3: Leverage genre conventions

Coincidences are more acceptable in some genres than in others. For instance, fate tends to play a bigger role in romance, fantasy, and horror: The lovers are destined to be together (regardless of when in the story that destiny is revealed), the prophecy about the young wizard must come true, and readers might anticipate that the demon will somehow survive at the end to wreak havoc again.

In those cases, or when the thematic nature of a story revolves around fate, destiny, prophecy, or divine intervention, coincidences play a bigger role in the story’s progression.

However, most people believe that free will plays a more significant role in our destiny than fate does, so even in genres that are friendly to coincidences, consider searching for a way to have a freely made choice rather than simply destiny or an act of God resolve things at the climax.

Strategy 4: Point out coincidences in the middle

Every coincidence except the opening one requires a leap of faith. So, the further you move into a story, the more coincidences will undermine believability.

Certain forces press in upon a story to help shape it—believability, tension, escalation, characterization, and so on. Sometimes authors overlook the importance of causality, or the fact that each subsequent event in a story is causally linked. In other words, every event is caused by the one that precedes it.

At times, the flow of a story might require a break-in causality, a jump in logic, or the necessity for something inexplicable to happen. If that’s the case in your story, readers will often sense a gap in believability—unless you point it out to them.

You can do this by having a character note that what’s happening seems unbelievable:

“It just doesn’t seem like Judy to lose her patience like that.”

“I can’t believe he would say that.”

“I could tell something was up. She just wasn’t acting like herself.”

Readers will think, “Aha! Yes! I thought something weird was going on, too!” And, rather than be turned off by what seems too unbelievable or too convenient, they’ll be drawn deeper into the story. They’ll trust that there’s more going on than meets the eye and that, in the broader context of where the story is heading, this event will retrospectively make sense.

Strategy 5: Anticipate readers’ reactions

Be your own worst critic of seemingly arbitrary events in your story. Think through the reactions that readers will have to the events as they occur:

Oh, that’s convenient.

I don’t buy it.

Yeah, right.

This doesn’t make sense.

Why doesn’t he just …?

We often talk about silencing our inner critics when we write, but this is one time when you should listen to that voice. When it pipes up, find a way in your story to answer it.

Strategy 6: Look for what’s missing

Avoiding coincidence isn’t just about spotting what does occur that’s not the logical result of the preceding events, it’s also about recognizing what doesn’t occur that should, given the current circumstances.

For example, the woman is being chased by the knife-wielding killer. She runs out of the house and tries to fire up the car—it won’t start. (Oh, that’s convenient.)

So, she gets out of the car and runs to the cellar instead of toward the highway. (I don’t buy it.)

Where she rallies her strength and punches the killer in the face, knocking him out. (Yeah, right.)

In those three cases, the coincidence comes from the actions she takes. But such contrivances are equally ineffective when they come from what should happen but too conveniently does not:

She carefully and quietly steps over his unconscious body to get to the staircase again. (This doesn’t make sense. Why doesn’t she tie him up, finish him off, use that knife of his against him?)

Any time your readers would have one of those reactions, you’ve identified a coincidence that needs to be addressed in the service of the story’s believability.

Strategy 7: Foreshadow to remove coincidence from the climax

Of all the scenes in your story, the climax should contain the least amount of coincidence. Foreshadowing is a powerful tool that can serve to remove coincidence, and thus the climax should be foreshadowed more than any other scene.

I’ve already pointed out that in far too many stories, things are reversed. Why do so many authors use coincidence to resolve the climax? Well, because they’re trying to come up with an ending that readers won’t guess. As the author brainstorms ways to surprise them, he also runs out of believable ways for the protagonist to solve his own problem, or to make the defining choice of the story in a way that will satisfy readers. It’s much easier to just put the protagonist in a terrible fix, stick her in
a situation that looks impossible to escape from, and then have someone else show up in the nick of time to save her.

But that’s lazy writing, and it’s not giving readers what they want.

Conclusions depend on choices, not on chance, coincidence, or rescue. By definition the hero should do the rescuing rather than needing to be rescued. He makes a choice that depends not on coincidence but instead on causality, and that choice determines the ending of the story.

Think back to Strategy 2: If your character needs that Swiss Army Knife at the climax, foreshadow earlier that she has it with her. If he needs to be a rock climber, show him on the crag with his buddies in a previous scene. If she needs to be able to solve complex mathematic equations in her head, foreshadow that she’s a human calculator.

The location, the character, the asset (or liability) that comes into play at the climax—anything that ends up being significant to the outcome of the struggle—should have been introduced long ago, or it’ll seem too convenient that it arrives when the protagonist needs it most.

At its best, foreshadowing should make so much sense in that earlier scene that readers don’t notice that the scene is foreshadowing anything at all. Only later, when that special skill, ability, or asset shows up again, will readers think, Oh yeah! That’s right. He knows how to fly a helicopter. Excellent. I forgot about that.

Readers should never think that the story’s conclusion “came out of nowhere,” but rather that it logically followed all that preceded it, even if the story ends with a twist.”

Review: The Hobbit

Posted by

1

I had never read any J R R Tolkien, because I had the impression it is trendy, other worldly. But I decided that I had to give him a try when he made the One Hundred Best Writers’ list, and I bought a copy of The Hobbit, his first novel. I’m glad I did.

J R R Tolkien

The Tolkien Society says,”John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) was a major scholar of the English language, specialising in Old and Middle English. Twice Professor of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) at the University of Oxford, he also wrote a number of stories, including most famously The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955), which are set in a pre-historic era in an invented version of our world which he called by the Middle English name of Middle-earth. This was peopled by Men (and women), Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, Orcs (or Goblins) and of course Hobbits. He has regularly been condemned by the Eng. Lit. establishment, with honourable exceptions, but loved by literally millions of readers worldwide”.

The Hobbit was written to entertain his children. Incidentally, Tolkien defined ‘hobbit’ as ‘little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded Dwarves…. There is little or no magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps them to disappear when large stupid folk like you and me come blundering along…. are inclined to be fat and have good-natured faces, and deep fruity laughs (especially after dinner).’ They also live in comfortable accommodation underground.

The Hobbit begins with Mr Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit, being called upon unexpectedly in his home by Gandalf, the magician, who invites him to go on a profitable adventure. Baggins declines, but the next day he finds himself serving tea to Gandalf and thirteen dwarves, who have a plan to kill a distant evil dragon and take his immense riches which had been stolen from the king of the dwarves and others. Gandalf identifies Baggins as the burglar of the group. They set off across dense forests, rivers and mountains, experiencing many exciting events, including attacks by wolves, giant spiders, hostile elves, goblins. During these adventures, Bilbo finds a magic ring which makes him invisible when he wears it. The ring is very useful as he sneaks into the dragon’s den and spots its fatal vulnerability. The dragon is killed by a human archer as it flies over a village setting fire to the thatched roofs with its flaming breath. A great war is fought over the dragon’s immense wealth between the goblins and wolves on one side and the dwarves, men, elves and eagles on the other. The latter prevail. Bilbo, having been given a chest of gold and another of silver for his services returns to his home in the company of Gandalf.

This is a thoroughly engaging and remarkable story. It is set a long time ago in an environment we would recognise: nothing strange about rivers, mountains, forest and lakes. We know about magicians, goblins, elves and dragons. and we know about dwarves, wolves, eagles and spiders, but perhaps not really giant spiders. The only new character is the hobbit, but his endearing character soon makes him our hero. The story is not fantasy and does not struggle with credibility. The principal characters, good and evil, each has his own quirky identity which builds his stature. The mishaps that befall the dwarves and hobbit are real, credible emergencies, and each is unique. The level of tension is constantly high. Even the narrator (Tolkien) does not remain anonymous. He comments, occasionally on the characters and their situations.

The Hobbit is a masterful piece of story telling!