A Last Minute Win

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Beth Kander has an article on Writers Digest website dated 12 December 2024, about how she entered a writing contest at the last minute an won more than the contest!

Beth Kander

Beth Kander is a novelist and playwright with tangled roots in the Midwest and Deep South. The granddaughter of immigrants, her writing explores how worlds old and new intertwine—or collide. Her work has been described as “riveting,” “emotional,” “expertly crafted,” and “habit-forming.” Expect twists, turns, and secrets, with surprising heart and humor. Beth has too many degrees and drinks too much coffee. Her favorite characters are her dashing husband and their two lovely kids.

She says, “This book definitely has a non-traditional origin. I was knee deep in another project when a friend texted to let me know that the pop culture site Hey Alma was having a Hanukkah movie pitch competition. Eager to procrastinate on my existing project, I checked the pitch competition deadline—and found out it was the very next day. Long story short (literally), I threw together a pitch for I Made It Out Of Clay, a quirky romcom-with-a-golem concept, submitted it at the 11th hour, and ultimately won the competition.

Industry folks started reaching out to me to inquire about film rights. My literary agent, Alli, passed along some great advice from a film agent colleague: “Write the book first, not the movie.” So, I set aside my other book projects and prioritized writing this novel. The story immediately provided myriad unconventional opportunities to explore big topics: grief and family dynamics and identity and adult friendships and turning 40 … I got to write about these heavy things while laughing and making monsters. What a gift.

I won the pitch competition in December 2022. I was so inspired, I drafted the novel in two blurry months. My agent took it out on sub in February 2023. It sold at auction in March 2023, and publication was set for December 2024. So all told, a two-year-process from idea to publication. That’s fast—often, the writing alone can take longer than that! I’m grateful that although the acquisition happened fast, I had a great editor and plenty of time to revise the book, several times over. I loved spending the time really developing the story and connecting with each character.

I’ve learned so much in the process of publishing this book that it’s honestly hard to even know where to begin, and there have been plenty of surprises along the way. But if I had to pull out the biggest lesson, it’s this: You just never know.

You can spend years working on a story you really believe in, only to have it languish and eventually fade away. You can have an overnight idea that becomes the story everyone’s eager to read. You can’t trust trends or tricks. You just have to keep trying. I think a lot about this two-panel meme, where the first panel is labeled “what people think success looks like” and shows an arrow moving steadily forward and up, and the second panel is labeled “what success actually looks like” and it shows a tangled mess that a forward-facing arrow finally re-emerges from… which feels relevant to the publishing process. But I’ve been over-the-top lucky to work with my agent, Alli, to navigate every detour along the way. And working on I Made It Out Of Clay with my editor, April, and the team at Mira/HarperCollins, has been a delight. Sometimes, gracefully and gratefully, the puzzle pieces slide into place.

You just never know.

This was the fastest writing process I’ve ever undertaken. To go from a paragraph-long idea to a 90,000-word novel in two months is… well, not something I’d necessarily recommend, honestly. Thank God for coffee.

But what I realized is that I didn’t speed-write this book in a vacuum; it wasn’t an anomaly, or a fluke. It was a culmination. All those years, all those other stories; that was my training for this manuscript-marathon. I doubt I’ll keep that pace up with many subsequent projects, but I’m definitely holding fast to the lesson that even the projects that don’t pan out help shape the ones that will fly.

There’s so much I hope that readers will get out of this book—catharsis, cackling-laughter, genuine enjoyment, a sense of release. There’s some strange stuff in the story (an actual monster!) but it’s really rooted in characters that I hope are relatable in all their imperfections and deep desires for something better. Most of all, I hope this book gives readers permission to laugh in the midst of sorrow or acknowledge sadness even as they dance for joy; to let complicated, conflicting emotions exist alongside each other on the page and in our lives. The publication of this book intersected with a profound loss in my own life, and I’ve become so grateful for anyone and anything that acknowledges that we can feel many things at once. If readers come away with that affirmation, I’ll be thrilled.

Write the book you want to rewrite—because most of writing is revising! Don’t agonize over every word in a first draft; that will only slow you down. Just write the story. Get it onto the page. Drafting is the stage where you capture the idea. Revising is where you figure out how to really tell the story well.”

Great Beginings

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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!”

English Literature Is Making a Comeback

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There is an article in today’s Telegraph by Ben Wright, which argues that AI is making a degree in humanities more valuable than ever.

Ben Wright

Ben Wright is a columnist and associate editor for The Telegraph. He was previously business editor and before joining the Telegraph was City correspondent at the Wall Street Journal and editor of Financial News.

Ben said, “Some might call it a tragedy. The number of students taking English literature at A-level dropped from 83,000 in 2013 to 54,000 last year. The number applying to study the subject at university dropped by a third over a similar period. Some pessimists believe the English literature degree could die out within a decade if the subject doesn’t make a better case for itself.

It’s not hard to understand why. For years now, we’ve been telling students to focus on Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects in the belief that a strong knowledge in these areas was the key to gaining entry to a whole range of industries. When you work in the money markets (or law courts, or Silicon Valley), what use are the novels of Wordsworth gonna be, eh?

That’s not complete nonsense but now the pendulum is in danger of swinging too far. And I’m not just saying that as one of the dwindling tribe of English literature graduates huddled together for warmth under the shrinking shelter and capricious protection of the media and publishing industries. Many employers, including those at the very cutting edge of tech, are coming to the same conclusion.

Strangely, a chronic problem has become acute with the advent of artificial intelligence. Andrej Karpathy, one of the founding members of OpenAI, caused a bit of flutter earlier this year when he tweeted: “The hottest new programming language is English.” What he meant is that increasingly you don’t need to be able to code to code.

A friend of mine who works in the tech industry points out that the deep learning algorithms and transformer models created by the likes of Google, Meta, and OpenAI among others in the past few years didn’t create Large Number Models; they created Large Language Models (LLMs).

Anyone can therefore write prompts for ChatGPT and their ilk. “Natural” language is therefore becoming the “user interface” for artificial intelligence. (That sentence alone illustrates why Silicon Valley might need some help with the transition.)

As my friend put it: the invention of the iPhone put a supercomputer in everyone’s pocket, but LLMs give all of us the ability to program it. In many ways this is great news. It means that technology is becoming more democratised and accessible. It opens up a host of opportunities for those who are skilled in the use of language. The problem is, that’s not many recent graduates.

Anjney Midha, who is on the board of several AI companies, says he often sees very bright Gen Z kids struggling to write clear prompts because they mostly communicate through broken or pidgin English: “Translating thought to language is insanely hard for them.”

Ethan Mollick, a professor studying AI at Wharton business school at the University of Pennsylvania, says this means that – in an inversion of the old order of things – experienced managers are becoming better coders than bright young things fresh out of university.

Nor is the problem confined to the world of tech. Universities are finding that many students arrive having never read a whole book from cover to cover. This is leading to a massive deficit in old-fashioned skills that turn out not to be so old-fashioned after all.

For the past few years, Kingston University has been asking businesses what skills they need but currently aren’t finding in potential employees. Top of the list are the ability to communicate, analyse, adapt, problem-solve and think creatively.

What’s more, it turns out that computers can learn to code far quicker than humans can. They can easily be taught how to ace exams in maths and science. But even the most sophisticated generative AI struggles with English literature papers. There’s a clue here.

In a recent interview about AI, the mathematician Terence Tao said: “I think at the frontier, we will always need humans and AI. They have complementary strengths.” So, contrary to the prevailing doom-mongering about the relentless rise of AI being about to damn the humanities to perpetual irrelevance, might the very opposite be true?

With such a large supply and demand mismatch, you’d assume the market will eventually correct itself, but perhaps things can be helped on their way. Colin Hughes, the head of the country’s largest exam board AQA, argued the GCSE English language needed to be rethought because it was “not very inspiring” and “a bit too mechanistic”.

One obvious way to update the syllabus would be to teach the writing of clear, succinct and unambiguous prompts for artificial intelligence chatbots. English literature could also be made more relevant.

That is not – repeat, not – about bemoaning the canon for being too “male, pale and stale”, as Sharon Hague, the managing director of Pearson, recently did. Nor should we point the finger at “wokeness” for killing off the English degree.

Such tensions have always existed in the discipline. So academics can continue with their squabbles about which voices are most marginalised, but only after pointing out that studying literature is a crash course in empathy, that almost all careers require an element of storytelling and that the only way to learn how to write well is to read lots.

Anyone can therefore write prompts for ChatGPT and their ilk. “Natural” language is therefore becoming the “user interface” for artificial intelligence. (That sentence alone illustrates why Silicon Valley might need some help with the transition.)

Harold Bloom argued that deep reading fostered higher order thinking. An education in the humanities or the liberal arts also makes students more adept at dealing with nuance and expressing opinions based on value judgments. These are useful skills for dealing with an unpredictable future and a world composed of various shades of grey.

None of this is going to result in an immediate stampede of people signing up to study English literature at university. You don’t need to understand Chaucer to write clear AI prompts. What’s more, you shouldn’t really need any better argument for studying great art other than for its own sake.

But if reading whole books and writing essays is no longer a given, then those who can will have an edge over their peers. And if more students can be persuaded that’s a good way to become more employable, a reasonable proportion of them will go on to study English literature at A-level and a reasonable proportion of them will go on to do so at university.

It’s only common sense that if you are worried about the rise of machines and robots stealing our jobs, it’s better to lean into the stuff that AI finds trickier to do. The not-so-secret ingredient is right there on the packaging; they’re called humanities for a reason.”

Writing Advice

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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

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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.”

Why Don’t Men Read Anymore?

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There is an article on The Standard’s website: “Men Don’t Read Anymore – What Happened?” that I think deserves our attention. It was written by Martin Robinson and dated 12 September 2024.

Today, the MailOnline website says: “Martin Robinson joined MailOnline in 2012 as a senior news reporter and became chief reporter in 2016. He has also worked at Westminster. Martin previously wrote for the Daily Telegraph, The Sun, The Daily Mirror and the Evening Standard, primarily covering London politics, crime and the London 2012 Olympics after starting his career in regional newspapers. He lives in London with his wife and three children. In his spare time he coaches youth football and follows his beloved Ipswich Town.” Apparently, he is also a freelancer.

Martin Robinson

He says,” Why don’t men read? Oh, I know dear male Standard readers do, those urbane, literary, poised and secretly perverted doyens of good taste. But those other men, they are not reading fiction. Oh sure, they read Sir Alex Ferguson’s book, Lewis Hamilton’s book, books about cage fighters and career criminals, but nice books that win literary prizes? Nope. The book buying public in the UK, US and Canada is 80 per cent women.

Is this why no-one wants my woe? Why my breathtaking work of utterly miserable fiction has been rejected by every literary agent in London, including a few I didn’t even send it to. Despite pouring my little spiteful heart and ugly soul into 350 pages of unrelenting male despair, everyone is chipping in with how much they hate it, how little it would sell, how much of my life I wasted on it. And those are just the gentle let-downs.

I could get all thicko anti-woke conspiracist about it — “I clearly wasn’t successful because I’m a man!” — but instead I’ll go thicko anti-male conspiracist: other men have let me down!

No-one wants to read my crushingly depressing glimpse into the masculine mind because no one is interested in what men think. Least of all men!

This sense of men lacking the sophistication to understand the nuances of existence has been at the centre of the analysis about why the modern man’s preferred reading choice is the captions on Rio Ferdinand’s podcast videos.

LitHub quoted an Irish novelist saying women are better novelists than men because they have a better grasp of human complexity, and the piece explored men’s reluctance to buy books written by, or about, women as indicative of a stunted view of literature.

Dazed put it down to the patriarchal late capitalist system, quoting one professor who said: “Our culture makes a fetish of practical outcomes, and perhaps because the outcomes of fiction-reading don’t patently lead to higher wages, it seems less worthy.”

All of which provides excellent food for thought when your thought revolves around: why is the book industry spaffing millions on Matt Haig’s global book promotion, while I can’t even get a non-automated reply?

Didn’t men used to be more engaged in the internal struggles of existence? I’m not going to reel off a load of male writers highly attuned to mysteries and complexities, but y’know, Shelley was hardly Andrew Tate was he?

Things have changed. Men have changed. Or the perception of men has changed. One which seems to be increasingly reductive. It becomes a self-fulfilling doom loop where men are considered by the literary world to be half-dog, half-machine, while men themselves take the excuse to act like robo-hounds because it’s easier and there are apps demanding their attention instead. They’re right, men are not buying women’s books, but they’re not buying men’s books either. They’re just not reading, OK?

And so you see. The abject failure of my rotten novel is not my fault, it’s the world’s…”

I don’t think we should be at all concerned, because you and I read plenty of fiction!

Review: The Thirty-Nine Steps

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This novel of only 119 pages is on the list of 100 best novels in English because it is the prototype of the tightly- written spy thriller.

The author is John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (26 August 1875 – 11 February 1940) was a Scottish novelist, historian, and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the 15th since  Canadian Confederation.

As a youth, Buchan began writing poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction, publishing his first novel in 1895 and ultimately writing over a hundred books of which the best known is The Thirty-Nine Steps. After attending Glasgow and Oxford universities, he practised as a barrister. In 1901, he served as a private secretary to Lord Milner in southern Africa towards the end of the Boer War. He returned to England in 1903, continued as a barrister and journalist. He left the Bar when he joined Thomas Nelson and Sons publishers in 1907. During the First World War, he was, among other activities, Director of Information in 1917 and later Head of Intelligence at the newly-formed Ministry of Information. He was elected Member of Parliament for the Combined Scottish Universities in 1927.

In 1935, King George V, on the advice of Canadian Prime Minister, R. B.Bennett, appointed Buchan to succeed the Earl of Bessborough as Governor General of Canada and two months later raised him to the peerage as 1st Baron Tweedsmuir. He occupied the post until his death in 1940. Buchan promoted Canadian unity and helped strengthen the sovereignty of Canada constitutionally and culturally. He received a state funeral in Canada before his ashes were returned to the United Kingdom.

John Buchan

The principal character and narrator of the novel is Richard Hannay, a wealthy mining engineer who has just returned to London, and finds his life boring. A panicked neighbour, Franklin Scudder, who is a journalist, knocks on his door and tells Hannay about a plot to kill the prime minister of Greece, Constantine Karolides, in a few weeks time – an event which the plotters hope will start the First World War. Hannay provides Scudder with a refuge against the plotters, but when he returns to his flat, he finds that Scudder has been murdered. Hannay discovers a coded notebook which Scudder had kept and which was what the plotters has been looking for. With the notebook in his possession and a dead man in his flat, Hannay realises that he will be sought by both the plotters and the police. So, he leaves his flat, disguised as a milkman and boards a train to Scotland. He alights from the train at a remote station in the Galloway Hills, and what follows is a cat and mouse game during which he eludes capture by the plotters and the police. Hannay manages to decode Scudders notebook, and he learns that the plotters are a German spy ring known at Black Stone, whose objective is to learn the disposition of the British fleet before the outbreak of war. Hannay resolves to inform  Sir Walter Bullivant, Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Office of the plot. As he hurries to escape capture, he enters what seems a disserted house, he finds himself face-to-face with with the leader of Black Stone. Hannay is locked in a storeroom where he finds a store of explosives. Using his mining experience, he blasts his way out and boards a train south. He finds Sir Walter at home in Berkshire, and convinces him of the truth of the plot except for the assassination of Karolides, until it breaks into the news. Hannay and Sir Walter travel to London to sound the alarm. At Sir Walters townhouse, Hannay sees a person he assumes to be the First Sea Lord leaving the meeting, but, as he goes by, Hannay recognises him as one of the Black Stone plotters in disguise. Realising that the plotters must physically transport their stolen information across the Channel, Hannay consults Scudders notebook which mentions a seacoast landing which is accesses by 39 steps. With the help of a coastal pilot, he is able to identify the place, the plotters in disguise and a German yacht ready to take them home. But they are captured before they can escape.

This is a fast-moving story, with many twists and turns. The settings, the events and the characters are credible, their credibility reinforced by the actual situation leading up to WWI. A pleasant and engaging read!

Not a Review: Ulysses

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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: Heart of Darkness

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This novel, by Joseph Conrad, is one of the books I haven’t read on the list of 100 best novels in English. (I’m now down to just a handful.)

Joseph Conrad

The Biography website says this about Conrad: “Joseph Conrad was born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski on December 3, 1857, in Berdychiv, Ukraine. His parents, Apollo and Evelina Korzeniowski, were members of the Polish noble class. They were also Polish patriots who conspired against oppressive Russian rule; as a consequence, they were arrested and sent to live in the Russian province of Vologda with their 4-year-old son. When Conrad’s parents died several years later, he was raised by an uncle in Poland.

Conrad’s education was erratic. He was first tutored by his literary father, then attended school in Krakow and received further private schooling. At the age of 16, Conrad left Poland and traveled to the port city of Marseilles, France, where he began his years as a mariner.

Seafaring Years

Through an introduction to a merchant who was a friend of his uncle, Conrad sailed on several French commercial ships, first as an apprentice and then as a steward. He traveled to the West Indies and South America, and he may have participated in international gun-smuggling.

After a period of debt and a failed suicide attempt, Conrad joined the British merchant marines, where he was employed for 16 years. He rose in rank and became a British citizen, and his voyages around the world—he sailed to India, Singapore, Australia and Africa—gave him experiences that he would later reinterpret in his fiction.

Literary Career

After his seafaring years, Conrad began to put down roots on land. In 1896, he married Jessie Emmeline George, daughter of a bookseller; they had two sons. He also had friendships with prominent writers such as John Galsworthy, Ford Madox Ford and H. G. Wells.

Conrad began his own literary career in 1895 with the publication of his first novel, Almayer’s Folly, an adventure tale set in the Borneo jungles. Before the turn of the century, he wrote two of his most famous and enduring novels. Lord Jim (1900) is the story of an outcast young sailor who comes to terms with his past acts of cowardice and eventually becomes the leader of a small South Seas country. Heart of Darkness (1902) is a novella describing a British man’s journey deep into the Congo of Africa, where he encounters the cruel and mysterious Kurtz, a European trader who has established himself as a ruler of the native people there.

Later Life

Over the last two decades of his life, Conrad produced more autobiographical writings and novels, including The Arrow of Gold and The Rescue. His final novel, The Rover, was published in 1923. Conrad died of a heart attack on August 3, 1924, at his home in Canterbury, England.

Conrad’s work influenced numerous later 20th century writers, from T. S. Eliot and Graham Greene to Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner. His books have been translated into dozens of languages and are still taught in schools and universities.”

This novella – it is only 99 pages – was first published in 1902 and is set at the end of the 19th century. Conrad actually sailed up the River Congo in 1890. There are two principal characters. Marlow, the narrator, an able seaman who is waiting for the tide to turn in the River Thames, and Kurtz, an agent of a Belgian company, who has become incommunicado in the interior of the Congo Free State. Marlow tells the story of his employment by a French company to be the captain of a steam river ferry. When Marlow arrives in the Congo, he is appalled by the racism and the laziness of the white colonists. The blacks seem indifferent to their mistreatment. The colonial managers are largely in awe of the remote Kurtz, who espouses unrevealed, complex theories about life. He is worshiped – almost as a deity – by the native people. Much of the book describes the jungle through which the steamer passes on its way to find Kurtz. The darkness of the jungle is similar to the darkness and remoteness of the blacks, to the immorality of the colonists and human nature in general. Marlow finds Kurtz, who dies. At the end of the novella, Marlow meets Kurtz’ fiancée, who speaks highly of him. Marlow decides not the tell her his impression of Kurtz.

This book is a vivid depiction of the colonisation of the Congo under the direction of King Leopold II of Belgium: cruel, inefficient and ineffective. Conrad uses a first person narrator to convey human consciousness vividly, and he uses different characters to express divergent opinions about a vital issue.

Do I Have to Write a Novel?

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There is an article on the Electric Lit website by Amy Stuber dated 1 October 2024 which rang bells for me. Its title is “I Love Short Stories Do I Have to Write a Novel?”

Amy Stuber’s fiction has appeared in the Missouri Review, New England Review, the Masters Review, and elsewhere. She’s an editor at Split Lip Magazine, and she lives in Lawrence, KS. Her debut story collection, Sad Grownups, will be released in October 2024,

Amy Stuber

Ms Stuber says, “In 1993, I published my first decent story in a literary journal and a few months later received a letter from an agent whose name I recognized. I’d written short stories in college classes, sent them off, and typically the only thing that came back was a rejection, housed in the self-addressed-stamped envelope I’d sent with the story, my own handwriting preparing me for the paper inside that said thanks, no or we liked this, but.

The agent letter was a surprise, and I was buoyed by it for days. The letter went something like this, “I enjoyed your short story. I’d be interested in seeing more of your work. Do you have a novel?” It felt great  to be approached. It was flattering. But the answer was no: I didn’t have a novel.

A few years later, I received another agent letter after another story publication. A few years after that, an email. The notes all said some version of “I liked your short story. But do you have a novel?”

I’d heard from my graduate school creative writing teachers, who taught us only to read and write short stories, that a fiction writer’s final form was novelist, or at least, they said, that was the publishing industry’s core belief. The books that sold well, the books editors at big publishing houses wanted to acquire, were novels. Collections could be published, sure, but they were afterthoughts or add-ons.

Whenever it came up, the “do you have a novel” question made me a little indignant. Novels use words and sentences, obviously, just like short stories, but they require a different skillset, as well as a lot of attributes, like patience and a good memory and discipline, that I—first as a 20-something who just wanted to write poem fragments on my forearms and listen to Pavement, and later as a parent, shellacked with two smallish kids and a full-time job—did not have. If I could write even a third of a short story over a few weeks, it felt like a win. 

When my kids were more self-sufficient and I found myself with actual pockets of time to write and submit, I started getting wildly, embarrassingly jealous of every Publisher’s Marketplace announcement I saw. More egalitarian and generous writers would Tweet about how “there’s enough success for everyone, there’s plenty to go around,” but I, then in my 40s, felt like maybe there wasn’t. Maybe short story writers, all of us vying to win the same few small-press collection contests that ran each year, were doomed to not have book deals. I decided to try to feel content about publishing individual stories in literary magazines and pushed aside the idea of a book. 

The next time an agent emailed me was 2020, and it was the same line as ever. “Do you have a novel?” No. “I really cannot sell a collection on its own.” Okay, I understand. “Do you plan to write a novel?” I guess. Maybe? 

I signed with the agent, which was a leap of faith more for her than for me. I started trying to expand a short story I’d published, to build it somehow into a novel. In most ways, it was like trying to make a bathmat work as a rug in a room the size of a ballroom. Still, I wrote early in the morning, on weekend days, while waiting for doctor’s appointments, on all-hands meetings. I remember even feeling a little bit hopeful, like, “Maybe I’m doing it, maybe I’m really writing a novel, finally,” like this magic land, unenterable for twenty plus years, was opening to me. 

In the end, my draft was more of a loose assemblage of stories. The plottier parts that lurched each chapter forward, the parts that made it a possible novel, weren’t working. When I expressed self-doubt to my agent, she asked me, more than once, if this was “the book [I wanted] to send into the world,” which felt pretty jagged. I remember thinking, Well, the book I want to send into the world is my short story collection. Maybe I even said it out loud. 

The process was flattening. People wanted “propulsion,” and I was focused on sentences and moments. I liked the quiet pockets I was able to build into short stories but that felt harder to make work in a novel.  

In a stupid fit of “now what?” I frantically, in a few months, wrote a whole other novel. The agent hated it, which stung, but it was likely hate-worthy. 

How did I spend the pandemic? I speed-wrote two novels, only to realize I am not a novelist, or at least not yet, and market trends, traditional publishing’s seeming demands for books that rapid-cycled you from beginning to end in one sitting, weren’t going to make me one. 

In summer 2022, I parted ways amicably with my agent and returned to story writing. She told me if I started working on another novel project, she’d take a look. I didn’t fault her. Agents have been told collections don’t sell. So many of them have to deal with the industry realities of looking for plot-heavy books. This isn’t to say there aren’t brilliant and successful poetic, experimental, quiet novels – there obviously are. But if you’ve queried an agent lately, you know: propulsion and plot are king. 

I disassembled the second novel draft and built some short stories from the parts, then wrote some new stories, too. I understood stories and loved how within one I could focus intensely, think about every word, and I could experiment without worrying about staying on a path of forward momentum. I revamped my short story collection, sandwiched in some new stories, moved things around, took out the flash fiction.

This, I thought, feels like the book I want to send out into the world. 

I submitted it to the same few indie presses and university contests where I’d sent earlier versions of a collection and had been rejected more than once. At this point, only a few of the stories were the same. What the hell, I thought. I was 54 and had gotten my first “but do you have a novel?” agent letter thirty years earlier. 

And then I waited. Items in my Submittable queue changed from Received to In Progress. 

In August, I moved my daughter into her first dorm room in a tall building, and I thought, simplistically probably, about how the dorm, each floor, with each room another person, style, story, was a collection, and how so many things in the world were more an assemblage of disparate parts than a mellifluous whole. My daughter, who is also a writer, said it didn’t make sense for people to be so weird about short stories. Why was publishing so opposed to short fiction, when the world seemed to want and love short-form everything else?

In September, a few weeks after leaving my daughter in New York, in my haze of sadness that was like an anvil hitting me repeatedly and saying you fucking fool why did you help make a person who is designed to leave you, I got an email from one of the small presses. I saw the re: ____ subject line, and I braced myself for the rejection those emails usually are. Instead, it was a nice editor I’d corresponded with a few years before, telling me they wanted to publish my collection.

I was so numbed by life that month, by all the accumulative sadnesses of being 50-something in a whirlpool of life change, that I wasn’t sure how to feel. But when I stood up from my computer to walk around the neighborhood and look at all the familiar things, so many of which had years of memories attached to them, each their own little story, I let myself feel happy. This wasn’t the novel. It wasn’t the Big 5. But it felt truer to the writer I wanted to be.

Small presses, less beholden to concerns over big sales, are able to publish collections and the kinds of books Big Publishing tells writers we shouldn’t bother making. For that, I’m grateful. 

As is true of so many writers I know, some of my favorite texts are short stories. Each time I come upon a new collection in the library or in a bookstore, I get excited about the hive of situations and characters I’m about to dive into and the room for experimentation. It feels like so much possibility. 

I remember hearing last year that a lot of traditionally published debut novels sell only in the hundreds of copies. The managing editor of the small press that accepted my collection told me something like, “During the life of the book, a good outcome would be selling 1000 copies.” A thousand sounded good. Better than the hundred of some novels. Big Fiction’s insistence on the novel as default is maybe a failure of marketing or the imagination about what a book can be and do. 

I’m trying again to write something that approaches a novel, but this time I’m letting myself lean into my tendencies and reminding myself that a novel does not require a traditional narrative arc, nor a set number of scenes and beats. So I’m trying a “novel in stories,” and I’m not writing it with some big splashy publication in mind. I’m writing it when and how I want to write it. 

After an excerpt of the novel-in-stories project won an Honorable Mention in a contest, an agent I adore, a “dream agent,” messaged me and asked me if I had the full novel ready.  I don’t, at least not yet. But when I do, I hope I’m able to pull together a whole made of small slices of the world pulsing together, a collection in its own way, that champions the short form while also feeling like a whole. To the industry, maybe it will even be considered a novel. 

Is this just an essay about someone who wanted to and couldn’t sell a novel so now wants to champion the short story? Maybe a little. But, more, it’s about a circuitous path away from and back to the thing I actually enjoy writing, that the industry told me I shouldn’t do if I wanted to succeed.” 

I may be in the same boat as Amy, but I got in it at a different port. I’ve written ten published novels. Some are good, some are rubbish, but none have sold 1000 copies. I want to try short stories, and I’m about 2/3 of the way to completing a collection – a collection of good short stories, enjoyable to write and to read. Maybe this is what I should have been doing!