Linda Maye Adams's Blog, page 33
February 18, 2020
Time Markers in Fiction
Have you ever run into a book where the time became wonky? Like the writer forgot that time was actually kind of important to the story?
[image error]Time Concept. Distorted soft melting clock on the old books. With dark toned foggy background. Selective focus
Photo from iStock Photo. Image by Zeferli
My own experience was reading an urban fantasy. I was reading through and then it suddenly hit me that the characters had a 72 hour day! The writer had lost track of the timeline entirely.
It’s easy to do. At a convention I attended, an editor talked about continuity for middle-grade books. He reported that it was very common for characters to get up each day and go to school. No weekends for the kids!
Establishing Time Markers
Time markers are elements that identify the time frame the scene happens in. It can include:
Seasons: Since it’s winter in Virginia, mentioning that it’s February and maybe a late winter snowfall. Or the first buds of spring popping on the trees (which I’ll probably see in March).Time of Day: This can be done in a variety of ways. Your character’s stomach growls and he realizes he missed lunch. Or describing the light in some way: The rays from the rising sun painted the horizon pink. You could even hit the basic version: That night; at nine a.m.; it was nearly dinner by the time…
The markers should happen at the beginning of a scene, like an establishing shot in a movie. It’d be kind of bad to have the reader think the scene is in the morning and then halfway through, one of the characters starts talking about the stars in the sky. Just takes them right out of the story, and annoys them besides.
How do you establish time in your scenes?
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More Reading
Marking time with your viewpoint character – from The Editor’s Blog. Addresses different ways to show time markers.Passing time is the secret to improving your story – from Standoutbooks. Suggests a spreadsheet and mapping out time for each of your characters.
February 16, 2020
New Book: Golden Lies
Hollywood, 1947: A film star missing…a movie studio executive in trouble…
Private Investigator Al Travers feels the pressure. Trapped between a politician and a movie executive, he must find the film star and the deadly secret she hides.
But time is running out and his search for the truth may cost him his life.
An exciting and twisted tale of Hollywood and the lies of Tinsel Town.
Available from your favorite bookseller.
February 11, 2020
Diversity of Opinion
One of the things I find frustrating about the writing world is that certain writing gurus are revered. You can’t ask questions, or for that matter be different.
[image error]So many writers I couldn’t get them all in one shot.
I’ve always craved learning more about writing. I grew up reading books on writing and didn’t realize there was much more beyond what they said. But as I grew as a writer, I realized the books said the same thing. They were also decidedly lacking because they all said the same thing.
In fact, because of how I grew up, the more someone says, “This is the way to do it,” my reaction is, “What’s the other side?” It makes me want to explore other areas rather than the bucket the people are trying to drive me to.
This last week, I went to the Superstars Writing Seminar 2020, an annual writing conference focused primarily on the business side of writing. It’s a lot of writers with different experiences coming together to give everyone what they’ve learned.
Not all it is the same. Some of it disagrees with what the others are saying.
I like that. I can take what works for me, but I can also hear the different opinions without people lecturing me that I’m not following the “program.”
These are some of the panels and workshops I went to:
Writing Fight and Action Scenes (from Craft Fest) – from Jonathan Maberry in case you want to study his action scenes. Action scenes are not just about documenting the action. There’s a lot more than plays into it, even long after the action scene has ended.Protagonist and Antagonist (from Craft Fest) – From Jim Butcher. I was writing things to do in the project I’m working on now. Quote from the workshop: “There are no mistakes when you write—just happy accidents.”Lots of Eggs in Lots of Baskets – from Dan Wells. This was on income streams, but covered more writing-related streams like plays, creating settings for games, foreign rights. Takeaway: Even if it doesn’t pay much, it’s still money I didn’t have before.
Finally, one of the things I walked away with was that I’m going to try writing Middle-Grade books. So it should be interesting!
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February 4, 2020
Anatomy of a Book Cover: Golden Lies
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I recently finished my mystery, Golden Lies (Al Travelers’ Mystery Book #1). The book presented special challenges for building a cover:
It’s set in the 1940sIt’s not noir
I wanted to make sure that the cover itself conveyed the historical aspect of the story. That way, readers who wanted historical would be able to tell that from the cover.
The typical image is a man in a fedora. That type of hat is a tag for the 1940s. Historical trivia: By the late 1940s, younger men were starting to ask why they should cover up their hair. Some started to go hatless.
So I ended up making this cover several months ago:
[image error]Golden LIes Cover 1
At the time, I was fussing because it was hard finding contrasting colors in the image to sample. The blue came from a spot on the wall by his leg. I accidentally rotated the image, liked the effect, and that’s what’s in the cover.
When I was doing my final cycling pass on the story, I revisited the color…and went “Ack!”
It had looked fine when I created it. Now it looked really wrong for the book.
So I went hunting for images again. I searched “1940s” only again. Most of the images were:
Black and whiteGangstersNoir
But I found one of a woman that satisfied what I was looking for. The yellow text is from the wall, and the red text is from the dress. I had to play around with the eyedropper tool to get different variations of the same shade.
[image error]Golden Lies Cover 2
The cover is made using Adobe Photoshop elements (a pared-down version of PhotoShop) that works nicely for creating eBook covers.
Meanwhile, I expect to change the cover and the title for Giant Robots.
January 28, 2020
Intrusion of the Real World
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I finished my mystery last Saturday. It’s a mystery set in Hollywood in the 1940s. It was surprisingly hard for me to do because I had to think about what I wanted to show in terms of the crime itself.
I’ve been reading mysteries since I was a kid, starting with Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, and Kim Aldrich. A favorite writer I always went back for also was Phyllis A. Whitney. She wrote gothic mysteries.
In those stories, there were a few moderately scary scenes where the culprit tried to stop the heroine. Pushed down the stairs, chased into the sea, knocked out by the villain. Just enough to say that this character was taking more risks than the rest of us.
I also read action-adventure thrillers.
Not crime thrillers.
Crime thrillers tend to be a lot more violent.
I also can’t always trust the writer not to go overboard. Those are the books where the criminal (not the culprit) kills the pet to be evil. Or he kills a character I’ve gotten attached to, on the page, the violent act described in detail. Or the violence gets worse as the book progresses.
(Writing Nerd still remembers a book that did a particularly violent and lethal act to a character I liked. Done with that book. Done with that writer.)
The difference? It lets the real world intrude in a place where I’m trying to escape from it. It’s not hard for me to read a newspaper and find a violent crime. Or surf Facebook and find someone posting a story with a horrific image.
Everyone’s so mired in the horror that they can’t escape from it into fiction or film. Yet, they think they’re being trendy by being “gritty.”
Perhaps it’s like always finding fault with what we read, until all we see is what’s wrong. A terribly negative way to think.
MORE READING
Carolyn Stein on “A Matter of Taste.” This sparked a discussion on Star Trek on Facebook, which lead to a discussion on types of violence in stories.
January 21, 2020
Editorial Calendar for Publishing and Inventory Control
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As I write this, it’s 23 out and feels like 14. I can hear the wind howling between the buildings. A bundled-up woman and a little white dog with a sweater are out walking. Despite the cold, that dog is still checking every telephone pole! Good time to be inside doing writing and administrative tasks like my book and story inventory.
I’ll admit it—I’ve gone from productivity system to productivity system, trying to figure out what works for me. Part of that is my crazy day job—think getting hit with a fire extinguisher all day and trying to fit a tornado through a keyhole.
Most systems are surprisingly complex, sometimes with the author’s own self-imposed complexity. Some are outdated. Try getting hit with a fire extinguisher all day and prioritize by A, B, C. Does. Not. Work.
I tried Trello as a test run for work. It does better if you have projects. Which meant it wasn’t going to be useful for work. I don’t have any projects.
But I decided to revisit it, since I’m working towards publishing a book a month. Plus I have short stories on tap to be e-published, as well as cover refreshes. I’ve previously had the inventory in a spreadsheet, but after there are so many entries, it gets cumbersome real fast and lose stories on the list.
This is from Trello’s Editorial Calendar template. Trello is like a storyboard. You can create different lists (i.e., Ready for Publishing) and drag the cards with the story from list to list.
[image error]Click on image to see it better
Each card has a place for comments (mostly for collaborating with teams, but useful for making quick notes), a checklist, and the ability to add attachments. So I made the cards look spiffy with my covers.
This is my checklist, not a template from the calendar. This one’s for Golden Lies, which is at the copy editor’s (there’s a comment below the screenshot where I noted the date I sent it).
[image error]Click on image to see it better.
Text from the list:
Write bookCopy editingCreate ebook coverFormat to ebookWrite blurbCreate keywordsPublish to D2DPublish to AmazonPublish to SmashwordsPublish to PublishdrivePublish to BundleRabbitPublish to Website
Since Golden Lies’ release is dependent on the copy editor schedule, doing all this helped me identify one omnibus I could publish in February if that schedule gets thrown off.
[image error]
New Short Story: Sentry Ghost
Hope Delgado, GALCOM’s only expert on ghosts in space, must solve the mystery of a haunting on a planet.
The ghost terrifies the Koraxians, who depend on the area for their livelihood.
But the ghost refuses to talk with Hope. With the death of one of the Koraxians, Hope must come up with another plan, and fast.
The odds are stacked against Hope in this thrilling space opera.
Pick up this short story from your favorite bookseller.
January 14, 2020
Story as a pinball machine
This week, once I decided I was going to stop striving for novel-length, I looked at my mystery, changed one line at the end of a chapter and realized I was in the climax. It’s amazing how what seemed like a simple goal became so distracting!
(It’ll be in the 30K range).
What then ensued was a cycling pass over the story. I actually like cycling. It’s evolved over time for me.
Cycling is a pantser tool that’s rather difficult to explain. Writers hear it as “revising as you write,” but it’s not revision. If you write a story too thin, you add more; if you write too much, you take something out. That’s the core of cycling. It can be setting, and that’s most commonly done with cycling because it’s both easy to put too much in or leave too much out. Revision is more like going through, finding fault (sometimes erroneously), and then correcting it.
The change of the one line triggered a round of cycling for the entire story. I knew who the villain was and the story needed some additions to sneak him in.
And I’ve needed my Thinking Cat for some of these. Cats are good at that (when they aren’t knocking stuff off). A lot of the additions were more story. Most of them were a sentence or two, maybe a paragraph at the longest.
Except for three scenes. Those ran into my weak area with time. They have to be in the story because the story is about Hollywood and the victim is an actress.
Golden Retriever Muse put the scenes in much later in the story. But the scenes kept nagging at Golden Retriever Muse: “We’re in the wrong place. We’re in the wrong place.” Like that commercial where all the insurance people come out of the cornfield.
Writing Nerd does not think sequentially—my brain is more like a pinball machine. It does not like sequence. At all. When I dial a phone number sometimes, I know what the number is, I look at the numbers, and my brain’s going “I don’t like the order. I must change it!” Maybe there’s a cat up there, whacking at the pinballs.
To figure out where the scenes were actually supposed to go, I had to do a full cycle through the story. The place was obvious once I did.
Fixing it…
Ugh.
It was early in the story, so I had to change scene numbers. Brain. Pinball. Bzzzz! And this was all about getting the numbers numbered right. Without goofing them up.
So it was move one scene into place, renumber it and all the ones that followed. Then repeat on all the scenes and shift them forward in their chapter folders (this is Scrivener for Windows). Then move the next scene and repeat, and the third, same thing.
Golden Retriever Muse is wagging her floofy tail now.
January 11, 2020
New Book: Last Stand
Last Stand is the fourth book in the GALCOM Universe series. Lots of action and I get to blow things up in the story. Here’s what’s it’s about:
A routine planetary office call turns deadly for Colonel Eric Graul of the S.C. Kangjun.
Lysian slavers monitor the new space station construction. Planning an attack?
Spies lurk in the shadows. Who can Graul trust?
But things about to get worse for Graul…much worse. His courage challenged as the fate of the galaxy lies in balance. A page-turning, action-packed story of survival.
It’s up on all the usual places, which you can find on Books2Read.
January 7, 2020
Trip around the sun
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Waves from the other side of the year.
And very cautiously approaches goals. Everyone does them for the New Year, and I saw something in the news the other day that said they last until about January 10!
I remember several years back, I set an aggressive writing goal of write 10 books in a year—and managed do finish none that year. It was very discouraging. It was like announcing the goal immediately doomed it.
But I’m going to try again.
2020 Goals
These goals are with a cautious note. Every time I’ve set an aggressive goal, I end up in December having accomplished none of it.
I’m going to shoot for a book release once a month (see my word count section for more on this). Write more short stories (also see my word count goal on this).
Successes
Three major wins for me this year:
Tidying Magic accepted for X Marks the Spot. It’s pirates + tidying magic + ghostsAlien Pizza for Monsters, Movies, and Mayhem. This is my first pro sale. Yipee! It’s aliens + pizza + movies + movie monsters.Published Digitial Minimalism – this one has turned in my “best selling” book.
Word Count, Word Count, Word Count
Sometimes you can really get the wrong goal and lose sight of what you actually intended. I had one of those in 2019.
My goal was to learn how to write a book that hit 50K. I’ve always had problems getting stories to even this length, much less what the publishers wanted. When I was still thinking about traditional publishing, getting to 90K seemed like an impossible goal. I actually still don’t know how other writers can write so far over they have to cut 20K or more.
But this year, I wanted to put a novel exclusively on Amazon and having a longer book is a requirement for those readers.
Instead, I wound up derailing myself because I got too focused on hitting that word count and lost track of the story.
I also swore off short stories until I learned how to write longer because, in the past, when I let word count mess with me, I would procrastinate by writing short stories.
Goals
I’m going to mightily ignore the story’s word count. It is entirely possible I might simply write books that are in the novella range only. It’s also possible that the books will eventually get longer with more practice. Which I’m not getting by focusing on length.But, cautiously, she said, I’ll track general word count numbers and try for 1,500 a day.I’m also going to tack back to short stories, but nothing like having a once-a-week goal or so many a month. It’s just going to be when there’s an anthology call that I can write for. So there might be more than one in a month or none, depending on what’s available. A lot of them have not paid well, or been on political titles (really? I get too much of that now!), or a category I don’t fit into. Also need to continue the cover refreshes. Might need to update the bio in all of them (good reason, but still, a lot of work).
New Releases & Upcoming
Last Stand
[image error]
The fourth GALCOM book is first on tap. That’ll be out in January. Big space battles, aliens, lots of explosions. Adventures are so much better happening to fictional characters. 
