Mark Canter's Blog: Selling Storytelling, page 5

"Second Nature" free to read...

I've just posted my science-fiction romance, Second Nature, to a website called Wattpad. I'm a member of Romance Writers of America, and Wattpad was recommended in the latest issue of their monthly Romance Writer's Report as a good place to get oneself discovered by readers---it's got millions of them. I'm not making a cent on the experiment, but I uploaded the novel yesterday, and I've got 104 readers today. We'll see how it goes.

The three fattest pleats in the manifold game of selling storytelling are 1) generating a terrific story idea 2) writing the story, and 3) getting your completed story discovered. If a mighty sequoia comes crashing down in a forest and no set of ears is there to hear it, does it make a peep?

Thank the muses for the Internet, because it has given us writers a far greater chance (but not a guarantee) of getting noticed. Call it the age of digital "discoverability."

The Hero's Journey

Joseph Campbell, the scholar of mythology, wrote about the classical story structure he called "The Hero's Journey." Campbell was close friends with filmmaker George Lucas (the old professor died in a home Lucas provided on his ranch). It is no accident that "Star Wars" clearly follows the mythic story structure of "The Hero's Journey."
      THE HERO'S JOURNEY
Ordinary worldCall to adventureRefusal of the callMeeting the mentorFirst threshold (first test)Meeting allies, enemiesMore tests (complications, set-backs)Approach to the inmost caveSupreme ordealReward (seizing the boon, or, in some myths, resurrection)The road back homeArriving at home with the boon (the elixir, the wisdom, the renewed person, etc.)

Tricks of the Trade

Describe all externals in your story—settings, objects, otherpeople, etc.—through the eyes of a character instead of through the"neutral" eyes of the narrator. 
This technique accomplishes threethings:
1)     It keeps the narrator out of the picture. (The writer's goal is tostay invisible.) 2)     It's a time-saver: Readers get necessary descriptions of thecharacter's surroundings while learning about the character. This moves thestory along faster.3)     It's a handy way to weave in back-story unobtrusively, withoutresorting to longer flashbacks that can break up the "now-ness" of the story.

What If...?

The question "What if...?"generates a lot of speculative fiction.
FACT: A 1992 TIME magazine article on the 53-centuries-old "Ice Man" discovered in the Alps reported that women had inquired about the possibility of having his baby. What if... we found a frozen, pregnant Neanderthal shaman and could transplant the embryo into a modern surrogate mother? =   Ember from the Sun.
FACT: Anthropologists have determined that the Chinese voyaged to South America centuries before Columbus. What if... the Chinese had established a colony in the Amazonian mountains—hidden, until now? = Down to Heaven.
FACT: Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the molecular structure of DNA, believed the genetic molecule was intentionally "seeded" on Earth from another world. What if... mitochondria, the power-plants of our cells (mitochondria contain their own, separate DNA) are actually life-seeds from another galaxy? = Second Nature
FACT: Angela Jolie wore a few drops of her (former) husband's blood in a pendant around her neck. What if celebrities sold their living skin cells in growth cultures that fans could wear as jewelry or trade like trading cards.
What if... people existed as neuter sexes until they went into heat—then they became whatever gender is appropriate to the mate who made them sexually aroused. = The Left Hand of Darkness , by Ursula Le Guin.
What if... nearby stars was about to go super-nova, and the human race found out it had only a year left to live? Two years to live? Ten years to live?
What if... we received a message from space saying "By the time you translate this message, our ambassadors will be among your population." But the rest of the message is hopelessly garbled? Are they ambassadors of peace, or are they forward military scouts? Why won't they make themselves known?
What if... we would quickly sicken or die if we didn't have sex daily? How could husbands or wives go away to conferences? Would there be emergency sex stations (gives Jack-in-the-Box a new meaning)? Or what if, it wasn't sex that was necessary for survival, but to be in a relationship, such that people would actually wither and die from being single? Popularity would be genetically selected, because unpopular people would die from loneliness before reaching reproductive age. You could call the short story or novel, Popularity Contest .
Nietzsche said, "Whatever does not destroy me, makes me stronger." What if... by physically torturing someone you love, you could make them stronger/healthier? By nearly killing them with pain, you could make them virtually invincible? What if it was emotional torture that fortified your loved one? How far would you go to enhance their survivability?
What if... an intuition-enhancing drug called Empathy enabled people to see into each other's minds for a few hours. Great for lovers? An alternative punishment for criminals?
What if... to stand out in a crowd of young people with multiple tattoos, the "cutting-edge" types will need to go far beyond—into decorative scarring, branding and mutilation? (This particular speculation is already starting to manifest.)

Vary the intensity of verbs

Opening of a classic Harlan Ellison short story, "Along the ScenicRoute":
            Theblood-red Mercury with the twin-mounted 7.6 mm Spandaus cut George off as hewas shifting lanes. The Merc cut out sharply, three cars behind George, and thedriver decked it. The boom of his gas-turbine engine got through George'sbaffling system without difficulty, like a fist in the ear. The Merc sprayedJP-4 gook and water in a wide fan from its jet nozzle and cut back in, a matterof inches in front of George's Chevy Piranha.            Georgeslapped the selector control on the dash, lighting YOU STUPID BASTARD, WHAT DOYOU THINK YOU'RE DOING and I HOPE YOU CRASH & BURN, YOU SON OF ABITCH. Jessica moaned softly with uncontrolled fear, but George could not hearher: He was screaming obsenities.            Georgekicked it into Over-plunge and depressed the selector button extending therotating buzz-saws.

Let's take the first paragraph andweaken Ellison's verbs (leaving the adjectives untouched) to see how it deadensthe intensity:
            Theblood-red Mercury had twin-mounted 7.6 mm Spandaus. It was driving aggressivelywhen George first saw it. The Merc was moving sharply; first, it was three carsbehind George, then the driver started accelerating. The boom of hisgas-turbine engine was coming through George's baffling system withoutdifficulty. It was like a fist in the ear. JP-4 gook and water came out of theMerc's jet nozzle, spraying in a wide fan. Suddenly, the Merc was a matter ofinches in front of George's Chevy Piranha.
But don't make every verb glaring and howling for thereader's attention. Choose you the tone you need for the scene and VARY THETONE accordingly. Some scenes call for quiet prose and static description.
Here's the opening to Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep:
            Itwas 11 o'clock in the morning, mid-October, with the sun not shining and a lookof hard, wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing mypowder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, blackbrogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, cleanshaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything thewell-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four milliondollars.
Good prose, like good music, is a matter of balance. Use strongverbs when you need them, the way acomposer uses loud, dramatic notes when he needs them, if only to make the hushof the soft ones more restful.
            

Reader Reviews of Down to Heaven

FromAmazon: FAST AND STEAMY: Rivals Ember from the Sun. A must-read for fantasy fiction lovers. From the copter crash on page one through the story's end, Down to Heaven rips along taking the reader on a wild, deep, sexy ride. Read it!FANTASTIC: I read this book a few years ago (I'm 22 now) and I still think about it once in a while. I've recommended it to most of my friends, as well as Canter's other work. I'm an avid fantasy-reader and Down to Heaven is an absolute MUST READ. It is so difficult to put down and resume one's life (but don't worry, that's a good thing!). FromGood Reads: Belongs to my list of "adored-and-reread books."

More stuff to keep in mind

SETTING: Take yourreader to new worlds and introduce them to fascinating people interacting withinan unusual environment and culture. I'm not necessarily talking about "world-building"as found in science fiction and fantasy. Chinatown, New York City, is an exoticworld if that is not your home. Life is in the details—so give the details (of Chinatown, East L.A., South Beach,Sitka) that will surprise and delight your readers. As a rule of thumb, if you'reable to (without a total re-write) transport your plot to another location, youare not using the unique qualities of the story's setting to youradvantage.
ACTION: Readers cheer for characters who take things into their own hands. Not someone who merely reacts to events going on around her; or worse, hangs back, reflecting philosophically about it all. It's not what happens to the character that makes herinteresting, it's what she does about it. Passive characters areboring, and the story has no emotional power. Most of us have read "post-modern"short stories in which a lonesome urban apartment dweller perches on a windowsill gazingbelow at the river of strangers, and... doesnothing... for five or six pages. A college press or "literary" magazine might publish such plot-less fiction, but it won't find commercial success.  
HIGH STAKES: Bestsellingfiction involves weighty outcomes. The stakes don't have to be literallyearth-shattering—say, Flash Gordon preventing the destruction of the galaxy. Ifwe care about the character, and she has been trying for years to get pregnant,whether or not she conceives a child (by resorting to magic, or science?)matters to us. We care because we care about her. As a rule of thumb, shortstories can get away with lower stakes than a novel. If the villain's plot isto poison pigeons, readers are not going to care enough to sustain a 400-pagenovel. But a character who is a pigeon-lover trying to prevent a bird-haterfrom killing pigeons might hold us for the length of a short-story. Or, in anovel, it could work as a sub-plot. In any genre, all your main characters musthave clear goals, so your reader can know whether the character has won orlost. In fact, each scene should havea goal (for more on this, read the post on "Story Questions").

Let Us Now Praise Scribbling Women

Jenny Crusie is a successful romance author whose thesis for a PhD in Literature focused on romance literature. She has a great website that includes a "For Writers" blog. Her essay "Let Us Now Praise Scribbling Women" is subtitled: "Romance fiction as an anti-toxin to patriarchal literature." This essay inspired me to join Romance Writers of America.

Here are the first three paragraphs; click the link to find the complete essay:
Let Us Now Praise Scribbling Women© Jennifer Crusie (used by permission)
A funny thing happened to me on my way to my Ph.D. As partof my dissertation research, I read one hundred romance novels and discovered abrave new world of feminist fiction. Well, not so new—a hundred years agoNathaniel Hawthorne was complaining about those "damned scribblingwomen" outselling him—but it was new to me and so exciting that I became aromance reader, and then a romance critic, and finally a romance writer.
I had to because I'd come out of my reading transformed,feeling more confident and much happier than during all my years of historical,canonical reading. The literary tradition I was familiar with hailed femalecharacters like Hester Prynne as great feminist heroines. You remember Hester,a woman who, after grasping at happiness and sexual fulfillment, realizes the error of her ways and spends the last sixtyyears of her life celibate and serving others so that when the townspeople whohave reviled her gather round her deathbed, they say, "The Scarlet A? Itstands for Able." As far as I was concerned, when the townspeople gatheredaround my bed, I wanted them saying, "The A? It stands for Adultery, andshe was damn good at it." I wanted the recognition that I'd lived my daysfully and freely and drunk life to the lees, but it wasn't until I read romancefiction that I found a reflection of that defiance and celebration.
That's when I understood why romance owns 50% of mass marketpaperback fiction sales. Seventy percent of book buyers and eighty percent ofbook readers are women, and like me, those readers are tired of serving andlosing and waiting and dying in their fictional worlds. The romance heroine notonly acts and wins, she discovers a new sense of self, a new sense of what itmeans to be female as she struggles through her story, and so does the romance reader as she reads it.