Chris Eboch's Blog, page 29

Using Giveaways for Promotions 3

Two weeks ago, I talked about my experiences with doing a free book giveaway through Amazon’s KDP Select program. Last Wednesday, I quoted M. Louisa Locke, author of the Victorian San Francisco mysteries Maids of Misfortune and Uneasy Spirits, on her views. Other authors have had mixed success with free book giveaways. Here are some of the things that have come up:

One author said when she includes a sample chapter of the next title in the series at the back of a book, sales of that title double or triple in the weeks after the first book is available for free. (On a personal note, I hate thinking I have 10% of the book left and then having the story suddenly end, because the last part of the book is a sample chapter or other promotional material. It might help to have a notice at the front of the book letting the reader know what’s at the back.)
One author said that the book she has put up for free most often is by far her best seller, but the giveaways haven’t made much difference to her other books. However, people may take a few months to get around to reading a free book, so there’s still the possibility of a trickle-down effect.
Several authors have said that they got great results the first couple of times they did free giveaways, with thousands of free downloads and strong sales afterwards. However, the more often they made a book free, the poorer the results. This may indicate that everyone who was interested had already found and downloaded the book. Authors wanting to make the same book free on a regular schedule will need to find new ways to advertise the sale. It’s probably also a good idea to spread out the giveaways instead of having them too close together. (Though from my experience and other anecdotal evidence, having at least two and ideally three days free in a row gives you the best impact in your rankings.)
I'd also like to announce the release of my latest romantic suspense novel, published under the name Kris Bock!
A summer afternoonA stranger’s bodyA life changed foreverAnd above, a hunter watches....
What We Found:
When Audra stumbles on a murdered woman in the woods, more than one person isn't happy about her bringing the crime to light. She’ll have to stand up for herself in order to stand up for the murder victim. It’s a risk, and so is reaching out to the mysterious young man who works with deadly birds of prey. But with danger all around, some risks are worth taking.

Plot Like a Screenwriter 2 with Douglas J. Eboch

Last week I posted a partial excerpt of an essay by my brother, scriptwriter Douglas J. Eboch. Here's a little more about plotting like a screenwriter, from his essay in my writing book, Advanced Plotting. Last Friday I posted the section about the Dramatic Question.
Apparent Failure/Success
There’s one other critical structural concept you need to understand. That is the moment of apparent failure (or success). Whatever the Resolution to your Dramatic Question is, there needs to be a moment where the opposite appears to be inevitable. If your character succeeds at the end, you need a moment where it appears the character must fail. And if your character fails at the end, you need a moment where they appear about to succeed.
This moment should come late in the story as the tension is building toward the climax. We need it so the audience can’t predict how the movie’s going to unfold. We may know that in a big Hollywood movie the hero will beat the bad guy and get the girl, but we shouldn’t be able to figure out how they’ll accomplish that. In screenwriting, we call this moment of apparent failure/success the Act Two Break.
[For a full explanation of the three act structure, pick up Advanced Plottingor explore Doug's screenwriting blog, Let's Schmooze.]
The Act Two Break
The Act Two Break is one of the most critical beats of your story. It’s often referred to as the “lowest moment,” though I don’t like that because I think it’s misleading. Seldom do I see a successful story where things start getting better right after the Act Two Break. I think “moment of greatest failure” is a better description. It’s also sometimes called the “all is lost” moment, which is pretty good. The point is that this is when it looks like your character is doomed to fail. The Act Two Break in E.T. is E.T. apparently dying and the breaking of the psychic link with Elliot.
That assumes, of course, that ultimately your character will succeed. Some stories, like Little Miss Sunshine, end with the character failing in their goal, and in this case you have to reverse the Act Two Break. It becomes the moment of greatest success. Gangster movies often work this way—the gangster seizes control of the gang at the end of Act Two and looks like he’ll be unstoppable. But by the end he’ll be lying dead in the street, riddled with bullets.
Why is this so important? Because the ending won’t be satisfying unless it’s hard to achieve. And you don’t want your movie to feel completely predictable. This is the point where the audience needs to think, “Boy, I know the hero must be going to beat the bad guy and get the girl (this is a movie, after all), but I sure don’t know how he’s going to do it. It seems hopeless.”
Hope and fear come into play here. What is the audience rooting for? Do they want the character to succeed or fail? (Both are possibilities depending on your premise.) This is the moment where you make them think the opposite might actually happen. Or in a tragedy you make them think they might get the ending they want, only to snatch it away from them. Romeo and Juliet hatch a plan to run away together… maybe it will all work out after all….
The Act Two Break in Star Wars is when our heroes escape the Death Star in the Millennium Falcon… but we learn that Darth Vadar has put a tracking device on their ship. It’s their biggest failure because they’re going to lead the bad guys right to the rebel base.
The Resolution
The Resolution is the climax of the movie. It should be big and exciting and emotional. It is also the moment when the Dramatic Question is answered either positively or negatively. Thus, it is what we’ve been waiting for since the Catalyst.
In addition to making this a big moment, it is crucial that you make it a final moment. The Dramatic Question must be answered definitively. If our hero can just go out and try again, then we don’t feel like the question is resolved. The Resolution must be the last chance for success or failure. If Luke can’t destroy the Death Star, then the rebellion will be crushed. It’s not just another battle; it’s the climactic battle.
The resolution is usually pretty obvious. Luke destroys the Death Star. E.T. gets to the spaceship. In Little Miss Sunshine, Richard gets up onstage with Olive and dances with her in support, and in defiance of the pageant people who want Olive off the stage. Olive may lose the pageant, answering the Dramatic Question in the negative, but the previously dysfunctional family has come together.
These are [some of] the structural stages Hollywood screenwriters use to build well-plotted scripts. Of course, a well-structured script isn’t the same as a good script. You still have to write the actual characters and scenes. But if you have a strong plot, then you have a solid foundation that will allow you to tell a truly great story.
Douglas J. Eboch wrote the original script for the movie Sweet Home Alabama. He teaches at Art Center College of Design and lectures internationally. He writes a blog about screenwriting at Let's Schmooze where he shares techniques like the ones in this article.
See Doug’s entire 4000-word essay covering all the dramatic story points of three-act structure, plus much more, in Advanced Plotting. Buy Advanced Plottingfor $9.99 in paperback or as a $4.99 e-book on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, or in various e-book formats from Smashwords.

M. Louisa Locke: Using Giveaways for Promotions

Last Wednesday I talked about my experiences with the KDP Select program for doing book giveaways. Other authors have had better or worse experiences. M. Louisa Locke, author of the Victorian San Francisco mysteries Maids of Misfortune and Uneasy Spirits, mentioned on a listserv that she was making both the first and second book in her series free at the same time. I asked:

I’m curious why you chose to make the first two books free back-to-back. My tendency would be to make just one free and hope people would then go on to buy the next book in the series. I know some people with lots of books out like to always have one book free as a promotional tool. But I’m curious what people think about how this could best be used, especially for books in a series.
She answered and graciously agreed that I could quote her:
“The question was why do both books back to back free, and my reason was simple, both books had slipped to the bottom (and frequently off) of the historical mystery bestseller list during the 2 months I had gone off KDP Select to try selling on the Nook and Kobo, etc.

“The sooner they went out free, the sooner that both would show back up higher on the list—which is where I get sales. You are right that eventually a proportion would buy the sequel, but not in enough numbers in a given day to affect the best seller rank.

“I also find it easier to promote the 2 books together, so that the buzz I generate for one translates to the other.

“I have also promoted them separately in the past, and will probably do this from now on, once they both go up somewhat in the rankings.” 

Later, she added, “The tactic definitely worked. As of this morning, the first day both books are back at paid, Maids of Misfortune was already at #13 on the historical mystery bestseller list, and #9 on the historical popularity list (it had been 127 on the popularity list before the promotion.) 
“It always takes at least a day for a book to find its new ranking in the bestseller list, so Uneasy Spirits, which just ended its free promotion at midnight last night, is still high in paid list, but dropping fast. But it is already showing up at #11 in the historical mystery popularity list (it had been at 113) so I know it will do well on the bestseller list by the end of the day.
As usual, Maids as the first in the series did better in downloads. Over the 2 days in all the Kindle stores I had 21,767 free downloads—and I haven’t done that well since last February. I had 11,572 free downloads of Uneasy Spirits over the 2 days. Even more heartening, I sold 80 copies of Maids of Misfortune yesterday—the first day it was back for sale while Uneasy was still for free. In the weeks before the promo I was lucky to sell a tenth of that.
“Would I have done as well if I had separated the promotions? I don’t know. Maybe. But it did take time to do the pre-promo and promotional work and, as I said, it was easier to do the work for both at the same time.
“If you primarily sell ebooks online the major way that people discover your books is either 1) through social media and 2) by browsing online. Not being the queen of twitter, my major sales come the second way. I write historical mysteries, readers looking for a new historical mystery go and browse in that category, if my book isn’t in the top 100 the chances of them finding it are very low.

“But if I can keep my books in the top 100 of historical mysteries, I sell. KDP Select when it came available this winter meant that when my book sales would start to falter and my books slide down the top 100, I could do a free promotion, and since these free books count as sales (they now only count as a percentage of sales, which is why many of us aren’t seeing quite the same effect from a free promotion) they would bump up the books in rank. Then they are more visible. I have been fortunate that if people see my book, a lot of them buy it.”
Mary Louisa wrote a blog post with more detail about why she’s happy to give away books for free, and why she doesn’t worry about piracy or Amazon accepting returns. She says, “I look at the issues from the perspective of the reader. If I want to sell books, I should be trying to make the reader happy, not the publisher, not the distributor, and not the blogging pundit.”
As she points out and I’ve often thought, that’s why Amazon has been so successful. They focus on trying to please the customer, while many traditional book publishers have focused on trying to force the customers to do what the publisher wants. (For example by not releasing e-books at the same time as print books.)
M. Louisa adds, “Do I mind that more people have gotten my books for free than have bought them? No because my income doubled this year from last after the introduction of KDP Select, and I know from emails and reviews that lots of those people who got the books for free are my future readers of my future books and that they are providing very good word of mouth.”

She also wrote blog posts about her “rather disappointing experiment trying to sell my books on Nook and Kobo.”

http://bit.ly/O3Nmww
http://bit.ly/OpT5Kj
Next week I’ll be back with a few more thoughts on giveaways from other authors.

View Maids of Misfortune: A Victorian San Francisco Mysteryor Uneasy Spirits: A Victorian San Francisco Mysteryon Amazon.

Plot Like a Screenwriter with Douglas J. Eboch

If you've been following this blog for long, you've probably “met” my brother, scriptwriter Douglas J. Eboch. I love talking about writing with him and following his screenwriting blog, Let's Schmooze. Novelists can learn a lot from movie writers. Here's an excerpt from the essay Doug wrote for my book  Advanced Plotting . This works with our exploration of building your novel.

Plotting Like a Screenwriterby Douglas J. Eboch
Now let’s look at the components of three act structure. Probably the most important is the Dramatic Question. If you understand nothing else but the Dramatic Question and the Moment of Failure (which I’ll get to in a bit) you’ll probably end up with a fairly well structured story.
What the Dramatic Question Is
The Dramatic Question is the structural spine of your story. On some level all Dramatic Questions can be boiled down to “Will the character solve their dilemma?” Of course that’s not very helpful to the writer trying to crack a particular story. You need to ask that question with the specifics of your character and dilemma.
So in Star Wars (written by George Lucas) the question is “Will Luke Skywalker defeat Darth Vadar?” In E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (written by Melissa Mathison) it’s “Can Elliot save E.T.?” In Little Miss Sunshine (written by Michael Arndt) it’s “Will Olive win the beauty pageant?”
Those sound simple, right? Simpler is better when it comes to the Dramatic Question. But it’s not always easy to be simple. You have to know who your character is and what their dilemma is before you can craft a nice simple Dramatic Question. But then if you haven’t figured out your character and their dilemma, you’re not really ready to start writing yet anyway!
I also think it’s good to phrase the Dramatic Question as a yes or no question. So it’s not “Who will Susan marry?” it’s “Will Susan marry Bill?” Keeping it yes/no helps you tightly focus your narrative.
What the Dramatic Question Is Not
The Dramatic Question is not the theme of your movie. It’s not the hook. It’s not necessarily the character arc (sometimes it is, but not usually.) It doesn’t define whether your story is sophisticated or facile.
Do not think the Dramatic Question determines the quality of your story. It’s simply the spine on which you’re going to build your story. What you hang on that spine is going to determine how good your script is. Just because a person doesn’t collapse under the weight of their own body doesn’t mean they’re beautiful, intelligent, interesting, or emotionally complex. However, if your spine isn’t solid, none of the other stuff is going to work properly either.
How to use the Dramatic Question in your story
The Dramatic Question is an unspoken agreement with the audience. It tells them what the scope and shape of the story is going to be. They need to know what the question is fairly early in the proceedings or you will lose them. If too much time passes before they understand the Dramatic Question they’re liable to walk out of the theater or turn the DVD off or put down your script. They’ll say something like, “I couldn’t figure out what the movie was about.”
The moment when the Dramatic Question becomes clear is called the Catalyst. The Catalyst is where the audience understands who the main character is and what their basic dilemma is. They may not understand the entire dimension of the problem, but they have an idea what the story arc will be about.
So in E.T. the catalyst is when Elliot sees E.T. for the first time. We don’t yet know that his mission will ultimately be to get E.T. home or even that first he’ll have to hide E.T. And we don’t know that E.T. will start dying from the Earth environment. But we know that this kid who nobody takes seriously just found a little lost alien—and that some scary men are looking for it. We have a character with a dilemma.
Similarly, when the audience knows the outcome of the Dramatic Question, your story is over. The audience will stick with you for a few minutes of wrap up, but if you go on too long after resolving the dramatic question, they’re going to get restless. They’ll say things like, “it was anti-climactic” or “it had too many endings.”
Once E.T. takes off in his space ship, the movie ends. Credits roll. The story is over. Compare that to the Lord of the Rings trilogy (screenplay by Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson). The Dramatic Question is “Can Frodo destroy the ring?” He does, but then the movie continues for another forty minutes or so. Kind of got tedious didn’t it? The story was over. We wanted to go home.
The structural beat where you answer the Dramatic Question is called the Resolution.
Douglas J. Eboch wrote the original script for the movie Sweet Home Alabama. He teaches at Art Center College of Design and lectures internationally. He writes a blog about screenwriting at Let's Schmooze  where he shares techniques like the ones in this article.
See Doug’s entire 4000-word essay covering all the dramatic story points of three-act structure, plus much more, in Advanced Plotting. Get more essay like this one in Advanced Plotting, along with a detailed explanation of the Plot Outline Exercise, a powerful tool to identify and fix plot weaknesses in your manuscripts. 
Buy Advanced Plottingfor $9.99 in paperback or as a $4.99 e-book on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, or in various e-book formats from Smashwords.

Using Giveaways for Promotions

Helping an audience find your books is one of the big challenges for all writers, but particularly debut or self-publishing writers. You can find a lot of mixed opinions about giving away free books as a promotion. I thought I’d share some experiences for my Wednesday series of posts looking at the business side of publishing.
There are several ways you can give away free e-books – providing coupons on Smashwords, offering gift books that you send directly to the reader or buy and send through Amazon, or resetting your book’s price as free as one seller (usually Smashwords) so that Amazon will match the price. But one of the most effective methods seems to be joining Amazon’s KDP Select program.
The disadvantage is that you have to pull your book off of all other sellers. This means your friends and family members with a Nook won’t be able to get the book, and some review sites won’t review books that aren’t available in all electronic formats. However, most independent authors find that the majority of their sales come from Amazon, so the trade-off may be worth it. Also, you can sign up for the Select program for 90 days at a time, so you can alternate between having your book available everywhere and using the Amazon program.
The big advantage to KDP Select is that you can make your book free for up to five days in the 90 day period. Through proper promotion, this can lead to thousands of downloads, which can improve your book’s rankings, bringing it to the attention of potential buyers. But does it work?
I decided to try this for myself. Shortly after I signed on to the program with Whispers In the Dark, I started hearing authors claim that the free book giveaways were not as effective as they had been previously. Amazon had change their algorithms, so free downloads are now only equal to a small percent of a paid sale, and so they no longer provided as much of a boost in rankings.
My first book, Rattled, had been out over a year, and my second book, Whispers In the Dark, was published in December. Sales to date of these “adult” books published under the name Kris Bock (as opposed to my children’s books published under the name Chris Eboch) have been miniscule, three or four a month. I’ve done very little publicity, because I was focused on getting three books out so I could promote them all. I’m running behind schedule on publishing my third, but I wanted to use my free days before the first 90 days expired.
At the advice of other authors on a mystery writers listserv, I submitted the information to Ereader News Today, Indie Book List, and The Frugal eReader. Some other sites either had a fee or didn’t seem to be active anymore. I also posted the info on Facebook, sent Twitter announcements, posted to a couple of GoodReads groups, and sent a notice to four listserves I’m on. I arranged for Whispers in the Dark to be free for three days, July 21 to23.
Saturday, 7/21, it showed up on Indie Book List, The Frugal eReader, and Free Books Hub (I did not submit it there, so they must have picked it up from somewhere else). Here are a couple of rankings from that day:
11:45 AM MST: Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,789 Free in Kindle Store • #39 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Romance > Romantic Suspense• #76 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Action & Adventure
7:00 PM Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #194 Free in Kindle Store #4 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Action & Adventure
On Sunday showed up on EReaderNewsToday.com. That day’s rankings:
2:30 pm: Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #96 Free in Kindle Store #5 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Action & Adventure#7 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Romance > Romantic Suspense
8:45 pm Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #32 Free in Kindle Store #2 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Action & Adventure#5 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Romance > Romantic Suspense
On Monday, I didn’t find any place new it posted, but it reached its highest rankings:
8:20 am Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14 Free in Kindle Store #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Action & Adventure#3 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Romance > Romantic Suspense
11 am, 1:40 pm, and 3:15: Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #13 Free in Kindle Store #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Action & Adventure (but it had dropped out of the Romantic Suspense rankings)
By Tuesday, 8 am, it had dropped out of the category rankings, but kept improving slightly in paid rankings: Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #24,461 Paid in Kindle Store 
Sunday, 7/29: Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #19,716 Paid in Kindle Store. (For comparison, my traditionally published books are often between 100,000 and half a million. The smaller the number, the better.)
In the top 20 romantic suspense free books, most had an average of four stars, with a few slightly over three stars. The number of reviews ranged from zero to several hundred, and didn’t seem to affect ranking. Based on my own habits, I would have expected the number of reviews to matter more, so I would have waited until I had around 10 reviews to promote the book. It doesn’t seem that other people shop the same way, at least for free books. However, having more and better reviews could mean more sales after the book is no longer free.
In all, I had 15,149 free downloads (obviously those aren’t all people I know personally!). Now on to the important stuff – how did this translate into paid sales?
Unit sales covering period 07/01/2012 to 07/31/2012 (most of these from the two days after it was free):
Whispers in the Dark: 71 sold, 9 refunded, 62 net sold, 16 borrowed. (Joining KDP Select puts your book in the “library” of books that Amazon Prime members can borrow. Authors get about two dollars per borrow.)
And the sales spilled over to Rattled: 23 sold, 1 refunded, 22 net sold, 0 borrowed. 
Sales kept up for another week or so. From 8/1 to 8/11, I sold 28 copies of Whispers in the Dark and 11 copies of Rattled. In total, I made almost $400 from Kindle in 3 weeks. (This did not translate into any additional sales of the print books, although I did sell about 50 copies of my children’s mystery The Eyes of Pharaoh in July and early August.)
Sales then dropped off, but remained better than previously. From 8/12 to 8/25, I sold six copies of Whispers in the Dark and 9 copies of Rattled (could it be that some people who got Whispers for free read it and liked it enough to go back for Rattled?!)
A few other notes – I raised the price on Whispers in the Dark to $4.99 before I made it free, figuring that people tend to think they’re getting a better deal if they get a $5 item for free than if they get a $3 item for free. I don’t know if that affected the number of sales I’ve gotten since then, but I got more per book sold. Rattled is still at $2.99.
I know some of my friends and children’s book writing colleagues picked up the book because it was free. While we might prefer that people we know pay for our books to support us, realistically, that doesn’t always happen. I certainly can’t afford to buy every book from every writer I know! At least some of these friends have gotten a look at my books for adults, and one of them already read and reviewed it.
I did this in a rush, because my 90 days were about to expire. I debated signing up Whispers in the Dark again versus starting my next book in KDP Select. I decided to do Whispers again, even though the bump might not be as good the second time around, so I can use the giveaway to help drive traffic to the next book.
I’ll probably make the new book, What We Found, available on Amazon and B&N for a month or so and try to get a few early reviews, then enter it in the program as well. I don’t think I’ll publish it on Smashwords, at least at first, because it’s harder to pull down from there to make it exclusive on Kindle. With direct publishing on B&N, I can remove the book within a day. Because Smashwords distributes to other companies (Kobo, Sony) it can take months to make changes. I’ve hardly made any money from Smashwords anyway.
Next Wednesday, I’ll take another look at the KDP Select program by sharing the experiences of some other authors.
Buy the Rattled e-book on Kindle for $2.99
See Whispers in the Dark on Amazon. (Prime members can borrow it for free.)
See Kris Bock’s books on Amazon.

Middles: Keep Your Novel Moving

The Hollywood Touch, part 2: 

Back on August 10 I talked about how you can use movies as inspiration to get your novel off to a fast start. Once you set those high expectations, make sure you satisfy them. Consider each scene in your novel. How can you make it bigger, more dramatic?
“Imagine the worst thing that could happen, and force the issue,” says Don Hewitt, who co-wrote the English-language screenplay for the Japanese animated film Spirited Away with his wife Cindy.
My brother Doug stresses the effectiveness of “set pieces—the big, funny moment in a comedy, the big action scene in an action movie. The ‘wow’ moments that audiences remember later. Novelists can give readers those scenes they’ll remember when they put the book down.”
Yet even in big scenes, you must balance action and dialogue. Long action scenes can be dull without dialog or characterization. “When you look at the page, it shouldn’t be blocky with action,” says Paul Guay, who co-wrote screenplays for Liar, Liar, The Little Rascals and Heartbreakers.
Hewitt adds, “Try to be as economical as you can with the action, and as precise as you can. Break it up with specific dialogue to strengthen it.”
Don’t let dialog take over either. Any long conversation where nothing happens is going to be boring. David Steinberg, who wrote the screenplay for Slackers and co-wrote American Pie 2, says, “Movies are about people doing things, not about people talking about doing things.” Even in comedies, he says, dialogue must be relevant to the plot. “Dialogue is funny because of the situation, not because it’s inherently funny.” The same goes for novels, too.
So throughout your novel, make sure you have a mixture of action and dialogue. And make sure both move the story forward. If your character is alone during the scene, you can use his or her thoughts in place of dialogue.
Think Movie
Try thinking cinematically as you sketch out a scene. Imagine your book made into a movie. Will it be a bunch of talking heads, people sitting around in an ordinary setting having a conversation? Try putting your characters someplace interesting instead, and maybe even giving them something to do while they talk.
In the original version of Sweet Home Alabama, Doug set some dialogue scenes in the main character’s parents’ trailer. But during filming, the scenes were shot at a Civil War re-enactment, which added Southern flavor to the movie. Apply this approach to your novel. “In a novel, you can get away with just people talking,” Doug says. “But give people something more interesting to do while talking than just drinking coffee. It makes the scene more alive.”
Here’s an example from my middle grade novel,  The Eyes of Pharaoh . Reya, a 16-year-old soldier, warned his friends Seshta and Horus that Egypt is in danger from foreign nomads. He promised to tell the more at their next meeting. Seshta has been waiting anxiously:
 At last Seshta reached the dock. Horus sat on the end of it, trailing a fishing line in the water. Seshta trotted across the wooden boards. “Where’s Reya?” “I’m glad to see you, too. Reya’s not here yet.” “Oh.” Seshta flopped onto her back and stared at the sky. A hawk soared in lazy circles overhead. Seshta remembered her dream, and her ba fluttered in her chest. She rolled over and stared at the river. Horus watched his fishing line, seeming content to sit there forever. Downstream, laundrymen sang as they worked at the river’s edge. Two men washed clothes in large tubs, their shaved heads glistening and their loincloths drenched. Two others beat clothes clean on stones, and one spread the garments out to dry. Seshta sighed. “What do you think of his story yesterday? His big secret?” “Probably just showing off to impress you. But with Reya, you never know.” “Well, we’ll find out when he gets here. He’s not putting me off today!” Horus glanced at her and smiled. “No.” “I wish he’d hurry.” She slapped out a rhythm on the dock. “This is boring.” “He’ll be here when he gets here. You can’t change time.” Seshta sighed. Once she knew Reya was safe, she could curse him for distracting her and get back to more important matters. She needed to concentrate on dancing, not waste her time worrying about strange foreigners. Ra, the sun god, carried his fiery burden toward the western horizon. Horus caught three catfish. A flock of ducks flew away quacking. Dusk settled over the river, dimming shapes and colors until they blurred to gray. The last fishing boats pulled in to the docks, and the fishermen headed home. But Reya never came.
This is a slow scene by its nature, because they’re waiting for something that doesn’t happen. But the unusual setting makes it more interesting. Hopefully you can see the scene, and you get a feeling for the characters’ different personalities by the way they behave in that situation. We get character, setting, and plot all together.
Visit Doug’s fabulous scriptwriting blog, Let’s Schmooze.

Open Strong: First Chapter Exercises

I’ve been talking about the promise a first chapter makes and how to open strong. Now try these exercises to explore how the first chapter makes promises.
Pick up one of your favorite novels. Reread the first chapter. What promises does it make? From your knowledge of the book, does it fulfill those promises? Repeat this exercise with other books. Try it with short stories and articles, judging the promises made in the first few lines.
When you start reading a new novel, pause at the end of the first chapter. Could you identify the genre, main character, point of view, and setting? Is the main character facing a challenge? Make a note of these promises. At the end of the book, decide whether each promise was fulfilled. Try reading short stories and articles this way as well.
Think about your work in progress. What do you want to promise? Check your first chapter for each of the following:Does it clearly identify the genre?Does it identify the setting, including time period, country, and urban/rural/suburban lifestyle? Does it suggest whether this is a school story, a family story, an epic interstellar journey, or whatever?Does it introduce the main character and possibly one or more other important characters?Does it clearly establish the point of view and the tone of the book (funny, lyrical, intellectual, or whatever)?Is a problem introduced quickly? If it is not the primary plot problem, does the opening challenge at least relate to or lead to the main problem?Few authors wind up using their original openings. Some authors write a novel, then throw away the first chapter and write a new first chapter — the one that belongs there. It seems like it’s almost impossible to write a strong opening until you’ve finished the rest of the book. The final version of the opening may actually be the last thing we write!
Openings are a struggle for many of us, but don’t worry about the beginning during the first draft. Chances are it will change completely anyway, so wait until you have a solid plot before you start fine-tuning your opening. You need to know the rest of your story in order to figure out what your opening should be.
Don’t stress about the opening during your early drafts, but do make sure you fix it later. Keep in mind that fixing the beginning may involve throwing it out altogether and replacing it with something else or simply starting later in the story. In the end, you’ll have the beginning you need.
In  Advanced Plotting , you’ll get two dozen essays like this one on the craft of writing. Advanced Plotting is designed for intermediate and advanced writers: you’ve finished a few stories, read books and articles on writing, taken some classes, attended conferences. But you still struggle with plot, or suspect that your plotting needs work.
Advanced Plotting can help. 
Buy Advanced Plotting for $9.99 in paperback, $4.99 ebook, on Amazon,  B&N or Smashwords.

Strong Starts: The Hollywood Touch

I've been talking about getting your books off to a strong start. Now let’s go to Hollywood for some advice. I had the chance to interview some scriptwriters for a Writer’s Digest article some years ago. I’m adapting and expanding on that article. 
Authors dream of having their books made into movies. But even if your story never hits the big screen, you can make your work better by thinking like a scriptwriter. Apply screenwriting tricks to writing your novel and breathe new life into your work.
Let’s begin at the beginning and look at one important part of a manuscript, the opening. You know how important this is—editors and agents often say they can judge a manuscript on the first few pages. But don’t let the pressure get to you. You can put together an opening that grabs your readers and doesn’t let go.
OPEN BIG
I missed the connection between screenplays and novels for a long time. But when a middle grade novel just wasn’t connecting with readers, I consulted with my brother, Doug Eboch, who wrote the original screenplay for the film Sweet Home Alabama. After reading my manuscript, he told me, “You need a big opening scene. Think of visuals, color and movement—maybe a big party.”
He has a good point: Begin your novel with action, not background, to grab the reader’s attention. “Start with something big and memorable,” says David Steinberg, who wrote the screenplay for Slackers and co-wrote American Pie 2. “And big isn’t as important as memorable. It doesn’t have to be a big explosion, but start off with something exciting, different, weird—something that makes the reader want to keep going.”
Don Hewitt, who co-wrote the English-language screenplay for the Japanese animated film Spirited Away, agrees. But, he warns, don’t just make up any big scene for the sake of drama. “Start with an event that affects the character,” he says. Ideally, this event is a moment of change, where the character starts on a new path.
Establishing the protagonist’s role in the story is one of the most important functions of an opening, whether in films or novels. Let the reader know the character’s goals. “What does he want? What does he really need?” asks Steinberg. “What’s his external goal? And what’s his internal goal—what’s this person’s flaw, and how is he going to be a better person by the end?”
In addition, Doug says, “An opening scene should establish the genre. For comedy, I try to make a really funny opening.” In one of his screenplays, Quiver, a woman finds Cupid’s bow and arrow. “I open with Cupid to establish that it’s a comedy with a supernatural element.”
If the opening is exciting, funny, sad or scary, the audience expects the entire movie—or book—to be the same. If the opening is boring, the reader assumes the rest is, too. I took my brother’s advice. Now my first chapter has exotic scenery, magic, humor and a huge food fight. And I found a way to work important setup information into all that action.
For more on first chapter challenges and getting off to a fast start, click on the link to “beginnings” in the column to the right. If you’d like more insight into how a Hollywood scriptwriter works, check out my brother’s blog, Let’s Schmooze.
AdaptationHere are a few more screenwriters’ tips you can put to work in your novel.
Planning: Paul Guay spent three months plotting his screen adaptation of the Piers Anthony novel On a Pale Horse before beginning to write. “I plan the entire thing out scene by scene before I write one word of dialogue or description. I know exactly what my beginning is and what my ending is.”
Character Development: Don Hewitt says, “It’s easy to have things happen to the character. He’s passive. But it’s always best that the action happens because of a choice.” Hewitt tries to base characters on real people. For him, it’s easier to know how they would really react and talk in any given situation.
Setup: David Steinberg notes that a lot of comedy comes from deception, such as a person pretending to be something he isn’t. The longer he has to keep the secret, the more tension he creates. “If you’ve set up the tension, it should be easy to write,” he says. “If you can’t come up with anything, it’s because you haven’t set up the opposing forces.”
Advanced Plotting has tons of advice on building strong plots, including a detailed essay from Doug Eboch on the script writing "turning points" and how to use them. Buy Advanced Plotting for $9.99 in paperback, $4.99 ebook, on Amazon,  B&N or Smashwords.

Start with a Bang: Strong First Chapters

Last week I talked about the promise a first chapter makes to the reader, and what you should include. This essay from Advanced Plotting continues with advice on getting off to a fast start so you create a strong first chapter.
The Fast Start

An opening introduces many elements of the story. Yet you can’t take too long to set the scene, or your readers may lose interest. You want to start in a moment of action, where something is changing, and cut the background. But don’t rush things — take a little time to set up the situation, so it makes sense and we care about the characters and what’s happening to them.
Fast, but not too fast. How do you find the balance?
You can test your opening by seeing how much you can cut. What if you delete the first sentence, the first paragraph, the first page? Does the story still make sense? Does it get off to a faster start? For a novel, what if you cut the whole first chapter, or several chapters? If you can’t cut, can you condense?
On the other hand, if your beginning feels confusing or rushed, you might want to try starting earlier in the story. Try setting up a small problem that grabs the reader’s attention, luring them in until you can get to the main problem. In my novel  The Well of Sacrifice , the Maya are dealing with famine, disease, and marauders in the early chapters, even before the king dies and an evil high priest tries to take over. That gives readers time to understand these characters and their unusual world.
My Egyptian mystery,  The Eyes of Pharaoh , opens with the main character running — an active scene, even though she’s merely running for pleasure. In the rest of that first chapter, Seshta, a young temple dancer, is focused on a dance contest she wants to win. This introduces a challenge and a goal, and the contest is a major subplot throughout the book, though not the primary plot line. By the end of the first chapter, Seshta’s friend Reya, a young soldier, warns her that Egypt may be in danger. She doesn’t believe him, but the reader has seen the seeds of the main plot, which will develop when Reya disappears and Seshta searches for him, uncovering a plot against the Pharaoh.
The inciting incident — the problem that gets the story going — should happen as soon as possible, but not until the moment is ripe. The reader must have enough understanding of the character and situation to make the incident meaningful. Too soon, and the reader is confused. Too late, and the reader gets bored first.  Options for Fast Starts:
· Start in the action, at a moment of change. Then work in the back story.· Start with two people on the page.· Start in the middle of a fight or other conflict.· Start with a cliffhanger — something powerful about to happen.· Start with a small problem that leads to the big problem, or is an example of the main problem.
Keeping Your Tone
With all the pressure to write a great opening, people often struggle to find an opening scene that is dramatic, powerful, and eye-catching! Something that will make the reader want to keep reading!!!
We may see our opening as something almost separate from the full manuscript — something we can submit to a first pages critique or send to an editor or agent who only wants to see a few pages as a sample. But treating the opening paragraphs as an ad may not be best for the rest of the manuscript. A clever, funny hook is great — but only if the rest of the book is also clever and funny.
Many readers will browse a book’s opening pages in a library or bookstore to decide if they want to take the book home. If you offer the reader a fast-paced, action-packed opening, when your book is really a subtle emotional drama with lyrical descriptive writing, you’re going to disappoint the readers who enjoyed the opening. Even worse, readers who would have enjoyed the whole book might never get past the opening page.
The same holds true for stories on a smaller scale. Even if your story only lasts a few pages, your readers are making judgments during your opening lines. Don’t confuse them by starting one way and then turning the story into something else.
Next week: Opening Exercises
In Advanced Plotting, you’ll get two dozen essays like this one on the craft of writing. Advanced Plotting is designed for intermediate and advanced writers: you’ve finished a few stories, read books and articles on writing, taken some classes, attended conferences. But you still struggle with plot, or suspect that your plotting needs work. 
Advanced Plotting can help. Buy Advanced Plotting for $9.99 in paperback, $4.99 ebook, on Amazon,  B&N or Smashwords.

Strong Starts: Make a Promise with Your First Chapter

Over the last month, I’ve gone through the stages of developing a story. Now let’s take a closer look at some of the parts of creating a strong story. I’ll begin with a series of posts on strong starts. You’ll hear it over and over again — the first chapter, and especially the opening lines, are important. Your opening makes a promise about the rest of the story, article, or book. It tells readers what to expect, setting the stage for the rest of the story to unfold — and hopefully hooking their interest.
What You Promise
The first scene should identify your story’s genre. This can be trickier than it sounds. Say it’s a romance, but the main character doesn’t meet the love interest until later. Can you at least suggest her loneliness or desire for romance? (And get that love interest in there as soon as possible!)
Maybe you’re writing a story involving magic, time travel, ghosts, or a step into another dimension, but you want to show the normal world before you shift into fantasy. That’s fine, but if we start reading about a realistic modern setting and then halfway through magic comes out of nowhere, you’ll surprise your reader — and not in a good way. Your story will feel like two different stories clumsily stitched together.
If you’re going to start “normal” and later introduce an element like magic or aliens, try to hint at what’s to come. Maybe the main character is wishing that magic existed — that’s enough to prepare the reader. In my novel The Ghost on the Stairs, we don’t find out that the narrator’s sister has seen a ghost until the end of chapter 2. But on the opening page, she comments that the hotel “looks haunted” and is “spooky.” Those words suggest that a ghost story may be coming. That’s enough to prep the reader. (The title doesn’t hurt either.)

Your opening should also identify the story’s setting. This includes when and where we are, if it’s historical or set in another country or world. Once again, you don’t want your reader to assume a modern story and then discover halfway through that it’s actually a historical setting. They’ll blame you for their confusion. In a contemporary story, you may not identify a specific city, but the reader should have a feel for whether this is inner-city, small-town, suburban, or whatever.
Who and What’s Up
Your opening pages should focus on your main character. You may find exceptions to this rule, but your readers will assume that whoever is prominent in the opening pages is the main character. Switching can cause confusion. You should also establish your point of view early. If you’ll be switching points of view, don’t wait too long to make the first switch. In novels, typically you want to show your alternate point of view in the second chapter and then switch back and forth with some kind of regular rhythm.
And of course, you want some kind of challenge or conflict in your opening. This doesn’t have to be the main plot problem — you may need additional set up before your main character takes on that challenge or even knows about it. But try to make sure that your opening problem relates to the main problem. It may even lead to it.
In The Ghost on the Stairs, Tania faints at the end of chapter 1. Jon does not yet know why, but this opening problem leads to the main problem — she’d seen a ghost. If I’d used an entirely different opening problem, say stress with their new stepfather, that would have suggested a family drama, not a paranormal adventure.
This book promises adventure in Mayan times.In a short story, you need to introduce your main conflict even more quickly. A story I sold to Highlights started like this:
Jaguar Paw watched the older Mayan boys play pok-a-tok. The ball skidded around the court as the players tried to keep it from touching the ground. They used their arms, knees, and hips, but never their hands or feet. The best pok-a-tok players were everybody’s heroes. These boys were just practicing. But that meant Jaguar Paw could watch from the edge of the court.
That opening paragraph, 64 words, introduces the main character, identifies the foreign, historical setting, includes a specific location (the ball court), and hints at Jaguar Paw’s desire to be a ballplayer. Genre, setting, main character, and conflict, all up front.
Next week: The Fast Start


In AdvancedPlotting, you’ll get two dozen essays like this one on the craft of writing, plus a detailed explanation of the Plot Outline Exercise, a powerful tool to identify and fix plot weaknesses in your manuscripts. $9.99 paperback, $4.99 ebook.