Matt Moore's Blog, page 23

What Thor Taught Me About Character Motivation

I saw Thor Thursday night. While a fun popcorn flick, it's not up to the level of Iron Man. What's more, I have no idea why some characters did what they did.

As a writer, this bugs me.

Plot Summary

(This is a spoiler-free review. Anything I reveal you'll have seen in the trailers or can guess.) Thor is a god in the Asgardian pantheon, son and heir to Asgard's king, Odin. Arrogant and brash, Thor breaks the peace with Asgard's enemies, the Front Giants (no, really). So Odin banishes him to Earth, sans powers, via the rainbow bridge that connect Asgard to other realms. If Thor can learn to become wise and noble, he can regain his powers and return.

On Earth, Thor meets Jane Foster who believes the rainbow bridge she saw Thor arrive from is an Einstein-Rosen Bridge (aka wormhole). Luckily, she's a physicist.

Meanwhile, Thor's brother Loki is hatching a scheme. So when Odin falls into some kind of regenerative coma, Loki becomes King of Asgard.

Some of Thor's friends go to Earth to look for him, a big battle ensues and Thor, having learned his lesson, regains his powers. He kicks ass, gets the girl, and upsets Loki's plans.

So What's Wrong With That?

At a number of turns, I don't know why characters did what they did.

First, when Thor arrives Jane is in the desert looking for… something. Have there been other wormholes arriving on Earth? Something else? We never know, just that she's in the right place at the right time. (And this coincidence happens twice more.)

And there's Loki. While there are several twists, changing how we see him and his scheme, we don't know what's driving him. Is he selfish? Destructive? Power-mad? Is he a villain or just an antagonist? We do get a final confession to explain why he did what he did, but that confession could be one more lie. While a villain that we never truly understand (Heath Ledger's Joker, Iago from Othello), is compelling, here is feels muddled.

Then there's Jane's and Thor's "romance." Sure, they trade glances and giggle and share a moment talking about physics (no, really), but I kept waiting for some conflict that would move their relationship from infatuation to love. As with Loki, it never happens. There's (of course) the climatic kiss between them (and a number of rude "hammer" jokes made in the theatre), but it's Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman's acting (and the swelling music in the background) that kept the kiss from being a truly WTF moment.

And while Thor regains is powers, we never see what suddenly makes him noble. Then there's Jane's mentor Dr. Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård), who puts his neck on the line to help Thor when in all previous scenes Selvig has considered him dangerous and mad. Not to mention Thor's sudden alliance with SHIELD when the whole movie has them at odds with one another.

A Lesson For Writers

Thor shows how important it is to not just tell, but show, and not just show, but demonstrate.

Thor never has an "ah-ha" moment where he realized his brash aggressiveness causes harm. Think of Superman 2 where Clark is beat up in the diner. Seeing his own blood, Clark realizes that every human can bleed and suffer just as he is doing. No matter what it costs him personally, Clark knows he must regain his powers to stop this kind of suffering. (Yes, a Christ reference.) That is a great scene. It shows how a profound transformation can come about.

So, if you're writing superhero films or just a story with a guy who needs to become a hero:

Simply choosing to become a hero is not enough. The hero must try, then fail, learn from that failure and try again.
Putting the hero next to an attractive woman will not make them fall in love. What would draw these two people together? What do they have in common? Why do they need each other to change and improve?
If your bad guy is a schemer, has he set his scheme in motion a long time ago or making it up as he goes? Either way, what motivates him? What does he want? And what will he do when he gets it.

While I didn't love Thor, I am still looking forward to The Avengers!

The Rest of My Experience at World Horror Convention 2011

After writing the above post, I have lunch with a good deal of the CZP crew—Brett, Sandra, Helen, Laura, Brent, Bob, Mike. I think Nick Kaufmann was there, too. Apologies if I left anyone out.

After lunch, I went to the Genre Mash-ups and Commonwealth Horror panels. I had some time on my own, so I went for a quick swim with my wife, hung out with Brent and Bob where we talked about Ass Goblins of Auschwitz, and eventually my wife and I went out to dinner at a Mexican place next to the hotel where we gorged on delicious meal.

After dinner,  hung out in the mass autograph sessions where I probably could have sat with copies of some anthologies I was in,  but had too much fun cruising around the room, talking to everyone. Ironically, when the session wrapped up, the CZP crew (with my wife and I in tow) went back to the same Mexican place for  dinner.

Finally making it back to the hotel, we hung around the Cutting Block press party, but it was getting late, I was in the beginning stages of a cold and the sheriff's office was already on hand in the pre-shut-it-down phase, so I turned in.

Sunday came too soon and it was time to say good-bye. Our flights back home to Ottawa were routine with the exception of horrific treatment at the hands of United Airlines, which I will never fly again and my wife describes in a Facebook Note. To put it bluntly: If you have a handicap and carry medical equipment that you must carry on to avoid damage, well you can go fuck yourself.

So, it's a week later, I'm feeling the effects of a cold/conplague, and WHC2011 is a wonderful memory of friends, heat, humidity, and jokes so foul they dare not be repeated.

If I first met you at World Horror Con or I've known you for a while and we hung out, thanks for sharing some time with me. It was blast!

Update from World Horror Convention 2011 in Austin, TX

I'm writing this from the lobby of the Doubletree Hotel in Austin.

It has been a great couple of days at World Horror Convention 2011 and I am sad it's the last day for me. (I'll be leaving Sunday morning and miss the last day of events.)

I arrived in Austin on Wednesday evening after a long day of travel from Ottawa and passed a generally quiet evening.

On Thursday, I walked around downtown Austin with ChiZine Publications authors David Nickle and Claude Lalumière. We explored some out-of-the-way places (great fodder for horror writesr), walked under Austin's Bat Bridge and had a good time exploring the Museum of the Weird. I went out to dinner with some friends and was longer than I thought I would be, so missed the opening events. After my walk in a hot, sunny city that morning, I was in bed early.

Friday was a blast, beginning with the "Why Write Short Stories" panel, which featured my friends Suzanne Church and Claude Lalumière. One of the things I took away from this panel was most first scenes in short stories are throat-clearing before you tell the real story.

I then attended the Guest of Honor interview with Brett Alexander Savory and Sandra Kasturi, my bosses at ChiZine Publications. After that I sat on my panel, "What Happens to Your Books After It Sells?," where I discussed my experience as Marketing Director for ChiZine Publications with other editors, publishers and authors to try to let aspiring writers know what to expect in the publishing process.

After some time on my own to re-charge and dinner with friends, I did a reading at the Damnation Books launch party from "Silverman's Game." The ChiZine Publications' launch party followed, which was packed, loud and hot, but a great party. Considering we were not in our backyard of Toronto, we really packed in a quite a crowd and the feedback on the work we've been doing was positive and enthusiastic.

I just came from the "What Do Editors Want?" panel, where Sandra was a panelist. I'd hope for a bit more Q&A, but the panel was educational to understand the world and point of view of publishers and editors.

I'm looking forward to the panels later today and parties tonight. The only trouble is the hotel is filling up with college kids on some kind of fraternity/sorority weekend booze getaway. I'm not sure dressed-in-black horror fans and horny drunk college kids is a good mix.

How to Track Your Submissions

When writing and submitting short fiction, you should have a list of the markets where you plan to send your stories.

But that list is only half the battle. You should also track where you have sent your stories. Tracking submissions is important to avoid three common errors that might hurt your chances at future publications:

Multiple Submissions: Sending more than one story at a time to the same place. This is generally not allowed unless a magazine states it's acceptable.
Simultaneous Submissions: Sending the same story to more than one market at once. Some markets allow you to do this, but you should only simultaneously submit if all the markets you send a story to allow you to do so.
Re-Submitting: Sending a story to the same magazine more than once. You should only send a story again if the magazine explicitly asks for a re-write. Even if you have drastically revised the story, it is still still a resubmission.

How to Track Submissions

To track your submissions, create a spreadsheet with the following columns:

Name of the story
Magazine
Date submitted
Notes
Response

When Submitting a Story

When you submit a story, enter the appropriate information into the spread sheet, with each submission as a row.

For Notes, I usually enter relevant information, such their average response times and anything I learn—a change in editors, closing to submissions, etc. As well, some markets say "We reply withing 30-60 days. If you have not heard from us in 90 days, send a query." Noting the appropriate delay for sending a query is important.

For Response, enter the date when you should follow up with query if you have not heard anything. If the submission guidelines say 3 to 4 months, use four months. If they say "We reply withing 30-60 days. If you have not heard from us in 90 days, send a query." use 90 days.

Finally, set the background of the row to yellow, so at a glance you can see what submissions you currently have out to market.

As Time Passes

If you have not heard anything and 80%-90% of the response time has passed, change the background of the row to orange. This way, you can see that you soon may have a sale or be looking for a new market.

After Expected Response Date

When the date when you expected a reply comes and goes with no news, change the background of the row to red and consider sending a query.

Unless the magazine states the time that should elapse before sending a query, let another week or two pass before sending one. Keep the query brief and polite—"I am querying about my story 'Vanity' that I submitted on February 30 of this year."—and add the date you sent the query to the Notes column.

Acceptance/Rejection

When you receive your reply from the magazine, note their decision in the Response column.

If they rejected your story, clear the background color from that row. Add any comments the editors may have made about the story. You may find a pattern if the same market has similar comments about your work (too long, want something character-driven), or several markets say similar things about one story (cliché).

If they purchased it, change the background to green and add any comments.

Something Else

Rejections or acceptances are not the only two outcomes. Sometimes a story is lost and the magazine asks you to re-submit it, but will give it priority. Sometimes markets go out of business. Or they request a re-write. When something unexpected happens, mark the row as pale blue and add notes.

When sending in a story again—as a re-write or the original submission was lost—treat those second submissions as new submissions. Enter the date the second submission was made, date you can expect to here from them, etc.

Stay Organized

All of this may seem like a lot of work, but remaining organized is vital to a writer. Multiple submissions or submitting a story to the same market more than once may get you noticed as unprofessional.

On a Panel at World Horror Convention 2011 in Austin, Texas

Just learned that I will be on the "What Happens To Your Book After It Sells?" panel at the World Horror Convention in Austin, Texas. This panel will take place Friday, April 29 at 2pm. My fellow panelists will be:

Yanni Kuznia (Moderator)
Mel Odom
Louis Greenberg
Del Howison

The panel's description is:

Selling a book isn't the last step; in many ways it's the first. Hear what editors, copy-editors, designers, publicists, and booksellers have planned for you, and how best to work with the professionals that could make, or perhaps even break, your career.

I am thrilled to be taking part in a world convention and especially for my role with ChiZine Publications as their marketing director. The added bonus is that CZP's co-publishers Brett Alexander Savory and Sandra Kasturi will be Guests of Honor.

How to Publish a Short Story: Ranking Markets

In a previous blog post, I talked about the different types of short fiction markets, how to research them and how to start a list of places you can send your story.

In this post, I'll talk about what to do with that list.

How to Rank Short Fiction Markets

Now that you have a list of markets—magazine, anthologies, contests—you should rank them in the order you should submit. Let's face it, some markets are better than others in terms of what they pay and the prestige they offer. You should submit to these markets first.

Payment

You won't get rich selling short fiction, but payment shows your story has value. As well, payment may qualify you for certain writing organizations, like SFWA. So, markets that pay more should be sorted toward the top.

Prestige

Payment is not the only way to decide where to send your story. Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, for example, states "We do not pay much," but publications in this magazine is a tremendous coup for new and emerging writers. Sometimes, having your story in a well-known market means more than a higher-paying, but less well-known one.

But evaluating prestige can be tricky. The best way to do this is read a lot of short fiction and look for the magazines and anthology editors you see often.

Likelihood of Publication

Balancing against payment and prestige is how likely a market is to buy your story. For beginners, it's a long shot that a top market will publish you. It could take years of trying all the top markets, and being rejected, before reaching a lower-tier market that buys your story. But what if you sell your story on its first submission to an anthology paying $1 per story? You might wonder if you could have sold it to Analog.

There's no right or wrong answer here. Balance spending a lot of time on submissions to markets you might not be ready for with grasping for that golden ring.

Timing

While most magazines accept submissions year round, anthologies and contests only accept submissions for a certain time period. What if an anthology that's perfect for your story, but only pays $5, is closing to submissions in two weeks? Do you submit to the anthology—better odds of acceptance, lower payment—or to a magazine paying pro rates—longer odds, better payment—but miss the anthology's deadline?

Balancing this idea are long acceptance windows. Some anthologies may be open to submissions for six months, but will not make acceptance or rejection decisions until after that six-month window (and sometimes several months after the submission window closes). Are you willing to let your story sit for a year under consideration? Again, there is not right answer—it's something you'll have to decide for yourself.

Entry Fees

While reputable anthologies and magazines will not charge you for submitting, contests generally charge some form of entry fee. Would you spend $5 at a chance of winning $1,000 and publication in an upcoming anthology? How about spending $10 for the chance of winning $100? For contests, you need to balance the entry fee along with the length of time it will take to judge the contest with the payment and prestige the winner receives.

Rank Order Your List

With everything above in mind—payment, prestige, timing, likelihood of publication—list the markets that might take your story in the order you will submit to them. Having this list handy will help when an inevitable rejection comes in. Rather than starting another search for a new market, you select the next item on the list.

Be Aware of Changes

Even with the list, things change day-to-day. Markets close or increase their payment rates. Anthologies and contests are created and announce calls for submissions. Be sure to keep your list up-to-date.

A good time to update the list is after a rejection. Look at the next market on your list and verify that the specifics—payment, response times—are still accurate. As well, do a quick search for new anthologies or contests that might be suitable for your story. You never know what's changed since you last submitted your story. You never know if the perfect anthology for your story has opened to submissions.

Track Your Submissions

Having this list of possible markets will be a big help to you in submitting short stories, but you also have to track where and when you've submitted your work to prevent a simultaneous submission (sending one story to multiple markets at the same time) or accidentally re-submitting a story to the same market.

I'll get into this topic more in my next blog post.

Back from Ad Astra

Too many memories, but went too fast.

Ad Astra 2011 is history,  but as always it was a great convention with lots of laughs and lots of great conversation. Some highlights.

Chicken burritos courtesy of Brett Savory in the Green Room with CZP staff & Derryl Murphy.
Robert Shearman meeting Michale Rowe for the first time. The humour was so dry it nearly sucked the moisture from the air.
The reaction to the People Live Still in Cashtown Corners trailer (which was mild to severe revulsion) during the Book Trailers panel, which also had a great discussion on the current state and future of book trailers.


The ChiZine Publications launch party. #Epic!
Saturday night and early Sunday morning (until3:30 in the morning) in the Green Room.
The "Why Professionalism Matters" panel went to some great places to talk about many aspects of professionalism and I think the participants gained a lot from the discussions.
The drive to and from Toronto with the amazing and talented Marie Bilodeau.

Now I am really looking forward to the World Horror Convention in a few weeks!

Off to Ad Astra 2011

I'll be leaving for Ad Astra, a Toronto SF convention, within the hour. Ad Astra was the first convention I had ever gone to in 2008, and I have been going every since where I have sat on and moderated panels. (See my schedule for this year.)

I'm looking forward to seeing friends I don't get to see that often, spending time with friends I do see often, and listening to heated discussions like whether Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica's faster-than-light propulsion is more realistic.

I hope to put up a post or two while there, but I am usually run off my feet, so no promises.

How to Publish a Short Story: Know Your Markets

You've finished your edits to your short story and now it's ready to to be published. If your a beginning—or even intermediate—writer, the question of where it can be published can be daunting. If you want to sell your story and not waste your time submitting to markets that are not interested in your stories, you have to do your research.

What Kinds of Markets Are There for Short Stories?

Before diving into research, know the types of markets for short fiction:

Magazines regularly publish short fiction, ranging from a few stories per year to a dozen stories each month. They may also contain reviews, editorials or articles. Magazines can be broken down into:

Printed versions sold in book shops or via subscription. Print magazines vary from high quality productions like Asimov's to hand-stapled photocopies.
Online magazines, like ChiZine and Clarkesworld, publish fiction through a website.
Podcasts produce fiction in audio format, such as The Drabblecast and Pseudopod.


Anthologies are book containing short stories, usually based on a specific theme. Some anthologies, like the Tesseracts series, are annual while others appear just once.
Contests may also publish short fiction as part of the prize. The winner might receive payment and/or simple recognition.

How to Research Short Fiction Markets

What to Look For

You want to find markets whose needs match your genre and story length.

A magazine wanting "hard SF" isn't interested in sword & sorcery. And some markets are very specific—your near future societal sci-fi story won't sell to a steampunk magazine. Now, you might be drawn to a market like Asimov's with its popularity and high pay rates, but unless you have a science fiction story to sell them, don't bother submitting horror or fantasy. No matter how good your story may be, markets have a specific vision for the fiction they want to publish.

Also, length restrictions must be respected. An anthology accepting up to 2000-word stories won't consider something 2,500-words long. Some markets may allow you to query for longer works, but understand what a query is: It does not mean to send your entire story with a cover letter asking if it is OK. Rather, summarize the story, your writing credits and the length of the work. A pro market may let Neil Gaiman or Joe Hill have an few extra hundred words. They won't accept a story that's one and a half times their maximum length from a beginning writer. Remember, many markets pay by the word, so a longer story affects their budget. And for printed magazines and anthologies, a longer story means they might have to bump someone else, or buy more paper and ink.

Finally, look for specifics restrictions, like writers from a certain region or age. For example, some markets favor writers under 25, those living in New England, or were adopted. If you do not meet their criteria, save yourself some time and don't bother submitting.

A Note About Contests

While most contests are legitimate, others ask for entry fees for the sole purpose of raising money since the winner has been predetermined. Before submitting to any contest with an entry fee, do your research. How long has the contest been around? Are the judges people you've heard of?Is the contest associated with a reputable organization?

Where to Search

To find this information, two of the most popular sites are Duotrope and Ralan, which contain detailed listings of short story markets including magazines, contests, anthologies podcasts and more.

An Internet search for "call for submissions" or "open to submissions," adding the genre or type of fiction you write to the search, may lead to anthologies looking for submissions. Do the same for "fiction contests." Setting up a Google Alert for these is a great way to stay up to date on a changing market place.

Read, read and read so more

Once you have some ideas of markets that might publish your story, the best thing you can do is read those markets to make sure what they are publishing matches what you have written. Most magazines will offer free samples of their stories, and website usually provide all of their stories for free.

Unfortunately, this is a step often overlooked by authors and it frustrates editors to no end. "Horror," for example, can mean anything from mad slasher stories loaded with blood and guts to creepy atmospheric stories like "The Yellow Wallpaper." If you have a horror story, the only way you can know if your story will have a chance at being published in a "horror" market is to read it.

Make A List

As you are searching and finding markets that might be interested in your story, start making a list of them. Record:

The name of the markets
The website address of its submission guidelines
Its requirements: genre, length, etc.
Its payment policy – cents per word, flat rate per story
Response time

What Do I Do with this List?

Having a list of markets will help you determine where you send your story first and what market to pick next if you're rejected. I'll talk about this more in detail in my next blog post.

Selling Snake Oil in the Age of Social Media

In large organizations, we hire outside consultants and contractors to carry out large projects and take advantage of their expertise.

In the age of Facebook and YouTube, experience in social media is a common perquisite to bid on communications contracts. And while thick, glossy bids arrive with examples of creating YouTube videos and launching Facebook pages, more and more I'm seeing that some so-called "experts" have pushed buttons or written text, but don't understand social media's norms and best practices. Almost as if they read blogs and learned buzzwords for the proposal, but don't know what any of them mean.

What's especially frustrating is when consultants carry themselves with a certain swagger and panache (since they are the experts and I, the cog in the machine, couldn't possibly know as much as they do) and senior managers opt to implement the consultants' recommendations, despite the objections of others, since a lot of money was paid for those recommendations. After all, if the consultant charges so much he/she must be an expert.

Two recent examples of this come to mind. (I have changed specifics and won't name names.)

Do You Understand That's Impossible on Twitter?

The organization I work for—a very large and stoic one—recently launched a high-profile marketing campaign. Among the products delivered—print and online advertisements, website copy, flyers—were Twitter updates. The flavor of what we received took the form of:

We have GREAT prizes 4 U! Do U want 2 WIN tix to a CLF game? Check out our site for more info! #CLF #CanadianFootball #win

I've already railed against "check out" as the Twitter equivalent of "click here" and why using marketing-ese in social media is a bad idea. But what surprised me was that they embedded hyperlinked text within a tweet, which cannot be done. Other messages were over the 140 character limit. It's almost like they randomly surfed Twitter and adopted the language of teenagers without researching Twitter's best practices for organizations and what it can and cannot do as a medium.

Don't Letterbox YouTube Videos

A second example is videos developed for YouTube. These videos were originally produced several years ago in 4:3 ratio for DVD. Management wanted these videos placed online, so they were converted to electronic files for our website and YouTube. However, since 16:9 is now the standard, the contractor delivered videos with black bars on the left and right side of the image to force it into a 16:9 format.

While I acknowledge they understood that YouTube now presents videos in 16:9, a quick search of YouTube Help for "aspect ratio" would have revealed http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=132461, which makes it clear you are not to letter box videos yourself—YouTube will add the black bars when the video is processed. The videos were distorted when uploaded, but fortunately the contractor agreed to deliver the files in 4:3 without much fuss.

Do Your Research

None of what I know about social media is the result of years of experience, endless trial-and-error or picking the brains of marketing geniuses. It comes from doing due diligence when working with a technology that is constantly changing and evolving. Most of what I know about sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube comes from questions being asked of me or unusual situations where I need to go find an answer or double-check what I suspect to be correct.

For consultants who sell themselves as experts, this same level of research is vital to deliver accurate answers and, more importantly, maintain the trust of your client. It's not enough to talk about "engagement" and "digital natives" and Obama's use of social media in his election. Theory is great (vital, even), but you also need to know the nuts and bolts of what you're doing. Anyone can read blogs about how to use social media in theory. The real expertise being paid for are the details, like using annotations to link  YouTube videos, analyzing Facebook Insights or is Tumblr, WordPress or Blogger the best platform for someone's needs.

When a very highly-paid consultants discusses a Facebook strategy and I have to point out that what they're proposing is impossible, I will do everything I can what I am authorized to do to make sure we do not work with that consultant again. And, I'll tell my colleagues to beware that snake oil salesman still exist, but now they are selling "social media expertise."