Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 137
July 29, 2016
GROWING AS A WRITER
Since Man first looked up at the stars, he wondered at the moon looking back down on him.We yearned to fly up there somehow to see for ourselves what lay upon those distant shores ...
and one day, we finally got there ...
because we did not give up.
We yearn to make an impact with our writing, our casting of sparkling tales into the darkness.
If we do not give up, we will reach that goal ...
but only if we continue to grow.
HOW DO WE GROW AS WRITERS?
1.) READ WRITERS WHO INSPIRE YOU
Here are some of which you may be unaware --
BIRD BY BIRD by Anne Lamott:
Anne is the Bette Midler of the writing world -- and no, this book is not about birds.
“Almost every single thing you hope publication will do for you is a fantasy, a hologram--it's the eagle on your credit card that only seems to soar.”
CARING FOR WORDS IN A CULTURE OF LIES by Marilyn Chandler McEntyre
Marilyn is the standard bearer for the power of words.
“Loving language means cherishing it for its beauty, precision, power to enhance understanding, power to name, power to heal. And it means using words as instruments of love”
THE SITUATION AND THE STORY by Vivian Gornik
Vivian weaves the magic of how the internal story gives birth to the external one.
"Every work of literature has both a situation and a story.
The situation is the context of circumstance, sometimes the plot;
the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say."
THE WRITING LIFE by Annie Dillard
In fluid and dream-like prose, Annie relates the harsh world of writing.
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.
One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all ...
The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later."
What are some of your favorite inspiring books?
2.) SHAKE IT UP
Like those Go-Go Dancers of the sixties, shake it up. Only first person for you? Do third person. Only prose. Write a haiku.
3.) DANCE AS IF NO ONE WERE WATCHING
Forget about selling your book, about your audience, about what is hot. Write the best story you know how.
Tarantino says that you should make your story for you. There are others like you that will like it, too.
4.) WRITE FOR AN AUDIENCE
Yes, I know what I just said.
But we are story-tellers. We do our best work thinking of how best to stir the listeners.
Imagine you are telling your tale to a very sick friend, trying to get her mind off her pain.
Can't be boring. Can't be pedantic.
Must conjure a world that takes your friend from the sickbed of pain to a world of wonder.
5.) WEED OUT WORD CRUTCHES
We all have words we fall back on over and over. Work at expanding your vocabulary.
Wordle helps there:
http://www.wordle.net/
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide.
The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.
It will help you see your crutch words while giving you a fun time.
July 27, 2016
OUT NOW!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01J7F9HTI/
Forget about the end of October ...
Halloween this year comes at the end of July!
"The mind of Roland Yeomans is a wonder-filled carnival of delight and terror
that stretches from the deadly forest at the edge of a Southwest border town to the coldest reaches of outer space.
Yet all his work is united by one common thread:
A vivid and profound understanding of the vast sea of emotions that brings strength and mythic resonance to our frail species.
Roland Yeomans' characters may find themselves anywhere and anywhen.
A horrified Nazi may find gruesome, poetic justice aboard a haunted Orient Express.
A New Year's Eve party may find the invited guests of the just deceased Thomas Edison targets of revenge from beyond the grave.
A Lakota teen may seek to repay cruelties only to find that revenge never goes as planned.
An old rabbi may find himself in a parallel New Orleans facing demons invading our world.
A cursed Texas Ranger finds redemption on All Hallow's Eve in a haunted French Quarter mansion.
Each of these magnificent creations has something to tell us about our own humanity--
and all of their fates await you in this new volume of six classic short stories."
- Sandra Thrasher
COMING SOON!
Forget about the end of October ...Halloween this year comes at the end of July!
"The mind of Roland Yeomans is a wonder-filled carnival of delight and terror
that stretches from the deadly forest at the edge of a Southwest border town to the coldest reaches of outer space.
Yet all his work is united by one common thread:
A vivid and profound understanding of the vast sea of emotions that brings strength and mythic resonance to our frail species.
Roland Yeomans' characters may find themselves anywhere and anywhen.
A horrified Nazi may find gruesome, poetic justice aboard a haunted Orient Express.
A New Year's Eve party may find the invited guests of the just deceased Thomas Edison targets of revenge from beyond the grave.
A Lakota teen may seek to repay cruelties only to find that revenge never goes as planned.
An old rabbi may find himself in a parallel New Orleans facing demons invading our world.
A cursed Texas Ranger finds redemption on All Hallow's Eve in a haunted French Quarter mansion.
Each of these magnificent creations has something to tell us about our own humanity--
and all of their fates await you in this new volume of six classic short stories."
July 26, 2016
HAVE QUOTE WILL TRAVEL
(This work is in the public domain because it was published in the United States between 1923 and 1977 and without a copyright notice.)Have Gun -- Will Travel was one of the few television shows to spawn a successful radio version.
Did you know that?
I remember watching the re-runs on TV in the late nights when just a boy.
Each episode opened with the same visual:
Paladin drawing his gun
while delivering a line of dialogue from the coming episode,
after which the pistol is uncocked and holstered briskly.
Some have seen a bit of Paladin in my Samuel McCord,
though both are quite different, they both wear black and are educated.
Those of you who have read my books know that I like to start each chapter
with a tantalizing title and a quote to tease what is to come.
Take two chapters from my latest WIP: THE NOT-SO-INNOCENTS AT LARGE
CHAPTER TEN
TREACHERY IS LIKE DIAMONDS
“Men, like musical instruments, seem made to be played upon.”
– Qing Long, the Azure Dragon
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
A GRAVE OF DEAD GODS
“Where is the graveyard of dead gods? What of Huitzilopochtli? In one year - and it is no more than five hundred years ago - 50,000 youths and maidens were slain in sacrifice to him. Today, he is not revered at all. Such a waste of life, but that is the way of humans to waste the precious to serve the useless.”
- Lady Meilori Shinseen
What do you think?
Do beginning chapter quotes add to the book? You know what I think by my use of them.
Starting a chapter with a quote is known as an Epigraph.
See? Don't you feel more informed now?
July 25, 2016
STRANGER THINGS
No, I'm not talking about the DNC. Sigh. We used to have a democracy. Now all we have is a rigged 3 Ring Circus.
The highlight of summer 2016 hasn’t been any blockbuster movie, at least so far.
Nope, it’s the pleasant surprise that is the new Netflix series, STRANGER THINGS.
It is set in 1983 and though many have mentioned it is a homage to Spielberg,
it is really more like Stephen King's STAND BY ME melded to his IT.
It is much more about mood and atmosphere and suspense and dread than it is about gore.
It is also about friendship, being a misunderstood outsider, and first love.
If you grew up in the ’80s, or just love movies from that era,
Stranger Things will have you hooked, and you’ll likely binge watch the 8 episodes over one weekend.
Not to worry.
It tells a complete story while leaving enough unanswered questions to spark another season.
{Watch this video only if you have seen the show}
HAVE YOU SEEN STRANGER THINGS?
The highlight of summer 2016 hasn’t been any blockbuster movie, at least so far.Nope, it’s the pleasant surprise that is the new Netflix series, STRANGER THINGS.
It is set in 1983 and though many have mentioned it is a homage to Spielberg,
it is really more like Stephen King's STAND BY ME melded to his IT.
It is much more about mood and atmosphere and suspense and dread than it is about gore.
It is also about friendship, being a misunderstood outsider, and first love.
If you grew up in the ’80s, or just love movies from that era,
Stranger Things will have you hooked, and you’ll likely binge watch the 8 episodes over one weekend.
Not to worry.
It tells a complete story while leaving enough unanswered questions to spark another season.
{Watch this video only if you have seen the show}
HAVE YOU SEEN STRANGER THINGS?
July 24, 2016
WRITING WITH THE SOLAR PLEXUS
The ghost of Raymond Chandler sat in the leather chair stroking my cat, Midnight,
who was more than a little rattled to be that close to a ghost.
"I looked you for you all weekend, son. But you were off on your blood runs.
You do know Lincoln died to end slavery, don't you?"
Midnight squirmed and popped out of his arms, and I said, "Saturday was your birthday, wasn't it, sir?"
"Yes, and Clemens and Hemingway threw me a party
where Clemens insisted on only talking about himself and Hemingway kept challenging me to box.
I pulled out my automatic and both of them became blessedly scarce!"
"Ghosts can kill ghosts?"
"You wrote GHOST OF A CHANCE about it, remember?"
"Even put you, Mark Twain, and Hemingway in it, too."
Chandler nodded,
"Like me, you sneaked into it a quality which readers would not shy off from, perhaps not even know was there …
but which would somehow distill through their minds and leave an afterglow."
"I tried."
Chandler shook his head,
"November is coming where many of your friends will try to vomit as many words as they can a day."
He snorted,
"I took four months to distill my first short story. Four months. I continued to work with painstaking slowness when I began to write novels.
I believe that all writing that has any life in it is done with the solar plexus. It is hard work.”
Midnight, over his fright, jumped back into his lap as Chandler continued,
"Ten years after my first story was published, I was still on the breadline with four novels behind me."
He sighed,
"I began to wonder if the effort had been worth it.
But by 1945 cheap reprints of my books were selling in their hundreds of thousands,
and the critics who had hitherto ignored me were vying to outdo each other with superlatives."
Chandler snorted, "The world is simultaneously a horrible and beautiful place."
His words made me think of what he had his detective say in THE LONG GOODBYE:
“I hear voices crying in the night and I go see what’s the matter. You don’t make a dime that way…
I’ve got a five-thousand-dollar bill in my safe but I’ll never spend a nickel of it.
Because there was something wrong with the way I got it.
I played with it a little at first and I still get it out once in a while and look at it.”
I thought to myself as I watched him pet Midnight
that the best we as writers can do is make the most of our books, trying to make poetry out of the pulp of our dreams.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
who was more than a little rattled to be that close to a ghost.
"I looked you for you all weekend, son. But you were off on your blood runs. You do know Lincoln died to end slavery, don't you?"
Midnight squirmed and popped out of his arms, and I said, "Saturday was your birthday, wasn't it, sir?"
"Yes, and Clemens and Hemingway threw me a party
where Clemens insisted on only talking about himself and Hemingway kept challenging me to box.
I pulled out my automatic and both of them became blessedly scarce!"
"Ghosts can kill ghosts?"
"You wrote GHOST OF A CHANCE about it, remember?"
"Even put you, Mark Twain, and Hemingway in it, too."
Chandler nodded,
"Like me, you sneaked into it a quality which readers would not shy off from, perhaps not even know was there …
but which would somehow distill through their minds and leave an afterglow."
"I tried."
Chandler shook his head,
"November is coming where many of your friends will try to vomit as many words as they can a day."
He snorted,
"I took four months to distill my first short story. Four months. I continued to work with painstaking slowness when I began to write novels.
I believe that all writing that has any life in it is done with the solar plexus. It is hard work.”
Midnight, over his fright, jumped back into his lap as Chandler continued,
"Ten years after my first story was published, I was still on the breadline with four novels behind me."
He sighed,
"I began to wonder if the effort had been worth it.
But by 1945 cheap reprints of my books were selling in their hundreds of thousands,
and the critics who had hitherto ignored me were vying to outdo each other with superlatives."
Chandler snorted, "The world is simultaneously a horrible and beautiful place."
His words made me think of what he had his detective say in THE LONG GOODBYE:
“I hear voices crying in the night and I go see what’s the matter. You don’t make a dime that way…
I’ve got a five-thousand-dollar bill in my safe but I’ll never spend a nickel of it.
Because there was something wrong with the way I got it.
I played with it a little at first and I still get it out once in a while and look at it.”
I thought to myself as I watched him pet Midnight
that the best we as writers can do is make the most of our books, trying to make poetry out of the pulp of our dreams.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
July 23, 2016
WONDER WOMAN meets CAPT. KIRK!
All right I admit I am fickle. Now, I am enamored of Wonder Woman. But so is Captain Kirk. 
I am looking forward to this movie as well:
Have you seen STAR TREK BEYOND yet?
If so, what did you think of it?
July 21, 2016
STAR TREK BEYOND
One of the abiding pleasures of “Star Trek,” in its old and newer iterations, lies in its balance of stubborn consistency and canny inventiveness.
A. O. Scott - New York Times
The actors, in particular, carry the essence of Roddenberry’s inclusive vision into the present. Star Trek Beyond is designed to dazzle. Stephanie Zacharek - Time
A return to fun, and a return to form for the new version of the old Trek. The 13th Trek movie is also the second good odd-numbered installment in a row. Lucky for some. Chris Hewitt - Empire
What did I think of it?
INTO DARKNESS almost persuaded me never to see another new Star Trek movie ever again.
But STAR TREK BEYOND has redeemed the franchise for me.
It tilts the eyes, stirs the imagination, tickles the funny bone, and touches the heart.
What more could you ask for?
This film further develops the Spock/McCoy feisty, funny dynamic from the old series and breathes new life and depth to it.
This is the first film of the three reboots that begins with the full crew, separates them into new teams, and then reunites them --
all the while keeping the momentum going forward in fun, unexpected twists and turns.
"Oh, but it is the same brand going where it's gone before" is one thing some reviews whine.
Not every wheel needs reinventing.
Sometimes it just needs a little axle grease and a shine ...
which STAR TREK BEYOND does ... for me.
After all, all I can say about a movie is what it did for me.
And this movie made me a kid again, enjoying the wonderment of a universe of spectacle and mystery.
And Jaylah is my new Sci-Fi heart-throb.
July 20, 2016
HOW TO MAKE TIME WHEN THERE IS NO TIME
“The moment of victory is much too short to live for that and nothing else.”
- Martina Navratilova
Don't you wish you had a time machine? I sure do. You could have a 48 hour day every day.
Think how much you could get done!
Well, there is only one way to get more time -- you take it.
All of us under-utilize time.
Time we could use for our novels is waiting for us to seize it:
Waiting in line. Time you are in the car. In the shower.
If we look hard, we can find the time that we are giving away.
We just have to look for it in the right frame of mind.
There are little slices of time we are letting go fallow.
Take back a few minutes every day, and you will be surprised how it builds up to quite a chunk of words written or ideas discovered.
If you had a time machine, what would you do with it?
“You may delay, but time will not.”
- Benjamin Franklin
“Time is what we want most,
but what we use worst.”
- William Penn
- Martina Navratilova
Don't you wish you had a time machine? I sure do. You could have a 48 hour day every day.
Think how much you could get done!
Well, there is only one way to get more time -- you take it.
All of us under-utilize time.
Time we could use for our novels is waiting for us to seize it:
Waiting in line. Time you are in the car. In the shower.
If we look hard, we can find the time that we are giving away.
We just have to look for it in the right frame of mind.
There are little slices of time we are letting go fallow.
Take back a few minutes every day, and you will be surprised how it builds up to quite a chunk of words written or ideas discovered.
If you had a time machine, what would you do with it?
“You may delay, but time will not.”
- Benjamin Franklin
“Time is what we want most,
but what we use worst.”
- William Penn
July 18, 2016
HOW TO CREATE SUSPENSE
The suspense is killing me ...
The FIRST rule ...
Create characters with such depth and resonance that the reader cares when you place them in jeopardy.
The SECOND rule ...
SLOW BURN.
The danger must approach relentlessly, slowly, seemingly unstoppably ... then BAM!!
The THIRD rule ...
SIZZLE sells the steak.
The problem of readers being bored isn’t solved by adding action but instead by adding apprehension.
Suspense is anticipation; action is payoff.
You don’t increase suspense by “making things happen,” but by promising that they will.
The FOURTH rule...
FORESHADOW don't TELEGRAPH the danger.
The FIFTH rule ...
Make Death not an IF merely a WHEN.
Make the suspenseful scene seemingly impossible to get of.
Now, get out there and raise some goosebumps on your readers!
The FIRST rule ...
Create characters with such depth and resonance that the reader cares when you place them in jeopardy.
The SECOND rule ...
SLOW BURN.
The danger must approach relentlessly, slowly, seemingly unstoppably ... then BAM!!
The THIRD rule ...
SIZZLE sells the steak.
The problem of readers being bored isn’t solved by adding action but instead by adding apprehension.
Suspense is anticipation; action is payoff.
You don’t increase suspense by “making things happen,” but by promising that they will.
The FOURTH rule...
FORESHADOW don't TELEGRAPH the danger.
The FIFTH rule ...
Make Death not an IF merely a WHEN.
Make the suspenseful scene seemingly impossible to get of.
Now, get out there and raise some goosebumps on your readers!
