Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 141

STEPHEN KING'S WRITING TIPS

The darkness was alive, pressing in around my table at Meilori's.  

These shadows knew my secrets: 

when Kathryn, my fiancée, died in the surgery that removed both the tumor ... and her life;

when I was all alone as a frightened six year old abandoned on Skid Row in Detroit;

when my mother died holding my hand.

These shadows knew what abandonment, fear, and loss felt like.  I tapped into them as I wrote.

On my laptop screen were the paragraphs that detailed how Sam McCord cheated death by dragon 

and sowed the seeds for the great 1906 earthquake in San Francisco.


Funny.  No matter how hard we humans try to be smart, we end up only out-smarting ourselves.

I jumped in my chair in what felt like a whole foot as Stephen King sat down opposite me at the table.  

"Shit!" we both exclaimed ... but for different reasons.

King shivered.  "I hope you're writing a horror novel because this is sure the place to get in the mood!"

He pointed at the table to far left of us.  "Is that Hemingway?  The man is stabbing himself in the left arm and then writing in his journal."

"Ghost.  It is his ghost, and he always said there was nothing to writing -- you just opened up a vein and bled the words on the page."

King shook his head.  "You know I only come here for the 'free' whiskey.  What will it cost me tonight?"

"A few tips for my friends on how to write well.  One tip, two fingers of whiskey."

King shook his head.  "After my walk to your table, I'll need at least five shots to make it back out of here half-way sane."

Alice Wentworth, the Victorian ghoul, flowed like mist to the table with five shot glasses held steady on a silver tray.

As she gracefully placed them in front of him, he raised an eyebrow that could pierce steel.  "You trust me, Miss?"

Alice smiled demurely, but still showing him her pointed teeth.  "I, too, like fingers, Mr. King ... finger sandwiches."

He cleared his throat and tugged at his collar. "Ah, yeah.  Well, the first tip is this:

 "Description -- it begins in the writer's imagination, but it should end in the reader's.  Give the reader just enough to give the wheels of his imagination a push."

Looking after the departing Alice who moved like a specter through the shadows, King downed the first drink in one gulp.

"The second tip," I asked softly.

King traced his forefinger along the edge of the second shot glass.  

"Quality -- the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the events in which they find themselves -- in essence, the best stories are character-driven."

King slowed a bit, taking two gulps to finish his second shot.

"Style -- the road to Hell is paved with adverbs.  A thing is what it is.  Pumping it up with prose steroids only makes it seem less natural not more."

King blinked his eyes.  "Whoa!  That girl served me the good stuff.  My head is spinning.  I better get on with the remaining tips while my tongue is still working.

"Meaning -- a story is like a house.  Words are the lumber.  With sufficient, quality lumber you build a sturdy paragraph.  With carefully laid paragraphs, you create a chapter.  Enough of those gives you a house or a story to be proud of."

Despite his earlier words, King took a sip from his third drink.  The fine whiskey was beginning to hit him, and he began to wax eloquent.

"Happiness -- 

Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. 

In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. 

It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.”

King stared at his empty glass as if not remembering drinking it. He pointed an unsteady forefinger at me.

"Getting ideas --

Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we, Roland? 

There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers."

He sipped his fourth drink and continued, 

"Good story ideas, old chum, seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: 

two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. 

Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.”

He pushed away the fifth drink.  

"I think I best decline to stay vertical and avoid horizonal.  But I'll give you the fifth tip any way."

"Sir, you've already given me ...."

King shook a forefinger at me.  "A friend has to keep his word to a friend ... makes him different than a politician.

Hard Work --"

King smiled fatherly at me.

 “There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your laptop. 

No, siree.  He lives in the ground. He’s a basement kind of guy. 

You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. 

You have to do all the grunt labor, 

in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you. 

Do you think it’s fair? I think it’s fair. 

He may not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conversationalist, 

but he’s got inspiration. 

It’s right that you should do all the work and burn all the mid-night oil, 

because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. 

There’s stuff in there that can change your life." 

King smiled benignly.  Believe me, I know.”

Samuel McCord walked up to my table, looked down at King sleeping happily on his forearms, 

and raised his own eyebrow under his Stetson.

"The ghost of Mark Twain has been a bad influence on you, son." 

WHAT MAKES A GREAT HEROINE?

Does she have to be like Wonder Woman or Katniss Everdeen and save the world?

Hard to relate to those two isn't it?  

Except towards the end I wanted to strangle Katniss for whining so much.

It was like she volunteered for Hell and then spent the rest of her saga complaining about the heat.



1) Take JANE EYRE --

Though she suffers greatly, she always relies on herself to get back on her feet — no wilting damsel in distress here. 

As China Miéville wrote: 

“Charlotte Brontë’s heroine towers over those around her, morally, intellectually and aesthetically:

She’s completely admirable and compelling. 

Never camp, despite her Gothic surroundings, she takes a scalpel to the skin of every day.”



2) HERMIONE GRANGER  --

She has a wonderful arc:

 Hermione starts as an insufferable know-it-all, blossoms into a whip-smart beauty who doesn’t suffer fools (except for lucky Ron), 

and ends up as the glue that holds the whole trio together.

  She’s the only one of the three never to wholly break down in a crisis. 




3) HUA MULAN --

No, not the Disney version but the 6th century heroine of the Chinese poem, The Ballad of Mulan.  

She already knew the skills of a warrior when she assumed the role of her father, 

shone on the battlefield, and without fanfare or request for glory, returned to her home. 


COMING SOON TO PAPERBACK
4) MARLENE DIETRICH --

Her life reads like a script for one of the movies she made ...

But no director or stunt double was there to ease her pains.

As a star, Marlene noticed an assistant director feverish and ill, forced to stay on the set by a tyrannical director ... 

who got a chewing out from the star as she took the ill man to his home.

The assistant director awoke in his bed to the smell of chicken soup and the sound of someone scrubbing his kitchen floor.  

He got up to discover Marlene on her knees scrubbing his floor.  

He then got reprimanded for keeping his floor so badly!

Marlene one evening returned to her hotel suite in Hollywood to find Hermann Göring waiting for her 

to offer her a castle, riches, and titles if she would but return to Germany to make movies exclusively for Hitler.

She chased him out of her suite with a fireplace poker and the next day applied for U.S. citizenship.

When the war broke out, Marlene toured Europe to entertain the troops as close to the front as she could.  

She never went back to Hollywood to make a movie until the war was over though Hitler had placed a death sentence on her head.

Marlene then returned to Hollywood only to be told that she had become too old to be a star.  

A director demanded she be the star of his movie, GOLDEN EARRINGS, and her fame soared once more.  

Three guesses who that director was.

Marlene maintained popular success throughout her unusually long show business career 

by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and personally. 

So, of course, I had to make Marlene my heroine in my own fantasy 

where I am hounded through all my fictional worlds for the murder of the ghost of Ernest Hemingway.

WHAT DO YOU THINK MAKES A GREAT FICTIONAL HEROINE?

COTTON CANDY BOOKS

D.G. Hudson
http://dghudson-rainwriting.blogspot.com/

in her comment on my last post wrote:

 "It also seems that many 'creative' writers are writing whatever is selling, and to many, that is YA or NA. What happened to just 'Adult' writing?

 Or are there no adult readers left? There seems to be fewer and fewer books that make you think."

Now, the books I like to read are the ones that make me pause off and on, 

reflecting on what it means to be human in a world that no longer seems to care about humanity.

(A mindset reflected in the mass shooting of 50 human beings in Orlando --

Our games are of killing; our movies of death. We cannot see the worth of those around us for the blood in our eyes.)

Now, the Longmire mysteries, Spenser P.I. cases, Harry Dresden magical mayhems, and Neil Gaiman fantasies ... 

all are what you might flippantly call genre ...

But they all make you think.


Neil says Genre is like Pornography films.  

What is important are the sex scenes in those films.  

The scenes leading up to and away from there are merely fillers. 

In genre books, the Westerns must have shoot-outs; 

the action thrillers must have deadly fight scenes; 

the zombie tales must have the undead chomping on the living, 

and the bodice rippers must have steamy sex scenes.

The other scenes are only important in that they lead up to those genre scenes and lead to others.

But in a real novel, each scene is like a link in a bicycle chain 

in that each scene is pivotal to the flow of the whole book.

{I mean did it really take THREE entire books to tell the saga of a kinky sexual relationship?}

Have you ever felt that reading a good book 

makes you better able to connect with your fellow human beings?

 If so, the results of a new scientific study back you up, 

but only if your reading material is literary fiction – pulp fiction or non-fiction will not do.

I work to have substance in all of my books though they could be seen as genre by a casual reader.  

Sam McCord, Victor Standish, Wolf Howl, even Hibbs, the cub with no clue, 

strain to find meaning in their lives and in the world around them.

I like cotton candy.  I like popcorn.  

But a steady diet of either would make me sick and long for something substantial to sink my teeth into.

I feel the same way about books.  What do you think?

STAY LIT!

Writing is precarious
Amazon seems to want to prune its ranks of unknown Indies. 

 Struggling Indie writers find their novels lost in an ever-growing sea of self-published prose.

Twitter, Facebook, and Blog Book Tours offer fewer and fewer dividends to authors.

It’s a time when it would make a lot of sense to quit 

— and a time when simply not quitting is becoming its own art form.

Academics who left the scholarly world that no longer seemed relevant have invented their own genre --  

Quit Lit.

 Many creative writers today seem to be writing what you might call  

“STAY LIT” — 
accounts of how the publishing world has bruised and sometimes bloodied their egos, 

and why they’re still writing anyway.

Read the early letters of Mark Twain, Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, and Raymond Chandler --

And you will read the same thing:

Those who quit never win.  Those who stay the course always win their self-respect ... if not their dreams. 
Writing lives and writing careers are very hard-won even when they’re successful.

If it were easy, everyone would do it.  Stay the course.

HOW DID THAT GO AGAIN?

There is a world where innocence dies quickly ...

    where the lost seldom find a path back home ...

         and where the broken never seem to heal.

It is presided over by a being behind whose eyes hides a hunger for something he cannot put into words 

but can only burn with the yearning.

Call him DayStar.  He does.

Into this world come heroes who think themselves monsters.  

And they war with DayStar ... and with themselves ...

         to seek a season of peace and love that never seems to last.

But then all beauty is fragile and fleeting ... and mortal. 


HERE IS THE SKEIN OF THEIR DAYS:

VICTOR STANDISH (guest-starring Sam McCord)
1.) CARNIVAL OF THE DAMNED 
         Wherein Victor has his first job interview by an open grave.

2.) THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH
          His first meeting with the mysterious Sam McCord and the deadly ghoul, Alice Wentworth.

3.) UNDER A VOODOO MOON
           Victor races across the rooftops of the French Quarter chased by evolved raptors.

4.) THE RIVAL
            Marooned in 1834 New Orleans by DayStar, Victor invents the term "a hot time in the old town tonight."

5.) END OF DAYS
            Told through the eyes of Alice Wentworth: Sidhe, werewolves, and the end of Man's World.  

6.) THREE SPIRIT KNIGHT
            Victor is back in the flesh and ready to unravel all of Time to save his friends.

 



CAPTAIN SAMUEL McCORD
1.) RITES OF PASSAGE       It is 1853 and McCord searches for the murderer of a young girl who is wearing the victim's face as a trophy aboard a cursed steamer bound for Paris.
2.) ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM       Aboard the cursed Demeter, McCord continues his love affair with the mysterious Meilori Shinseen and faces a lethal duel with DayStar.
3.) THE NOT-SO-INNOCENTS ABROAD       (1867) McCord's deadly honeymoon cruise aboard the first Air/Steamship, Xanadu, with enemies to repel, friends to protect, and a love to salvage.
4.) DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE       (1895) McCord accompanies his wife, Meilori Shinseen, to the desert wastes of Egypt in an attempt to keep his wife from destroying herself and the world while saving his marriage.
5.) THE STARS BLEED AT MIDNIGHT       (1895) McCord and Meilori battle ancient evil in the form of a evil mummy child while attempting to give the dying Mark Twain one last great adventure.
6.) HER BONES ARE IN THE BADLANDS       (1927) It is 17 years since the death of Mark Twain, 
and McCord is seeking to lose himself in the making of the first talking Western movie in the wilds of the Badlands.  
But undying evil is awakened.
7.) FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE       (2005) It is the day after Katrina. 
McCord and his friend, the vampire priest Renfield, 
are faced with the impossible task of keeping undead predators from preying on the survivors.
8.) CREOLE KNIGHTS       (2005) It is the month after Katrina. 
 McCord is fighting the Russian Mob and corrupt politicians when Death herself is kidnapped.  
And his long duel with DayStar reaches its lethal conclusion.       

HOW TO DRAW THE MOST VIEWERS TO YOUR BLOG

Inger Wiltz (Desert Canyon Living)
http://desertcanyonliving.blogspot.com/2016/06/my-ten-most-popular-posts-why-did.html

started thinking of what were her 10 most visited posts from something I said on my own blog.

Inger thought perhaps folks were drawn to others' misfortunes.  

She found that her 10 most popular posts did, indeed, contain some misfortune.

But others contained themes of friendship and colorful locations.

I checked on some of my most visited posts.

The most was to HIDDEN SECRETS OF THE AMAZON KINDLE FIRE from 2011. (10,745)

But the second most visited was from May 11, 2016
WHEN LIFE KNOCKS YOU DOWN (2,115)

The Third most visited was WHY FRIENDSHIP? from Sept. 4, 2011 (1,966)

The fourth was from May 11, 2016 DON'T MISS THIS POST (1,788)

So we have Curiosity, Surviving Hardship, and Friendship as the themes for my most popular posts.

WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR MOST POPULAR POSTS HAVE BEEN?
WHAT DO YOU THINK WAS THE REASON?

YOU DID WHAT?

Ratatoskr, the Asgardian Squirrel here:
Just been reading some of you humans' bestsellers.  

All I can say is that The New York Times must be hard up for bestsellers!

For my own sanity I am giving all of you some things to stop doing to your poor abused novels.


1.) You Ain't Writing CITIZEN CANE

Stop with the symbolism and themes beating me over the head every fricking chapter!

One chapter you got this poor gal in a storm, 

the next she's being baptized, 

the third you got her washing her hands like Lady Macbeth.

I get it already!  

Now, for the rest of your book, 

I'm looking for the next symbol of cleansing AND You've taken me out of the story.

I'm not living it; I'm critiquing the darn thing. 


2.) Don't TELL me what to feel; MAKE me feel it.

When you use the dialogue tag "She joked" -- 

what you're really telling me is that you ain't all that sure what she said is funny in the first place.

Most times your instincts are right.  Make her words funnier or take those skunks out altogether!


3.) Remember I am an OCD rodent.

Love alliteration?  Save it for your lousy love poetry.

"Cautiously she crept across the carpet to the corner closet."  

You know what?

I am going to be counting C's for the rest of the paragraph 

and looking for the other repeated letters throughout your clunky novel --

LIFTING ME RIGHT OUT OF THE STORY AGAIN!


4.) Beware the Missing Link!

No, I am not talking about monsters here.  

I leave them for that idiot Roland to ask out on a date!

No, make sure the bicycle chain of your scenes flow naturally from one to the other.

How do you do that?

Make sure your characters' actions have a common sense to them.  

Don't force your characters to do or say something 

just because it gets your story headed where you want.

Make the circumstances such that your stupid heroine, 

who should have minded her own business, 

now has no other choice but to go where the plot needs her to be.


5.) The Trick to Pulling a Rabbit Out of the Hat is That the Rabbit is Already in There!

Lay those plot threads carefully.  

It is alright to weave them in all sneaky like.  

But you got to play fair with the reader.

No having the starship Enterprise whizzing over the horizon at the last chapter

unless you all casual-like left the communicator turned on in the prior chapter 

while the villain was laying out her dastardly plan while she thought you were helpless.

Not unless you want the readers to feel whizzed upon for real!

Well, I have gifted you guys with some real gems. 

 Now, sit them broadening butts in those computer chairs and write better.

I'm tired of nose-bleeds when I read books in Meilori's.  

Not healthy.  

All of the vampire customers here are starting to think squirrel-tartare when they look my way!

SECRET TO SUCCESS_BE CRUEL

"Men, like musical instruments, were created to be played upon."
 - High Fae Queen Oyggia



"I do so enjoy Man ... or rather I enjoy what destroys him."  
- DayStar






Certain things will open you up like a knife.

When that happens, the world ... and you yourself ... get to see what you are made of.

You learn most about yourself during the absolute worst moments of your life.  

Crises that fill you with loneliness, heartbreak, or despair 

force you to look at yourself as you really are underneath the act you show the world ... 

and even yourself.

You either wither on your feet or grow deeper roots to stand taller.  

Your choices will determine which.

The same is true of your novel.
Give your characters easy struggles, 

and you will bore your readers who may well toss your book, never to read another.

Give your readers "no escape" crises, and you will have them eagerly turning the pages.

Caution: 
your characters must have some victories along the way despite the looming doom, 

some humor to light the darkness, and the promise of love --

else your readers will put your book down as too depressing.

A main character that is always on the ropes is as deadly as a Mary Sue who sweeps through all her hurdles with ease.

You know what banner hangs on the wall of the writers' room for THE FLASH?

Three words only: HEART, HUMOR, and SPECTACLE.

I would add a fourth word: SUSPENSE.

WHAT TURNS YOU OFF IN A NOVEL?

SIGN OF THE GREEN DRAGON

Portsmouth Square, San Francisco, during the gold rush, 1851{Image in Public Domain}
I. Sign of the Green Dragon
 I smiled sadly. Young Sammy was all eyes as he walked the dirt sidewalk of the Barbary Coast.  His gait was that odd shuffle that stayed with him all his days.  
At sixteen, it gave him the odd appearance of old age.  When old that shuffle would grant him the illusion of youth.  

It fit the tangle of contradictions that was the boy who would grow to become Mark Twain.
Sammy smiled, "Did the editor of the San Francisco Herald really promise to make me a reporter?"
"Yes.  If I brought the murderer of its publisher, James King, to justice."
Sammy rubbed his hands together.  "Captain Sam, I am as good as hired!  You're the best lawmen ever."
I studied him.  "Isn't your mother worried about you being shot in this wild town?"
"Naw."
"She trusts me that much?"
"Of course not!  She says any boy destined to hang has nothing to fear from guns."
I smiled wryly.  That sounded like her all right.
 Before the Gold Rush of 1849, there were only a few hundred people living in tents and wooden shanties within San Francisco. 
However after the gold rush the population of San Francisco would increase fifty-fold in just two years—from 492 in 1847 to over 25,000 in 1849. 
That extreme growth combined with a lack of strong government had created many opportunities for criminals, corrupt politicians, and brothel owners.
Sammy's grey-blue eagle eyes widened as he hushed in a breath as we stepped onto the corner of Pacific and Montgomery Streets.
"Welcome to Casa," I said low.

Sammy rasped, "Excepting for that green dragon sign, it's like something you'd see in Old New Orleans with those lacy iron terraces."
"There's a Casa there, too.  And in Paris.  And in Los Angeles."
"Where?"
"A small trading post of 250 people about 400 miles south of here.  I own a lot of property there ... as I do here."
Sammy shook his head.  "Lord, I ain't never seen the like."
He arched his head back and took in the night sky. 
 "Yet even with the torches on those balconies, I can still see the constellations shining in their myriad majesty, 

and moving like an army dressed in silver mail, marching from unknown victories to conquer in distant wars."
Even so young, Sammy still had the Way about him and his words.
The tall Chinese man in the doorway breathed a sigh of relief.  "At last you come, Xian.  Qing Long has crossed the ocean for revenge."
Sammy frowned, "Qing Long?"
"The Azure Dragon," I murmured, feeling as if my sins in the Opium Wars would never stop haunting me.

"Th-That's just a nickname, right?" quavered Sammy.
I shook my head.
Sammy muttered, "Does Los Angeles have a newspaper, Captain Sam?"

The tall Chinese, who would never tell me his name, shook his head sadly.

"It is too, late, young sir, for the Green Dragon has also come for his treasure." 

Death and madness followed but that is another story.

And in 2016, a crumbling map from 1859 is found in the bony grip of something long dead 

propelling three boys into unsolved murder, modern crimes, lost ancestors, and dragons who guard the meaning of true treasure. 

CURIOUS?

On August 3rd, C. Lee McKenzie releases SIGN OF THE GREEN DRAGON

which holds the answers to your questions.

   

MIRROR, MIRROR OF THE SIGHTLESS EYE

I am currently writing the sequel to my latest Steampunk, THE NOT-SO-INNOCENTS AT LARGE:





In it, an immensely powerful enemy threatens the lives and sanity of every human aboard the Xanadu, 

smug in the certainty that Samuel McCord will not break his most inviolate rule.

McCord is forced to decide if his rules are more important than innocent lives.

A recent scene in the latest episode of PERSON OF INTEREST mirrors that scene I wrote before the program aired.

SPOILER ALERT!  SPOILER ALERT!  SPOILER ALERT!
Here is that scene:

HAS A MOVIE or TV SHOW EVER ECHOEDSOMETHING YOU HAVE WRITTEN?