Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 91

YOUR VICTIMS BID ME TAKE VENGEANCE

"Deep as my grave, black as the pit, such is my vengeance."

NO PLACE YOU CAN HIDE

There are dark shadows on the earth,  but its lights are stronger in the contrast.

COMING SOON

A Christmas Ghost Story

GOOD versus BAD Storytelling

Take Heath Ledger's Joker ...

Look at him ...

The make-up is crudely applied.  

The smile-effect is made from knife scars at the corners of his mouth: the origin only hinted at.  

His actions deadly and insane.

And those eyes, right?

Now, take Leto's Joker ...

I mean you can tell he's damaged ... ah, because that is what is tattooed on his forehead, right?

The ultimate in telling and not showing us!  

And what is up with all the tattoos and metal teeth caps?  The insanity is literally all surface.



Take GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY ...


Five individuals we had never seen before.  

Yet their backstory was smoothly integrated into the flow of the story until by movie's end ...

when we hear Groot sacrifice himself for the others and rumble, "WE ARE GROOT," we actually tear up, don't we?



Take SUICIDE SQUAD ...


There are too many thrown in all at the beginning as we get the Cliff Notes version of the backstory.

We cannot feel for any of them very much or mourn when they die.





ACTION ...

Action must strive for some worthwhile goal or it is all sound and fury signifying the fight scenes in SUICIDE SQUAD.


Action scenes don't just happen because it is time for one as in comics or comic movies.  

Your action scenes must propel your narrative forward in meaningful ways.



Good Storytelling, even by males, must have female characters that are WHOLE, STRONG persons in and of themselves



Women characters must exist as entire personalities, not be one-dimensional or the entire story suffers.

In SUICIDE SQUAD, the biggest laugh of the movie is when Batman hits Harley Quinn in the face.  

She has an abusive relationship with her Puddin', the Joker ...

nor is it referenced as anything but some bad taste joke.

WHAT OTHER EXAMPLES  OF  GOOD VS BAD STORYTELLING TROPES  DO YOU SEE ON THE SCREEN OR TV OR NOVELS?

Is It Cruel to Give Your Book to a Friend?

Wonder why you give your book 
to your friend,  and he or she never 
gets back to you or gives you non-feedback?

Look at it from their side:

Aren’t novels all about pleasure? 

And so the deeper the friendship the harder you may find it to begin your friend’s book—

the potential for disappointment enhanced by each heightening degree of affection. 

That stifled inner voice makes another declaration:

 “If I never read it, I'll never be put into a position of having to lie or write something that will hurt my friend. ”


Then, there are the words of Jesus:

 "Truly I tell you," he continued, "no prophet is accepted in his hometown."


When those who know you read your book, they do not read your prose; 

they see the person whom they believe they know.

They also "hear" your voice when they read the dialogue.


Who believes their friend Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt?  

They find it hard to reconcile their image of you to the drama inside your novel.

It comes off unrealistic to them even if to a stranger it would be riveting.


That leads us to critique partners:

Sometimes the longer they know you, the less helpful their advice becomes.

They no longer see your prose as it is but as it was.  

You are no longer a stranger to whom they can be objective.


Finding the right critique partner is as hard as finding the right spouse. 

 And look at the divorce rates these days.


WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT YOUR FRIENDS AND YOUR BOOKS?

SO YOU'VE BEEN REJECTED

REJECTION
It's a hard pill to swallow.  Our prose is an extension of who we are, what we are.  

When our story, our novel is rejected, it is a pushing away of what makes us US.

Have you ever been told by a romantic partner, "It's not you; it's me."

You knew the truth: IT WAS YOU. Ouch!


What is the TRUTH about novel or story rejection?
EDITORS REJECT STORIES, GOOD AND BAD, BECAUSE THEY FEEL THAT THE PARTICULAR STORY WILL NOT GIVE THEIR READERS THE KIND OF SPECIFIC READING EXPERIENCE THEY WANT OR EXPECT IN THAT PARTICULAR VENUE. EDITOR'S REASONS for buying a story:1. The editor knows it will give the reader a Satisfying Reading Experience of the kind his magazine or anthology was intended to provide.
 
2. The story has a clear-cut, likable character with whom the reader can identify.
 
3. The story tells, and solves, a clear-cut narrative problem which the main character solves by his or her own efforts.
 
4. The story makes the reader glad he read it, therefore giving the reader a (see #1 above) Satisfying Reading Experience.



OTHER THOUGHTS
A magazine, an anthology, even publishing houses ... 
they have only finite space and have to consider balance in their publication(s).

Rejecting your story may have broken the heart of the editor ... 

or they may have buried it in their cat's kitty litter box.  

You know which option I like to think is relevant to my stories!! 


You will probably not be given a reason for rejection ... or you will be given a vague, sugar-coated one.


1.) If you were the editor's best friend and you submitted a story she couldn't use, she would reject it.
  
2.) If you were her mother and you submitted a story she couldn't use, she would reject it. 

3.) If you were Jesus at the right hand of God and you submitted a story she couldn't use ...

come on, she would accept it. 

Hey, we're talking possible damnation here!



Bottom line: you were rejected.  People in Bosnia only wish that was their greatest problem.  

We have to move on ... or don't.


We learn from the blows we take ... or we languish in them.  

Deep down you know which option is more healing.

In the end, we get compared to other good stories with similar themes.  

If another rings purer or more evocative than ours .... guess what?



This is the real world of publication.  
And eventually, you are going to have to fist-fight a bear.

Yeah, you're outclassed ... but you entered these woods of your own volition.

It will not be just one bear ...

oh, no it will be polar, grizzly, and Kodiak.  

Your story will have to run through a gauntlet of judges that just don't care about you at all.  

Not a bit.

They care about themselves.  

They do not want to choose a story that the readers will label "Awful!" 

and in turn paint those judges with the same tar.


May we all someday experience that singular joy of being accepted.
And if it means anything ... I like you.    :-)

Do You Tell Ghost Stories on Christmas Eve?

It’s no coincidence that the most famous ghost story is a Christmas story Or, put another way, that the most famous Christmas story is a ghost story.

It's remarkable to see how little Christmas has changed over the past 160 years.

 People still send Christmas cards, decorate evergreen trees, 



go door-to-door caroling and stuff stockings with candy. 

Christmas, at least as most Americans celebrate, is really a product of Victorian England.


The practice of gathering around the fire on Christmas Eve to tell ghost stories

 was as much a part of Christmas for the Victorian English as Santa Claus is for us.



Isn’t there something inherently unseasonal about ghosts?
 Don’t ghosts belong with all the ghouls and goblins of Halloween? 
Not so for Victorian England.  
Not so for those of us alone at night with winter winds howling and plucking at our window shutters.

The 25th of December was selected because of its connection with Sol Invictus 
(the birthday of the Unconquered Sun).
 It celebrated the death of light and its subsequent rebirth the following day. 

 In addition to being the longest night of the year, however, winter solstice was also 
traditionally held to be the most haunted due to its association with the death of the sun and light. 
It was the one night of the year when the barrier between the worlds 
of the living and the deceased was thinnest. 
On Christmas Eve, ghosts could walk the earth and finish unsettled business, 
as exemplified by the apparition of Marley in Charles Dickens' Christmas masterpiece.


In Henry James’s famous Gothic novella, The Turn of the Screw,  
the frame story involves a group of men sitting around the fire telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve,setting off a story of pure terror, without any pretension to charity or sentimentality. Yet, I think The HAUNTING of Hill House was made even more terrifyingbecause of the characters' love, compassion, and brokenness.  WHAT DO YOU THINK? IS WINTER A SCARY TIME FOR YOU? IS THERE ROOM IN HOLIDAY  GHOST TALES  FOR LOVE AND COMPASSION?

WHAT YOUR WORDS SAY ABOUT YOU

“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” 
 - Ernest Hemingway

“Most people do not listen with the aim to understand; they listen with the aim to reply.”
 - Mark Twain





 The words we use say a great deal about who we are, where we come from, and how we think.

The same should be true of the characters in our novels.

Take for example, depression ...

One set of studies has linked depression to an elevated use of first person singular pronouns ( I, me, my)

 and a lack of first person plural ( we, our), second, and third person pronouns,

suggesting that these serve as linguistic markers of self-focused rumination

 (narcissists show similar language patterns) and social isolation.

You might want to watch what you say… 

you never know what secrets you just might be giving away.

DOES A 99 CENT PRICE SAY YOUR EBOOK IS POOR QUALITY?

I was reading through a readers’ forum on Amazon’s KDP and saw this:

“If a Kindle book is priced at 0.99 cents then the chances are it’s going to be really bad.”

 Ouch!


Let's look at it another way
1.) At 99 cents, many readers feel there’s little risk in “giving it a try.”
Few Indie authors are household names.  We have to entice readers to gamble on an unknown.

2.) Selling your first ebook at 99 cents can work similar to a “loss leader” in the marketing world.
If you have other books in your back list, 
getting a reader interested in your prose is worth selling a book at 99 cents.
3.) People with e readers are getting LOADS of free books, 
and then a lot are buying only the 99 cent books after that.


4.)  The International Market
It's well to remember that a 99c book will cost $2.99 to many readers outside the US 
because of the Whispernet charge that Amazon adds. 
That is why I price some of my books at 99c so that they will be a reasonable price ($2.99 = R21) 
to my fans in South Africa. 
They can buy a small McDonald's burger for R18!
5.) Priming the Pump

At $.99, you can witness impulsive buying from potential readers.  

I am in this for the long haul.  

Which means I am providing a great looking cover (expensive for me), 

evocative images (another expense),and the best prose I can craft.

No one who browses the LOOK INSIDE feature of my books can feel my books look of poor quality. 

The total package counts.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07HM8ZS5Q
6.) Consider the Season

My New Orleans Christmas Ghost Story, Beware the Jade Christmas, is coming out soon. 


 I am well aware of the Black Friday bargain mindset of potential readers 

and their anemic wallets due to holiday shopping.

So I have decided to price my French Quarter holiday ghost story at 99 cents.


 In order to compete, you need to build an audience of people who like and support your books.  
Offering a new book at 99 cents is one way to expose your writing to a larger audience.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?

WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL_IWSG post

What you can control as a writer  these days  seems to amount to very little,  doesn't it?

You cannot control being knocked down,but you can control getting upone more time than they knock you down.

There is no secret formula to become a best sellerelse we would all be Stephen King.

The common concept of Social Media Marketingis NOT the answer

How tired are you of reading BUY ME! novel tweets?
How frustrated are you of FB requests to like a Book Page?


It is like selling a kiss.
Even if you make a sale,there is no satisfaction to it. 
It is like kissing your sister.
So what control do we have?

We can choose to grow as a writer, as a human being.
Each story we write we strive to make better than the last.

We do not market an individual book.
We market ourselves. We are the Brand that will sell.

If each blog post we write is evocative or funny or touching,then, our readers will feel those qualitieswill be in any new novel we write.

Take   The HAUNTING of Hill House.

Based on the evocative book by Shirley Jackson,the series will inspire you to rise above theordinary limits of whatever genre you are writing.

How do you make each new story, new novel better?
You start with the hearts of your characters.Make them people to root for, to like, to mourn when life extracts its tuition from them.

Hill House is filled with decent, charming peoplein an originally crafted series of dangerswhose explanation at the end will have you crying.

Each of your characters,like each character in Hill House,should have have a scene
where they come alive in the minds of the readers,giving them an  "Yes, I've been there" moment.


What do you control?  What are your chances of success?
You are like a WWII fighter pilot.
All you can do is your best.Fly the heart out of your dream.
You may be shot out of the sky.But before then,you will have flown!