Justin Swapp's Blog, page 9
April 17, 2013
Rethinking Thinking
Today I wanted to relate this TED video, Rethinking Thinking, to writing. As writers, we manipulate our readers. It sounds harsh, and maybe even evil, but it’s true. We mislead, give partial information, put a red herring in your path, and leverage any device or technique we can to control the readers thoughts and to achieve the desired outcome or effect.
So, what does that have to do with this video? Well, this video outlines how humans think, and how we make assumptions based on our preferences and our experiences. Here is a list of the thought process stages that we go through as we experience life.
Raw data and observation
Filter
Assign meaning
Make assumptions
Develop conclusions based on our assumptions (add emotion)
Adjust our beliefs about the world around us
Take action
As writers, how can we leverage this information in our stories? I believe comedians use this to set up jokes, and we use them to set up our readers to deliver a payoff. I was going to give an analogy, but there is a really good one in the video. Leave your comments below and share your insight into how you can use this to manipulate your reader 
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April 16, 2013
The Anti-Hero
One of these days I’m going to write a story with an anti-hero. The notion of a protagonist that blurs the line between the traditional hero and villain is a curious to me, and from an author’s perspective, should be fun to write. At a minimum, its less common in books, although they do exist, of course.
Here’s another neat TED video I found on anti-heros. Notice the awesome use of Tron as an example. What about you? Have you ever written an anti-hero? Tell me about it in the comments below.
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April 15, 2013
The Hero’s Journey Video
When you start out in something you’re serious about you look for patterns or models that have been established to help you understand it better. When I first started writing, or rather, studying the craft of writing, I came across The Hero’s Journey.[/templ_dropcaps]
The Hero’s Journey is a model that Joseph Campbell established in his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. In short, the book maintains that over the ages, and across cultures, humans have a set core of beliefs concerning our heros that constantly manifests itself in our story telling traditions. The hero has a pattern, or a type that is seen all over the world. Mr. Campbell went on to consolidate these common occurrences (in their various forms), and created a model called The Hero’s Journey.
I found a fun video on TED that depicts The Hero’s Journey and included it below. Also, I’ve included a diagram that outlines the various stages of The Hero’s Journey. Have you used this in your writing, or are you planning to? If so, let me know about it in the comments!
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January 29, 2013
The Magic Shop - Book Cover Revealed!
http://justinswapp.com/the-magic-shop...
The Magic Shop Book Cover Revealed
Well, today is one of the highlights of my life. Not only have I written a novel that my beta readers seem to enjoy (still not sure how that happened), but I have been blessed to work with an absolutely fantastic artist in Arthur Wang (see www.ArthurWangArt.com,) on the book cover.
When I started the search for an artist, I wasn’t really sure how to go about it. There were lots of folks out there that offered the typical looking e-book cover, but that wasn’t what I wanted, not for my baby. I needed a powerful MG/YA cover that would make the potential reader want to open the book and get to know my characters, and their story.
I know a bunch of people on www.deviantart.com to be excellent artists, so I decided to start poking around there. Once I figured out where artists posted for commission requests, I spent days going through different portfolios and assessing the various artists’ styles.
There was something in Arthur’s art… He captured something in the face of his characters that really spoke to me. I knew that I needed to capture a sense of wonder on the cover, and I just had a feeling that Arthur was the right choice for me.
I was right. Oh, so right.
As I tought of an interesting way to chronicle this process, I realized that I could use the update pictures that Arthur sent me throughout the process to create an animated GIF. I thought this would be a way to bring the book cover to life, and in an abbreviated way, you could travel on the same journey that Arthur and I did together.
In a way, this process is not dissimilar to writing the novel itself. He sent me an initial rough draft, something to give me the basic shapes and ideas he had for the cover. Then you can see he focused in on the central most important part — Marcus’ (the main character’s) face, and let the painting grow organically from there. Arthur did a great job of capturing that sense of wonder as Marcus looks down on a key focus of the book – the magical Phoenix skull. He later added the ambiance of the shrieking forest, the magical wisps around the skull, and moved the flaming birds and burning branches around in the background. And then there was the hand-made typography…
The results were fantastic.
I suppose the greatest compliment I could pay to Arthur is this – seeing his art, his book cover, made me want to back and edit my book again so that my art would be as awesome as his.
Thanks Arthur!
If any other authors are looking for a great experience, and an exceptional result, check out Arthur’s website.
Here is the non-animated version:
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January 21, 2013
The Next Big Thing – The Magic Shop
Chanté McCoy recently tagged me in The Next Big Thing blog hop. This is essentially a game authors play to create a network of blog posts that their readers can visit to learn about their existing writing, and future projects.
In this particular blog hop, I’ll answers ten questions about my work, and then I’ll tags a few authors at the bottom of my post to do the same thing the following week, and so on and so on. By hopping from one blog to the next, hopefully you’ll discover other writers or books that may end up being the next big thing.
I’m grateful that Chanté McCoy tagged me on her blog as this should be fun. The cosmos first threw Chanté and me together when we started working on The Crimson Pact anthology a few years ago. The editor suggested that the authors interview each other as a way to promote our individual writing, as well as the anthology itself. Chanté and I wasted no time getting on the phone and working through the interview process. I found her to be delightful, and very helpful. I was also amazed at all the projects she was working on, and I honestly wondered how she found the time for it all. She made me want to write more.
Since then, I have actually become a fan of Chanté’s writing. She has some of the most unique ideas for stories that I have read. I wish I could create the same kind of ambiance she does via her lush descriptions (Right now she’s working on a zombie book called, Scabbies, for example. Kinda sums it all up, doesn’t it?). Everything is so palpable.
Here’s my interview:
What is the title (working title) of your book?
The Magic Shop.
Where did the idea come from for the book?
This is actually an interesting point, and something that I never would have imagined happening to me. My idea came from a brief moment in an episode of Fringe (the Fox series ended last night – sniff sniff). The planets must have aligned, because I was stuck on what I wanted to write, and I had decided to watch a sci-fi show and look for ideas that I could put a fantasy twist on. It all started when one of those shape shifters asked for “the back room.”
What genre does your book fall under?
Middle Grade / Young Adult Fantasy.
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
Asa Butterfield (Main Character – Marcus Fith), Dakota Fanning (sister – Ellie Fith). Asa has an interesting quality to his acting that I think would lend nicely to Marcus. Dakota has shown she can play all kinds of characters to great effect. She would make a wonderful Ellie, Marcus’s powerful and mysterious sister.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
When Marcus and Ellie Fith are asked to tend the family Magic Shop, they are thrown into a world they never knew existed; Not only is the family business a front, but Marcus learns that he has been marked as a dead man since birth.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? What do you think?
I’m actually pretty conflicted on this topic. Almost any writer would love to be represented by an agency, get huge advances, and sell a lot of books. The publishing world is changing though, and there are many trade-offs to publishing the traditional route. The hardest trade-off to deal with is time. Who knows how long it would be before someone actually considered publishing the work. Then, it could be months or, more likely, years before someone actually puts it out there in print. That’s a long time. Also, the writer losings control of a lot when he goes the traditional route (book cover decisions, what he keeps in the story etc). That said, I’d still like to be represented, so for now, I’ll say agency (fingers crossed).
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
About three years – whenever I wasn’t working. I’d try to get up early and write when everyone was sleeping. Then, it was off to a fairly stressful full-time job. One of my goals is how to figure out how to do all of this writing business a whole lot faster.
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
That’s hard for me, because no matter what the answer is, it always sounds so presumptuous. Its a book about magic, and family ties, and the secrets and lies that families keep. There are lots of twists in the book, good and evil magic, and several dark parts too… Its a wild ride with fantastic creatures and situations. So, I’d compare it to a book like that.
Who or What inspired you to write this book?
I have a need to be creative, and I’ve always loved writing, I think. The notion to write my own book occurred to me when I started reading the Harry Potter series to my children – I remembered I loved to tell stories. The bad thing was, I had just started an MBA program, and so I had quite a workload. But, the urge was there, and I couldn’t help myself. I just sacrificed sleep, I guess. It seemed like such a romantic thing to do — chase a dream. I thought maybe, just maybe I could produce the effect in a child that the books I read to my son did in him.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
Couple of anecdotes. One of my teenage alpha readers read the manuscript the first time (without the ending even really being complete), and then went on to read it again several times over. An adult alpha reader (co-worker of mine), got about half way through the book one morning before she realized she was late for work. Those kind of stories make a writer’s day, and are fun to tell.
Chanté McCoy
At this point you can probably tell I have all kinds of admiration for Chanté. She has great talent, and it really comes through in everything I’ve read of hers. Her ideas are super fresh, and you can tell from the start that she has honed her craft. I highly recommend you visit her site, and check out some of her writing. You can always come back to this post and drop me a thank you comment later
Donald J. Bingle
Donald is another fabulous author I met through The Crimson Pact anthology. He is a prolific writer, and cranks out stories more frequently than I eat burgers (I’ll spare you the oversized jpg). His writing covers a crazy range of fantastic topics and formats from short stories to novels. His writing is highly regarded, and you’ll definitely want to pay him a visit online.
Darnell Dickerson
Darnell Dickerson is an up and coming writer that I first met on Facebook. He has a couple of nice short story pieces up on amazon right now that have already begun to take off. Pay him a visit and let him know what you think.
Paul Genesse
Paul was my first editor, and in the short time I worked with him, I feel like I learned a lot. He’s a work horse, and demands excellence. That said, he showed a lot of patience with me, and I will always be grateful for that. He has written an awesome set of fantasy novels called the Iron Dragon series. Furthermore, he’s just finished another novel, Medusa’s Daughter, which promises to be every bit as awesome as everything else he’s written. Check him out online.
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January 16, 2013
The Codex
That’s when his life ended, and his new lives began.
Sloan didn’t ask for what he got, but he was chosen to accomplish a very special task, and its implications were something he couldn’t deny. Danger and discovery lurk at every turn as Sloan fights off supernatural forces, and tries to embrace everything he recalls about the hidden world he discovered, and his new role in it.
Story Reviews:
[scrapeazon asin="B00930OU86" width="600" height="800"]
Book Trailers:
January 10, 2013
Cigars for Sawyer
Ben has no idea what he was in for after his uncle died. The death itself was a mystery, until Ben receives the special gift his uncle left behind for him.
That gift changes everything.
In a world where devices exist that can erase or modify one’s memory, Ben is forced to learn a the family secrets the hard way, and under the strangest of circumstances.
Story Reviews:
CERTAIN CONTENT THAT APPEARS ON THIS SITE COMES FROM AMAZON SERVICES LLC. THIS CONTENT IS PROVIDED 'AS IS' AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE OR REMOVAL AT ANY TIME.
Story Trailer:
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January 1, 2013
Cigars for Sawyer
Ben has no idea what he was in for after his uncle died. The death itself was a mystery, until Ben receives the special gift his uncle left behind for him.
That gift changes everything.
In a world where devices exist that can erase or modify one’s memory, Ben is forced to learn a the family secrets the hard way, and under the strangest of circumstances.
Story Reviews:
CERTAIN CONTENT THAT APPEARS ON THIS SITE COMES FROM AMAZON SERVICES LLC. THIS CONTENT IS PROVIDED 'AS IS' AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE OR REMOVAL AT ANY TIME.
Story Trailer:
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December 29, 2012
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