Michael E. Henderson's Blog: Henderson's The Literary Man, page 3

Don’t Jack up your Writing With Clutter: Two Examples

Whether you're writing a novel, a legal pleading, a news article, or whatever, it should be as clean as possible, using only the words needed to communicate the idea. This is certainly true in business and legal writing, but is equally true in writing fiction.

Here are two examples clunky writing that are easily fixed.

Example 1: “Reached out to...” or any of its variants. I suppose this tired and childish phrase has its uses, but is used constantly to mean “contacted,” or “asked.” If that’s w...

Story Structure in a Movie: "Barfly"

I love to beat on story structure, partially because it fascinates me, and partially because I think it’s one of the most important things a writer must get right. Whether you plan your story in every detail or write by the seat of your pants, in the end, the story must have this structure. Movies are a great way to see it in action because they follow it religiously, and it’s quicker than a novel. It’s true that a novel does not have to follow the structure as precisely as a movie does, b...

Story Structure in a Movie: "When Trumpets Fade"

One great place to study story structure is by watching and analyzing movies. Although novels don’t need to follow the structure as closely as screenplays do, it’s still instructive, and the closer your novel does follow this structure, the better off you’ll be. It’s also a good idea to try to achieve the same structure in your novel as you see in movies.For this analysis, I’m doing one you can presently see in its entirety on YouTube. I will provide an Amazon link to it in the event it’s ta...

A Great Example of Scene Structure: Paulie and Christopher vs. the Russian

(Sorry for the quality of the video. It may look better on your machine at https://youtu.be/wOri4-GHOFY)

Ever notice how in “The Sopranos” that things don’t always go as planned? There’s a reason for that.

Techniques of the Selling Writer By Dwight V. Swain

The primary building blocks of every story are scenes. There are two types of scene. In his book, “Techniques of the Selling Writer,” Dwight Swain referred to them as “Scene” and “Sequel.” The terminology is confusing, so people have gi...

My Experience with Amazon Giveaways

Amazon makes it very easy to setup a giveaway for any product (so far as I know). You go to that product’s page, scroll down, and you’ll see a link to “Setup a Giveaway.” Follow the simple instructions, pay for the item and, after a short time, your giveaway will be active. Amazon does not market it for you, but they provide a link that you can use to market it yourself. There are even social links whereby they automatically insert the link and the hashtag #AmazonGiveaway.

As an author, I’m al...

OpenOffice Text Selection Slow: Solved

OpenOffice Writer Text Selection Running Slow

I’d used OpenOffice Writer for years with no problem, then one day the text selection feature was so slow that it would take twenty minutes to select all the text in a novel (80,000 words). It hadn’t done that before, and I couldn’t figure it out. That made it useless.

I went online and read all sorts of complicated responses to people who had the same. Here’s the thing: solutions to this type of issue are rarely complicated. The more complex the so...

How Not to Start Your Novel, Part 1

This is the first in a series of posts about how not to start your novel. One of the most common questions I see from new writers is how to start. I can't necessarily tell you how to start your novel, but I can tell you how not to, particularly if you want to find an agent or a publisher.

I follow a couple of thousand people on Twitter, largely other authors, many of whom are self-published. The self-published people love to hawk their books, and I like to go to Amazon to “Look Inside,” which...

Small Publisher Contracts: Beware

You’re in the middle of querying your novel, and have received a load of rejections. And then comes an email from a small indie press that wants to publish your work. They do mainly ebooks, but so what? Someone has finally realized the value of your work, and it validates you as a writer!

You tell them you’re interested, and they email you the contract. No problem, a mere formality. You look at it. It’s a lot of words, some legalese, and a line for you to sign. You try to read it. There’s a lo...

Science Fiction and the Light Barrier

I like writing space opera. Space opera (for me) requires interstellar space travel. Any meaningful interstellar space travel requires that the characters be able to go faster than the speed of light. A lot faster. Thousands of millions of times faster.

But I read an article recently on NPR where it discussed being realistic in science fiction. That is, the story would take place in a world bound by our current understanding of science. That would preclude not only faster-th...

Book Review: Mr. Mercedes, by Stephen King

Four out of Five Stars

All in all, I enjoyed the book, but there are issues with it that bear mentioning. By the way, it’s not horror. It’s a thriller with no supernatural or horror elements.

The story is about a retired detective (which King annoyingly refers to repeatedly as “Det. Ret.) who starts out as a mopey sap, and pretty much stays a mopey sap to the end of the story. His mission is to find the “Mercedes Killer,” a sicko who used a stolen Mercedes to drive into a group of people to...