Jane Friedman's Blog: Jane Friedman, page 56

Get in Front of Readers’ Doubts and Objections

Today’s post is by author, editor and publishing strategist AJ Harper (@AJHarperAuthors).

This is the one. This is the book that will help me help me solve my problem, get what I want, feel less alone, gain the advantage I need. This is the book that will help me finally do the thing.

When readers dive into a prescriptive nonfiction book, they have high hopes—and a healthy dose of skepticism. Will this book deliver on its promise? Will this work for me? Does this author know what they’re talking about?

As readers learn new concepts, gain knowledge, and consider acting on the author’s advice, doubts can grow into objections.

I don’t think this author gets it—or me. These ideas are outdated. This approach is not doable.

And when unaddressed doubts and objections stack up, they can become spoken criticisms of the book and the author.

“This book is a total disappointment. The author is out of touch. I’m better off using Google to get the answers I need.”

Ouch. So what happened to the readers’ hopes?

At the heart of nearly all reader doubts, objections, and criticisms is self-doubt.

I could do the thing! Can I REALLY do the thing? I don’t think I can do the thing.

In my work with authors, I emphasize the importance of putting the reader first at every stage of the writing and editing process, in every chapter and on every page. This includes considering and respecting the readers’ journey through the book. What is it like to learn these concepts for the first time? Where might they freak out? Where have I asked too much of them—or too little? Then, authors edit the book to address doubts, manage objections, and prevent criticisms. This helps a reader feel seen and understood. They start to trust the author. They keep reading. And they are more likely do the thing.

When readers do the thing, they get results. When they get results, they tell everyone about your book. And this time they say, “I love this book. You have to read it. I feel like this book was written for me.”

The best time to get in front of readers’ doubts and objections is during the editing stage, after you have a complete first draft. If your reader is an earlier version of you, start by thinking about how you felt going through the same process you share in your manuscript. For example, in his book, Profit First, Mike Michalowicz asks readers to complete an “Instant Assessment” of their business finances. After we wrote that section, I asked him about the first time he looked at his numbers in the same way. Mike said, “It felt like someone dropped a bucket of cold water on my head. I wanted to give up.”

If Mike wanted to give up after looking at his Instant Assessment results, the reader might feel the same. So we wrote some content that acknowledged the experience could be a shock, shared Mike’s own experience with it, and lifted them up with some “arm over the shoulder” encouragement. If we had left the task in the book as-is, without getting in front of readers’ potential doubts and objections, many of them would put his book down—forever. More importantly, they would not get the promise his book delivers, the thing they wanted most.

Here’s a list of some common reader doubts and objections:

“This strategy won’t work for me because…”

This objection is rooted in readers’ unique sets of circumstances that they think prevent them from doing the thing. It could be financial or time constraints, lack of a support system, or health issues. It could also be something as simple as thinking they don’t have the right equipment or materials. Remember, some limitations are real and some are perceived, and it’s not up to you to decide which is which. Consider your biases and privilege. Your advice may work for you in part because of your own set of circumstances. If that’s the case, how can you change it to make it more doable and accessible?

“Easy for you to say!”

At the heart of this criticism is your readers’ perception of your life, past and present. They may read your bio and your stories and think you succeeded at XYZ because you had a better education, a loving family, more money, stronger connections, or that you are simply a lucky person who was in the right place at the right time. Maybe you’re leaving out critical information that would help them relate to you, maybe you need to be more vulnerable, or maybe you need to acknowledge the fact that not everyone has XYZ.

“This process [task, challenge, framework] is too hard.”

Here you may be dealing with self-doubt, or you the thing you’ve asked readers to do needs to be simplified so it’s easier to do. You’re practiced at your own process, and you may have forgotten what it’s like to try it for the first time. You want them to act on your advice because when they do, they will get the payoff, and that helps keep readers on the page. When they stay with you chapter by chapter and benefit from following your guidance, they want to tell the world about your book.

“I already tried this, and it didn’t work.”

This objection comes up when you ask readers to do something that other authors, speakers, or coaches recommend. Creating a morning routine, for example, or journaling. Because this objection is about past failed attempts, you’ve got a mix of self-doubt and the actual reasons why the thing didn’t pan out the last time they tried it. Maybe they gave up too soon. Maybe they didn’t have a guide to help them. Maybe the thing they tried was different or flawed in some way. How can you convince your readers to try again?

“What you’re saying goes against everything I learned…”

Your reader will criticize your content when they feel torn between believing you and someone influential in their lives—their parents, their religious leaders, their coach, their boss—even other authors. If you defy conventional wisdom in your book, this issue may come up. As you craft content that shows them your advice has merit, be sure to honor their previous knowledge and current beliefs, because someone they care about is likely behind them.

“I’m not [smart, talented, strong, young, old, fit, financially stable, experienced, beautiful, healthy, creative, brave] enough to pull this off.”

This is the big one. And here’s the kicker—if your reader believes they are not enough, they will experience self-doubt over and over in your book. This means you’ll have to reassure them and motivate them multiple times. It can be helpful to build them up as you go, reminding them of all they’ve learned while reading your book.

With your list of doubts and objections on hand, look through your manuscript and consider where some of these issues may come up for your readers. Then, get in front of them. Here’s a simple process to do just that:

First, ask yourself if your readers may be right. If the answer is yes or maybe, modify your content. Make the ask more doable. Simplify. Respect the belief systems you are asking them to set aside. Honor their experience.Whether or not you change your content, acknowledge the readers’ doubts, objections, and criticisms right in the text. This is the “get in front of it” part of this editing exercise. Simply stating what they may be thinking can be enough to build trust.Next, provide social proof. Include an anecdote or story, or perhaps a statistic that backs you up.If you’re dealing with a big objection, or if you’re asking them to do the hard things, lift them up. Offer encouragement. Inspire them to try.

Getting in front of your readers’ doubts and objections takes the energy out of their concerns before they become criticisms. It’s as if you’re saying, “I see you, and I get you.” When readers feel seen and understood, they stay on the page. Hope wins out over skepticism. They will probably do the thing. And maybe, just maybe, they will get what they want most.

How Are Books Adapted for the Screen? Two Agents Demystify the Process

Today’s guest post is a Q&A by Sangeeta Mehta (@sangeeta_editor), a former acquiring editor of children’s books at Little, Brown and Simon & Schuster, who runs her own editorial services company.

Over the last couple of years, it’s been tough not to notice the increase in dramatic rights deals in the book industry. A quick search on Publishers Marketplace reveals a new film or television deal almost every week. Publishers Weekly’s “page-to-screen” news feed is equally active, and The Hollywood Reporter recently ran a piece on How the Publishing World Is Muscling In on Hollywood Deals.

These deals don’t appear to be limited to a particular genre or category. Streaming services and film producers are expressing an interest in a wide range of book properties—fiction and nonfiction for both adult and children’s audiences. And from the outset, it looks as though they are inviting authors—bestselling and debut—to take part in the adaptation process, at least to an extent.

During a PEN America event I attended a few months ago, Your Option on Options, one of the speakers noted that the rise in streaming companies, coupled with the pandemic, has made today a golden age for IP content. Curious to find out if this is true, I reached out to Allison Hunter of Trellis Literary Management and Jennifer Weltz of Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, both of whom represent authors whose work has been or is being adapted for the screen. As with all my literary agent Q&As, neither knew the other’s identity until after they provided their answers to my questions below.

Why don’t we start by defining what a book-to-screen option is. Is it correct to say that this is an agreement whereby a producer is granted the rights to adapt an author’s book for television or film?

Is there a standard fee, term, or renewal process for options, or do these vary widely in the same way that book advances vary?

How does an option differ from a shopping agreement, and what is more common today?

Allison Hunter: Yes, an option is an exclusive right to shop the book to producers, studios, directors, writers, and actors to see if anyone is interested in turning the book into a movie, TV show or limited series. Pre-pandemic, options were usually for a 12-month period, but now we’re seeing more 18- and 24-month options, as it’s taking longer to get projects made. Option fees do vary widely, from the very low (a few thousand dollars) to the high (hundreds of thousands).

A shopping agreement similarly asks for exclusivity but doesn’t offer any payment in exchange. It’s a way to test the waters to see if there is any interest in the property without a financial commitment. Shopping agreements are generally for a shorter time period than option agreements (often six months), because there is no money offered. They are becoming more and more common, especially when it’s not a competitive situation.

Jennifer Weltz: Yes, that is correct, and there are no standard fees, terms, or renewal processes for options. These vary even more than book advances. But I would say that terms usually aren’t shorter than three or six months and aren’t longer than 24 months; they can be 6 months, 9 months, 12 months, 18 months. It’s more important to ask: How new is the book? How desired is the book? And if a producer wants to have it for a long period of time, how is the author getting compensated for that exclusive time with the book?

A shopping agreement has become more and more popular with producers because this involves no or little money. Also, the producer is already attached to the project, which gives them the safety of knowing you can’t cut them out of the deal. If you’re doing a shopping agreement, I would encourage you to do it for as short a period of time as possible. It’s basically saying that the producer has limited time to make the magic happen, and if not, you both part ways.

Does your agency partner with television and film co-agents, or do you pitch books directly to producers, production companies, studios, or streaming services?

Do you attempt to sell dramatic rights for all the books your agency represents, or only those that seem well suited for adaptation? In what cases, if any, would the publisher retain and exploit these rights?

AH: We partner with co-agents, who have the relationships in Hollywood that we do not. Our goal is to find co-agents for all narrative projects, fiction and nonfiction. We never allow the publisher to retain film rights. We consider those rights extremely valuable, and only in very rare cases can a publisher make a better deal for film rights than our co-agents can. We want to give our authors as much input and control in potential film adaptations as possible, which is why we always prefer to handle those rights.

JW: We do both. We work with some amazing co-agents, but we are an agency that’s almost 45 years old with a huge list of books, and not all co-agents are aware of some of our books. For example, just today, I had somebody contact me about a series of books from the late eighties or early nineties that had reverted, and they wanted to know if rights were available for film. We deal directly with producers who contact us directly, and we negotiate our deals in-house. But if we’re pitching them a book, we have wonderful co-agents we refer them to.

The publisher does not retain film rights. If a publisher is attempting to obtain film rights, question whether you should be doing a deal with that publisher. Sometimes that’s your only option and they have you over a barrel. Obviously, there are exceptions to every rule, such as publishers who have a first-look deal with a studio; there’s nothing wrong with this if it doesn’t bind you to the terms. But we retain film rights for almost all the books we have ever done in 45 years.

We sell dramatic rights for all our books, but not all books lend them themselves to film. The ones that we actively go out and try and sell tend to be ones that might lead to a series or to a film documentary. This means fiction as well as nonfiction books work well for the screen.

Are there certain genres, styles, or topics that might increase a book’s chances of being adapted, such as fiction with strong world-building elements or nonfiction about a current event? Does this depend in part on the type of adaptation the producer envisions, whether a limited series, a feature film, or a documentary?

Are there any instances in which you would encourage an established writer to revise their book to make it more fitting for the screen, perhaps if a studio executive has expressed interest in an early draft?

AH: These things can be a bit trendy—for a while, right after The Martian, everyone was looking for grounded sci-fi. Then we were hearing that everyone wanted Game of Thrones–style fantasy. After Big Little Lies was a big hit, female-led suspense became popular. Now, I’m happy to report that rom-coms are having a bit of a moment.

Certainly, what books the producer is looking for depends on what kind of adaptation he or she envisions, and some nonfiction projects are better suited for documentary than feature. I can’t think of a situation in which I’d advise an author to change their book specifically for the screen, since the elements that make a book cinematic—gripping story, memorable, nuanced characters—are the same ones that make it a great book.

JW: Yes, but these things change all the time. Watching streaming and films gives you a sense of what is working and what is not. Sometimes a book has a very visual element to it, like Dune, but this was a blockbuster before anyone was willing to touch it. Same with Lord of the Rings.

If you’re not yet in a situation where you have huge sales, you have to have something else about your book that is incredibly compelling. Film people do look at sales numbers, though, because they want to make sure that they have a surefire audience. Adapting for film is very expensive, so it has to be worth it to them. Historical fiction (say, with horses) and fantasy are harder than contemporary fiction because this requires an investment in creating a world. I would say that streaming services are doing the highest number of adaptations right now. Feature films are also coming back into play, but they really need to be blockbusters.

As for revising a book for the screen—the book needs to be a book. If the studio executive has some really great idea to better the actual book, that’s a whole different issue, but don’t revise it purely to make it more palatable for the screen. The screenwriter is perfectly capable of making those changes.

At what point in the book publishing process are most books optioned? Once the book deal is signed? Just before or just after publication? Or after the book has reached bestseller status or amassed a fan base? Are most of these books published by the Big Five and other corporate publishers, specifically those with celebrity-curated imprints , or are you seeing some literary adaptations come from independent publishers and small presses?

AH: The good news is that books can be optioned at any point in their life. Occasionally, a book is optioned at the same time or even before it sells to a publisher. More commonly, it’s optioned closer to publication, when the buzz has been building, or after publication, when it’s a bestseller. But sometimes it happens months or years after publication. It’s definitely easier to get a book optioned if it’s a big bestseller, but it doesn’t need to be, and it certainly doesn’t need to be published by a major house. A great story is a great story, no matter what!

JW: Film options can happen at any point in time, but obviously, the higher the visibility of the book, the more likely you are to get interest. The film world pays attention to announcements for new books, so if they hear about something that sounds amazing, they will ask to see it, and this is how books get optioned before they’re published. But by and large, it’s either at publication or after, when there are reviews and publicity. And if a book has reached bestseller status, then you have more leverage to be able to option it.

As for who is publishing these books—I’m seeing some literary adaptations come from independent publishers and small presses. It doesn’t matter who’s publishing them. It matters how visual the book is and how much potential it has to be a good film or a good series. We’ve optioned short stories as well as books, and we pitch everything equally.

In the past, once an author’s work was optioned, they had little to no say in how it would be interpreted and translated for the screen. Today, many authors are being hired as consultants, screenwriters, showrunners, or even producers . What explains this pivot, and do you think most writers are able to distance themselves enough from their book to excel at screenwriting and other related art forms?

AH: Because of the streaming services, there is more entertainment content produced than there ever has been, and because some TV and film adaptations of books have been very successful, producers are turning to books more and more. Authors then have more options for where to sell their books, and more leverage in negotiations. Most authors want to be involved in the adaptation process—their books are their babies, and it’s hard to let go! But not every author is suited for screenwriting. It’s a different skill, and some authors have it and some do not.

JW: First of all, it’s important to clarify that having consultation does not mean that you will have final say about what the film will look like in the end. Even if you’re in the writing room, you usually do not have final say. You could be an executive producer, which means that you have a say, but you might not have final say because there are a lot of people who have their fingers in that pot. All authors should recognize that their book may change when it’s adapted. If you want complete control, then the film world is not for you! Yes, there are authors that have managed a very high level of control, but that’s usually because they’ve written a huge bestseller.

If you are an author who becomes a showrunner, you are running the show. You have proven that you have the chops to be the head writer, which has nothing to do with being a book writer. It means you are multi-talented, which is fantastic.

Until the streaming era began, it was rare for a literary work to be produced, much less developed for the screen in some way. How has this scenario changed now that so many streaming platforms are competing with one another and likely need a steady influx of new content? Are there any benefits for an author who secures a rights deal from a studio that never produces their work? Or whose movie adaptation is not well received or whose series adaptation is canceled prematurely? Could they still see a spike in book sales, or be considered for other opportunities down the road due to new film and television contacts?

AH: I don’t know that I agree that it was rare—books have always been appealing to Hollywood, since the era of Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz (both books first!). But, as I said earlier, the streaming era means that there are many more buyers than there used to be. Authors have more choices and can thus make better deals.

Frustratingly, it is extremely common to have a book option and not to have an adaptation made—things can fall apart at so many stages in the process. I always tell authors not to believe it’s going to happen until they physically see it on the screen. Generally, book sales are not affected until the movie or series actually gets made—most people aren’t reading Deadline or learning what’s getting optioned. But depending on how involved the author is with the option process, there certainly can be other opportunities that come out of it.

JW: I think it’s a combination. Yes, there are competing streaming services that need content. But I also want to give credit to Netflix. When they entered the scene, one of their biggest hits was Orange Is the New Black. This series—a book adaptation—put them on the map. From then on, book adaptation was king. It has been proven again and again that books add to the interest and viability of a screen project. The Enola Holmes Mysteries by Nancy Springer was an older title I’d been trying to get adapted for years, and it was supposed to be a feature film, but then the pandemic hit. It later ended up with Netflix. It became a film because the actress Millie Bobby Brown came onto the scene, and the stars just aligned. It’s true that streamers need a great deal of content, but books are a perfect way to find content. Books have also provided them with some of their biggest hits.

Will an option help with book sales? Probably not, but the author will have earned some money. It’s when the movie gets made that you start to see a spike in book sales. As for gaining a new contact from the person who optioned the book—I couldn’t say. I mean, they might want to see the author’s next book, but I have no idea.

Is there anything unrepresented or unpublished writers can do to take advantage of Hollywood’s book boom ? For example, should they create a logline or a one-page pitch about how their work would fit into the current entertainment market, in addition to writing their query letter? Come up with a screenplay or film treatment to accompany their manuscript, if they have the time and the resources? Or would such projects come across as presumptuous?

AH: At the stage when they’re querying literary agents like me, it would be presumptuous. At that stage, the author’s job is to write a fantastic, cinematic story. If they can picture it as a TV series or movie, they’re doing something right. But if they’re interested in screenwriting, they will need a spec script, and adapting their own book is the easiest way to do that. That’s something they should discuss with the film co-agent much further down the line, however.

JW: I would not recommend creating a screenplay at the query stage. But you can place a log line at the top of your query letter. Being able to describe your book in one line is always a helpful skill. Remember that agents are looking for books, so that’s what the author should focus on.

Do you have any other advice for writers who dream about one day seeing their work adapted for the big or small screen?

AH: Be patient! The process can take a very long time, but you never know what will happen. My former agency represented the rights to Michael Punke’s 2002 novel The Revenant, which sold modestly at the time of publication but became a bestseller when it was adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, 13 years later. Don’t give up hope.

JW: Keep in mind that everything you see on a big or small screen is a miracle! If it was adapted from a book, there are hundreds if not thousands of other books that have been optioned and not ended up on that screen relative to that one. The odds are better today than they were 10 or 20 years ago because we have so many streaming services, and because book adaptations have become so successful. Also, producers and show runners have a growing respect for books. But it is still incredibly hard to get a book to screen. So be kind to yourself, try to make your book the best it can be, and make sure that people know that your book exists. By doing all of this, you are more likely to gain somebody’s attention who might be able to make your book into a film or show.

Allison Hunter (@AllisonSHunter): A founding partner of Trellis Literary Management, Allison is actively acquiring literary and commercial adult fiction, focusing on upmarket book club and women’s fiction, rom coms, thrillers and domestic suspense. She loves great storytelling and unforgettable characters, and is always looking for female friendship stories, campus novels, great love stories, family epics, and books about class and cultural identity. She would especially love to find a smart beach read by an author underrepresented in that category.

In the nonfiction space, Allison is acquiring select memoir, narrative nonfiction, and the occasional prescriptive project. She loves working with journalists and with experts in their field, and is always looking for pop culture, women’s issues and for books that speak to the current cultural climate.

Allison has a B.A. in American Studies and Creative Writing from Stanford University and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, she now splits her time between upstate New York and Austin, Texas. She loves to cook, host dinner parties, watch all medical TV shows, and brainstorm new book ideas and plots with her authors.

Jennifer Weltz (@JVNLA): As President of JVNLA—and newly elected President of the Association of American Literary Agents—Jennifer Weltz has sold books domestically, internationally, and for film for over two decades. Coming from a mediation background, Jennifer sees herself as a liaison between her author and the editor and publishing house that acquire her author’s work. This role takes on a myriad of forms—business manager, confidant, task master, preliminary editor, and matchmaker—to name a few. Since Jennifer takes up an author’s career and not just a project, she is very careful and selective about signing on new authors. At present she would love to find an adult novel by an author from a diverse background that makes her laugh until she cries. A little magical realism is always welcome as well.

How Suspense and Tension Work Together to Increase Story Impact

Photo by cottonbro

Today’s post is by editor Tiffany Yates Martin (@FoxPrintEd). Join her on Wednesday, Aug. 24 for the online class Mastering Suspense and Tension.

No matter what genre you write in, suspense and tension are the propulsive forces that draw readers through your story. The terms are often used interchangeably, and while they work in tandem, they fulfill different functions.

Suspense creates questions in the audience’s mind—and it’s the engine of every “unputdownable” story.The fuel that powers it is tension—creating conflict, obstacles, friction—and it belongs on every single page.

In the basic “boy-meets-girl” story trope, suspense is whether or not boy gets girl; tension is everything that stands in the way of the resolution of those questions: the missed call, the argument, the parental disapproval.

Harness them both in your story, and you’ll grab your reader from page one and hold them all the way through to “the end.”

The overarching suspense question

Every good story has an overarching suspense question—the big-picture uncertainty readers are reading to find out: How does Sherlock solve the case? Will Ahab get that whale? Where did you go, Bernadette? How does Stella get her groove back?

They tend to have big, overt, direct scenes of suspense as well: the battle, the chase, the argument, the cut-throat negotiation, all of which carry some version of the basic suspense question, “What’s going to happen next?”

Enter: the accompanying tension

What makes these questions effective is the accompanying tension that keeps us uneasy, unsettled, that calls the outcome into question: the relentlessly ticking timer of the bomb as the hero battles the villain, who seems to be overpowering her; the un-take-back-able words that escalate the lovers’ conflict; the pounding heart and shaking hands of the woman walking home alone at night and hearing ever-quickening footsteps behind her.

Suspense and tension aren’t limited to key scenes

Suspense and tension are the propulsive force of every scene in story, not just the high-action, high-drama ones. The thrilling bursts of speed and overtaking maneuvers in a Formula 1 race happen only as brief amped-up moments of excitement amid the drivers’ steadily fighting to gain position and forward momentum for the entire 190 miles. Creating questions and friction in reader’s minds throughout your story is essential to hook them and keep them engaged—but that doesn’t have to mean nonstop major action or melodrama.

Imagine this scene: A man is making breakfast for his family. He cracks the eggs into the pan, fills up the glasses with orange juice, puts the bread in the toaster and hits the lever.

Are you hooked? Probably not. This is a pretty pedestrian domestic scene. Things are happening but they don’t really impact readers because they don’t seem to mean much.

Now introduce an element of tension, something unexpected or that creates friction. Let’s say he throws the bread in the pan and cracks an egg in the toaster.

Immediately a question forms in our minds. Why is he doing that?

That single moment of tension—the unexpected act of juxtaposing the egg and the toast—grabs readers’ attention amid the complacency of an otherwise ordinary scene, and introduces the first tiny threads of suspense as our minds keep asking questions to try to puzzle out the answer: Is he aware he did that? Is he confused? Distracted? Why?

Already we’re engaged—as soon as our minds start asking questions, we’re part of the story. As the scene develops, some of these questions will start to be answered; that initial suspense will be resolved. To keep your reader on the hook, keep introducing new ones, always buttressed by tension.

Let’s say the man immediately realizes what he’s done, curses, and upends the toaster over the sink to get the egg out. He’s trying to clean the appliance when his wife walks into the kitchen, looks at the stove, and says, “Toast is burning,” as she opens the fridge for a protein drink.

“I’m a little busy here,” he says, not turning around.

Here’s another tidbit of tension. The wife ignoring the burning toast in the pan to get her own breakfast and the husband’s terse reaction both suggest tension in this relationship…and that leads to more questions (suspense) in the reader’s mind: Why? What’s going on with these two? Is that why the man was distracted while he cooked? Why, has something happened between them?

Now imagine the same scene without any of the tension elements. Would you care about what was going on? Would you wonder, or just think it’s just another ordinary day of domestic life? Even if you introduce a suspense question—let’s say that the man is wondering whether his spouse is having an affair—would the scene have as much impact without the moments of tension?

If you remove the suspense elements—say, we know that these two who are a couple whose usual dynamic is bickering, and the man is lately suffering from some focus issues—then the tension elements lose their steam too. These are no longer elements of friction—they’re exactly what we might expect in those circumstances.

Good authors unspool every scene like this, constantly creating questions in readers’ minds and threading in moments of friction in large moments and small to keep them off balance and invested in the answers.

One tees up the ball and the other takes the swing, over and over and over, suspense and tension working in tandem back and forth, keeping the motor of the story fueled up, running, and moving forward.

Layer your tension and suspense

Think of tension and suspense as layers of cake and frosting—each one a little less satisfying alone, but together they create something delicious.

Early in The Princess Bride, Princess Buttercup has been kidnapped by three rough men who have bound her and are sailing her away to an uncertain fate.

This sequence is layered with suspense, from the initial uncertainties of “Why has she been kidnapped?” to “What will they do to Buttercup?” to “Will she escape?” to “Who is in the ship following them?”

Heightening these suspense questions is that sweet, creamy tension filling—moments of friction, opposition, and conflict: a defiant, bound Buttercup challenging a hostile Vizzini; dissent in the ranks as Inigo and Fezzik first begin to question his leadership; that relentlessly closing ship behind them.

Together both elements create a strong effect on readers—as Peter Falk’s grandpa character realizes when he abruptly stops the story in the middle of Buttercup’s wide-eyed panting fear (tension) in the face of the charging Shrieking Eels (suspense—“Will she survive?”), reassuring his worried grandson to whom he has been reading, “She doesn’t get eaten by the eels at this time.”

The suspense of the moment is defused—for the sick child and for the viewer. Once we know the answer the question loses its power. The film returns us to the same scene, the same tension of Buttercup’s helpless fear…but this time we relax. We’re no longer on the edge of our seats.

But screenwriter William Goldman knows another truth about suspense—as soon as you resolve one question, you must introduce another to keep readers on the hook. No sooner is Buttercup safely away from the eels than she’s back in the soup with the kidnappers and their mysterious pursuer, headed for the terrifying-sounding Cliffs of Insanity.

Accompanying the suspense questions of who is following them, whether they’ll elude their pursuer, and Buttercup’s fate are more moments of tension: the race to beat the pirate ship to the cliffs…the dangerous climb to the top…the desperation to cut the confoundingly thick rope before the Man in Black reaches the top.

Tension is suspense’s handmaiden, and vice versa—each one amplifying the effectiveness of the other. Skillful authors weave both together to draw readers irresistibly through into their stories on a taut thread of unanswered questions and constant frictions.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, join Tiffany on Wednesday, Aug. 24 for the online class Mastering Suspense and Tension.

7 Questions to Reboot a Nonfiction Book You’ve Been Writing Forever

Photo by IA SB on Unsplash

Today’s post is by author Jennifer Louden (@jenlouden).

As a writing coach, most of my clients come to me after months, years or even decades of trying to write a book on their own and floundering.

I get it. I’ve written nine books and every single time I start a new one, I come down with book amnesia. I look at my published books on my shelf and think, “Are you sure you wrote those? Because you seem to have no inkling of how to write a book.”

So yes, writing a book is hard and if you’ve been working on yours for a while now, there are probably a couple of other issues getting in your way.

Trying to cram every last thing you know into your book.Writing a book that serves everybody—or at least a number of very different somebodies.

These are the biggest reasons I see nonfiction books stall: being a subject matter expert and your sweet desire to serve as many people as possible. So I’ve come up with a few questions to help you reboot your book without overwhelming yourself or your reader. I recommend journaling your responses to these questions until you feel too bored to write another word—and then writing for another page beyond that. Yes, it’s tedious, but it works.

Do not go back to your manuscript to answer any of these questions. That’s key!

7 questions to ask yourself

1. What does my just right reader already know about my topic?

Exhaust the known. Dare yourself to name what your reader already knows. Don’t worry—you’ll still have plenty of material.

2. What do I know about my subject that I think everybody else already knows?

What are you certain is old hat, already done, too basic, or boring to include?

3. What don’t I trust my reader to know about my topic?

You are very close to your material, which can make you believe your readers are a lot less informed than they actually are. Let your inner know-it-all out by writing everything you don’t trust your reader to know. Be snarky, it’s okay.

Then ask yourself for each item you wrote: Is that true? How do I know they don’t already know this? And does it matter if they don’t know it? (That last question is a game changer!)

4. Who do I most want to reach and change with my book?

I know you’ve heard this advice before, and if you are anything like my writing clients, you do not want to choose one particular reader to write to. I can almost hear you insisting on how many different readers you can serve with your book.

But this kind of thinking fuels a strong tendency to include lots of information that your actual reader could care less about. It dilutes your message so much that nobody cares.

When my client Karen was writing It’s a Tango, Not a War she wanted to write to everybody: doctors, diabetes educators, newly diagnosed diabetics, and parents of kids with diabetes. I kept reminding her that her book was for someone who had been living with Type 1 diabetes for years, who was despairing, often in crisis, completely overwhelmed, and who needed to-the-point information to reset and believe good health was achievable.

After a decade of not finishing her book, with that one reader in mind, she got it done and self-published.

5. What does the reader I want to reach most urgently need to know?

Urgent can point you to what problem or need your reader has that they want to address now. And that can steer you away from all the stuff you want to include that your reader doesn’t care about.

6. What have I experienced around my topic nobody else has?

Experienced is the key because it will help you find your unique frame and hook for your material. It’s more than what you know, it’s the experiences you’ve lived that will bring your book alive. (Do not peek at your existing manuscript. Answer off the top of your head.)

7. What is unique about my experience?

This is where talking to another writer, friend or coach can be useful because it can be tricky to see what makes your experience unique because you’ve already absorbed the lessons and insights. But your just right reader has not. You are several steps or many leagues ahead of them.

Make a list of stories that illustrate your knowledge.

Stories are the engine of good nonfiction writing. Pick up any of your favorite nonfiction books and note how often stories are used to illustrate a point, bring a richness to the writing, and deliver the intimacy readers crave. But instead of going back to your manuscript to make a list of your existing stories, start fresh with the ones that fit this reader.

Steal structure.

For at least a decade or so I’ve been teaching writers the best nonfiction resource you have on hand are the books on your shelves, starting with the table of contents and then studying chapters for the elements or templates that author uses to organize their material.

Seeing structure as something you can borrow, where you can mix and match elements you like from different books—and doing so with your existing book in mind—is often a giant aha moment. Suddenly you can see a shape to fill in with your existing ideas and stories. It’s not just a gargantuan blob of words anymore.

Start fresh.

Use a program like Scrivener or Ulysses to create a new document using the structure you’ve cobbled together. Then copy and paste from your existing document (or more likely 7,000 documents) only what your just right reader most urgently needs to know.

Fill in your new structure, leaving behind—for now—everything you wrote for question one (what your reader already knows). You can do it!

Then look at what you wrote for what you think everybody already knows. That will give you clues to what you’ve neglected to write or include because it seems too basic. But now that you have a bead on the urgent need of your one (1!!) reader, you can fill that in.

Save all your leftover material for articles to promote the book when it comes out or for your next book. Next, work on writing any additional stories, case studies, and transitions that you can now see you need.

I hope these questions help you reboot your nonfiction book and craft a book that delights you and your reader.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out Jennifer’s myriad books, classes, and resources for writers.

Moving Between Scenes with Summary and Spacers

Photo by Khushbu hirpara on Unsplash

Today’s post is the last in a three-part series by Sharon Oard Warner, adapted from her book Writing the Novella. Read part one here, and part two here.

It’s difficult to overemphasize the importance of scenes in writing and reading narrative—whether it’s fiction or nonfiction. And if you are writing a stage play or a screenplay? Well, then, scenes are everything. In his book Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, Syd Field says that “good scenes make good movies.” Good scenes also make good novellas, novels, and memoirs, but scenes alone won’t give you a graceful and sturdy narrative arc. For that, you need a little mortar, some grout or glue, and—yes—you need spacers.

Summary serves an essential role in the making of the narrative arc. In the first place, summary provides a means of moving time forward without a loss of momentum. It’s inevitable that we share the information that’s necessary but not significant through the means of summary. And orienting information before a scene is one sort of summary. But summary also serves as mortar between scenes, holding them together.

Sequential and circumstantial summary

Two different kinds of summary serve this purpose, and Janet Burroway offers a wonderfully succinct description of the two in her textbook, Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. She distinguishes between sequential and circumstantial summary by the way they organize time. Sequential summary offers an efficient if compressed accounting of a particular period of time—as in a day, a week, or a month—organized in the order in which the events occurred. Here, then, is a summary of the events from the scene in the grocery store: You entered the store with the express purpose of completing the task in less than ten minutes and, by jogging down the aisles, managed to collect all five dinner ingredients in six minutes flat, only to get stuck in line with a couple of flakes.

Circumstantial summary is another matter. It’s not about a single trip to the store; rather, it provides a glimpse of the way these trips generally go. (Sometimes life is a bit of a blur, one day passing pretty much like the one before.) Because humans are creatures of habit, because we live on a planet that circles the sun, many of the moments in our lives can be encapsulated by circumstantial summary. Here’s a quick example: During the summer months, you rush for the produce aisles, but post-Halloween, you will avoid that section of the store altogether. It depresses you to see the pinkish sheen on the faces of shrunken tomatoes, and there’s nothing you hate worse than rubbery broccoli.

Okay, enough of my goofy grocery store examples. Here are excerpts of each sort of summary from a novella by Jean Rhys entitled Wide Sargasso Sea. Rhys wrote Sea as a revisionist response to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Published in 1966 and set in the Caribbean, Rhys’ novella is an essential text in postcolonial literature and women’s studies. These excerpts come very early in the book and both describe the narrator’s mother.

Sequential summary

She persuaded a Spanish Town doctor to visit my younger brother Pierre who staggered when he walked and couldn’t speak distinctly. I don’t know what the doctor told her or what she said to him but he never came again and after that she changed. Suddenly, not gradually. She grew thin and silent, and at last she refused to leave the house at all.

Circumstantial summary

My mother usually walked up and down the glacis, a paved roofed-in terrace which ran the length of the house and sloped upwards to a clump of bamboos. Standing by the bamboos she had a clear view of the sea, but anyone passing could stare at her. They stared, sometimes they laughed. Long after the sound was far away and faint she kept her eyes shut and her hands clenched.

Examples are easy to find. You will want to make use of both kinds of summary in your novella, and the best way to better understand how and when they are used (and what sort of work they do) is to watch for them as you read. 

Spacers

I once worked with a graduate student named Mary Beth who wrote scenes the way some people dance and other people cook—gracefully and intuitively. She had an accessible prose style and a devilish sense of humor. And her subject matter was exotic, at least for me. She wrote about rodeo life, and she knew her stuff first-hand. The holey jeans Mary Beth wore to class weren’t a fashion statement, and the caked mud on the heels of her cowboy boots had made its way to New Mexico by way of Texas. Most often, her scenes took place in travel trailers, at rundown bars or out in the middle of a pasture. Everyone was bucking or being bucked, flying off a horse, out of a comfortable bed, or into a jail cell. Never a dull moment.

One night, Mary Beth called me. She’d been writing all day, and this one scene in the barn had expanded to twenty pages. The protagonist was on the floor of the horse stall with her mare, who was foaling or trying to foal. The vet had yet to arrive, and…“I can’t seem to end this,” Mary Beth told me. She sounded exhausted, so caught up in the unfolding scene that she no longer knew where to find the exit. It happens. If we’re lucky, it happens to all fiction writers.

“Jump ahead,” I told her. “If in doubt, jump ahead, and not just an hour or two. Jump ahead to the next day or the next week.” I went on to explain that she could decide later, during the revision process, where the scene reached its natural conclusion.

Most often, the jump-ahead is referred to as gap, and in contemporary fiction, gap is delineated by white space. Sometimes, a writer designates white space for a short gap, one that moves the narrative briefly forward and uses white space and an asterisk or some other symbol to signify a leap in time. Can’t you just imagine Mary Beth’s first novel, those leap forwards marked by stylish little horseshoes? I like that idea.

Parting advice

Convincing the audience of the “realness” of characters is one of the main objects of scenes. As readers, we gobble up scenes, seduced by the sense that the lives of these book people are as real as our own and that what is happening to them is happening in real-time, as we consume it. The necessity to turn the pages comes from our sense that the scenes we are imagining will determine the fates of the book people we’ve come to know and care about. To compel readers to lose themselves in our prose, we must be able to construct scenes that seduce and convince.

In an interview with Susan McInnis, fiction writer Ron Carlson explains it this way:

…[I]f the story is about a man and a woman changing a tire on a remote highway…you’ve nonetheless got to convince me of the highway, the tire, the night, the margin, the shoulder, the gravel under their knees, the lug nuts, the difficulty getting the whole thing apart and back together, and the smells. You must do that. But that’s not what you’re there to deliver. That’s the way you’re going to seduce me…after you’ve got my shirt caught in the machine of the story and you’ve drawn me in, what you’re really going to crush me with are these hearts and these people. Who are they?

If You Don’t Feel “Literary” Enough: Q&A with Nikki Nelson-Hicks

Nikki Nelson-Hicks (@nikcubed) is honored to be described as “the lovechild of Flannery O’Connor and H.P. Lovecraft.” She tips her pen in a plethora of genres from Horror to Holmesian to Steampunk to Supernatural Detective Pulp to Weird Western.

She also has written screenplays (Power, Corporate Politics, Angel Bar, Fine) and a radio play, The Box. You can stalk her on any of her social media accounts.

KRISTEN TSETSI: “Show me something old in a new way. Make me think. Make me feel. Make the words burn like drops of fire inside my brain. I want to taste them when I read them aloud. I’m an old reader—I know magic when I read it. I can feel if there is soul in the words. Don’t try to lie to a liar.”

This was your answer to a question in a Huffington Post interview about what you look for in a book, what excites you as a reader. Do you have a favorite passage you can share that does all of this?

NIKKI NELSON-HICKS: Terry Pratchett…well, hell…most everything about the Discworld series, to be honest. The scenes that often come back to me are his themes. How he dealt with gods and what they owe their creation (spoiler: EVERYTHING).

In Small Gods, he plays with the idea of a god that discovers the fact that They need us more than we need Them. It’s a fascinating idea and I often think about it. Small Gods quote: “Gods don’t like people not doing much work. People who aren’t busy all the time might start to think.”

A scene from Men at Arms:

“Something Vimes had learned as a young guard drifted up from memory. If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you’re going to die. So they’ll talk. They’ll gloat. They’ll watch you squirm. They’ll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar. So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.”

From Carpe Jugulum: “Sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”

On the subject of writing, are you familiar with the book, Writer Ferrets Chasing the Muse by Richard Bach? There is a scene where the main protagonist, who has been fighting writer’s block while trying to create his Magnum Opus, realizes he can’t write because he doesn’t like his story. He thinks he needs to write a literary classic of the ages, when, really, he just wants to write children’s books about dragons and hummingbirds. When he finally lets go and writes the stories he loves, he finds happiness. There is a plaque above his desk that I have stolen: HAVE FUN! DON’T THINK! DON’T CARE!

TL;DR: Don’t worry about new. Try to write something true. That’s where the power lies.

You’ve written a lot. Short stories for anthologies, short-story collections, novels, and screenplays. You explore genres, have fun with characters and scenarios, accept unusual writing challenges (like the one from a publisher looking for short pulp-genre stories that revolved around chickens), and you publish regularly. But you said a few years ago in Authors Interviews , “I try not to think of myself as a Writer with the capital W. The burden of that title constipates me.” What makes capital-W “Writer” such a loaded word?

It’s the societal expectations of the Writer or Author title. As if I have some special training or education that makes me, god forbid, an expert on some subject. I am not. Every story starts as the same muddled soup of an idea and I flail around until I find a workable vein and I write my ass off making it into something understandable.

I’m not gifted; I’m just really stubborn.

I helped with a workshop recently on world building. It was a Zoom thing, about 40 people attended. We spent about 90 minutes talking about how we crafted our stories, our worlds, and, hey, you can too! There’s no playbook to this. You can do it however you want, whatever method your story requires. That’s where the magic is! Play and have fun! Yadda, yadda. Rinse and repeat.

The moderator contacted me a week later to let me know how the attendees rated our workshop (I had no idea I was being rated; now THAT would’ve constipated me), and the reaction that most reported was how refreshing it was to see “real authors are just like normal people.”

Oh, poor sweet Summer child. “Real authors.” What does that even mean? It’s this sort of thinking that kills the creative spirit in so many people. Oh, well, the person tells themselves, I’m not smart enough/educated enough/don’t have a special pen that flows with the blood of Muses to pursue that dream, so I’m not even going to try.

Think of all the stories we’ve lost because of that fatalistic mindset, that divisive idea that you must be born gifted THIS WAY if you want to create THAT THING.

Nothing makes my blood boil faster than the clipping of someone’s wings.

When asked what advice you would give young writers, you say, “Stop waiting for permission. Just…tell your story.” You were 40 when you gave yourself “permission” to write. Where did the idea come from that a form of official approval is needed before someone can write?

I grew up worshipping books. As a kid, I thought there was a governmental department that fact checked every word so that only the truth could be printed on paper. This belief caused a lot of problems when I discovered UFO magazines and Weekly World News, but I digress.

I loved to read. When I was seven years old, I tried to check out a book on bats from the school library. The librarian wouldn’t let me take it until I read aloud from it because it was for fourth graders. I read and. boom, I was put into a Gifted Program. (I didn’t tell them the reason I wanted the book was because I was thought all bats were vampires in disguise and I wanted to learn more about how they did that. But, again, I digress.)

I loved stories. All kinds of stories! Myths, legends, all of it! And I loved to create new stories built on the bones of the myths that I was gulping down like air. And it was fun!

Until, as the “The Logical Song” by Supertramp tells us:

They sent me away to teach me how to be sensible
Logical, oh, responsible, practical
And then they showed me a world where I could be so dependable
Oh, clinical, oh, intellectual, cynical

In school, especially when you get into high school or college, stories are dissected like frogs on a plate. No one enjoys them. Now stories must have meaning, metaphor and lofty goals. Have you created an outline? What sort of impact will this story have on the reader, the world? Adverbs, kill them. Adjectives, gerunds, narrative POVs. 1st, 2nd, 3rd. Omniscient or Limited? Come on! You have to know all of this, ALL THE THINGS, and if you don’t, well, you’re not a real writer, are you?

It took me years to unteach myself all the crap that was poured into my head: How only literature was worth writing. That horror, sci-fi, insert your genre here, were wastes of time and not “real writing.” And don’t get me started on how women can’t write horror.

One of my proudest accomplishments thus far as a writer has been helping people who have wandered across my path, as if I was a storybook crone in the woods, and trusted me with their hidden desire to write stories.

“But I’m just a housewife/waiter/insert dead end job here, I can’t be a Writer. I don’t have the *insert societally approved documentations here.*”

“Sweetie, stop that…stop that right now. You come from a story telling race. We are made of stories. We need them more than we need food to stay alive.”

TL;DR: We don’t live in a society that appreciates creativity unless it can make somebody (not necessarily the creator) money. So, Society. Society is a bastard.

Your stories are here to be entertaining, you’ve said, adding, “I don’t have any higher goal than that.” Which implies there is a higher, rather than parallel and equally valuable, goal to achieve. (It’s hard not to think this way, because, as you illustrated, it’s what we’re taught.)

I wonder if you might say something to any writer who doesn’t feel “literary enough,” which some messaging would suggest is synonymous with “good enough,” because they’re drawn to writing for entertainment.

So, Literachure…

I think it’s a scam. A title you can hang yourself with if you get too caught up in it.

Look, Shakespeare’s plays are filled with sex jokes. The guy was obsessed with dicks. Mark Twain is credited with saying that Great Literature is like wine and his stories were more like water; however, more people drink water than wine. Aesop was a hunchbacked, uneducated slave whose fables, simple stories filled with talking foxes and races between hares and tortoises, have endured for millennia.

Stories are stories are stories.

Some time ago, my friend Logan Masterson and I were invited to host Stouts and Stories, a lovely event at a pub where we gather to drink, share our stories, and answer questions. It was an easy-going crowd until someone posed the question, “What responsibility do you feel your stories owe to society?”

Yikes. At that point in time, the only book I had out was the Jake Istenhegyi stories about zombie chickens and swamp monsters. Logan, always a man ready to get on a soap box, gave a ten-minute-long speech about how he wanted his series of stories to build a bridge between the established religions and the outlier pagan ones. It was heartfelt and very eloquent. When it came to me, I said, “My stories are to distract you when you’re on the toilet. I don’t have any loftier goals than that.” And, for the most part, I still don’t.

While the project I am working on, Politics of Children and Other Stories of Revenge, isn’t as pulpy or monster heavy as my older works (there’s still murders, don’t you worry!), in the end, if people’s legs aren’t going numb while reading my stuff on the potty, I will feel that as a failure.

TL;DR: Write the story you want to read. Write the story you want to tell. Don’t get hung up on marketing and genre.

There again, though, is the distinction in artistic value between what you write and other kinds of writing. Writing a story collection or a novel seems like a lot of work just so you can distract some stranger sitting on a toilet, so entertainment must mean a lot more than that. If it didn’t, people wouldn’t stand in line for it. Why do you think we need it?

Why do we need entertainment? That is a many, many layered question.

I firmly believe that the thing that makes humans different from our fauna brethren is not the ability to use tools, but our unique ability to weave stories. We need them. More than food or water. We need them to not just stay alive but to live.

The very first stories were to teach children about danger. Telling a kid, “Don’t go near the water. You could drown,” doesn’t have the impact of, “If you go near the water’s edge, Jenny Greenteeth might be waiting beneath the waters and she will grab you and gobble you up, and you’ll never see your family again!”’

As we grow, our stories teach us things that we need to become better, stronger human beings.

Religious parables and koans are a way to digest a huge truth in small, palatable bites. Fantasies show us there are monsters in this world that want to pick their teeth with our bones but that through friendship, loyalty and courage, they can be defeated. We need heroes, fantastical characters that can show us to be greater than what we fear.

As a child, I lived in a very…um…as my therapist so eloquently described it, “f—d up environment.” I was lucky. I turned to reading as a defense mechanism. I used stories like a shield. I never had friends to play with, but I had stories.

Sherlock Holmes took me on adventures and made me feel like the smartest person in the room. Don’t even get me started on Star Wars. I’m a kid of the ’70s. That shit is pretty much my religion. And Terry Pratchett held me by the hand and showed me truth in the lies. My favorite scene in Pratchett’s Hogfather:

“All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

“So we can believe the big ones?”

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

“They’re not the same at all!”

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”

MY POINT EXACTLY.

See what I mean?

A lot of genres get flack for not being highbrow enough. Romance is only for horny housewives or Tinder rejects. Science fiction is for nerds. Fantasy is for soft-brained people who can’t handle reality. Those observations are, to put it bluntly, bullshit. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a love story. Curled up in a blanket, sipping a hot cup of tea, and watching two people find each other? What’s the harm in that? Science fiction is a stepping stone for a budding scientist to manifest science fact. Imagination is a gift! It’s how we discover new worlds, new medicines, new routes to different realities. Lay off the nerds! And people who love fantasy? The first stories our ancestors took the time to write were about heroes and gods. From Tolkien to the Marvel Universe, what’s your problem with that? Leave the cosplayers alone.

And to my favorite abused genre: horror. Have you a clue as to how many times I’ve been told that people who write/read horror are deviants, twisted psychos who enjoy gore, torture and gothy death things?

We provide a way to witness terrible ideas and themes, but in safety. I wrote a story, “Coon Hunt,” that has been turned down by publishers because they thought it was too intense, but it also won a cash prize from a literary magazine. (Although they completely gutted the story and rewrote it so it wouldn’t offend their readers. Hey, I still cashed the $100.) Tired of waiting for someone with balls enough to print it, I published it in my anthology of short horror stories, Stone Baby and Other Strange Tales. There isn’t any cursing or explicit gore in “Coon Hunt.” It’s a grandfather telling his innocent grandson a story from his childhood.

To the boy, it’s just a story, but to an astute reader, it’s terrifying.

A coworker, a stereotypical elderly Southern lady, pearls and blue hair, learned I was a writer and bought one of my books: The Perverse Muse. (Of all the books I have out there, she chose this one.) A few days later, she came up to me, shook her head, and said, in the softest, cottony tone, “I don’t understand how your brain works. I just don’t. Can I ask? Do you have a relationship with the Lord?”

Oy.

Another time, I was on a panel and was blindsided by someone asking me how I justified writing horror. “Why doesn’t a nice girl like you focus on something more light-hearted? Bring some kindness into the world? I bet if you looked deep inside yourself, sweetheart, you’d find a lovely poem in there.”

Putting aside the face slapping misogyny, I nearly burst out laughing in this guy’s face.

Let me pull out an old chestnut here by G.K. Chesterton: “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist.Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”

The same goes for people like me who write stories that are tinged with horror, death, and bit of fun (i.e monsters) on the side. I am not inherently dark or creepy. I scoop wasps out of the patio; if they don’t hurt me, I let them be. I let spiders live on my front porch; a few cobwebs in the summer means less mosquitos. If I find a worm cooking on the hot asphalt, I will move them onto the cool ground.

Because I can feel their anguish.

And why? Because I write about pain. I write about loss and fear and terrible things that gnash and grind bones in the dark. I see both sides of the story. I feel the pain of the victim as well as the monster. I am Janus Sighted and, because of that, I go out of my way to not inflict pain on any living thing.

We do not bring more darkness into this world by writing horror. We show it to you. We mirror the monster hiding behind you. And we teach you how to kill it.

The greatest compliments I have received so far as a writer have been from people who have told me my stories gave them comfort when they were sick or in a dark place. A school counselor contacted me about a high school student who struggled with reading. She offered him a prize if he’d read just one book from her library. He pulled my book, Sherlock Holmes and the Shrieking Pits. “I probably won’t like it,” he said.

He devoured the entire book in one day. It was the first time he had ever done that. It gave him the courage to try and find more books that would be FUN to read.

My one and only fan letter was from a man who read my Jake Istenhegyi: The Accidental Detective series on repeat while he was bedridden with Legionnaire’s disease because it gave him a place to escape to when he felt like his body had betrayed him.

Do you see the power in stories to comfort? To provide a little bit of light in a world that is so full of shit?

And it might be my only shot into heaven.

You credit the Nashville Writers Group, which you and four others founded in 2004, with supporting your commitment to becoming a published author, and you recommend all writers try to find a similar support system. What has being in the writers group done for its members in terms of finding presses or figuring out self-/independent publishing and navigating the business end of the writing world?

The most helpful aspects for me regarding the Nashville Writers Group was all the contacts I made. For example, it was through the NWG that I met Alan Lewis who introduced me to Tommy Hancock who eventually launched the Jake Istenhegyi: The Accidental Detective stories through his small press Pro Se.

It was through the NWG that I met Tracy Lucas who then introduced me to Todd Keisling and through Todd I met other writers in the horror genre.

Writing is a very lonely profession. We spend so much time in our heads that it is necessary to find others who understand why we do what we do.

On the business end of writing, it helps having friends who are far more experienced and can hold your hand through all the accounting and marketing and all the things that give me hives just thinking about them.

You need a tribe, as cliché as that word has become. Just be careful and choose the voices you let into your head wisely. Not everyone wants the best for you.

What’s a hard lesson you’ve learned in your time publishing, both on your own and with independent presses, that you wish you’d known a lot earlier?

Many small presses run more like a clubhouse than a publishing house. My first contract with a small press was for 80/20 profit split. Guess who got the short end of that stick? I did all the writing, all the marketing, all the conventions where I shill out the product and they get the meaty part of the steak.

I was too eager to get published. The editing was crap, the formatting was terrible. Ugh. When the rights reverted to me, I rewrote it, smoothed it out, hired an editor and a layout and cover artist, and published it under my own house, Third Crow Press. It put a dent in my bank account, but I have a finished product I am proud of.

Never work for a flat fee. You get X amount of money and the publisher get XX amount of money for every copy they sell. The math always works out to you getting screwed.

OH! And if your publisher tells you that they don’t do quarterly sales reports, get an IP lawyer and get your rights back. Learn from my fail.

Your attitude toward writing and publishing screams independence, including a time you told a publisher you would never publish anything with him again if he insisted on using the cover art he’d chosen for the first book of yours he was publishing. He ended up changing the cover, but you would have given up an easy-in for a second published book over cover art.

But—you’ve also said you’d like to be published by one of the Big Houses because you’d like to see your book in bookstores. Would you be willing to trade cover approval for bookstore shelf space?

I’ve thought about that a lot. Would I give up control for a contract with one of the Big 5? The prestige of being with one of the Big Boys, a book that I can point out to my friends at Barnes & Noble? Something in (gasp) hardback? Ah, wouldn’t Mama finally be proud?

Uh, I dunno.

You give away all your power. They decide whether the protagonist is This or That. If the story is too long or too short. And then to slap some shitty cover on it? Something that is completely tone deaf to the story within the pages? These are my stories. That is my name out there. Who is going to trust or respect me if I don’t respect myself?

No, thanks. Maybe I’ll never see my name on the NYT Bestseller list but, goddamn it, I’m proud of my stories. They are mine.

No…no…no. I’m saying it while sitting here in the comfort of my own poverty, but I seriously don’t think I could stomach being such a sell-out.

Considering your fiction is a blend of genres that might not fit neatly into an easily marketable box, how do you reach readers, and where do most of your sales come from?

Conventions. When I do a face to face convention, my Amazon numbers always increase. I have tons of swag, bookmarks and magnets. I have found great success by handing out my story, “Perverse Muse,” in a pamphlet form. “Have a taste of what I have to offer! Free!”

People love free.

Good Scenes Require Specifics

Photo by Brands&People on Unsplash

Today’s post is the second in a three-part series by Sharon Oard Warner, adapted from her book Writing the Novella. Read part one here.

“You can’t write a novel all at once, any more than you can swallow a whale in one gulp. You do have to break it up into smaller chunks. But those smaller chunks aren’t good old familiar short stories. Novels aren’t built out of short stories. They are built out of scenes.” —Orson Scott Card

Scenes are about emotion and action; to elicit either one, you need specifics. Think about it: nothing happens in a vacuum. In my own experience, a long line at the grocery store is made more vexing by a lack of planning. Entering the store in a hurry, I have often bypassed the cart because my intention was only to buy an item or two. Most often, though, I pick up half a dozen “necessities” and arrive at the end of the cashier’s line with groceries tucked under my chin. Suppose I have a cold and have to cough or sneeze? Then what?

Here’s the bottom line: if you don’t imagine a bottle of merlot tucked in your protagonist’s armpit at the beginning of the scene, she can’t drop and break it at the end.

Preparation is key

Before you begin drafting a scene, take a few minutes to think through the specifics. A little preparation will make a big difference in the way your scene unfolds. In his excellent book, The Weekend Novelist, Robert J. Ray describes what he calls a “Story Board.” Included are orienting details such as time and place, temperature and season, sounds, and smells. Additionally, Ray suggests making notes as to the characters involved in the scene, the subjects of the conversation, and the anticipated climax.

One of the joys of scene-writing is the element of surprise—and surprise for the writer augers surprise for the reader. We writers often learn the most about the characters when they are “on stage,” so to speak. For this reason, you may decide not to plan your scene to its conclusion. You may want to bank on a little inspiration. That said, if you are anything like me, you will be more inspired if you, the writer, have prepared the ground on which your characters stand.

Recently, I taught this technique in a graduate novella workshop, and the students who incorporated a short journaling session before drafting their scenes made noticeable improvements to their writing. One student credited scene preparation as the single biggest change agent in his drafting process. And it only takes a few minutes to brainstorm the specifics.

I recommend making notes, as necessary, on these aspects of scenes.

Location, general and specific: In the context of a larger story, where the city is already established, you will only need to specify the place—a bar, say, or a friend’s apartment. However, it’s not enough for the reader to know that the character has entered his best friend’s house. Does he drop onto the living room couch or settle in a kitchen chair? Envision the surroundings, take note of them in your journal. Are there sounds or smells to incorporate?Season/temperature/time of day: Knowing what the weather is like can make a real difference in the texture of the scene. Most of us check the weather before we go out. Characters need to be aware of and subject to the verities of nature, just as readers are.How many characters are present? The reader needs to know about all those who are present. Don’t wait until a character speaks to introduce him or her.What are the characters bringing to this scene? Consider props such as cell phones, umbrellas, purses, pistols, and so forth. More importantly, think about where your characters are coming from and what sort of day they’re having. Often enough, our reactions to others are determined by our overall mood. What has happened earlier in the day can color everything that happens later.What’s the business of this scene? What topics are likely to come up?

If it seems to you that this list is too lengthy, that your favorite writers don’t cover all this territory, I urge you to open a beloved book and scan a few of your favorite scenes for orienting information. See how much of it gets used, and how that information puts you, the reader, at ease. You can relax and enjoy the interactions of the characters because the writer has made sure that you, the reader, are grounded and comfortable.

Building a scene sequence

At major plot points, one scene may not be enough. At these junctures, you will often require something called scene sequences.

The concept of scene sequences will be familiar to anyone who has read or written screenplays as well as to those of us who’ve spent time in dark theaters munching popcorn. Movies are held together by scene sequences of several sorts. The most familiar, perhaps, are those that indicate the passage of time. Imagine this: a burst of fireworks segues to rumbling school buses and then to gusts of autumn leaves. What’s next? Well, of course, the quiet beauty of falling snow.

Syd Field devotes an entire chapter to scene sequences in his boo, Screenplay: The Foundation of Screenwriting. A sequence, he says, “is a whole, a unit, a block of dramatic action, complete unto itself.” Perhaps more to the point for fiction writers, however, is another point he makes, that the sequence is held together by a shared context or situation. In novels and novellas, the climactic scene often requires a change of some sort: in tone or mood, in location or chronology.

Think about the climax of Fahrenheit 451, for instance. Having floated down the river, Montag finds himself in the country, surrounded by itinerant intellectuals. He’s in a place he’s never been with people he doesn’t know, led by a chatty fellow named Granger. This long scene covers an indeterminate amount of time—a day or two or three—until it becomes clear that war is coming to the city. From a distance, the group of men watch as jets appear and drop their bombs.

The concussions that follow throw Montag and the others to the ground, kicking up dust that settles over them. Montag imagines Millie’s last moments and is overcome with grief. Suddenly, he recalls the place they met, something neither of them remembered earlier in the book. The story comes full circle—in the opening pages, Millie nearly died of an overdose; now, in its final pages, she perishes with the rest of the city.

In Fahrenheit 451, the climax scene builds slowly over a dozen pages. The pacing slows as Montag joins this group of likeminded men and acquaints himself with an entirely new environment. The tension builds as jets are spotted in the skies over the city. If you review that long scene sequence, you’ll find the early pages are preparatory, and the later pages conclusive.

Coming next week: the connective tissue between scenes.

The Secret Side Careers of Successful Authors

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

Today’s post is by SaaS copywriter Alexander Lewis (@alexander-j-lewis).

Open by Andre Agassi is one of my favorite books I’ve read in the past few years. Agassi’s tennis memoir details his long emotional road from training as a child under the strict guidance of his father to his hardest-won achievements as a world-renowned tennis icon. Readers of Open are likely to miss one subtle interesting detail about the making of the book. It’s a brief story, buried in the acknowledgments section, about a disagreement between Agassi and his ghostwriter, J.R. Moehringer.

Writing the memoir required multiple years of close collaboration between Agassi and Moehringer. As the book neared publication, Agassi wanted Moehringer to receive public credit for all his hard work. Agassi insisted that both their names should appear on the cover.

Moehringer pushed back. He believed Agassi’s name alone should be on the front cover: it was Agassi’s story, after all. All you have to do is glance at the book cover to know Moehringer got his way. But Agassi still wanted to give credit where it was due. This small story about their disagreement, along with a kind note of gratitude from Agassi, is the only appearance of Moehringer’s name in the book.

Sometimes the craft of writing is more important to an author than seeing their name on a book cover. Many successful authors maintain side writing careers, where they can exercise their abilities in a new medium. These side hustles receive far less publicity than their books, and often include less glamorous writing styles such as grant writing, copywriting, and ghostwriting.

Here are three of my favorite examples of authors with secret writing side careers:

1. Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy is a modern literary powerhouse, writing mostly in the genre of Western Noir. Some of his most famous works include the novels No Country for Old Men, The Road, and Blood Meridian. He is a living legend in the literary community, with many universities offering courses that explore his body of work.

What you may not have guessed is that this literary giant is also a scientist and science writer at the Santa Fe Institute, where he is a Trustee. He has worked in the science field more than two decades, and has been described as, “an aficionado on subjects ranging from the history of mathematics, philosophical arguments relating to the status of quantum mechanics as a causal theory, comparative evidence bearing on non-human intelligence, and the nature of the conscious and unconscious mind.”

McCarthy’s first science paper, called “The Kekulé Problem,” was published in 2017.

2. Ryan Holiday

Many people know Ryan Holiday for his books on Stoicism: Ego Is the Enemy and The Obstacle Is the Way, among other titles. But for years, Holiday has also used his writing chops to run a quietly successful author marketing agency called Brass Check, where he has collaborated with successful authors including Tim Ferriss, John Grisham, Arianna Huffington, and Tony Robbins.

Holiday’s day-to-day work at the company is difficult to learn about because he doesn’t publicly promote his services often. But following his work carefully, you’ll learn that book ghostwriting and book consulting are just a few of his writerly services. He seems to enjoy the craft of writing as much as he enjoys the business of book promotion.

3. Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis is a gifted storyteller who built his career writing nonfiction stories, often about complex subjects such as high finance. Many of his books—including The Big Short and Moneyball—have been turned into blockbuster films. For most of his writing career, Lewis has been a journalist, writing books and articles for some of the largest publications.

In the last few years, Lewis has taken his writing skills to the world of audio. Inspired by fellow nonfiction author Malcolm Gladwell, Lewis launched his podcast, Against the Rules, in 2019 to write within a new storytelling medium.

Writing careers extend beyond book publishing

Like many writers, I have loved the craft of writing most of my life. Until my early twenties, I thought making a career through writing meant writing novels or being a journalist.

It turns out for many writers—even those who’ve achieved great literary success—the love of writing runs deeper than merely seeing their name in print.

The Building Blocks of Scene

Photo by Adrien Delforge on Unsplash

Today’s post is the first in a three-part series by Sharon Oard Warner, adapted from her book Writing the Novella.

Imagine you’re standing in the express line at your favorite grocery store. 

On your way inside, you bypassed the cart corral. Now, as you wait at the tail end of a longish line, you’re regretting it. Here you are: juggling a frozen pizza, a cucumber, and a package of paper napkins. Tucked under one arm is a weighty glass bottle of Merlot and under the other, a bottle of red wine vinaigrette.

Overhead, the fluorescent lights flicker. The line isn’t moving, and you are weary. You close your eyes for maybe a second, and when you open them again, a whip-thin, tattooed man has slipped in line ahead of you, a jar of pickles pressed to his chest. The young woman queued up behind you hisses over your shoulder:

“So, are you going to let that go?” Her question is loud enough for bystanders to hear.

The interloper’s back stiffens. He cocks his head and makes an odd clicking noise with his tongue that sounds menacing.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” asks the strident young woman. Is she addressing you or the interloper? From the front of the line, half a dozen faces swivel in your direction.  You feel yourself blushing. If there’s anything you hate, it’s for someone to make a scene, especially when you are forced to be part of it.

Making a scene on the page

Reflect now on what your mother meant when she said, “Don’t make a scene.”  She was asking/pleading with you not to do anything in public that would draw the attention of others. If there aren’t bystanders on hand to gawk, well, it isn’t really a scene. Note that “making a scene” need not be embarrassing or distressing, though that’s usually the case. Sometimes, a public display is carefully orchestrated—as in attention-getting marriage proposals and flash mob performances. The common denominator in all these situations, be they negative or positive, is emotion. Whatever is experienced by the participants—fear, jealousy, embarrassment, awe—is transferred to the audience.  Such experiences tend to be memorable.

Scenes are the building blocks of narrative, regardless of the form that narrative takes. Anyone who writes short stories, novellas, novels, memoirs, screenplays or dramatic plays must be proficient in crafting compelling scenes. All the significant moments in any narrative get conveyed through scenes. In fact, the decision to write in scene or in summary is decided based on importance. If the event or moment is noteworthy, chances are you will want to develop it through scene. What’s less important ends up being summarized.

As someone who has grown up in a culture obsessed with fictional narratives, you have been exposed to hundreds of thousands of scenes—beginning in your babyhood when, if you were lucky, your parents read to you at bedtime. From there, you have learned to read for yourself, and, if you want to write stories, you must have fallen in love with them. You have attended plays, gone to movies, watched television, played video games, all of which are dependent on scenes. So, you know their makeup well. But you have partaken of them, and now you will need to be able to take them apart.

Creating a public display of emotion, one way of describing what it means to “make a scene,” can and often does happen spontaneously, but creating scenes on paper usually requires considerable planning and forethought. In The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer, author Sandra Scofield defines scenes as “those passages in narrative when we slow down and focus on an event in the story so that we are ‘in the moment’ with characters in action.” If the scene is compelling enough, the reader becomes a bystander of sorts, and characters come to life.

The building blocks of scene

Some of what I am about to explain may seem self-evident, but I know from my own experience as a reader and writer of fiction, a creative writing instructor, and a book reviewer, that writing a compelling scene is hard work. I also know that well-constructed, compelling scenes are essential to the success of narrative prose.

So, let’s begin with the basics:

All scenes have a beginning, a middle, and an end.Most scenes are preceded by orienting information: who, what, when, where. Readers can’t relax and enjoy the proceedings until they have their bearings.Scenes are composed of action, description, dialogue, and thought. In any given scene, one of these components may well dominate while another recedes. (Think about it: Sometimes, we are doing a lot of talking, other times a lot of thinking.)In general, the longer the scene, the more critical it is to the overall narrative.  Most often, plot point scenes will be among the most developed scenes in any narrative.Readers enjoy scenes more than they enjoy summary. (Don’t believe me? Take note of your reading habits. Do you rush through exposition or page ahead to see when the next scene takes place? Most of us do.)Scenes are rarely provided in their entirety. We writers skip over the niceties—the hellos and goodbyes, the chitchat and weather talk. We use summary as well as other techniques to fast-forward, slow down, or pause.Longer fictional narratives will usually include one or more scene sequences. A sequence is a group of three or more related scenes that take the narrator/protagonist through a significant piece of action. An excellent example of a sequence is the opening of Fahrenheit 451. Montag burns books, is surprised on his way home by Clarice, discovers his unconscious wife, calls the EMTs, and finally takes a lozenge himself to get to sleep. As in this example, sequences will themselves have a beginning, middle, and end.

Coming next week: scene prep and more on scene sequences.

3 Things I’ve Learned About Storytelling (and Life) from Performing Narrative Nonfiction

Photo by Vince Fleming on Unsplash

Today’s post is by author, editor and storyteller Anastasia Zadeik (@anastasiazadeik).

The bar is hushed. I stand at the podium, bright lights partially obscuring the crowd. I see a blur of faces and blank spaces, hear ice clinking in a glass somewhere to my right and murmurs from the back of the room where drinks are being ordered and served. I am about to start speaking when I remember a tip I was given by my first performance coach, Jon.

“Before you begin,” he said, “take a deep breath and remind yourself to . . . slow . . . down.”

This, I have found, is good advice and, as Oscar Wilde famously said, “The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on” so…

1. Before you start a story (or anything new)—take a deep breath and remind yourself to slow down.

I begin to read the narrative nonfiction piece printed on the pages in front of me. It starts with some background about my dad, how he was a Latin, Hebrew, and Greek teacher, a Shakespeare scholar, and docent at the Art Institute of Chicago. Then the story places him in the hospital at age 81. He is about to go in for emergency surgery when he calls to me to share what might be his last bit of fatherly wisdom. I slow down in the reading, pause for a few seconds, and then explain that, instead of the profundity I expected given his extraordinary intelligence and the dire circumstances, I heard my dad say, “There are some Bob Chin gift cards in my wallet. Make sure you use them with your brothers and sisters.”

The crowd laughs.

I look up to see the blur of faces and spaces and lift my gaze to just above the heads, following advice from the minister at the church where my father’s funeral was held—a piece of advice I received when I was about to deliver the eulogy I’d written for my dad when, months after the Bob Chin gift card incident, we lost him to complications from that emergency surgery.

“Look just over their heads until you feel comfortable,” the minister told me. “They will think you are engaging directly with them. Only when you begin to feel at ease should you lower your gaze to their faces, and then engage with an open, amiable face or two around the room.”

2. Give the impression you are engaging directly until you can actually engage directly (in other words, fake it til you make it) and then look for the people who appear open and amiable.

I lower my eyes to the page again and share how my dad never walked again after that surgery, how he suffered from ODTAA syndrome, “One Damn Thing After Another,” and the grief and loss my siblings and I felt when he died. I share how we went on a scavenger hunt of his favorite paintings at the Art Institute together as if trying to find him somehow, and our fear that we weren’t ready to be the older, wiser, generation. My voice drops and wavers slightly as I allow myself to feel those feelings again. I hear an audience member sniffle.

I wait a moment, let the sadness settle, and then I begin to share how my siblings and I did indeed use my dad’s gift cards, how Bob Chin’s was a crab shack that served alcohol and how we proceeded to get drunk and tell bittersweet stories, how my brothers ended up fake-wrestling on the floor of the funeral home, and how the hotel clerk thought I was planning a bachelorette party when I called to inquire about the capacity of the hotel’s hot tub and whether we could bring our own booze into a conference room. I lift my eyes, now fully engaging with the blurry faces, and hear laughter again.

Then, slowing my voice again, I finish with the last piece of advice my father actually gave me, the words of wisdom and love he wanted to pass on to his grandchildren. The laughter fades into silence and I hear another sniffle, and another.

And I am reminded of something my second performance coach, Eber, told me. “If you can make them laugh or cry, it’s a good story. If you can make ‘em laugh and cry, it’s a great story. And if you can make ‘em laugh, cry, laugh, and cry again, then it’s an amazing story. Be authentic and make them feel it.”

3. Be authentic

Trust me, this does not contradict #2 because this is all about the delivery of your message. Let your emotions come through. Make them feel your passion, your dedication, your fear, your joy, your belief. Make the most of every moment. Grab ’em with what you know and what you feel and don’t let them go until the
very
last
word.