Larry Brooks's Blog, page 16

Confessions of a Learning Curve Climber

A guest post by Stephanie Raffelock… about a “steaming mass of poop.”

 

Larry Brooks made me cry. An ego bruising, embarrassing cry.

He did it by asking a simple question: What is the dramatic goal of your hero?

I answered every question he put forth in that scary, unflinching Questionnaire he uses in his coaching programs… all but that one.

It was like when my mother asked me if I had taken her beloved blue Mustang without her permission and I told her, “I have so much research to do at the library. I have a paper due.” I never did answer her simple question–“did you take the freaking car or not!?”

A series of questions loomed on the rest of that damn Questionnaire.

After answering the first few, the harsh truth began to reveal itself. In spite of intelligence, a modicum of humor and a great passion for the written word, I would not recognize the components of a good story if I tripped over them and landed in a puddle of my own shock and awe.

Welcome to Novel Writing 101.

By the time I got here, I had a degree in creative writing and poetics. I’d received awards and accolades for both short stories and blogs. I’d been published in magazines and newspapers, and I knew how to crank out a mean essay (like this one). So now I was ready to write a novel.

I mean, how hard could it be?

Like many who came before me, and many who will come after, I wrote my first two novels by the seat of my pants. For some, this is a revered state. They proudly tell you that they are “pantsers.”  I, unfortunately, had no such pride (it does work for some, who understand what I had yet to internalize), just a mess of 60,000 words or so that didn’t hang together.

Every day for a month I got up and locked myself in my office for a few hours, and I wrote. Every day, because I didn’t have an understanding of structure. Instead I sat with my laptop and just made shit up. And I felt so righteously creative doing it, too. But when I got to the end of each of the first two novels, I didn’t have a story. Hell, I didn’t even have an antagonist!

How is it that a creative writing major, who shined in her studies could write such a hot, steaming, mass of poop?

For one thing, I don’t know of any writing program in the country that is teaching story structure. That’s a sad truth, but writing programs nurture the creative and not the practical. The creative without the practical is what gets you that steaming mass of poop.

After I dried my eyes and dusted myself off from the humiliating encounter with Brooks, I got the gift he intended: the novel is a muti-layered, heavily nuanced form, best not left to writing by making shit up as you go. Respect it. Respect the forms and functions and targets and criteria that apply to any novel in any genre, and have hundreds of years of proof behind them, because every book that’s ever been commercially successful has aligned with those principles.

And that’s when I began to study story structure.

Larry recommended story planner and coach, Jennifer Blanchard, to help me take my story to the next level after his initial feedback (it may have had something to do with some of the names I called him at the time). I bit the bullet and signed up to work with her. It is humbling, and also a great deal of fun, to be learning from a woman who is young enough to be my daughter.

Jennifer, by the way, is a passionate practitioner and spokesperson for the very same principles that Brooks used to crush my belief that my original story had legs.

Step by step, she took me through the principles of Story Engineering (Brooks’ first writing book), and helped me to plan and plot a story.

From idea to concept, premise, plot points, pinch points and character development, we worked together for a month before I wrote a single word of prose. The exercise not only changed the way that I write novels, it changed the way that I see the world: there are stories all around us in the people we know. When the next-door neighbor tells me about her trip to visit her aging parents, I’ll be darned if there isn’t a hero, a villain, if there aren’t obstacles to overcome and conflict to negotiate, demons to slay, and a desired goal motivated by stakes that matter.

I watch television and movies through different eyes now.

Where’s the first plot point? What does the hero want? Why am I rooting for him?

And in my own life: Flying on a small plane from Medford to Portland recently, looking down at the green landscape, I had this sense of the story of my life, the arch of it, the conflicts and tension that pushed against me and changed me. Wow, I was a hero, and I was winning against all those obstacles that had a different plan.

Jennifer is a great coach.

She’s part of my team now, a go-to training wheels kind of teacher who got me to the point of working from a detailed scene list that I used for novel number three. Honestly, I don’t have a clue if novel number three is publishable, but I do know that for the first time I have a story that hangs together beginning to end, and I am proud of that. It is my best work to date.

Larry Brooks still makes me cry, but now it’s because I appreciate the brilliance and beauty of the message and the material that he brings to the writing world. You gotta love a guy who wakes you up to what you really want by telling you the truth.

Okay, I get it. I’m a rookie.

Derrick Jeter was a rookie once, too, and he was the best rookie that he could be. I want to be Derrick Jeter. I want to practice and work and when I get it right, do it again. Armed now with the truth, I am ready to take it all on.

Working with Larry and with Jennifer, I embraced the notion of being a novelist. I respect the craft of novel writing enough to want to study it, learn it and integrate it, thereby respecting my readers enough to want to give them a good story.

We live in a fast, digitized world, where people abbreviate their words (that drives me crazy) and do their lives in limited character sound bites. Writers, I believe, are entrusted with the sacred task of being the keeper of stories, the full and rich stories that connect us all.

I haven’t read the latest talked about writing book whose cover reads “Story Trumps Structure,” but I can tell you that I hate the title. It goes against the grain of what I know in my bones to be true. Hey buddy, I want to say, story IS structure!

To take on the mantel of writing novels that illustrate the flux and flow of this human condition, you need to be able to know how to block out a good story, then those seductive prose and the sparkling word-smithery that you worked so hard for in grad school will have something to hang on that is worth reading.

Epilogue:

The books and the coaching were not enough!

I wanted a chance to sit down with Larry Brooks and Jennifer Blanchard in a classroom setting and keep going. But most workshops are just a day or an afternoon, maybe two days if you’re lucky. What potential might be unleashed if there were four full days of workshop, a novel intensive?

I gathered up my business acumen, years of implementing the art of logistics, and pitched Brooks and Blanchard on creating the best kick-ass writing workshop in the known Universe, and to my delight, they said “yes.”

The result is Your Story on Steroids: A 4-Day Novel Development Intensive. April 3-7 of 2016, in Portland Oregon. That’s a long time to plan, so don’t miss this opportunity to live the same Epiphany that I did, and then some.

Mark your calendar and visit the enrollment website at: www.novelintensives.com … or you can email me at: Stephanie@novelintensives.com, and I’ll add you to my emailing list and keep you apprised of the event.

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Thanks to Stephanie for her passion, and for putting all those names she called me into context. And for creating this amazing, ground-breaking workshop opportunity next March, in Portland OR, and the famous Benson Hotel. Bring you story and a vision for your career, and prepare to put both on steroids with an expectations-exceeding, career-igniting experience.

If you want that same damn Questionnaire experience, and perhaps the Epiphany that often results, click HERE for more on my coaching services, of which there are several levels.

If you’re in a workshop kind of mood and can’t wait until next spring (not an either-or, I suggest you do both), I’m doing two monster workshops in the near future:

June 26, 2015, in Denver CO, an all day intensive on what it takes to write a great historical novel. Click HERE for more on The Historical Novel Society Annual Conference, with a keynote from Diana Gabaldon.

August 7 – 9, 2015, in Portland OR, at the annual Willamette Writers Conference, a monster event. I’ll be doing two focused workshops on Friday and Saturday, and then an all-day Master Class on Sunday. Click HERE for more info.

Confessions of a Learning Curve Climber is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

The post Confessions of a Learning Curve Climber appeared first on Storyfix.com.

Seven Secret Weapons That Will Make You a Better Novelist

Stay tuned for a couple of Storyfix announcements, presented following today’s content.

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Most of the time, who makes it and who doesn’t is no accident.

 

We’re all looking for an edge. Sometimes that search confines itself to the realm of story as a definable essence… a better concept, a stronger premise, a firmer command of craft.

And sometimes we get that definition wrong.

All of that knowledge is out there. But the fine print of this proposition is that we are alone to interpret and apply it to the page. Which in truth means that ten writers might encounter the same conventional wisdom and, when it comes time to actually write the story, execute with ten different forms and levels of craft.

That truth should point us inward, in addition to our efforts to come up with the very best possible story we have in us. Inward, as in… consider doing some work on you, as an author, as a student of craft and an interpreter of information.

Just maybe you’re getting that wrong, as well.

Anyone can take singing lessons, but not everyone can walk away and hit the stage sounding like Celine Dion. Craft favors no one, but performance is a fickle lover, depending on so much more than the notes themselves.

Some call this talent.

I beg to differ. With storytelling, talent can be a learned quality. It is the expression of craft, and when done in a stellar manner, it is perceived as art.

Getting there is a different focus than pounding on a story without a grounding in craft, it is a proactive campaign to make ourselves better writers in a more general sense, writers able to perform instead of simply painting by the numbers… even though the numbers are there for a reason.

“Just write” is, in my opinion, one of the most misguided, even toxic pieces of writing advice ever given air time. It’s like telling a surgeon to “just cut.”

Craft is nothing if not a big ol’ pile of tools and principles.  And like any tool, you can hit yourself on the thumb as easily as you can drive a nail home with one informed stroke, even after reading the same how-to manual. Craft doesn’t really shine a light on touch and sensibility… which is the golden ring of writing spectacularly.

Here are seven strategies that will, if you really dive in and internalize these nuances over time, serve to make you a better wielder of the writing craft.

1. Learn to write better novels by emulating screenwriters.

In other words, immerse yourself in the pursuit of craft – the good stuff, not the “writing is art, do this any damn way you please” version, which is also out there.  Do this earlier rather than after you’ve figured out that the seat of your pants isn’t working all that well.

That’s what screenwriters do.  They learn before they write, which is the exact opposite of so many novelists at the beginning of their journey.

If you go on volume alone, there are over 132 novel writing books (this according to Google) for every single screenwriting book on the market (132,000,000 to 735,000). But don’t be fooled… screenwriters have it over novelists in terms of access to truly helpful 101-level learning (books and workshops in particular) by a wide and consistent margin.

Why?  Because of when they access that knowledge. 

If you could test the level of basic knowledge of craft among writers who have been studying for the first six months of their intention, new screenwriters would blow new novelist off the map, and by a massive margin.

Not because they are smarter. But because they value and seek learning sooner than do novelists. Novelists seem to enjoy the pain of rejection and frustration (which is a polite way to say that they believe they can do it without having a professional show them how), wearing it as a badge of initiation, and too often that’s precisely what finally brings them to the learning of the craft… only after they realize they can’t simply make up stories as they please… something a screenwriter would never consider.

Maybe they are smarter after all, at least on that particular count.

Take it from me, I wrote six novels before I cracked open a “how-to” book or attended a workshop of any kind. When I did – it was a screenwriting book, by the way – I finally saw how it was done. Only then did I realize the sheer volume of what I didn’t know.

That’s not remotely an uncommon tale, by the way.

Since then I’ve immersed myself in both worlds (novels and screenplays), and today I find myself writing novels and teaching the writing of both (six of those 132,000,000 novel writing books have my name on them). I got into this work precisely for that reason… novelists need to hear and learn – as soon as possible – what screenwriters are exposed to from the very first day of their journey.

In my experience as a one-on-one story coach, I run into novelists all the time who actually, a) can’t accurately and fully define what a story even is, and b) have spent decades, literally, seeking out the basic and fundamental craft necessary to make a story work.

Sometimes this is true after they’ve read some of the books and attended some of the classes. That initial hubris – that they can feel their way through it – is a deeply held limiting belief that can take years, and a locker full of rejection slips, to let go of.

In the screenwriting world, writers are immersed from Day 1 in the learning that really makes a difference: the form and function of story, driven from a context of character-driven structure that creates a linear paradigm for a story – any story – that works.

One of the things I learned early on – and had been told wasn’t true, but it certainly was true, and still is – is that story in film and story in novels are not all that different. In terms of the basic essences and structures, they are almost identical.

Read Screenplay, by Syd Field, and Save the Cat, by Blake Snyder, among other screenwriting classics, and see for yourself. I learned everything I know about the basics of storytelling beginning with the former, and everything I’ve learned about novel writing since (and belief me, that is a huge truckload of assimilation) aligns with the core principles that screenwriters learn in the first term of a college screenwriting class.

Or you can wait a few years, keep collecting rejection slips or those $22 royalty checks from Amazon, until you finally realize the steps you may have skipped.

Thing is, hardly anybody seeking to write a screenplay begins doing so without first immersing themselves in that craft. It’s like doing brain surgery in that regard… somebody dies trying if they don’t hit med school first.

Novelists, however, tend to head down the writing road armed only with their experience as a reader, and then, after the aforementioned years and volumes of rejection and frustration, they begin to look for the conventional wisdom of craft…which, when they find it, they realize pretty fixes what was broken.

There are exceptions, of course. You are reading this, so perhaps you are one of them. Then again, you might have many years under your belt and only now realize the power of the principles that have been at your behest all along.

You certainly can learn the basics of novel writing – beginning now – from people like James Scott Bell, Randy Ingermanson, K.M. Weiland, C.S. Lakin, Jennifer Blanchard, Donald Maass and, yes, moi… and hundreds of others who may not yet have a book out on the subject. Websites by real pros, like Art Holcomb, abound.

Wherever you find it, the earlier you dive in, the sooner you’ll have your head wrapped around what you need to know.

Just like the A-list, bestselling pros do.

2. Internalize a deeper understanding of the word “story.”

Allow me to use my own experience, and the resulting data, to make this particular point.

I’ve evaluated nearly 700 stories, in various forms, over the last three years, by writers of all levels of skill and experience, each with the intention of seeing their story published. In retrospect, I’d say that one-third to one-half of them had serious issues stemming from the fact that their authors, demonstrated by what they showed as their story, had real issues relative to how those stories actually weren’t stories, at least in full, after all.

Consider that for a moment. As many as one-half couldn’t define story properly, based on their work.  Their sentences were, for the most part, just fine.  But the “story” they were telling was… lacking.

Imagine writing a story, believing you know what a story is… and when the ink dries someone like me tells you there isn’t a story on the page after all.  Not, at least, according to the criteria I apply, which is the fundamental basis of story in general. I’m not saying they were all bad stories, I’m saying they weren’t stories at all.

If that data holds true, then one-third to one half of those reading this will be in a similar sinking boat. Some after years of pulling an oar and raising a sail.

So what were they, if not a story?

Episodic, memoir-like journeys of a character (I’d call them heroes, but in these wannabe-stories there was nothing heroic going on, because basically there was nothing going on at all, period), without a conflict-seeded “plot” of any kind.

Biographies of fictional characters, peppered with (again) episodic “stuff that happens,” without that stuff connecting to a quest or need of any kind.

Stories that dove deep into important issues, and some not so important, in a way more apropos to a feature article or a white paper at a junior college, maybe a Sunday morning sermon.  If you consider the last time you heard a plot within a sermon, you get the idea.

Stories with nobody to root for, because the hero wasn’t asked to do anything. The reader was, by default, being asked to observe the hero, rather than engage with the hero, to root for them, or share empathy relative to a quest or a need of some kind.

Stories that were a microcosm of a protagonist’s life riddled with backstory and inner landscape, with absolutely no exterior, forward-moving foreground dramatic story in evidence.

No drama, no story.

Love stories that were chronicles and documentaries, this-happens-then-that-happens-then-something-else-happens… without the slightest hint of conflict on the page. A diary of a relationship, nothing more. The end.

Upon receiving word that their work really wasn’t a “story” at all, nearly every single one of these writers were, a) shocked, b) momentarily in disbelief, c),apoplectic, d) humbled, and finally, e) very soon a newly converted voracious seeker of craft, as if hoping to make up the time lost – decades in some cases – to the illusion that they could write absolutely anything they want, and if it has a character in it, then you can call it a novel.

Because nobody, sometimes over years of moving within the writing community, had told them differently. And yet, because they’re smart and hungry, they recognize it, they sense it, the moment it is spoken aloud.

When was the last time someone at a writing workshop or conference, an instructor or otherwise, told you that your story idea wasn’t strong enough, or that your execution wasn’t really a story after all?  Doesn’t happen. Instead you get the pabulum of complacency, urgings to make your hero more relatable or to do this or that, the rhetoric of cluelessness.

Skip the 101 of truly understanding “story” at your own peril. The pros you read certainly didn’t.

3. Understand the nuances of the relationship between character and plot.

I wouldn’t go so far as to state that character in commercial fiction is over-rated. It is, perhaps, overly focused-upon.

In my workshops I often take a poll in the first several minutes, asking everyone to state the most important and necessary word in fiction.

Many get it right, sometimes with a synonym of the right answer… which is “conflict.” No conflict, no story.

But some, an alarming percentage, answer with the word “character.”

That’s not a bad answer, because character is certainly an element a story cannot do without.  But it is not the most critical essence of a story, the thing that makes it work.

Character is important. Critical, in fact. But not the most important word in fiction. Because, like a car with a beautiful and comfortable interior and smooth ride, it isn’t a car until an engine is put in… and in fiction, the engine that drives everything is conflict.

The ensuing discussion is often fascinating.

Those who answered with conflict quickly concede that, duh, character is essential. But it isn’t a story, not really – certainly not a publishable story – until conflict is put into play.

This, by the way, is spot-on accurate.

Conflict is what gives character something to do.

Those who answered with character contend, sometimes, that conflict is assumed, of course, because after all… no conflict, no story. So we are on the same page after all, though possibly writing in different genres.

But there are some – often a graduate of an M.F.A. program; these folks can become the most avid conflict-advocates of all, because what they were taught has not gotten them published, or even close – who insist that conflict (plot) is optional, or even that it is a lower breed of fiction that isn’t “literature” after all.

And they may be half right about that. In commercial “literary fiction,” the most important word is character. And yet, conflict is indeed there, subtly moving characters from action to action for reasons that make sense.

The point being, if you’re writing in any other genre – including adult contemporary, that doesn’t neatly fit into a genre niche – conflict (in the form of plot) is the central heartbeat – the engine – of your story. Even if your story is “character-driven.”

Conflict is the opportunity to strut the stuff of your wonderful characters, and thus, is your friend and greatest asset in your desire to write character-driven commercial fiction, regardless of genre.

Proven pros know this. And so, they value the nature, depth, nuance and meaning of the source of conflict in their stories – again, the plot – every bit as much as they do the facets and backstories and potential of their cast of characters.

4. Recognize how your writing process serves you… or not.

If you want to see a Hatfield vs. McCoy’s throw down at a writing workshop or via the comment thread in a blog post, suggest that story planning is a superior writing process as compared to pantsing (organic seat-of-the-pants story development using drafts rather than notes and outlines)… or — and this is important to note — vice versa.

That debate is quickly rendered moot with the understanding that, when all is said and done and the manuscript is ready to submit, the criteria and benchmarks of an effective story are exactly same, regardless of the process applied.

You can argue issues of efficiency, or the bliss of the journey, or the pitfalls of either process… without ever winning. Because there will always be a divided room – frankly, the largest percentage of writers do some of both at some point in the process – driven by what works for them, or not.

It is the “or not” of that statement that is problematic.

Some writers are deeply rooted in a process that isn’t serving them. Turning in pantsed drafts that aren’t ready, they haven’t landed on the best available core story, or drafts that lack the fresh impromptu energy of a draft that has had the life outlined out of it before a single page had been written.

The irony is, both of those worst-case outcomes suffer from the same diagnosis: the writer never landed on the optimal story emerging from its stated premise… or… that premise was never fully functional or compelling in the first place.

Which, again, is something no one will every tell you, other than a paid story coach.  Leaving us to make that critical call, even though we may not be fully or best prepared to do so.

At some point in your journey your process will become refined. You will have heard both sides, tried both methods, and will recognize where your strengths reside relative to the pure kick of either pantsing a draft or planning one to the n-th degree.

Pros have found their process. One serves them, rather than sabotages them. If your track record keeps yielding results that are less than hoped for, take a look at the process you apply to the generation of those drafts, and consider trying something new.

Who knows, you might change uniforms after all, and your work may finally get the attention it deserves because of doing so.

5. When an idea for a new story hits you… run from it.

In fact… run like hell.

Most writers – newer ones in particular – are hungry to land on their next story. So anxious, in fact, that they end up investing time in a story that really was never there in the first place, responding to an initial jolt of hope and energy, without looking deeper to see if there is truly 400 pages of conflict-driven, character-steered narrative there at all.

Mediocrity is everywhere you look. What you might think is your next silk purse of a story idea may actually end up, after hundreds of pages of giving it a shot, a cow’s ear all dressed up for a night on the town.

It’s like dating in this regard. Hopefully, when we do it right, we don’t marry a blind date on that blind date,or a more traditional first date, or even all that quickly after the initial blush of chemistry and attraction and even lust have blurred our vision. That particular mistake plays a role in the majority of young marriages that end badly, and soon.

And, sadly, in the preponderance of rejected stories out there. Too many never stood a chance, they were dripping with vanilla and a too-familiar sense of flatness from square one, even though the writer – who may love vanilla in their own kitchen – couldn’t sense it in time.

But remember, you are cooking for others now. What you think is a great story may or may not play to the crowd on Broadway.

I heard this recently at a writing conference, in a keynote given by a famous New York agent who claims it is the best writing advice he’s ever heard: when you get a new story idea, turn away. Run away from it. Don’t be tempted to anoint it your next story right away… or ever.

Then see what happens. Does the idea haunt you? Does it return and demand some mindshare, inviting you to look closer?

If it does… run away faster. First impressions are strong medicine, and great stories need depth beneath that surface. Set a higher bar for your stories, and assume that any new story suitor isn’t up to your high standards.

Become a raging snob about the stories you will put your name on.

And then, if it refuses to fade away, allow yourself to court the idea for a while. Get to know it, explore it, expand it, see how it bends, see where it breaks. Do this in context to a fully-informed filter that understands what a great story is, and what the criteria for that crown consists of.

Don’t settle. Don’t rush. When the story is right, it will anoint you before you anoint it. Let it come to you, make it chase you down, and play hard to get when it does.

The result might just be the best story you’ve ever written.

6. Strive to be the same… but different.

The vast majority of fiction sold today resides in a specific genre. A categorical niche where readers expect and find certain in-common topics and essences – these are called tropes – and writers feed them to readers like candy with the assurance that they know precisely why they’ve come, and they won’t be happy campers until you’ve given them precisely that.

There is also nothing wrong – in fact, it can be strategically brilliant – to offer a mash-up of genres, which is referred to as “cross-genre” storytelling in the publishing business, which has seen many smash bestsellers emerge with that tag.

What was the Twilight series if not a mash-up between the romance genre and the paranormal vampire genre?

Mistakes happen, however, when writers declare a story to be within the tropes and expectations of a given genre, and then change lanes with a focus elsewhere. If you try to write a “character-driven” serial killer novel (that, too, is a genre, because the major genres – thriller, mystery, romance, science fiction, fantasy, have all sub-divided with the specificity of a given focus within that genre; romance, for example, has a long list of sub-genres that basically embrace all other available genres, as well as inventing some of their own, like “time travel romance,” for example) that doesn’t deliver on the expected tropes, then readers will stay away in droves.

Notice that McDonalds hasn’t tried to sell us veggie burgers yet. We drive to the golden arches for a reason, and that reason drives everything we find on the menu.

And yet, how do you distinguish story within a genre in which the tropes and expectations have been defined for you?

The answer is to accept that genres are, by and large, formulaic. The tropes and expectations unfold within the same basic structure that drives any and all genres (structure is universal, it is not genre-dependent, while content-focus with a genre differs from other genres, and is pre-ordained). Your first order of business is to give readers what they expect, what they come for.

If you’re writing a slasher novel, let there be blood.

If you’re writing a hot sexy thriller, let there be femme fatales and sexy spies and murderous hunks.

If you’re writing a mystery, let there be a puzzle to solve.

And yet, the trick is to dress up the expected tropes with something fresh, a new twist on the familiar, an exotic locale, a thematic arena that pushes buttons (like a love story among nuns, for example), or the source of unexpected genius colliding with an unlikely source of darkness.

Be the same, genre-wise… but be different, style and set-dressing-wise and exposition-wise, with powerful themes and a narrative full of shock, awe, surprise and warm hugs in the right places.

Successful genre stories break out for two reasons: they deliver the expected with stellar vividness and sensual resonance, and they change things up with the delivery with fresh ideas that plow new ground… all within the tropes of the genre itself.

The world doesn’t need another vampire story. But it does need a new vampire story that gives us something we haven’ seen before, complete with the fangs and blood and sexuality we signed up for.

7. Acknowledge the End-Game of who you are really writing for.

This last one really separates the published from the frustrated, careers from one-hit-wonders.

As writers, we are constantly advised to “write what we know,” and just as much, “to write what we want to write.”

Be careful with that last one. Because it just might bite you back.

Writing what you know and what you want is not a problem if those things align with what readers want. That’s the goal… to sense what will play in the marketplace, and deliver a story you would want to read, provided it aligns with it. When you and the reader are in the same place, good things happen.

Notice that lawyers writing legal thrillers is always a viable pitch.  But grocery checkers writing grocery checking thrillers… not so much.

If you don’t give a crap about your readers, if you proudly proclaim that you are writing this for yourself, and only yourself… then you take your chances with others agreeing.

But the real pitfall, the deepest one with the poisoned spikes pointing upward from its floor, is when “writing for yourself” embraces an ambivalence, even a disdain, for the conventions of commercial fiction itself. You may have gotten into the business for yourself, for the love of writing and the love of stories you want to experience, but the moment you declare your professional intentions the dime flips and you have more than yourself to consider.

If it pleases yourself to write a story with no inherent conflict in play, then you are shooting yourself in the foot, and you will be left alone with your defiance. We hope you like your story, because nobody else may read it.

If it pleases you to write a story that violates every convention of story structure and dramatic theory, knock yourself out. Just know that you have, in essence, written your own rejection slip, as well.

Writing for yourself, when you are a professional, by definition implies that you want what your readers want, and you want to give it to them in a format and within the parameters of execution that align with the tropes of your genre and the fundamental tenets of how modern commercial fiction is built.

If you’re a professional, or you want to be, then you won’t want to try to reinvent those wheels, because you know they defy reinvention. Rather, you embrace the conventions of today’s fiction within its genres, because you know they work for you instead of forcing you into a corner of your own preference.

Which means you have to discover them, learn them, and master them. Whether you’ve been at this for a month or for two decades, that much is true and non-negotiable.

Making things up, outside of or in rejection of today’s principles, in either defiance or ignorance, will get you exactly nowhere.

You’ll be alone in that corner if you don’t open your heart and mind and eyes to what works, and why. The true art of fiction writing at its best, regardless of genre, is to give the expected a kick in the pants without knocking it down, to infuse it with your own voice and your own take on the world, and in a way that will reach out to touch others and open their eyes through your story, to embrace them and gift them with a reading experience they won’t soon forget, because it moved them, perhaps in ways you could not have foreseen.

That’s the magic of it, really. Readers are as discerning and individual in their desires and tastes as we writers are. And so the best we can do it reach out to them, extending a virtual hand or embrace, in the hope that they will respond.

Readers owe us nothing. And if you’re doing this right, you own them everything you have in you to deliver that stellar level of experience.

With these seven principles embedded in your vision and your process, your chances of doing so are infinitely greater than otherwise.

*****

If you’d like a peek at the cover of my new writing book, available from Writers Digest books in October 2015, entitled:

Story Fix: Transform Your Novel from Broken to Brilliant

… click on the title to go to Amazon.com, where it is available for pre-order.

*****

The Storyfix eBookstore is now open for business!

Tutorials on craft for only 99 cents…

… and a few longer ebooks for $2.99, including a conversational forum with James Scott Bell and Randy Ingermanson and me…

… and something you’ve never seen before, “the writing of a novel” presented as a case study in craft and the rocky road to publication… and more.

Click HERE to check it out.

Seven Secret Weapons That Will Make You a Better Novelist is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

The post Seven Secret Weapons That Will Make You a Better Novelist appeared first on Storyfix.com.

A Case Study in Near-Perfect Concept-Premise Integration

Plus, some Storyfix.com updates on coaching and a few new ebooks.

 

Submitting your work for evaluation and coaching can feel like a daunting experience.  Sometimes things don’t work as well as you thought, or hoped, and the feedback feels more like backpeddling than the forward-energizing catalyst that it really is.

And then there are those times when the feedback is nothing short of affirmation and tips on how to make “good” into “great.”

That’s what today’s case study is all about.  Read this one to see what a solid concept looks like, and how it empowers the subsequent concept that leverages it.

That’s the Big Ticket you’re after.  Your story may be wonderful, but when it’s built on a mountain of gold instead of the mundane sand of what we’re already doing day in and day out, you have a real shot at taking it to higher ground.

Read it here: A Case Study in Whole.

Feel free to add your thoughts and feedback so this writer can get there even quicker.

If you’d like your concept/premise put under this same microscope, and if you’ve got the 49 bucks it takes, click HERE.

******

Storyfix.com Updates

 

Kirkus Reviews – two of my novels have just been reviewed by Kirkus.  Check them out here:

The Seventh Thunder

Deadly Faux

****

New Story Coaching Level – I’ve just launched new level of story analysis, tucked (sequentially and strategically) between the Quick-Hit Concept Analysis, and the Full Story Plan Analysis… focusing on the dramatic arc of your story.

The Dramatic Arc Analysis is a Questionnaire-driven process that allows you to isolate your core dramatic story, position your protagonist within it, and assess the story physics of it relative to reader response.  It’s only $95 ($75 if you’ve already done a Quick-Hit Concept Analysis for that story).  Click HERE (scroll down when you do) for more.

Also, I’ve expanded (added options) to my Full Manuscript Evaluation service, which has been available for $1800.

That service remains (it includes integrated feedback on each scene, and often mid-scene commentary as necessary, as well as a full summary evaluation and my comments on your Full Story Plan Questionnaire, which is included.  Trust me, you won’t find this level of value elsewhere.

But if you don’t have $1800 to spend…

The NEW LEVEL of the Full Manuscript Plan is available for only $1200.  This is a full read-and-evaluation service leading to a comprehensive coaching document, in which the effectiveness of the storytelling is broken down and analyzed, with strategies for upgrade.

In essence, the lower-cost program is a solution for writers who don’t need (and don’t want to pay for) copy/line editing and scene-specific feedback, but are seeking a comprehensive evaluation of how the novel works, or not.

It’s like a book review on steroids, optimized for the author him/herself, with coaching on how to solve problems and reach for higher ground.

Contact me for more and/or how to get started.

*****

Several new Storyfix eBooks are now available on Amazon.com, from 99 cents to $2.99.  These tutorials are expansions and updates on earlier Storyfix posts that you may have missed, or wish to revisit.  They include:

Three Men and a Manuscript – a forum on storytelling craft with three writing teacher/mentor/guru types — James Scott Bell, Randy Ingermanson, and me –with a focus on what’s working in today’s rapidly evolving marketplace.   ($2.99 on Amazon.com.)

The Six Great Epiphanies of Successful Authors – helps you zero-in on what highly successful authors are doing, and how… things that the rest of us often struggle to discover and implement in our own process.  (Only 99 cents on Amazon.com.)

Stuck in the Middle - a tutorial on how and why manuscripts tend to stray – or run into a brick wall – after the setup qaurtile and before the resolution scenes, both of which are easier to visualize and execute.  This tutorial was originally an article in Writers Digest Magazine.  (Only 99 cents on Amazon.com.)

The Lie: Toxic Untruths Being Fed to Aspiring Writers Today – The title says it all.  A couple of reviewers aren’t happy (tempting to say here, with a Jack Nicholson tone, some writers can’t handle the truth…) , though one of them took the time to attempt to deliver the entire content of the book (which he acknowledges as accurate) in the review itself.  Judge for yourself.  True is true, but only one of us has the credibility to write about it, rather than simply rip it off.  (On Amazon for only 99 cents.)

When Every Month is NaNoWriMo – an award-winning ebook on making your National Novel Writing Month more than an investment of time with an emphasis on quantity, by lending a context of story quality into the writing process itself.  (On Amazon for $2.99.)

The Newbie 101 Guide to How to Really Write a Novel or Screenplay: A Manifesto on Process vs. Wandering in the Dark – not just for writers who like long titles… this book cuts through the crap of “how” to create a connection between process and effectiveness, without taking sides.  See if you have the guts to face the truth about what it takes to nail your story.  (On Amazon for 99 cents.)

The Inner Life of Deadly Faux – now here’s something you’ve never seen before: the biography of a novel, written by its author, telling the story of its arduous journey to publication, living up to its award-winning prequel and the take-aways and life lessons (not to mention writing lessons) that remain.  (114 pages of illumination, on Amazon for $2.99.)

“Gone Girl” – A Model of Modern Structure: A Storyfix.com tutorial – if you’ve read any of my many deconstructions of bestsellers on this site, you know you won’t want to miss this one.  (On Amazon for just 99 cents.)

What You May Have Missed About “50 Shades of Grey”: A Manifesto on the Cause and Effect of this Story – if you dare.  Or if you want to learn why this book exploded, despite what so many writers are saying about it.  Don’t be fooled, you want some of what she’s having.  (on Amazon for 99 cents.)

More affordable eBooks on the way, in addition to a continuing flow of free content for thinking writers.  Stay tuned.

A Case Study in Near-Perfect Concept-Premise Integration is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

The post A Case Study in Near-Perfect Concept-Premise Integration appeared first on Storyfix.com.

“The Situation” – True Dramatic Arc vs. Static Situational Narrative

A Case Study in One Dimensional Storytelling

 

There is a saboteur lurking in your writing dream, wearing a mask of perfect acceptability.  This killer is seductive, because at a glance he fits right in with your other writing guests, commiserating and kibitzing about the “nature of story” in a way that seems so… normal and harmless.

But in the end what he’s selling is toxic.  And you may not ever really know he was there… because nobody really talks about this.

It’s true, all stories present a “situation” of some kind.

You create a character and plop them into your story world, which by definition is situational.

Or at least it should be, because a novel or screenplay that simply defines a story world and a character – without giving them something to DO – is (also by definition) already broken.

If you have a “plot,” then you have a “situation.”

That said, it is entirely possible to have a situation that is not yet a plot… and that’s the hidden story killer waiting to destroy your writing dream.

The story of your summer vacation, for example.  It was summer, you were on a trip… hence, a situation.   But you’d need a lot more to turn it into a story someone will want to read… because we’ve all been on a summer vacation.

Our stories demand more  of us, as authors, than situations.

Permit me another situational analogy.

A strictly situational story is like a student away at college who never really attends classes.  He’s there, wearing the sweat shirt, partying and hanging out, but at some point he will fail if doing the required academic work doesn’t happen.  The “situation” is that he’s atschool, and you can write all about it… episodically, vividly, nostalgically…without a shred of dramatic context.  More like a diary or a student profile.

But until something happens in the story that creates and sustains a dramatic spine, it never really becomes a story at all.  Certainly not a novel or a screenplay that stands a shot at actually selling.

It’s an easy mistake to make. 

One that I see frequently in my work as a story coach.  It’s easy because we usually begin the story development process with just that – a situation – one that entices us and becomes, in our minds, the landscape for a story.

But too often the story never surfaces.  The situation remains the focus, without anything really happening within it.

I’m sharing one of those case studies with you here, in the hope that it will help you understand the critical difference between writing about a “situation” and actually creating dramatic narrative across a dramatic story arc.

The difference is everything.  It’s an essential understanding to writing a story that works.

Read the case study here: Case Study in Situational Arcs.

The take-away is in the feedback shown in this case study.  Notice that the concept is effective, but the premise never really creates a dramatic arc.  It describes a situation – and only a situation – but not anything specific that happens in a dramatic context.

What is a dramatic context? 

One in which you’ve given your hero a goal and a need, with stakes attached… and then you’ve put something in the hero’s way – an antagonistic obstacle – that calls upon the hero to take action — to respond to a threat or opportunity, and then to attack the problem — through confrontation and the embracing of inevitable conflict.

All of it with compelling STAKES in play.

If you go to a hockey game, that’s just a situation.  You can write 100,000 words about your night out at the arena, and make this situation vivid as can be.

But it’s not a dramatic arc until you include something happening that meets those dramatic criteria … like,  you have a blackout and end up framed for trying to rob the concession stand… or someone takes your seat when you go to get a hot dog and threatens bodily harm if you don’t get lost… or you meet your dream lover between periods, waiting next to the restroom, but she/he is wearing a wedding ring… and, you soon discover, is married to one of the players… who beats her/him… and, feeling the chemistry between you,  she/he asks for your help…  you get the idea.

A tour of the situation – your visit to the game – is never enough.

Notice, in this case study, that this writer never really gives us a dramatic arc to sink our reader teeth into.  There are goals and context (itself merely more situational fodder) for something in that vein, but those, too, are really just more situations, rather than problems the hero is being asked to engage with through action, or with stakes hanging in the balance.

As usual, this case study is available as a learning tool because the writer was courageous and generous enough to agree to share.  So please, if you have helpful feedback of your own, please feel free to comment and chip in.

Are you relying on a situation that is light on dramatic context?  Give your hero something juicy to do, with something hanging in the balance, and watch your story transform into something with real dramatic chops.

******

 

“The Situation” – True Dramatic Arc vs. Static Situational Narrative is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

The post “The Situation” – True Dramatic Arc vs. Static Situational Narrative appeared first on Storyfix.com.

Empowering the CORE of Your Story

Introducing a new level of affordable Story Coaching… and why you should take a look.

You don’t have to spend a couple grand to get your story professionally evaluated and coached.  There’s another way to get there, and it’s every bit as thorough and effective at the story level as a full manuscript review… for less than 10 percent of the cost.

You don’t even have to have the manuscript finished… or even started yet.

And now, it’s even better and more focused.

 

When asked about your core story, what would you say?

There really aren’t enough qualifiers in that question to point you toward the best answer, because your genre and your level of craft-speak (knowledge) become variables in that proposition.

There are three primary candidates when it comes to “core story.”

One is the inherent potential and compelling power of your CONCEPT AND PREMISE… how one feeds into, and off, the other.  Without a good answer here your story might be flat before you write a word of it.

Another is the core DRAMATIC ARC of your story, which is a function of genre and structure… and, in every genre, becomes the primary narrative engine of the story.  Get it wrong and the story loses steam before the first quartile concludes.

At this point you may be thinking… wait, isn’t the primary engine of my story the sum of my characters (leaving CHARACTER ARC as the third option among the aforementioned three)?

Well… not not so much.  In genre fiction in particular (as opposed to “literary fiction”), it is the nature and degree with which you’ve given your characters something to do that drives the story forward.

That “something to do” is your CORE DRAMATIC ARC.  Your plot.  The source and contextual impact of conflict in the story.

If that doesn’t work, or if it isn’t there at all, your characters won’t matter.

So the question — the key question, because nothing works until you get this right — is this: how IS your core story coming together?  What is the level of compelling strength and structural execution of your core dramatic arc”

Does it work?  How can it be strengthened?

And then the next question is… how do you find out?

Here’s the new Story Coaching answer to that one.

I’ve developed, and have just launched, a new level of coaching that focuses in on the Core Dramatic Arc of your story, as a facet of your story plan (or of your latest draft if you’ve gone that far).  It’s a Questionnaire-driven process, which makes it affordable at only $95.

This program stands alongside my Quick Hit Concept Review ($49) as a specialized evaluation of your story plan.  And it is a subset of my Full Story Plan level of analysis (at $245), which looks at your story according to a sequential rendering of your major story beats.

Why add this new level?

Because you can totally nail your Concept and Premise , but the story will still hobble if your Core Dramatic Arc is not optimal.

And you can get to the finish line with a full story plan, only to find that the central driving force of it – the core dramatic arc – is a 4-cylinder putt-putt installed into the body of a gleaming sports car or elegant luxury machine.

In other words, your full story and it’s gleaming new characters may be under-powered.

Here’s what the initial beta user (a writer, just like you) has to say about the new DRAMATIC ARC ANALYSIS:

“Wow, I am BLOWN AWAY by how good this is! I’m about halfway through the “first draft answers” and I’m amazed at the info you’re pulling out of me. Hurts so good! It is the most detailed, but succinct, interactive step-by-step forced look-in-the-mirror that all of us novices need, that I’ve ever seen. (And like most writerly dreamers, I have a large library of writing how-to books, including yours.)

It’s ‘way too cheap, too.”

You can opt in using the proper service level Paypal button from the Home page in the left column…or email me to request direct invoicing if you don’t have a Paypal account.

If you’re a prior client at the Quick-Hit Concept Review level… (already, or you plan to be), your fee for the Dramatic Arc Analysis is only $75.  See the drop down menu on the Home page (under Dramatic Arc Analysis), or email me for an invoice; this also means you can start now with the Quick Hit Concept Review and add the Dramatic Arc later at only $75… or you can opt in now for both at $124).

Don’t leave your best intentions stranded at the starting gate, concept in hand, with no takers.

Your story deserves the best developmental effort you can throw at it.  Another set of eyes — professional eyes — can save you more drafts and cut months or even years off your story development learning curve.

******

Got $2.99… and a hunger for more craft?

Here is one of the new ebooks I’m launching as part of my Storyfix eBookstore, which is soon to be launched (though the books are available now):

Three Men and a Manuscript:
Three Writing “Gurus” Discussing Craft, a Shifting Market and What it Takes to Create Successful Fiction

A dialogue between James Scott Bell, Randy Ingermanson and Larry Brooks on the nature and context of craft and what it means to the creation of successful fiction today.

The closer you listen to the writing conversation, especially when it comes from those who teach craft at workshops and write bestselling books on the topic (in addition to their own critically-acclaimed novels), the more commonality you notice. While it it possible to convey and cloak the basic principles of writing effective fiction with a variety of contexts and tones and approaches, which can sometimes cloud the issues, certain basic truths remain, and they are as universal among genres as they are eternal in their validity.

What’s less evident, but nonetheless true, is that there remains some “wiggle room” within the parameters of those principles, as well as a deep well of subtleties that become the tie-breakers for writers who harness them to create truly remarkable and original fiction.

In this dialogue, three leading voices in the realm of fiction craft seek clarity and precision of those principles, while culling out the subtleties that empower stories and storytellers toward greater heights. The result is, rather than the creation of an ominously higher bar, an illumination of a clear and doable path toward the reaching of that bar, no matter what one’s level of experience or genre of choice.

Click HERE to go to the Amazon.com page to order this ebook.

Empowering the CORE of Your Story is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

The post Empowering the CORE of Your Story appeared first on Storyfix.com.

Case Study: When Your Premise is as Vague as a Campaign Promise

When you think about it, the story concepts and premises we pitch – and just as often, the story concepts and premises we write from – are nothing other than promises.

We pitch a story concept and an ensuing premise to an agent with hope that they’ll want to read more.  By implication, by virtue of how we describe the story itself we are promising that they won’t be sorry.

Some writers are better salesmen than they are storytellers… the  concept is huge and universal and the premise sounds appealing, dripping with potential.  And sometimes – even if the writer has no real clue how to actually write that story – it works within a pitch… the agent likes what they hear and consents to read the story.

Story ideas, even good ones, are a dime a dozen.  Writers who can bring them to life… well, that’s why we’re here.  To become that writer.

The agent wants to believe in the promise.

And then, all too often, the inevitable happens, and when it does it sounds a lot like the other shoe falling.  The promise of the concept/premise is on the line.  Now, when it manifests as a manuscript, it had better deliver something more than a promise, more than the scent of something juicy and compelling sizzling on the grill of a storyteller’s keyboard.

Sounds a lot like a political campaign promise, doesn’t it? 

How often have we heard candidates assuring us they can solve our problems – end the war, balance the budget, get both sides of the aisle to work together – only to get elected and find themselves (and us) stuck in a political machine that renders all those promises moot and irrelevant.

They say that, and we vote for them.

It’s easy to make a promise.

When you consider that for every 100 story pitches that result in an agent’s request for more (which is about a quarter of all pitches made to agents at writing conferences, which means there are 300 other pitches that got turned down)… thus allowing us to conclude that the promise of those 100 premises was appealing – only about ten of those delivered manuscripts actually result in the agent agreeing to represent it.

That’s nine out of ten promises broken by writers who couldn’t deliver the goods, despite the ability to pitch them well.

For self-published writers, the risk here is orders of magnitude greater.  Because nobody is telling you that your promise, via your premise, came up short.  Too many writers are executing a premise that is, like that line in Top Gun, an ego writing a check the body can’t cash.

Because the promise of the premise is a story plan promise, as well.  And if that plan is lacking clarity, the road gets a lot steeper.

The reason behind this…

… is that it’s too easy to construct an idea into something that sounds like it might be fodder for a compelling story… but ultimately, in that writer’s hands, isn’t.

“The story of a woman whose search for love brings her happiness and dreams beyond her wildest imaginings.”

Yeah, that’s a nice pitch, all right.  A promise made.  A premise that never misses.  Right up there with “learn to make six figures on eBay” via an online training program.  That training products keeps on selling… on the promise alone.

But we, as writers, aren’t in that game.

We don’t get paid for promises made and naive customers fooled.  We have to keep the promises we make in our premises.  We have to deliver a story that is orders of magnitude deeper and richer and broader in executional scope than even the tastiest of premises could possibly describe.

There is a reason many compelling pitches ultimately fall flat. 

And here it is.

The pitch… the promise… the premise… is actually more an extension of the concept than it is a buildable blueprint for the story to follow.

Read that again.  It means that, while the criteria for a good CONCEPT - it describes a compelling framework for a story – is all there is…

… the criteria for a compelling PREMISE must be much more than a framework.

It must be specific.

A concept and a premise are different things. 

That’s the hidden gold here.  A premise is much more than a concept, even if/when it is an extension of that concept.  A premise is much more specific.  It fleshes out the concept.  It tells how and why… with specificity that relates to a protagonist.

A concept doesn’t even have a protagonist in it.

A premise must introduce a protagonist with a problem or an opportunity, stemming from a situation, leading to a specific call to action, a quest (that requires decision and reaction, then attack), with specific opposition in the way… with specific stakes in play… all of which will evoke the reader’s engagement on multiple levels (emotional, personal via vicariousness, intellectual, social, chemical, etc.).

I see nice concepts leading to equally promising yet remarkably vague premises all the time.  If the promise of either the concept or the premise is rich enough, an agent might still say yes, but a publisher won’t (nor will readers) unless and until the premise (which, let it be emphasized again, is a different thing than the concept) and the story that emerges from it is imbued with much more specificity.

Not just a promise.  But with something specific.

“I will offer you a job” is a promise.  A concept.  But you can’t write that story until you know what that job is.

“I will hire you as a teacher, in a third world country, working with a man you might fall in love with, or not, because he’s a terrorist sympathizer…” that is specific.  A huge difference for someone looking for a job.

Here’s a short case study in point.  Read and learn.

This is from my Quick-Hit Concept Review program, in which writers are asked to state both a concept and a premise.  Many succeed at the former – as does this writer – but fewer deliver a premise that is more than an extension of that concept, that make a promise with real teeth and compelling specificity at its heart.

Compelling specificity.  That’s the whole ballgame, right there.

Read it here: April Concept to Premise Case Study.

Feel free to comment with your own feedback and creative thinking. This writer generously and courageously consented to the sharing of this, and deserves the best thinking we can offer.

I’ve done that in my comments, as you’ll see.

Now it’s your turn to chip in.

*****

Got 99 cents?

Want to write better middles?  To get yourself out of the corner into which you’ve written yourself?  Consider this, one of my new eBooks (and part of my new Storyfix eBookstore):

Stuck in the Middle: Mid-Draft Saves For Your Story

Writing craft is always the sum of various pieces, one of the most critical – and problematic – being the middle section of a novel or screenplay. But like every link in a chain, the middle depends on how you got there and where you’re headed, which is where the challenges may reside. This tutorial focuses on your middle narrative – including the all-important mid-point story milestone – in context to overriding principles of story structure, with criteria and step-by-step diagnostics and fixes for the most problematic story middles, and the writers who are stuck there.

Included is a bonus article: “The Nine Sequential Missions of Story Architecture,” which is an introduction to the principles of story structure.

This tutorial first appeared as an article in Writers Digest Magazine (January 2014).

*****

Read a nice interview I did with Sue Coletta on her website, Crime Writer Blog.  She’s an example of an author who is soaking up craft as fast as she finds it, with several titles available.

You can also read her review of my novel, “The Seventh Thunder” … HERE.

Case Study: When Your Premise is as Vague as a Campaign Promise is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

The post Case Study: When Your Premise is as Vague as a Campaign Promise appeared first on Storyfix.com.

Toxic Untruths Being Fed to Aspiring Writers Today … And How It Can Kill Your Writing Dream

Something new here at Storyfix.com – Announcing the launch of …
…The Storyfix eBo0kstore.

 

A bigger post on this is forthcoming, but I wanted to get this into motion sooner than later.  At the launch I’ll have about six SHORT tutorial ebooks available, from 99 cents to a whopping $2.99.  Some of these are expansions on earlier posts, some are new content.

Why?  Because it’s been proven that old, archived content on a robust website is largely lost.  It goes undiscovered.  It’s been shown that publishing them, and charging a few cents for them, actually enlists a new and larger audience.

Today I’m introducing you to one of about ten titles for this launch, eight of which are new.  Today’s intro:

The Lie: Toxic Untruths Being Fed to Aspiring Writers Today…  And How It Can Kill Your Writing Dream

It’s one big truckload of helpful, even career-saving thinking… for only 99 cents.

Writers like James Scott Bell and Randy Ingermanson and Jennifer Blanchard are spreading the absolutely golden gospel of truth about storytelling and the process of engaging with it.  And yet, some of the “conventional wisdom” floating around out there isn’t as much “a lie” as it is a pile of half-truths and spun belief systems… which amount to a “lie” when regarded as a whole.

Newer writers, in particular, are victimized by these untruths and half-truths at an alarming rate.  Much of it comes from other writers, often in online forums, who preach their own often unenlightened beliefs, which comes off as advice and coaching… when it fact, it is just noise.

Sorting through the noise is the challenge.  This ebook will help you do just that.

From the front copy on Amazon:

Among avocations, the “way to write a novel” is perhaps among the most debated, written about and obscured of any of the available conventional wisdoms to be found. The conversation gets downright political when you consider that, truly, there is no one way to go about it, and just as certainly, no right way or wrong way.

Writers are left to discover “their” way, often choosing from a menu of approaches floating among the flotsam and jetsam of that available writing conversation. But without benefit of experience and the pain of trial and error, attaching veracity and function to the resume of the spokesperson for one’s chosen truth — to often from the mouths of the uninitiated — can have devastating effects. Even worse, some writers spend decades assuming there is indeed only one way, and that any other way is just counter-intuitive noise to be avoided.

With writing, pain is optional. And yet, for many it remains oh-so-romantic a context for the creation of stories.

Sooner or later, though, after years of frustration and failure, some writers quietly look elsewhere for writing truths that, upon closer examination, simply make more sense, even when it comes to the process of idea and narrative development.

In this 2500 word tutorial, blogger and bestselling writing mentor Larry Brooks exposes what he calls “The Lie” about how and why novels work, and the path toward achieving that milestone, and thus, how and why the prescribed approach to achieving those criteria is a critical decision.

It isn’t a question of planning or plotting, outlining or drafting, because indeed, writers working at either end of those spectrums have verifiable success to show for it. Pick your endorser, they await in both camps. The question resides at a deeper level of truth, one that defines process as the search for what works, rather than the means by which one embarks upon the journey to discover it. The difference is subtle yet powerful, and it can change a writer’s career with a simple acknowledgement that they may indeed be going about this all wrong, and that a better approach may not require adopting a less comfortable approach to story development after all.

Click HERE to pick up your Kindle edition of this ebook.

Next up… a case study on concept colliding with premise… and then, a fuller introduction and launch of the new eBookstore, with titles in much the same vein as the one discussed here.

Thanks for your support.

Larry

Toxic Untruths Being Fed to Aspiring Writers Today … And How It Can Kill Your Writing Dream is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

The post Toxic Untruths Being Fed to Aspiring Writers Today … And How It Can Kill Your Writing Dream appeared first on Storyfix.com.

The Randy Ingermanson Interview

The Co-Author of Writing Fiction For Dummies Waxes Wise on Craft, Process and Survival in a Changing Marketplace

Odds are you’re aware of Randy Ingermanson’s body of work.  His #1 bestselling book. One of the most successful writing e-Zines… ever. The Snowflake Method. His Advanced Fiction Writing Website. An annual slate of powerful writing workshops. Or his award winning suspense and science fiction novels that are infused with his background as a physicist.

To say Randy is prolific is an understatement.  But he is also two other things.  He’s one of the smartest guys in the writing game, which serves the other thing… he’s one of the most generous teachers and bloggers and writing “guru” types anywhere.

This isn’t his first Storyfix interview.  I invited him back because the market has shifted since his last visit, a topic he writes about with foresight and note-worthy veracity.

Much of that vast wisdom follows here. Read and learn. And enjoy.

*****

Larry: Since this isn’t your first interview here on Storyfix, let’s begin with some catchup.  What’s new with you, your newsletter (Advanced Fiction Writing) and your fiction?

Randy: Not much has changed with my Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine.  I’ve been publishing it now for more than ten years, and I have nearly 12,000 readers.

As for my fiction, I’ve finished putting all my previously published novels back into print as e-books and I’m now working on new books.  The last year has been excellent.  I’m earning more as an indie author than I ever did in traditional publishing, and I’m having more fun.

Larry: What might surprise readers – yours or mine – about your writing process, beliefs or quirks?

Randy: I have a confession to make.  I tried recently to cut some corners by not practicing what I preach.  And I got myself in trouble.  Here’s what happened:

I’m known around the world as the Snowflake Guy, in honor of my Snowflake method of writing a novel.  Last year I decided to write very short book about the Snowflake method, written as a story.  I thought I wouldn’t need to use the Snowflake Method on the story, because it was only going to be about 25,000 words.

Wrong!  I got about 3/4 of the way into the story and painted myself into a corner and couldn’t get out.  So I went back to the beginning, worked through my Snowflake process, and got the story back on track.  The lesson I learned is that I have to plan my stories, always.  I can’t cut corners just because the story is short.

Larry: A little over a year or so ago you rebooted your massively successful newsletter, basically starting over relative to subscriber base. And yet, in that short time you’ve amassed a significant readership and (since you post new subscriptions monthly) it’s growing very rapidly.  Do you market for that growth, or is it all organic word-of-mouth?  I won’t lie… would love to know how you’re doing that so I can duplicate the strategy here.

Randy: Here’s what happened.  I had been hosting my email service on 1ShoppingCart.com for years and I had about 30,000 readers.  When I gave my web site a facelift a couple of years ago, I decided to transfer my email list to MailChimp, because they have great deliverability rates.  And I decided to make sure that all my subscribers really, really wanted to stay on the list.  So I asked them all to resubscribe.  I wound up with a bit more than 5000 who did it.  That was fine with me.  I had fewer subscribers, but everybody on the list really wanted to be there.

What happens is that people get interested in writing, they subscribe to my e-zine, they read it for a while, and then they lose interest.  But they don’t unsubscribe.  Over time, my list gets bigger but I’m carrying along a lot of people who have moved on to other things.  And I have to pay for all those names on my list, whether they read my e-zine or not.  So I was quite happy to trim things down.

As for growing the list, I don’t really do anything actively to make it happen.  I’ve got a subscription box on every page of my web site, and it gives people an incentive to sign up.  Every month, about 300 new people sign up.  That’s out of about 100,000 page views on my site.  So I’d say that if you want more people to sign up, you have to pull more traffic.

Larry: Blogging guru Jon Morrow says that newsletters are dead.  But yours defies that… is that because it’s more a blog (yet independent of a website) in terms of content and distribution?

Randy: I don’t believe e-mail is dead. (Larry note: to be fair, Morrow agrees, it’s the old RSS newsletters he’s referring to.)

Darren Rowse, the guy who runs ProBlogger.net, did a study a couple of years ago to see where his sales were coming from.  He found that about 3% of his sales came from his affiliates, 3% came from social media, 7% came from his blog, and 87% came from his e-mail list.  E-mail rocks as far as a marketing tool.  There is nothing like e-mail.  You can read Darren’s results here:

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2013/06/26/social-media-whats-it-good-for/

I’ll tell you my secret for making my e-zine a success.  But first, a little context:  the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine is free and it takes me a full working day—about 8 hours—to write the content for each issue.  I write three articles every month, each article about 1000 words.  There’s an article on Organization, an article about Craft, and an article about Marketing.

Now here’s the secret:  I put my very best ideas out there every month.  I think that’s critical.  When you give stuff away for free, give away some of your very best stuff.  Give away some of your gold.  That’s the best way to market the rest of your gold—the part of your gold that you sell.

I don’t do any marketing on Facebook or Twitter.  I don’t blog very often anymore.  Mainly, I just send out my e-zine each month.  And it’s working very, very well for me.

Larry: One of my favorite posts of yours had to do with authors cultivating and growing a branded focus among targeted readers in your genre/niche, rather than marketing to other writers via writing sites (like this one).  But other than Goodreads that’s not a remotely easy demographic to isolate… how are you doing it, and how is that working for you?

I have a fundamental belief about marketing:  You should market only to your Target Audience.  Not to anyone else, just your Target Audience.

The problem is that it’s hard to do that.  Most authors make two mistakes here:

1) They define their Target Audience in terms of demographics—age, gender, social status, etc.

2) They try to find their Target Audience.

#1 is a mistake because your Target Audience is much better defined in terms of their psychographics—the set of emotional hot buttons they want pushed when they read a novel.  So you need to decide what emotional hot buttons your fiction is going to push.  Then your Target Audience is just the set of people who respond to those hot buttons.  When you write your books, focus on writing the stuff that will delight your Target Audience.  This is very freeing.  You don’t have to write to please “everybody.”  Just write to please a small set of people.

#2 is a mistake because you have no way to find your Target Audience.  You’ll do much better when you make it easy for them to find you.  And one way to do that is make the first book in a series permanently free.

Larry: Last year you relaunched most (or all?) of your titles under your own independent publishing brand.  What was that like (I sensed it was long, arduous and really fun), and what has the response been relative to your expectations?  What have you learned from that?

Randy: I had a series of three books that had been published back in the early 2000s.  These books are NOT for everybody.  They’re time-travel suspense.  They involve a young female Jewish-Christian archaeologist and an agnostic Israeli theoretical physicist.  These two characters are attracted to each other, but they can’t agree on anything, and they’re thrown back in time to first-century Jerusalem, where there’s a plot going on to kill the apostle Paul.  (This is based on an actual historical incident in about the year AD 57 in Jerusalem, when forty young zealots made a pact to assassinate Paul.  Paul’s own nephew was in on the plot.)

Now, as I said, this series is not for everyone.  There’s too much religion for some people and too much science for others.  Only a small fraction of all readers would be remotely interested in these books.  I originally published the series with a couple of Christian publishers, and the books didn’t sell very well.  They won several awards, and then they went out of print.  Ten years went by, and the whole project seemed dead.

Last year about this time, I hired a graphic designer to give me new cover art.  I formatted the books as e-books.  Then I posted them all on the usual retailers (Amazon, B&N, Apple iBooks, and so on.)  And I made Book #1 free, permanently.

I put the books in the Time Travel category and in the Christian Suspense category.  Two wildly different categories.  Then I just sat back to see what happened.

The results have been pretty cool.  I’ve given away about 122,000 copies of Book 1.  It now has over 500 reviews on Amazon.  Combined revenue for the series in the last 9 months has been about $18,000.  And I’ve hardly done any promotion.  I’ve bought a couple of BookBub ads, and a few other paid promos like that.  I’ve mentioned the books in my e-zine.

Other than that, I don’t do much active promotion.  I’m a big fan of passive promotion.  At the end of each book, I have a link to the online sales page for the next book in the series.

Here’s what’s happening:  Lots of people download Book #1, which is free.  Nothing attracts like “free.”  But most people don’t read every free book they download.  And if they do read it, most of the time, they aren’t in the Target Audience for the book.  If they really hate it, they might write a bad review.  If they really LOVE it, they buy the next book in the series.  And they write a review.  And they sign up for my e-mail list.  So over time, my Target Audience finds me.  And once I’ve got them in my e-mail list, I can tell them about new books in the future.

Permafree is win-win-win.  Readers win because they can try new authors for free.  Authors win because they are giving their Target Audience a way to find them, with no effort by the author. The online retailers win because they sell more books.

The less time you spend marketing, the more time you can spend writing.

Larry: You can’t Google writing craft without running into a mention of your famous Snowflake method.  What’s ahead for that, any new books or software?  What’s the best way for readers to get the 411/101 on the Snowflake method these days?

Randy: The Snowflake Method has been the most successful thing I’ve ever done.  It’s a series of ten steps that I use to write the first draft of my novel.  I build up a nicely structured story by starting with a one-sentence summary and expanding it out.  I also build up the characters at the same time.  I use a LOT of the same ideas that you teach in your book STORY ENGINEERING.  You and I are very much on the same page about story structure, character arcs, and that sort of thing.

Back around 2003, I posted an article on my web site.  The article is called “The Snowflake Method for Designing a Novel” and you can read it here for free:  http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/

That one article on my site gets about 50,000 page views per month.  It’s had over 4.5 million page views since I first posted it.  It brings me boatloads of traffic.

Some people love the Snowflake Method.  Some people hate it.  Some don’t care one way or another.  I’m just happy that it helps people.  I hear from people all the time who tell me that the method has given them hope that they can write a novel.  I use the Snowflake Method because it’s the best way I know to jumpstart my creativity.  It doesn’t make me more creative.  I just helps channel my creativity in the right direction at the right time.

One young woman who found my Snowflake page got so inspired, she wrote her novel in a couple of months.  Then she got an agent.  Within a few months, the agent sold a two-book deal to Hyperion.  The book got some nice reviews when it came out.  The woman lives in Nigeria, so she submitted her book for the Africa Commonwealth Prize in the debut category, and it won!  She had some talent, and the Snowflake Method gave her the inspiration to do what she was naturally gifted to do.  It was a small boost, but an important one.

I’ve got a book out now on the Snowflake Method.  The title is HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL USING THE SNOWFLAKE METHOD, and it’s been doing fantastically well.  It’s my best-selling book right now.

I’ve also got a powerful software tool, Snowflake Pro, which guides you through the process.  The Snowflake Method asks you to make some serious effort, and the software makes it a bit easier.  I use Snowflake Pro as the first stage in my own story development.  Snowflake Pro is for sale on my web site here:  http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/product/snowflake-pro-software/

Larry: With all the noise about self-publishing and the demise of traditional publishing, and the associated tsunami of self-published product out there, do you believe that writing itself – the nature and criteria for effective storytelling – is changing or evolving in any discernible way?  The physics of the phenomenon force the quality bar downward, yet some of these books are really selling.  Has there been a shift in the way writers should create their stories in light of this drastically evolving marketplace?

Randy: The big thing I’m seeing is the trend to shorter works and more series.

Most readers of e-books have a certain price point that they like best.  For a lot of readers, this is around $2.99, which is a good balance between quality and cost.

A long book at $2.99 doesn’t sell any more copies than a short book at $2.99.  But the long book takes longer to write.

So there’s an incentive for authors to writer shorter books.  Novellas have made a huge comeback.  A lot of novelists are writing 60k or 70k words per book, instead of 100k like they used to.

Series are doing very well, because when a reader finds a book they love, they want more books “just like it only different.”  And a series is the best way to fulfill that wish.

I’ve learned not to judge.  “Quality” means that you delight your Target Audience.  If you’re making readers happy, then you’re giving them quality.  Now I do believe that we should always try to write better.  But we should also keep asking how to delight our readers.

Larry: What percentage of your time is spent on coaching, blogging and other “guru” work, versus focusing on your own fiction?  And within that latter category, what percentage of that is spent on actually writing versus publishing and marketing your work?

I do no coaching at all.  I would like to blog every week, but my life is a perfect storm right now, and blogging every two months is closer to what I can handle.

I do teach at a few conferences every year.  This year I’m teaching at three.  I’m going to a fourth but won’t teach there.  That’s all I can manage right now.

Part of my time-crunch is that I have a part-time day job.  I work about half time as Director of Software Engineering at a biotech company in San Diego.  I live in Washington State, so I do all of this via the web.  It works out pretty well, and I get to do some science, but it also takes up about half my time.  That’s why I just can’t do coaching.

I try to spend about 2 hours per day in production.  That’s either writing, or editing, or formatting, or dealing with the graphic designer, or uploading to retailers.

I’m not a big fan of “active marketing”—time spent trying to find new readers.  I do a bit of “passive marketing” but not very much.  Probably the biggest marketing task I do every month is writing my free e-zine.  That takes 8 hours per month.  I enjoy it, and I focus on creating new ideas.  The only actual ad in the e-zine is one column I call “Randy’s Daily Deal” where I have some special price for one of my books.  I don’t take paid ads.

The rest of my time goes into the dreaded administrative bucket.  Accounting.  Travel.  That sort of thing.

Larry: What’s the most effective marketing strategy for self published authors today, and has that shifted from the obvious “social media” generalization, which is, for the most part, where writers find themselves marketing to other writers?

Randy: I don’t ever try to market my fiction to other writers.  My Target Audience is too small, and the set of writers is too small.  The intersection of those two sets is very small.

I do a bit of marketing to other writers for my products on “how to write fiction”.  But I do it in a way that seems best to me—I help people.  I teach at conferences, and work the critique table.  I belong to online e-mail groups and help people.  I have my blog, which used to be much more active.  I have my e-zine, which helps thousands of people.  Basically, I just give away ideas.  I don’t worry too much about money.  (Having a day job is one way to vastly reduce the worries about money.  I’m grateful I have a good one.)

My general marketing strategy is this:  Give away as much stuff as you possibly can for free.  Create products that you can sell at a fair price.  Don’t spend a lot of time promoting yourself.

I have no idea whether this is optimal, but it works well for me and I enjoy it.

Larry: What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received… and what’s the worst ( misleading, out-dated or just plain wrong)?

Randy:  Best – You get better at writing by writing.

Worst –  You don’t need to plan your writing—just let it flow.  (This advice is essentially the “seat-of-the-pants” method of writing, and it works for many great writers.  Stephen King is a pantser.  Lots of writers are.  But it absolutely doesn’t work for me.  If I tried to be a pantser, I’d freeze up.  There’s a moral here—what works for one writer may not work for another.)

Larry: Looking ahead two years, what will be different in your writing life compared to today?

Randy: My writing income last year as an indie was better than any three years I ever had during my career as a traditionally published writer.  So my plan is to keep putting out books and hope to ramp up sales to the point where I don’t need a day job.  Maybe I’ll get there and maybe not.  But it’s possible, and I’m going to push for it.

I think that could happen in a couple of years.

Many thanks to Randy for his generous responses and very motivating wisdom.  If you haven’t read his stuff, I encourage you to sign up for his newsletter, read Writing Fiction for Dummies, grab one of his novels, or soak up his new Snowflake book as if it is a survival guide.  Which it is.

*****

Want more Randy?

A new short ebook – Three Men and a Manuscript – where Randy, James Scott Bell and myself go deep into the issue of what makes fiction work, and why, is a day or two out from publication (it first appeared as a post on this site).  It’s a virtual workshop in its own right.  Look for it soon.

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Major Story Coaching Changes… Soon

In fact, a new level of coaching service – The Dramatic Arc Analysis – is already listed on the Coaching page, at an affordable $95 . This fits between the Quick Hit Concept Review ($49) and the more robust Full Story Plan Evaluation ($245) to create a comprehensive idea-to-polished-draft suite of tutorial-based coaching experiences, each with personal feedback on your story intentions.

Stay tuned for more on this exciting new service!

*****

This just in…

Robert Dugoni’s hit, “My Sisters Grave,” has just been nominated by the International Thriller Writers for Best Original Thriller!  See his recent Storyfix interview, including thoughts on how he developed and positioned this novel… HERE.

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Storyfix Reader Publishes First Novel!

Huge congrats to Julian Venables, whose YA novel “The Astrologer’s Apprentice” is now available on Amazon (click HERE to check it out).

Julian was one of my coaching clients early in the story development process, and I recall the novel as a richly evoked historical set against the backdrop of plague and the Great Fire in seventeenth century London, within the arena of astrology and romance.  So if that sounds fun and vicarious – and it certainly is, who wouldn’t want to fall in love with an apprentice astrologer making his way through famine-infested London amidst a devastating fire? – please support Julian and give it a go.

The Randy Ingermanson Interview is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

The post The Randy Ingermanson Interview appeared first on Storyfix.com.

Art Holcomb on Rewriting Your Novel or Screenplay

The 6 Most Common Problems

in a Rewrite
By Art Holcomb

Okay, so . . .

You’ve just finished your first draft – or maybe your 10th draft – of your work-in-progress and you suddenly realize that there’s a problem you haven’t considered. You’ve become so intimate with the characters and their actions that you can no longer see where the potential problems are. You’re wondering now what errors you can no longer see but will be evident to the first editor or agent you send this to. You’re afraid you no longer have the perspective you need to see the story clearly.

Take a breath and relax.

You’ve read Larry’s books and posts. You know that the rewrite is where all your knowledge of story and craft must come into play. You’re ready to make the next pass at the work – the one that brings it all home.

So, let’s start with the basics that professional writers use before the rewrite process begins:

DO NOT show this draft to anyone: You’re not ready for a critique by others until you give it this final review now. Make sure you save your very best efforts for your first reader.

Start by letting the story cool for a while: You need some real distance from the story, so plan to put it away for a while as you turn your attention to your next project. A month would be great but set it aside for at least a couple of weeks – just long enough for your conscious mind to see the story anew. You’ll be surprised at the difference it can make in the rewrite.

Print it out: I find that editing is always better when I can feel the paper, physically take my red pen to the manuscript and give myself permission to carve the thing up by hand. It’s all too easy to start moving words and paragraphs around on the screen before you see the story in its entirety.

Read it out loud: I know of nothing more important to the rewriting process than hearing the words I’ve written. By reading the whole story out loud, you can hear whether the dialogue and the descriptions are working. You’ll identify all those phrases that you thought were great but that now just sound silly in the light of day. The problems on the page become instantly clearer when your brain translates these thoughts to actual sounds.

Have at it! The time has come (if you haven’t done it before) for you to be ruthless about the changes you know in your heart need to be made. What isn’t working? What sounds bad when you read it aloud? Where do you stray from the story’s mission? The time has come to kill your darlings! Consider removing all those passages that you absolutely love but which lead your story astray. Strike out anything that simply isn’t working. What remains will be the framework you need to make the story so much better.

The question now is – what else should I be looking for?

What problems are there likely to be that I’m just not seeing?

I’ve been writing for more than thirty years and have seen a lot of problem-ridden stories: by my students, my peers and by my own hand. And while there are always difficulties that are unique to each piece of writing, problems and blind spots occur which are common to all writers.

Below are the six most common – and typically missed – problems in a rewrite:

1. The protagonist does not have a strong enough goal: Does your protagonist burn? Does he need so badly to achieve his story goal that it feels like a life-or-death moment for him? Of course, it doesn’t have to be actually life-and-death, but you need to have your hero feel so strongly about his goal that, should he fail, his life and/or the lives of those he cares about will never be the same. If your hero is wandering around your story, working toward a goal that he, quite frankly, could take or leave, why should the reader be emotionally involved enough to want to turn the page?

2. There’s no urgency to the protagonist’s goal: Urgency means tension and tension means suspense – which leads to the ever-important CONFLICT. The panic, resolve and determination that your hero feels as he faces ever-increasing trials and dangers is contagious for the reader. Your fans want to feel that emotion right alongside your hero. Is there a looming deadline or impending cataclysm on the horizon for your characters? Make it plain, sing it loud, rewrite it passionately to make sure that both reader and protagonist are on the same page.

3. The characters don’t have enough arc: You’re writing a novel – not a play or a script for TV. You have all the room in the world to complicate and develop the emotional change you’re planning for your hero. It isn’t enough to take him from his naïve self in the beginning (Point A) to the more evolved creature you’re planning for the end (Point C). That kind of simplistic arc is hard for the reader to buy into. Instead, make the sure you include at least Point B – the point when your hero is at his lowest, ready to just lay down and die because the journey so far has just about killed him. Take your hero to the absolute depths of despair before you show him a way out. Torture him! Torment him! Lead him through Point B – the darkest moment of his life. That’s the way you build a story people will want to read.

4. The stakes are too low/ the obstacles too easy to overcome: We’ve talked here before about Goals, Obstacles and Stakes – the Holy Trinity of Character Development – and you need to take a good, long look at these last two factors. Did the hero really have a good enough reason to enter this story in the first place? Did he easily overcome the problems you threw at him? As with the discussion of goals above, a weak set of obstacles and a mediocre motivation equals a frail and pointless hero, no matter how well you’ve written him. You have to amp it up! Let the challenges the hero faces grow in both intensity and consequence as the story goes on. Make the stakes involved as close to a do-or-die scenario as you can possibly manage. Your readers will thank you for it – by buying your next book!

5. The characters’ dialogue sounds too similar: I see this all the time. Beginning novelists and screenwriters alike often end up with characters you couldn’t tell apart in the dark by their dialogue. They either all sound like the writer himself or they are subconsciously written like caricatures – and is so doesn’t need to be that way.

One secret from writer/director Joss Whedon of Buffy/Avenger fame is to perfect 5 or 6 different sounding characters – or archetypes – from different walks of life to inhabit ALL your stories in the beginning and then tweak them as needed for the individual situation. Start small: a working stiff, a southern gentleman, a rich and snoot aristocrat, a lost teen, a world-weary senior, and an “Everyman/woman” – whatever combination makes that most sense to you and your style. You don’t need many to start with and you can use these foundational archetypes to build new powerful and individual characters.

6. The dialogue lacks subtext: Nothing is more boring than a character who says exactly what they’re thinking and feeling every time they open their mouth. Don’t do that! You want to avoid that like the three week old Chinese take-out that’s still in your fridge.

One rule of thumb is “Dialogue is what they say. Subtext is what they really mean.” So imply, hint, infer, and deceive! That is how people really talk, and anything you can do to get that kind of dialogue out of your characters will build the bond between your hero and the audience, leaving them constantly hungry for more for your literary creamy goodness.

So get back in there and get to work – your story needs you!

Art

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Frequent Storyfix contributor Art Holcomb is a screenwriter and comic book creator. His most recent comic book property is THE AMBASSADOR and his most recent project for TV is entitled THE STREWN.  His new writing book is tentatively entitled “SAVE YOUR STORY: How to Resurrect Your Abandoned Story and Get It Written NOW!” (Release TBA.)

Art Holcomb on Rewriting Your Novel or Screenplay is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

The post Art Holcomb on Rewriting Your Novel or Screenplay appeared first on Storyfix.com.

Wisdom, Wit and War Stories from An “A-List” NY Times Bestselling Novelist

An Interview with Robert Dugoni, author of “My Sister’s Grave.”

If you’ve haven’t heard of My Sister’s Grave, you haven’t been paying attention to the fiction world in a while.  The book was a recent top-1o New York Times Bestseller, currently the #1 legal thriller on Amazon, has (as of this writing) 6,437 reviews on Amazon, and is basically all over the place – bookstore windows and shelves, Amazon mailers, in people’s laps at Starbucks..

This is as big as it gets, from an author who has been there before.  And it isn’t Robert Dugoni’s first visit to the NY Times bestseller list, either, though his enthusiasm and humble joy (as seen on his Facebook page) is as infectious as a first-timer.

I was fortunate to make his acquaintance last year, when a mutual friend suggested I reach out for a blurb for my new novel, “Deadly Faux.”   He read the book – like many at that level, he doesn’t blurb just anything, he has to really love it – and it turned out well for me.  He did love it, and his blurb is a shining endorsement that I treasure.

I invited Bob to do this interview, and he didn’t hesitate.  He’s a class act, in addition to being a wise and accomplished author with lots to share with us.

The Interview

LB: Let’s start with the explosive breakout success of your latest novel, “My Sister’s Grave.” All of your books have been well reviewed and have achieved commercial success… so how do you explain this particular book? What’s different about it, if anything, and was that a strategic decision on your part, or an escalation in craft? Or was it, as much as anything (because you were a stellar novelist before, and it’s hard to take “stellar” to an even higher qualitative level) market timing or some escalation of your publisher’s promotion or distribution effort?

RD: I think it was a combination of things. As a writer, you’re always trying to get better and I do believe I am a better writer than I was when I wrote The Jury Master. I also deliberately moved away from a straight legal thriller to a police procedural, which has a wider audience in the mystery/thriller genre.

Second, the subject matter of My Sister’s Grave seems to have touched an emotional place in many people. I receive at least one email a day from someone who is a relative of a victim of violent crime. The relationship between the two sisters, in particular, is powerful to many people who have read the book.

Third, my publisher, Thomas & Mercer, has done an outstanding job getting this book into as many readers’ hands as possible. Even three months out they continue to find ways to promote the book and get it into new stores. The more people who’ve read it, the more they’ve talked about it. The more they talk about it, the more others read it. This was truly a partnership and for that I am very grateful.

LB: Some cynics say – and I’ve said this myself – that some bestsellers are ordained as much as they earn the tag. Which means, sometimes an author’s earlier work is every bit as good as the book that suddenly makes them a Very Big Deal. Do you agree, or am I (having achieved critical success but nothing close to this) simply a cynic after all?

RD: I agree that there are a lot of talented writers out there writing very good books who aren’t being promoted enough, or correctly, and so are not being read widely.  I say all the time that best seller doesn’t necessarily mean best written.  Sometimes a book just touches people and the word of mouth spreads.  Sometimes the publisher promotes the heck out of a good book and sales become great.  With the success of My Sister’s Grave, a whole new audience has found my earlier novels and readers are really enjoying them. They’re the same books I wrote years ago, but now they’re being more widely read.  A third factor is pricing.  In this day and age, a book price can be the difference between 500 people reading it and 500,000.  I’ve learned that there are many people on fixed incomes who love to read 10 books a week and can’t afford to pay even $7.99 for a paperback, so they’re selective.

LB: Dennis Lehane (an example of the above) attributes the ignition of Mystic River to a killer review in People Magazine, among other venues. What is the role of reviews in the bestseller phenomenon, and did reviews have a role in yours?

RD: I definitely think that reviews in a major publication can do wonders for a book. The Jury Master took off after a killer review in the Seattle Times and then Parade Magazine. But honestly, after 9 novels and a non-fiction book, I’m convinced it is word of mouth. When readers start talking about your book they sell it for you in a way that no advertisement or review could.

LB: Were you surprised by the breakout success of MSG, and when/how did you know it was in full swing?

RD: I honestly believed I’d written a strong novel. I knew the relationship between the sisters would be powerful, but no, I didn’t expect this type of runaway success. I don’t think anyone really can. I was amazed when we hit 1,000 reviews and I’m amazed we’ve hit 6,000. The moment I knew things were really happening was when I realized that 95% of the reviews on all the review sites were 4 and 5 stars. I knew that meant there were a lot of people who were going to turn to family and friends and say, “You should read this book.”

LB: You released a short story (The Academy) two months before the November ’14 release of My Sisters’s Grave, and then a non-fiction biography (The Cyanide Canary, with Joseph Hilldorfer) a month after, as well as a couple of other titles (which I assume were republished titles). Was the timing of these releases a strategy tactic relative to the latter?

RD: I have a terrific agent and she was able to secure the rights back to two novels, Murder One and The Conviction and the non-fiction book, The Cyanide Canary. We were aware of the significant promotional campaign T&M planned for My Sister’s Grave and made the business decision to re-release those books at the same time hoping people who liked My Sister’s Grave would want to read them. The Academy was originally going to be part of a novel, but my agent liked it so much she thought it might be strong as a short story. I didn’t want to charge readers for a short story. Readers have been very loyal to me and my intent was to give away The Academy for free. It was not intended as a gimmick to get people to buy My Sister’s Grave. You don’t have to read it to understand My Sister’s Grave. They are separate and complete stories.

LB: You aren’t new to the NY Times bestseller list… how is the experience this time around compared to the first?

RD: This time was a surprise to everyone. The NY Times has been reluctant, as I understand it, to include Amazon sales. So this meant the book was selling widely. The other anomaly was that the book came out in November but hit the list in February. That meant that it started to really take off, people were talking about it. For an author that was incredibly satisfying and pleasing. We popped the cork on a bottle of champagne at the house to celebrate that first Friday when we got the news and the next two weeks weren’t bad either.

LB: How does a “republishing” event even happen? For me, rights to my first four novels were returned to me (after eight years) by Penguin-Putnam, and my agent landed a deal at Turner Publishing to republish them as trade paperbacks. What was your experience and path toward your new/current publisher?

RD: When we got the rights back to my three books, Thomas & Mercer was terrific about guiding us on how best to get them out to the public. We decided to republish them myself through the Kindle Direct Program. My agent has an agent in her office who is a whiz at this stuff, and she worked quickly to get the books re-packaged and up on the kindle site with strong placement. The sales have been incredibly strong and that has really been special to me to know so many more readers are reading those novels.

LB: You are publishing with Thomas and Mercer, an Amazon company that also releases in traditional bookstores. T&M is widely held as a response to new digital markets, and they’re taking on name authors (like you) who were previously published by so-called “Big 5″ houses. How did you end up there, and what’s the experience like compared to the old days?

RD: When my agent was shopping My Sister’s Grave, Thomas & Mercer invited me to lunch. Frankly, they blew me away. The energy at the table was incredible. They had a game plan already in place on how to sell not only My Sister’s Grave, but also a game plan for sequels and thoughts on how to sell my backlist. I found them to be incredibly smart and pro-active.

I had good experiences with my other publishers. I’ve met some terrific people. If anything, I think Thomas & Mercer is more involved and always looking for a way to keep selling my book, even months after publication. The promotions are incredible. I just learned my book will be in 600 Sam’s Stores and 1500 Wall Mart’s starting in March. Another marketing campaign is going to start in April. The book will be released in Germany in April and in Italy later in the year. They work hard to make a book successful. The editing process is also intense. We work together back in forth over a month to get a completed manuscript. Finally, the author team never fails to make sure everything is going well, that I’m happy with how things are progressing. They seek my input on titles and covers and when we hit sales benchmarks they’re quick to congratulate me with a gift. Feels like a home, frankly.

LB: What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever heard? And – I gotta ask – the worst?

RD: The best writing advice I’ve received is writer’s write. It’s a job and you have to take it seriously. There are a lot of reasons not to write. You have to find the reasons to sit in a chair on a beautiful day and go to work.

More and more I think the worst advice is “show don’t tell”. I know this will be controversial, but the problem is people don’t understand what that means. It is impossible not to tell in a 400 page novel. Of course you have to do some telling. The show relates to the essence of the character. I see so many writers stringing out long metaphors and similes because they don’t believe they can simply say, “He was six feet tall.” All that does is cause an excess of words and strained descriptions.

LB: You were kind enough to provide a blurb for my recent novel, Deadly Faux.  Bestselling authors don’t do this lightly, they have to really like a book before putting their name on it… which is why I was/am so excited to have your very enthusiastic endorsement. How many blurb requests do you get, and what gets your attention to spend the time, which is significant? What do you do in the sad event that you don’t really like the book?

RD: I loved Deadly Faux. That was an easy blurb for me because the protagonist was engaging and the plot was intricate and the writing was superb. It was my kind of novel.

I get asked to blurb quite a bit now. The problem is I just don’t have enough time to do them all. I won’t blurb a book unless I’ve read it all the way through. It’s important that I’m honest. I have had to say no a couple of times. I just explain to the writer that not every book is for every reader. It doesn’t mean it isn’t a good book, it just wasn’t right for me. I had one guy not take it very well. Even though I’d blurbed his prior book favorably, and he used it in marketing, he decided to go on Goodreads and “get even” by giving me two stars for My Sister’s Grave. I had a good laugh about it. No good deed goes unpunished, right?

LB: You have a new novel releasing in September, a sequel to My Sister’s Closet (thus, establishing The Tracy Crosswhite series), entitled, Her Last Breath. Based on that timing, it appears this was the plan all along, correct? Or was the new book rushed into the schedule based on the success of Sister’s?

RD: I knew I wanted to do at least three books in the Crosswhite series and Thomas & Mercer was open to that. Now that MSG has done so well, there might be more. I won’t rush a book. I write fast, but I am a really slow editor. I’m by no means a wordsmith and I’ll never win a Pulitzer for my writing. I have to really work hard at it and work hard at the editing so I don’t make embarrassing mistakes.

LB: Any parting shots for writers who want a piece of this kind of action (including the well over 6000 Amazon reviews you’ve scored for MSG as of this writing)?

RD: Write what you’re passionate about and write to your theme. If you’re book is about obsession then make sure you’re hitting it at the climax and at the resolution. When I wrote My Sister’s Grave I very much kept in mind what a homicide detective told me. “We can help a family find justice. We can’t help them find closure. People have to find that on their own. Some never do.” Powerful stuff. It was in my mind the entire time I wrote My Sister’s Grave.

*****

Many thanks to Robert Dugoni for joining us here.  Check out My Sister’s Grave, you’ll have a great read and you’ll learn a lot about what craft looks like in the hands of a real pro.

Robert Dugoni is the critically acclaimed and New York Times–bestselling author of the David Sloane series: The Jury Master, Wrongful Death, Bodily Harm, Murder One, and The Conviction. Murder One was a finalist for the Harper Lee Award for literary excellence.

Dugoni is also the author of the bestselling standalone novel Damage Control, and his nonfiction exposé, The Cyanide Canary, was a Washington Post Best Book of the Year selection. Dugoni’s books have been likened to Scott Turow and Nelson DeMille, and he has been hailed as “the undisputed king of the legal thriller” by The Providence Journal.

Visit his website at www.robertdugoni.com, and follow him on Twitter @robertdugoni and at www.facebook.com/AuthorRobertDugoni.

Wisdom, Wit and War Stories from An “A-List” NY Times Bestselling Novelist is a post from: Larry Brooks at storyfix.com

The post Wisdom, Wit and War Stories from An “A-List” NY Times Bestselling Novelist appeared first on Storyfix.com.