Larry Brooks's Blog, page 3

Pearls, Nuggets and Excerpts… the Series, Part 6

For the story to emerge… before it can work… certain principles and criteria apply.

The fundamental truths about what causes a story to work aren’t optional or random, any more than sutures and staples are optional in a surgical procedure, or wings are less than compulsory in the design of an airplane.

Successful genre-centric writers never write from an intention to marginalize the principles of dramatic tension and vicarious experience and emotional resonance to offer up a manifesto about the meaning of life, or a biographical slice of life from a fictional character. Rather, they write to tell a story that resonates on both a dramatic and thematic level.

And yet, too many newer writers, without intention, end up circumnavigating those principles by allowing the story to emerge organically, before they possess the requisite instincts to make that approach viable.

Certainly, with the right instincts, a story might eventually emerge simply by confronting the blank page. But in essence this approach is, for the newer writer without those developed story instincts, the search for a story idea or premise, rather than the drafting of a novel that meets the criteria for a story that works.

Truth is, even when organic story development is your preference, there’s a higher road available, one that allows you to create in context to specific criteria at both the idea stage and within the story execution process. That better approach is an informed story instinct, the kind proven authors apply, rather than the in-development kind that explains why only 4 percent of submitted stories end up in a bookstore.

An under-recognized truth is that the road to efficacy begins at the idea stage. From there, guided by criteria and fueled by the inherent allure of the idea that meets them, it extends into the premise, which then fuels an unspooling sequence of expositional scenes and transitions, some of them essential structural milestones. All of these elements of the story are embedded with expectations and standards, which are germane not only at the submission level (agents, acquisition editors, and online readers as they shop for new reads) but at the story execution level that precedes submission, as well.

These become a checklist for the inherent potential
of your story idea.

Readers of genre fiction are expecting a certain flavor of vicarious experience. A lover to be met. A far off land to discover. An alien dimension to explore. A culture to navigate. A wrong to avenge.

Your readers will expect to meet a hero that they can relate to, even if that character is nothing like them. More than anything, they will relate to what the story asks or demands of the hero (which is why anti-hero stories can work). They are drawn to the hero being summoned down a story path with an immediate goal—to run, to survive, to seek clarity, to fight back, to save someone, to conquer darkness and save the day for all.

Relating to your hero needs to translate into rooting for your hero along the treacherous dramatic path that you, the author, have put before that character.

The common context here is that there is a goal to pursue. There must be obstacles along the path of that quest, including, but not limited to, an antagonistic force, usually in the form of a villain. There will be twists and turns. There will be inner issues the hero must deal with. There will be a second level in play within the narrative (known as a B-story, often a romantic arc for the hero) that eventually connects the hero to the primary story arc. There will be drama, conflict, confrontation, small successes, and major setbacks.

There will be surprises and twists, as new information enters the story in the right places — which accurately implies that, indeed, there are wrong places to inject major changes to a story — with the confident that comes from knowing, rather than guessing or hoping. There will be confrontation that leads to resolution, after which the hero goes forward with the consequences of what has been done. If, that is, he survives, which is not a criterion at all.

Of course, this is Story 101.

These excerpts are taken from my new craft book, “Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves.” Feel free to share with your writer friends, directly or via social media.

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Pearls, Nuggets and Excerpts… the Series, Part 5

On turning the corner from your writing instinct to an informed writing instinct. The difference is what will get you published… and what will attract readers and solid reviews.

Day 5

Not all writers understand the nuances of that truth.

The nuanced truth is, within any genre there are certain expectations in play: Genre-specific tropes that you omit or violate at your peril. When a writer isn’t aware of those tropes, or worse, when they aren’t aware of the criteria that drive toward the universal principles of effective storytelling, the only approach that’s left is to guess. They apply their instincts to conjure and vet their choices.

Which is fine if their instinct is up to the task, which is rare among newer writers. They seek to imitate the genre novels they enjoy reading, but without the learning curve that guides authors of those books. Or—this being the subtext of those who deny structure or diminish the value of story planning—newer writers are seduced by advice that applies more aptly to literary novels, and thus may prove toxic to their genre-centric premise and vision for the story.

They just write. Because that’s what they’ve
read and heard. That’s what a successful writer advised from behind a
microphone. Just write. You’ll be just fine.

Maybe.

When an experienced professional just writes, that, too, is instinct being put into play. But their instinct is almost always at a higher level than that of the new or untrained writer. Novice writers will find an abundance of advice out there suggesting they should go with their gut and just write. It won’t be called guessing in that moment, but that’s exactly what it is when writers go at it without the omnipresent context of knowledge.

The pursuit of craft–principles and criteria–is advice you should carefully parse and vet. It is a process you should understand completely before diving in to that end of the pool. Because when it works, it is because of an informed instinct, not an untested one.

The exact
same principles and criteria apply to any process. Because the bar resides at
the same height—its way up there—for
either preference.

It is always better to know.

These excerpts are taken from my new craft book, “Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves.” Feel free to share with your writer friends, directly or via social media.

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Pearls, Nuggets and Excerpts… the Series, Part 4

More light shed on process versus product.

If you are a genre writer, and you don’t view your work as a product… you are kidding yourself.

Day 4… the viability of the story idea.

It is rare, even unheard of, when someone in the writing community will tell you that your story idea isn’t strong enough. It’s as if the default position—to an extent that it is commonly considered to be part of the conventional wisdom—is that a writer can and should write anything want. The underlying assumption is that that said writer can define what a story is, when fact the idea may not qualify as a criteria-meeting story at all.

This is no different than believing we can and should eat and drink anything—and as much as—we want, when there are principles that clearly show us we cannot do so and simultaneously seek a high level of health. Ice cream for dinner every day.

When a friend or a writing teacher allows you to settle for a thin or weak idea, simply by refraining to tell you that they don’t see great potential in your story idea, they haven’t served you. Or possibly, they aren’t able to differentiate a strong idea from a vanilla one at this early stage. They nod and smile and say, “Wow, that sounds terrific!” When in fact, it actually doesn’t, as least to someone who understands the criteria for a good story idea at its core. Rejection may be the closest you’ll get to an assessment in that regard.

Rarer
still is feedback on the core idea when the draft itself is complete. And it
may indeed be too late, if the idea has collapsed under the weight of what the
criteria are asking of it. This is like suggesting to a recent college grad who
can’t find a job that maybe they should have chosen a different major. That’s a
decision best vetted before the fact, not after.

Nobody—not agents, not editors, not readers—is waiting for someone to reinvent the genres they love. Rather, they are rooting for someone to excel within them.

Truth is, for genres other than literary fiction, where the principles are more vague and more flexibly applied, agents aren’t really shopping for the next great writer at all. They cling to hope, but that’s not the road before them. Rather, they are on pins and needles hoping to find the next great story.

These excerpts are taken from my new craft book, “Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves.” Feel free to share with your writer friends, directly or via social media.

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Pearls, Nuggets and Excerpts… the Series, Part 3

More fodder for the writer’s inner learner.

Day 3

Principles and criteria are what feed and nourish our instincts as writers. All writers–plotters and pantsers alike–rely on this storytelling instinct.

But all instincts are not created equal, nor are they applied at the same point along a writer’s learning curve.

It is when those instincts are underdeveloped–which is the case for almost all new writers–that our reliance is misinformed.

Instincts inform all points along the story development process continuum, because they can be applied at the moment of creation, just as they can be retrofitted at the revision and polish stage. That’s two points of entry where criteria are concerned . No matter how you get there, when the story works, it will be because of how the story reads and unfolds, rather than how it was assembled.

Because the criteria don’t favor any given process. Many roads can take you there, even though many forms of the end product are not as available. And when you arrive, the reader will neither know nor care what your process was.

So if this
is true—and I can assure you that it is—process boils down to nothing other
than a choice. A comfort level leading to a preference. This is critical
context for understanding the bigger picture, where process and product merge
into one outcome.

We need to know when we’ve arrived at a final
draft and when we haven’t.

This is one of the highest-risk benchmarks new writers, and too many resistant writers, face. How do we know when the story is done, and if it’s good enough? They stop too soon, before all the requisite bases have been touched—because they aren’t aware of, or don’t believe in, the term requisite—or the scenes remain less than optimized.

Or, they don’t stop soon enough, which leads to overwriting. Either way, the story is thusly compromised … unless and until they know.

Here’s the paradox that results: They think they know, but outcomes show that they don’t.

These excerpts are taken from my new craft book, “Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves.” Feel free to share with your writer friends, directly or via social media.

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Pearls, Nuggets and Excerpts… the Series, Part 2

More grist for the craft-seeking, solutions-starved author.

Day 2

Sometimes knowledge is misinterpreted as formula.

Especially if what you are writing is considered a genre novel, versus a book considered to be a literary novel, ala writers like Jonathan Franzen or Ian McEwan or Phillip Roth. Because the expectations of the genre audience is far different, and in many ways, more rigidly demanding.

Consider the best dish you’ve ever eaten. Somewhere there’s a recipe for it. Even when you or your favorite chef can whip it up straight out of your head.

When that recipe varies, the dish nonetheless turns out wonderfully because you know where it needs to end up.

But if it varies too much, will it still be that dish? Maybe not, it may be inedible. If not for you, then for some.

So is that a formula? And if you believe that it is, or even if you don’t, does that word even matter? The dish works because there is an accepted identification of requisite ingredients, proportions, and preparation that lead to a successful outcome. All of it somewhat flexible, because “season to taste” remains an open invitation. But there are also standards and expectations that tell us not to pour a pound of cayenne pepper into the wedding cake.

Formula is a word for cynics and the uninitiated, often applied to an uninformed perspective on story structure.

It is an overly simplistic view in an avocation that is anything but simple. Craft is the better word to apply.

Craft is the practice of putting knowledge to work within an artful nuance of creativity and within a framework of expectation, standards, and best practices. At the professional level, when your intention is to publish, craft becomes essential.

These excerpts are taken from my new craft book, “Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves.” Feel free to share with your writer friends, directly or via social media.

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Pearls, Nuggets and Excerpts… the Series, Part 1

Given our current state of lockdown and distancing, I thought I would stay connected by offering Storyfix readers, regulars and guests–which is to say, those who seek and appreciate insight on the craft of writing novels–a few tasty notions to chew on and apply to their writing beliefs, processes and projects.

Hope you are all safe and staying sane.

Day One

Writing a
great story is all in your head.

Or is it?
The better question may be, should it
be all in your head?

That’s the
real issue at hand, in this or any other book about the craft of fiction. The
destination of the serious author, in any genre, is to gain an understanding of
the craft specific to it, and then apply that understanding to the development
of a story within your process of choice.

Which tees
up one of the most mission-critical memes in all of writing:

Too often we don’t know what we don’t know.

This is a
paradoxical truism by virtue of its very nature. It is also a sticking point.

Because it’s that last part—what we don’t know—where both risk and opportunity await.

Of course, none of us know everything about writing a story that works, and few of us know every nuance of the story we are about to write before we begin, sometimes even once we’re well into it.

This not fully knowing applies, as it does for us, to the famous authors we read and the gurus whose workshops we devour. And we certainly can never claim to know what the market will respond to, or why.

Nonetheless we soldier on, into the dark woods of the unexplored, defaulting to an acceptance of not knowing.

And thus we find ourselves in yet another sort of paradox. Because it is the acceptance of what is actually, for lack of a better word, ignorance, when piled on top of the sheer volume of what we don’t know, that can take us down.

These excerpts are taken from my new craft book, “Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves.” Feel free to share with your writer friends, directly or via social media.

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The “Foreword,” written by NY Times Bestselling Author Robert Dugoni

The Foreword to what, you might ask. I was grateful when Robert Dugoni agreed to write the Foreword for my new writing book, Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves. He went big with this, and it’s the perfect tee-up for the book. Some folks skip the Foreword… here it is again if that’s you (worth the read, I assure you).

Foreword

By Robert Dugoni

Many years ago, when I was a boy, my mother handed me what had been her brother’s trumpet. She thought it important that a child learn to play an instrument, something about learning the scales being a good way to expand the mind.  I don’t disagree. I picked up that trumpet and I did my very best to blast air through the mouthpiece with the hope that the bell would emit a beautiful song.  I suspect you know what came next. The sound emitted was so horrific, it summoned my father like a fog horn does a ship. He wasn’t as interested as my mother in any of his children playing an instrument. With ten children, I guess he figured there was already enough noise in the house. “Take some lessons before you blow into that thing again,” he told me. “And never again in the house.”

I took lessons. I learned to read music and I learned how to summon notes with my fingers pressed down on the pistons, and my lips pinched and squirting air into the mouthpiece. I never did become very good. I didn’t like practicing the scales and the runs essential to learning how to truly play a song well.  I wanted to just be able to put my lips to the mouthpiece and magically blast out a tune.

Too often, I find, new
novelists feel the same.

There is a misconception circumnavigating
the writing world that anyone can write because everyone (or nearly everyone)
can string words together. String enough words together in the proper order and
you have a sentence. String enough sentences together and you have a paragraph.
String paragraphs together and you have a scene. String scenes together and voilà!
You have a story.

So, really, how hard can it
be to write a novel?

“Just write from the
heart!” is one rallying cry far[LB2] 
too often given to new writers. “Pour your heart into it!” This advice is akin
to my picking up the trumpet, blasting air through the mouthpiece, and
believing that a song would magically come out of the bell. I can assure you that
was not the case. Oh, you might get lucky and pinch your lips in just the right
way, press down the pistons in just the right order, and produce a note.  But think of that musical note as a letter.
Now carry the analogy one step further. You’d have to get lucky approximately
500,000 additional times, in a row, to produce a novel.

How do you like those
odds?

And yet, so many writers
do just that. How do I know? Because I was one them, and I soon learned the
fallacy of my endeavors. Mind you, I was not a person who had never written
when I sat down to type out my Great American Novel. I had been the editor-in-chief
of my high school and college newspapers. I wrote for the Los Angeles Times. I wrote news articles and feature stories of
significant length. I also practiced law for fourteen years and wrote extensive
legal briefs.

I had done just enough to
think, how hard can it be to write a novel?

As Larry Brooks might
say, I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

Insert the trumpet
analogy from above, here. And that is not even commenting on the quality of the novel written. 

It wasn’t until I had
received close to fifty rejection letters that I fully grasped that writing a
novel is a craft. It is something to be studied and learned. For some, this realization
is disheartening—as it was disheartening for me when I realized I couldn’t
blast tunes on my trumpet without first learning the craft.  But for others, myself included, the
realization is encouraging. If there is a craft, then the craft can be taught,
and if it can be taught, then it can be learned, and if it can be learned, then
those odds of stringing the right words together to actually produce a coherent
novel significantly improve.

Find the right teacher,
and the odds improve exponentially. Find the right teacher with the right
material and the odds improve even more.

Enter Larry Brooks.

I first met Larry at a
writers conference in Surrey British Columbia in October 2013, though I had
known of him for many years.  Larry’s
work on the craft of writing had become a fixture on my writing shelf alongside
the works of Christopher
Vogler, Donald Maass, Sol
Stein, Michael
Hague, James Frey,
and Stephen James.
I had his books Story Engineering and Story Physicsand
I soon thereafter bought his brilliant Story Fix.  We look for those teachers who can take a
complicated mess and, somehow, miraculously unravel it. Larry, unbeknownst to
him, had unraveled several of my messes before they ever became published
novels, some of them ending up as bestsellers.

After our meeting, I called Larry during one of my hair-pulling moments and asked him for advice on how to fix a tangled mess I had created. Larry listened carefully before asking me a series of questions and prodding around the edges of my story premise. It soon became clear that Larry was not going to fix my problem for me. He was doing much more than that. He was teaching me the tools I would need to fix not just one problem but the many others I would face down the writing road. Going back to the trumpet analogy, he wasn’t going to teach me to memorize one song, he was going to teach me how to play the instrument, so that I could recognize and fix my mistakes on my own. I hung up the phone that day buoyed with a sense I had never had before—I might just make it in this writing gig after all.

Larry’s books on the craft of writing have always spoken to me because he offers the author no excuses. He isn’t there to hold your hand and console you.  Larry pushes the writer to flex her writing muscles and to move forward, toward that elusive goal of becoming the best author that writer can be. Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves is the next book in Larry’s writing toolkit, and one I eagerly devoured. In it, Larry eviscerates the concept of the untrained author sitting down at her keyboard and typing out a Pulitzer Prize–winning novel. To write a novel he says, is to have a mission. To understand that mission is to have a clue to the secret of great writing, a sense of the criteria that apply. Larry teaches writers not only the concept of the setup and the hook, but the difference between the first plot point and the first pinch point, and where in a writer’s story the reader should expect to find each.

I know there are many writers
out there who don’t want to be bogged down by rules and outlines. In the
business, we call these writers either “organic writers” or the less-flattering
term— “pantsers”—as in, someone who writes from the seat of his pants. 

Guess what? I consider
myself one of them.

What I’ve learned over my
twenty-plus years in this business is that there are very few truly organic
writers, and by that I mean a writer who has never had any training on the
craft of any kind but who has managed to achieve success (insert your own
definition of success here). At this point you might be wondering about that
theory you’ve read or heard about. You know, the theory that anyone who puts
10,000 hours into something becomes an expert—like Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci. 

Sadly, it is more fallacy than theory. As my grammar school baseball coach liked to say, “only perfect practice makes perfect.” Read the biographies of the two greatest artists the world has ever known, and you soon realize that Michelangelo and da Vinci didn’t just rack up hours like meters in New York City cabs. They spent thousands of hours in perfect practice to perfect their crafts.

You might just be the
person who can beat the 500,000-to-one odds. You might just win the next
mega-millions lottery too. But the better odds are, you’re not. Besides,
doesn’t it make sense to learn from those individuals who have already put in thousands
so hours of perfect practice and who are willing to teach you the skills and
tools needed to perfect your own writing?

You can bang your head
against the wall intending to break down the wall, but it’s far more likely you’ll
just give yourself a headache. Wouldn’t it be so much wiser to open the pages
of this book with a pen or a highlighter in hand and absorb what Larry Brooks
has to teach? It’s a step toward learning the craft, which is a step in the
right direction. It’s a step toward becoming your own best editor, which is a
step toward publication. It’s a step toward stringing words together that produce
a story so rich and intoxicating that readers experience the story as life
itself. The characters feel real. The story rings true. To an extent that their
own lives have been transformed by reading it.

It happens. Trust me. It
happens every day.

The alternative is that beautiful trumpet, locked in its case, tucked neatly in the recesses of the attic, never to be played, never to be heard. And right beside it, in a neat stack, are your manuscripts, possibly never finished to the degree required. And because of that, never read.

No writing teacher will ever render the task of writing a novel that works easy. If they tell you they can… run[ . But they can make the work clearer, and the path more accessible, while elevating your creation. That’s what Larry and the element-specific criteria he discusses here can do for you. It’s the stuff most of us wish we had known much earlier in our journey. You now hold it in your hands. What you do with it is your choice. But what this book can do for you as a writer is something you just might find to be a game changer. As I did.

You can grab a copy of Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves here: in Kindle… in paperback… or at your local bookstore (who can order for you if they’re sold out, which is the case in many Barnes & Nobles.

ABOUT ROBERT DUGONI

His newest, A Cold Trail (continuing the Tracy Crosswhite series) is out now.

https://www.amazon.com/Cold-Trail-Tracy-Crosswhite/dp/1542093228

Robert Dugoni is the critically acclaimed New York Times, #1 Wall Street Journal, and #1 Amazon best-selling author of the multi-million-selling Tracy Crosswhite series. The first entry, My Sister’s Grave, has sold more than two million copies, has been optioned for television series development, and has won multiple awards and nominations. He is also the author of the best-selling David Sloane series, nominated for the Harper Lee Award for legal fiction, and the stand-alone novels The 7th Canon, a 2017 finalist for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for best novel, and The Cyanide Canary, A Washington Post Best Book of the Year. His latest novels include the award-winning The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, and The Eighth Sister, which debuted on several best-seller lists and elevated him to the #1 ranked author on Amazon.com. He is the recipient of the Nancy Pearl Award for Fiction, and the Friends of Mystery Spotted Owl Award for the best novel in the Pacific Northwest. He is a two-time finalist for the International Thriller Writers award and the Mystery Writers of America Award for best novel, among many other awards and best-of inclusions. His books are sold worldwide in more than twenty-five countries. Learn more at his website, www.robertdugonibooks.com.

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Here’s another video interview that’s actually like an interactive workshop… on the principles that make a story work.

This is the second time I’ve been hosted by Lauren Moore and Kaleen Williams on their fun and informative Youtube channel for writers, Keystroke Medium. Well worth checking out and hitting the SUBSCRIBE button for more.

This week is about going deep into how plot serves character, and vice versa. While that may seem 101-level basic, it’s also one of the primary areas where new writers struggle, and frustrated writers find their next level.

Much of this information is based on my new book, “Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves,” which is out now. Enjoy. (If you’re reading this via an email feed, click HERE to see the video within the post on Storyfix.com.l

Click on the video frame itself after launch to view it at full width.

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Writing and the Fun Scale — A Guest Post by Debbie Burke

(Quick note from Larry: this courageous guest post from Debbie is a genuine gift. It’s a warm hug from someone who knows and feels what you are experiencing as an author. She’s a terrific writer and a wonderful person who is well loved within the writing community. And… her new novel – and the last one – is truly excellent.)

My friend, Sarah Rugheimer, climbs mountains. Big mountains. Kilimanjaro (19,341 feet),Chimborazo (20,564 feet), Aconcagua (22,841 feet). Sarah is also a high achiever at low elevations. She holds a PhD in astrophysics from Harvard, currently teaches at Oxford, and was just selected to give a TED talk.

So, when she introduces me to an unfamiliar concept, I pay attention. Recently, she explained the “FUN SCALE” as it relates to mountain climbing.

TYPE 1 FUN is when you enjoy what you’re doing while you’re doing it.

That’s an afternoon hike to Hidden Lake in Glacier National Park, spotting mountain goats and marmots along the way, and standing on the cliff of heaven as you gaze down at pristine, turquoise water.

TYPE 2 FUN is miserable at the time you’re doing it but fun to talk about afterwards. It’s that same hike to Hidden Lake, except a snowstorm blows in, temperatures drop 50 degrees in minutes, your blisters hurt so badly you can hardly walk, and your nose gets frostbitten. But, later, that climb becomes an entertaining story to share over beers in front of a crackling fireplace. Now, you’re warm, dry, and can laugh about it.

TYPE 3 FUN is never fun, not while it’s happening, not looking back years later.It’s coughing up pink froth because blood and fluid fill your lungs from altitude sickness. Or it’s breaking through an ice crust and tumbling into a sheer fissure that you can’t climb out of. If you’re lucky, you’re rescued in time, carried down the mountain, and survive. Otherwise, you become an unfortunate statistic.

In fact, I don’t understand why Type 3 is even included on
the Fun Scale since it’s never,ever fun.

Like mountaineering, the Fun Scale can be applied to writing.

Some days, it’s Type 1—pages fly by, quicksilver running through your fingertips on the keyboard. A beautiful review appears for your latest book. A fan recommends your series to her book club.

Much of the time, though, writing is Type 2, not fun while you’re doing it but fun to talk about later. You stay up all night to meet a deadline; you make the first cut in a contest but ultimately lose; agents or editors “love the story but just didn’t love it enough.” Then…miraculously…you win the award or your book is accepted.

At last, you’ve attained the enjoyment phase of Type 2 fun. You share stories of your grueling uphill trudge while friends toast your success.

Then there’s Type 3 that’s not fun ever, ever, ever.

That’s the point when many writers give up. Their editor gets fired. Their publisher goes bankrupt. Trolls blanket their book page with scathing reviews. One final rejection is the straw that breaks the back of the staggering camel.

At some point in their careers, most (if not all) writers have spiraled into depression. I tumbled down that chasm in 2003.

My stories had won awards. I was a contributing editor for a glossy wildlife magazine. A terrific, high-end agent represented me. An editor requested a three-book series. I was this close to achieving my lifelong goal of publishing mystery novels.

Then, professional and personal avalanches collapsed on top of me.

The wildlife magazine went kaput. The editor moved to a different house that didn’t handle my genre. The agent cut me loose.

Even worse, serious illnesses felled friends and family members. I feared answering the phone because too often calls meant another loved one had died. A fire wiped out treasured possessions. Nonstop care-giving for family led to my own bout with pneumonia.

What was the point of writing?

Compared to real suffering—chemotherapy, hospice, funerals—the made-up, imaginary problems in my fluffy little mysteries sounded trivial. My fiction was just a silly, frivolous hobby.

In a fit of discouragement, I trashed cartons full of manuscripts and extensive notes taken at conferences and classes I’d attended. More than a decade of work and study went in the garbage.

I languished in Type 3 fun that was not fun, ever, ever,
ever.

A close friend recognized my despair and did her best to talk me out of it. “You’re too good a writer to quit. You have things to say that people want to read. Please don’t give up.”

Her kind encouragement made me reconsider. Writing was ingrained in my DNA. I couldn’t quit completely. I switched to editing the work of other authors.

Gradually, time passed, along with that cycle of loss.

Although I wasn’t writing, editing was productive, worthwhile work—manuscripts I worked on became published books; authors thanked me in their acknowledgement pages.

Then one day, an older acquaintance asked me whatever happened to a mystery I’d been working on. Years later, she still remembered excerpts that she’d heard during open readings at our writing group. She said she’d enjoyed them and asked why
I’d stopped.

I answered that fiction felt trivial.

She gave me a stern look, heavy with the wisdom of age. “It’s not trivial,” she said, “to write a story that takes someone away from their problems. People need to forget their troubles for a little while.”

Her words struck a chord.

Without knowing it, she’d thrown a lifeline down to me.

Over the next several years, I wrote more novels.

Because I’d endured tragedy with loved ones, my character development grew deeper and more nuanced, the story themes more resonant. Rejections were still rejections but they became increasingly gracious and encouraging.

My nonfiction articles found wider markets. I taught craft classes. Blogs asked me to write guest posts. I was honored when The Kill Zone, an award-winning crime fiction site I’d admired for years, invited me to be a regular contributor.

In 2016, my 10th (that’s right, 10th ) novel, a thriller entitled Instrument of the Devil, won two contests. It was published in 2017. The editor requested the second book in the series, Stalking Midas.

Overnight success only took 30 years!

Three decades of struggle and disappointment turned into Type 2 fun—amusing anecdotes to share at cocktail parties and writing conferences.

Then writing became Type 1 fun—book club appearances,
enthusiastic applause at readings,and fan mail.

But, of course, Type 1 fun never lasts.

Six months later, my publisher went out of business. At age 66, I was an orphan. One benefit of growing older (besides Medicare and senior discounts!) is equanimity.

The world did not end. This just became another setback to
survive.

That’s life and writing is life.

The third book in my series, Eyes in the Sky, recently launched, and the fourth is in final edits. All the burners on my writing stove are bubbling with projects I’m excited about and believe in. It’s hard work but I’m enjoying it.

My friend Sarah educated me about extreme mountain climbing:

Don’t focus on the summit. Just take the next step, just
breathe the next breath.

Concentrate on elements within your control. Eat and stay hydrated. Don’t roll your ankle on a rock.

Take care of your feet—change socks, treat blisters and
frostbite before they disable you.

Test the ice crust before you put full weight on it and fall
into a crevasse.

Glamorous? No.

Necessary? Yes.

Eventually you’ll reach the summit—Type 1 fun.

That moment is glorious…but fleeting.

Type 3 fun can kill a dream and even a life. Or a writer can file the experience away and use it later. If you have to endure the misery, you might as well turn it into story fodder.

Type 2 fun is where we writers spend much of our
careers—most of the time, we struggle.

Occasionally, we enjoy a break to laugh about mishaps and
celebrate victories.

And that’s not a bad place to be.

https://www.amazon.com/Eyes-Sky-Tawny-Lindholm-Thrillers/dp/1650458886

The post Writing and the Fun Scale — A Guest Post by Debbie Burke appeared first on Storyfix.com.

27 of the Best Books on Writing: a list, an irony, and an opportunity.

You may know I have a new writing book out. Lord knows I’ve been shouting it from the digital rooftops.

It’s been out for three months now, and the book remains in that work its way up the ladder position that seems to be the case for a) less than completely famous authors, b) books that readers sense, often unreasonably, that they’ve read it all before, c) books that don’t get much of a push from their publisher. Which, in today’s market, unless your name is already in the bookstore window, is the new normal.

Nobody can completely explain why some books from authors whose name isn’t visible in that window do, on occasion, start out of the gate actually with incredible momentum.

It actually happened to me… once upon a time.

All three of these rationalizations explain why Great stories Don’t Write Themselves is doing okay… just okay… when – I have to be honest with you – I had higher hopes for it at this point.

Not giving up on that, by the way… the reviews and feedback have been, frankly, nothing short of spectacular (check out the latest Amazon review by Art Holcomb, who is as credible as writing gurus come). My beloved editor at Writers Digest Books, Amy Jones, suggested that GSDWT may take a while to gain traction, that it’s going to be a word-of-mouth engine that, because of the powerful nature of the content (her words), has a real shot at reaching a tipping point in this niche.

So when someone sent me this post today (follow that link, it explains the title of my post here today), I realized this was an opportunity to clarify a few points to those of you who, for some reason or another, aren’t interested in my new writing book, or aren’t sure yet.

That link is actually not about my new book. It’s about one of my earlier writing books. The first one, in fact: Story Engineering.

That book actually did have the kind of launch writers dream about. It quickly reached #512 on Amazon’s site-wide sales rank, stayed in that neighborhood for a while, and has been selling consistently, if significantly lower, ever since (eight years, in fact). It changed my life, as bestsellers tend to do, and here we are, three writing books later, hoping to once again create magic.

This list of 27 of the Best Books on Writing shows Story Engineering occupying the #3 position, ahead of a bunch of massively famous names I’m too sheepish to repeat here. (I’m already teetering on the edge of hubris as it is, simply by sharing this with you; I’ll say this, Stephen King is one of those names further down the list, and many of your favorite gurus with terrific writing books aren’t on it at all.)

Now here’s what’s ironic. While my new book was acquired and developed by Writers Digest Books when it was a stand-alone publishing entity (that imprint remains on the new book’s spine), it was ultimately released by Penguin Random House, who acquired Writers Digest Books literally a few weeks prior to the planned release date.

This list of the 27 Best Writing Books is from them.

Here’s what I want you, and the folks at Penguin Random House, who are my publishers, to know: Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves is actually better, more fully realized, that was Story Engineering. It picks up where Story Engineering left off in that it goes deep into an explanation of how to use and apply the powerful principles defined there (six core competencies, all supported by a foundation of story structure – even if you’re not a fan of story structure – within your stories).

It’s the first writing book I’ve seen that actually offers criteria to apply to your story idea, as well as the premise that emerges from that idea.

And from there, it offers specific criteria for reader efficacy – the ultimate goal you are chasing – across sixteen different realms of the story development and execution experience, with a total of over seventy specific criteria laid out for you, explained and clarified and exemplified.

I’ll say it here, hubris or not, because it’s been a ten year journey of exploring these principles to get to this point, to get to this book: With Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves (with its killer Foreword by bestselling author Robert Dugoni), I set out to write the best damn writing book anyone has ever read. With content they’ve never encountered before. A book that will finally pull back the curtain of understanding what makes a story work – makes it really work – and what gets it published and makes it sell, even if you’re publishing it yourself.

This book delivers an understanding of what causes readers to take notice, to care about, remember and embrace.

I have no idea if it’ll ever make a list like the one Story Engineering finds itself on. But I can tell you this: if you liked that book – or even if you didn’t, because it dispels the myth that stories grow on trees and are nurtured by story fairies who whisper dialogue into your ear – it can change your writing life if you let it in.

Ask Art Holcomb. Ask Robert Dugoni. Ask the several thousand folks who have already immersed themselves into this experience. This is the writing book you’ve been waiting for.

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