L.E. Truscott's Blog, page 19

Struggling to Write a Good Ending? You’re Not the Only One

Why is it so hard to write a good ending? Why do we struggle and agonise and draft and redraft and throw it all away to start again, usually more than once? I wish I had a gloriously psychological answer that delves into how writers don’t want to let go of the worlds and characters they have spent so much time immersed in and therefore subconsciously sabotage themselves. Instead, I have the opposite – a horribly simplistic reason that won’t make any writer feel any better or any more capable of writing a good ending.

So what is it? Why, regardless of whether we are writing a poem, a short story, an article, non-fiction or a novel, do we struggle to write good endings? Well, it all comes down to this: it’s hard!

Told you it was simple. Frustratingly, annoyingly, head-scratchingly, solution-defyingly simple.

Clearly, then, I’m not going to be able to offer any iron-clad guarantees or firm rules to point you in the right direction. After all, I suffer from the same difficulties in writing good endings as much as everybody else does. In fact, this chapter was the last one I wrote for Project January and I started, stopped and disposed of what I had written four times before I was finally able to come up with something that didn’t seem to go in circles or pointlessly and completely in the wrong direction.

That’s unusual for me. Generally, I write a topic onto my ideas board, then spend some time thinking about it and don’t attempt to turn the idea into a blog post or chapter or short story or whatever it is the idea is about until it has almost fully formed in my head. Then I sit down and write and usually within an hour or two, I’ll have between a thousand and two thousand words ready to be added to my blog or the book I’m working on.

The problem in this scenario of how I usually write is that the solution when it’s not working is to simply walk away and give it some more time to cogitate. Usually, there’s no deadline that says I have to write something now. The problem with an ending is that there’s nothing else I can write instead without completely putting aside my current project. And when I’m so close to being finished, I want it done. If it doesn’t get done, it’s like running ninety-nine metres of a hundred metre sprint and then stopping to take a breather while all the other runners rush past you (assuming, of course, you weren’t behind to begin with – then it’s watching everyone in the race with you finishing well ahead of you and moving on to the next stage while you flounder just shy of the finish line).

So am I going to be one of those people who points out the difficulties and then leaves you all alone to figure a solution on your own? No, of course not. Even when I don’t know quite how, I always want to help in some way. And although I might not be able to provide a step-by-step guide to overcoming the struggles to write a good ending, maybe a discussion of the topic can provide a welcome distraction as well as some mental food for thought.

Types of Endings

There are lots of types of endings. In Project December, I wrote about “The Ideas Generator”, a simplistic seven-step process to develop story ideas by identifying a genre, a main character, a traumatic past incident, a secondary character, a profession and a trigger, then a type of ending. Although it isn’t a comprehensive list, the possibilities included:

*Happy ending

*Scooby-Doo ending

*Poetic ending

*Poetic justice ending

*Twist ending

*Sad ending

*Uplifting ending

*Change ending

*Sudden ending

*Success ending

*Failure ending

*Marriage ending

*Death ending

*Winning ending

*Losing ending

*That’s life ending

*Setting up the sequel ending

*Back to the beginning ending

*Waking up from a dream ending

*Learning a lesson ending

Just because we can identify types of endings doesn’t mean it’s clear which one best suits a story. Some endings suit certain genres more than others. A romance story generally needs a happy ending or a marriage ending. A sad ending or a death ending will really upset anyone who has chosen to read a romance. So the story you’re telling may, to some extent, dictate the ending or it may just dictate what shouldn’t be the ending.

The one thing this list can do is be a prompt. Instead of choosing and fanatically sticking to just one ending, consider how your story could end by writing a descriptive paragraph based on each of them. It’s likely that several or even just one will stand out from the others. Then have a go at writing that ending in full. If it doesn’t work, try another. Or maybe a combination of several. The important thing is that you should be prepared to go in a different direction than you’d planned to if your ending isn’t working out. Sometimes when you write towards a pre-determined ending, you miss the signposts for a better one because you’re so preoccupied. Above all, don’t worry about choosing the wrong ending – you can always change it later.

The Final Chapter

Robert McKee, is his book Story, talks about the difference between climax and resolution. The climax is usually exciting and dangerous and not what the protagonist wants but usually what the story needs. The resolution, on the other hand, returns the protagonist to a sort of normalcy but not their normal life. In The Silence of the Lambs movie, the climax shows Clarice Starling tracking and shooting Buffalo Bill through the darkness of his basement. But the resolution shows her graduating from Quantico and then receiving a phone call from Hannibal Lecter, who assures her he won’t be coming for her. Without this, she would be left to wonder and we would be left to wonder – the story would be missing a satisfying ending.

Some plots combine the climax and the resolution and some leave out the resolution altogether to maintain the mystery. But it can be a fine line because not tying up loose ends does have the potential infuriate readers. In those instances, a “To be continued” ending can be a great hook (the Back to the Future movies did this so well). But this only works if your story isn’t a one off, a stand alone. And if you don’t actually know where the story will continue on to, you might end up writing yourself into a corner.

The Final Paragraph

The final paragraph can sometimes be overlooked in discussions that focus on the overall ending and the final sentence. To be honest, there’s a reason for this. Almost nobody can remember the entire final paragraph of a book (unless it’s a one-sentence final paragraph, in which case it’s also the final sentence).

I’ve only read one final paragraph that was so powerful that it eclipsed the entire book and that was at the end of Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow by Peter Høeg. In my review of the novel, I wrote, “The final paragraph of the book is perhaps the best final paragraph of any book I have ever read. As a writer who struggles with writing endings, I am envious. In fact, it’s an ending that could have been tacked on to the end of many, many books, if any of the authors had thought to write it. I’m going to quote it here in its entirety because it doesn’t give anything away but I hope it intrigues and makes others want to read the book if they haven’t already, just to get to that last paragraph and let it blow their mind the way it did mine. ‘Tell us, they’ll come and say to me. So we may understand and close the case. They’re wrong. It’s only what you do not understand that you can come to a conclusion about. There will be no conclusion.’ Pow! Straight between the eyes!”

What else can I say?

The Final Sentence

Just like opening sentences, final sentences face a lot of scrutiny. In my opinion, good writing is good writing and bad writing is bad writing whether it occurs at the beginning, the end or somewhere in the middle of a book. But it’s so much easier to locate the sentences at the start and at the finish so they easily become the subject of lazy judgement.

“They all lived happily ever after” generally isn’t an acceptable way to end a book these days. Mostly because it’s a cliché. But also because it’s completely fake. Nobody ever lives happily ever after. Real people and complex characters, if they’re lucky, lead lives of combined happiness and misery that mostly lead to a level of acceptable contentment.

The final sentence can embrace the poetic. Think of the “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”, which is from the end of The Great Gatsby.

It can go full circle. The closing sentence of my debut novel, Enemies Closer, reads, “Cassandra Broderick had been born in England, grown up in Australia, studied in America and was currently homeless but nevertheless amongst friends.” It’s a play on the first sentence that introduces the main character all the way back at the start of the book, which says, “Cassandra Broderick had been born in England, grown up in Australia, studied in America and for two years dated a Frenchman. The resulting accent was noticeably intercontinental…”

It can be reflective. In my upcoming novel, Black Spot, the main character of which is a teenage amnesiac, the last line is, “Don’t worry, Livia,” he says, running a hand through her hair and leaning down to whisper in her ear as her vision turns black, “you won’t remember a thing.”

It can be whimsical. The final sentence of Liberty’s Secret, an unpublished romance novel I wrote a very long time ago reads, “It seemed forever had never factored in the ability of a girl named Kennedy Freeman [the main character’s kid sister] to interrupt at all the right moments.”

I’m sure you can see as easily as I can that my final sentence efforts aren’t anywhere near as good as F Scott Fitzgerald’s in The Great Gatsby. But I don’t obsess over them. Because they didn’t need perfect endings. They just needed workable ones. After all, perfection almost never exists in this area just like so many others.

Some Tips

*Avoid entirely predictable endings. There’s nothing worse for a reader than investing all those hours in reading a book to get to the end and discover they saw it coming from a mile off.

*You will always have a choice to either have your main character saved or for your main character to save themselves. Don’t always assume that it’s better for your main character to save themselves. Let the story dictate the choice.

*Tie up loose ends… but don’t do it with a big information dump.

*If you choose not to tie up all the loose ends, make sure you have a really good reason why. It should be intriguingly mysterious, not frustratingly nonsensical.

*Avoid the deus ex machina (which means “gods of the machine”) ending – it’s a divine intervention ending where the bad guy, for example, gets eaten by a crocodile instead of getting his true comeuppance. It’s considered such poor form that criticism of this type of ending goes all the way back to the ancient Greek poets and philosophers.

*Ask your beta readers about what they think of your preferred ending and if they think there could have been a better one. If there’s a rough consensus, then they might be onto something.

*Remember that a good ending is a great advertisement for your next book.

*And, finally, don’t stress. Keep calm. Think logically. And, if necessary, wait for a moment of inspiration. There’s nothing that says the story has to be finished right now, no matter how much you might want it to be over and done with. Sometimes the writing gods just know better than you do.

Using the Source Material of Others

If you’ve ever read a poem, a short story, an article or a book or seen a play, a photograph or a painting so evocative that you thought, “This should be a movie,” then you’ll know it’s often the first step towards the creation of something new and wonderful yet familiar and comfortable. Regardless of where the idea begins and where it ends up, after that first step there are several more that will help ensure that when using the source material of others, you do so with honesty and respect.

Identify Strengths

Obviously the source material has strengths or you wouldn’t have been so enamoured with it and wanted to turn it into something else. Usually these are the key components of the story but sometimes they are also the small details. As a general rule, the strengths of the source material should be retained in order to become the strengths in your adapted piece of writing.

Identify Weaknesses

Even when you’ve been struck by the adaptability of something, you will need to remain objective enough to be able to identify its weaknesses (and there are always weaknesses). Whether it’s turning a single image into a lengthy book or turning a lengthy book into a ninety-minute screenplay, whether it’s meshing four minor characters into one or eliminating a subplot, or whether it’s turning the ending of the story completely on its head, identifying the weakness and then turning it into a strength is the only way to deal with it.

Identify the Appropriate Medium

It’s easy to assume that all adaptations should end up being films but the source material should be assessed to determine the appropriate medium on a case-by-case basis. If a book is long and the plot can’t be condensed, then perhaps it should be a miniseries instead of a film. Girl with a Pearl Earring was a painting that became a book that became a movie but paintings are often used to inspire poems. There’s an entire section in Postcards from Planet Earth (a collection of poetry I studied in Year 12) devoted to poems inspired by paintings and they are equally fascinating.

Don’t Be Afraid to Make Changes

Just because something works in one medium doesn’t mean it is guaranteed to work in another. In Carrie Fisher’s celebrated novel, Postcards from the Edge, the novel is broken into four distinct sections, the last of which is most recognisable as the story of the film. I wrote the following in my review of the book: “For fans of the movie, it is almost unrecognisable. When Carrie Fisher wrote the script for the film, she was very selective in what she took from the novel (I’d estimate less than 20%). The movie is better for it because while I give the movie 5 stars, I can only give the book 3 stars and I wonder if I would have given it 2 stars if I hadn’t seen or wasn’t so fond of the movie. I applaud Fisher’s ability to recognise the limitations of her novel and turn it into the film that the novel should have been.”

Recognise What Absolutely Cannot Be Changed

At the same time, it’s just as important to know what absolutely cannot be changed. If you’re adapting a story about the Titanic, you can’t decide that the ship shouldn’t sink. If you’re adapting a story about Dracula, you can’t change the fact that he’s a vampire. Or at least you shouldn’t. These are crucial components of the stories and people familiar with the source material will be expecting these elements to be included in the adaptation. And when they realise that these elements have been changed, they usually aren’t happy.

If you’re thinking about changing fundamental aspects of a story, then you should consider why you need the original story to begin with. You probably don’t.

Get Permission

Think it’s strange that getting permission is at the end of this list of steps? You shouldn’t. You don’t need anyone’s permission to adapt. You only need permission if you want to publish or produce your adapted piece. And sometimes having the adaptation already written can help to convince the owner of the original piece to sign over the necessary rights.

If it doesn’t, if you can’t convince the owner to let you use their work (where permission is required), then you might be able to tweak the story to disguise its origins. EL James did it with her Fifty Shades series (originally Twilight fan fiction).

Susan Orlean’s “Orchid Fever” and The Orchid Thief and Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation

One of the greatest examples of using the source material of others is “Orchid Fever”, a 1995 article by Susan Orlean in The New Yorker magazine. It tells the true story of John Laroche, a Floridian plant expert obsessed with rare orchids, self-described as the smartest person he knows and a character so large that the page couldn’t contain him. Almost as soon as it was written and published, it was optioned by a film company with the intention of turning the story into a film. Sounds simple, right? In 1998, Orlean published a non-fiction book based on the article. But the film was still in development.

Charlie Kaufman was the scriptwriter brought in to turn the story into a film but he suffered terrible writer’s block in adapting the source material. So instead of a straight adaptation, he wrote a fictional version of himself into his script (giving himself a fictional twin brother in the process) and made it the story of the difficulties he was having. Susan Orlean and John Laroche also became fictional versions of themselves, so much so that when Orlean finally read the screenplay, she later told GQ magazine she said, “No! Are you kidding? This is going to ruin my career.”

It’s not hard to see why. In the film, Orlean (played brilliantly by Meryl Streep) is portrayed as someone cocooned in a life of big city success but who lacks real feeling for who she is and what she has accomplished. She’s envious of Laroche’s passion for orchids, his passion for life in general. They begin an affair, take drugs and become caught up in the illegal poaching of ghost orchids. Obviously she came around to the brilliance of Charlie Kaufman’s high concept screenplay or the movie wouldn’t exist.

If you haven’t seen Adaptation and you’re a writer or you want to write, put it on your to do list (and if you have time, read Orlean’s original article and book). It shows how hard using the source material of others can be at times, how desperate a writer can be to justice to it and how frustrating it can be when they just can’t figure it out. It doesn’t offer solutions to these problems so much as it is a commentary on the process of adaptation and writing in general. If you watch it and find it strange, watch it again. (If you’re not a writer, you might not get it. There are a lot of in-jokes. Yes, it’s one of those films.) And again. On subsequent repeated viewings, you’ll find it frustrating, hilarious, uncomfortable, spot on and brilliant. But most of all, just like the steps above are intended to assist with, you’ll find it honest and respectful.

Same Same but Different: Ebooks and Pbooks

Now that the self-publishing of ebooks (electronic books) and pbooks (physical books) is so easy, many writers choose to distribute both instead of just focusing on one. There are similarities in the preparation processes for both but there are also differences. Knowing them in advance instead of discovering them along the way can help minimise the time it takes to achieve publication.

Editing

Regardless of whether you choose to publish as an ebook, a pbook or both, your manuscript needs to undergo the same stringent editing processes. If you plan to publish both in ebook and pbook formats, it’s best that it remains the same file right up until the moment that the differences in the preparation process become necessary. As soon as you separate them into ebook and pbook files, every subsequent change in the text of the story in one must be duplicated in the other, essentially doubling your workload.

Templates

An ebook doesn’t require a template. You simply take the Word document you’ve been using to perfect your book and follow the instructions to turn it into the ebook files ready for uploading (there are different instructions for different platforms). The whole point of an ebook is that it is reflowable text, automatically modifying itself depending on the device on which it is being read.

A pbook, however, is a fixed file and a template will ensure that it appears exactly on the printed page without change from copy to copy. If you hire a typesetter to do the work for you, they will take care of the practical aspects of this but if you are self-publishing through a print-on-demand (POD) service, the templates are generally provided free of charge. You simply copy and paste your text into it.

Charts, Table and Columns

Charts, tables and columns do not fare well in the ebook conversion process so the ebook platforms recommend any instance where they are absolutely necessary that they be inserted into the file as images. But you can have as many charts, tables and columns (within reason) in a pbook as you would like.

Page Numbers

Page numbers are unnecessary in an ebook and sometimes even confusing because the pages move around depending on the device the ebook is being read on. Tables of contents are instead bookmarked or hyperlinked to text in specific locations (usually chapter headings) to make finding them easy. Pbooks don’t theoretically have to have page numbers but they do help with navigation and referencing. I can’t think of a good reason to leave them out, especially since they will appear automatically in a template.

Hyperlinks

Technology hasn’t come along far enough for us to make hyperlinks in pbooks possible so make sure you remove them all from your template. Hyperlinking in ebooks is usually limited to places within the book because some platforms don’t like or can’t process external hyperlinks. If you do have external hyperlinks, think about why and if it can be done differently to eliminate them.

Widows and Orphans

Widows and orphans are lines and sometimes words that are separated from the previous line or previous page and left hanging all by themselves. There are some disagreements over what exactly constitutes each one but for the purposes of this article, remember this: widows and orphans aren’t relevant for ebooks. Because ebooks automatically resize themselves depending on the device, widows and orphans that appear in one version may not appear in another. So there really isn’t any point in trying to control where they appear. You’ll just drive yourself crazy.

In a pbook, however, they are considered very poor typesetting form. So whenever you see a single line at the top of a new page that is the last line of the paragraph on the previous page or a single line at the bottom of a page that the first line of the paragraph on the next page, these need to be fixed. This can usually be accomplished by turning on the Widow/Orphan control in Microsoft Word but be careful: sometimes this results in the last line on each of the two facing pages not lining up, which can make it look lopsided. Sometimes the solution is to make minor changes within the text to bring the lines up or push the lines down. Just remember that you will need to go back and make the same changes to your ebook file for consistency.

ISBNs

An International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is used to identify a book in the book trade and library sector. It isn’t mandatory in either an ebook or a pbook but choosing not to assign them can limit your distribution options and make finding your book difficult. Amazon won’t distribute a book without an ISBN unless an exemption is applied for and granted and this is usually only done for older books that were published without an ISBN before 1973. And adding your book on Goodreads is so much simpler when they can simply search for an ISBN. Remembering that neither your author name nor your book name can guarantee to be unique, sometimes the ISBN is the only thing that is.

Just remember that each ebook and pbook requires a separate ISBN. If you publish an ebook version of your book through Amazon KDP, another ebook version of the same book through Smashwords to reach the majority of other online ebook platforms and the pbook version through CreateSpace, that’s three ISBNs you’ll need.

Barcodes

Since barcodes are only required for point-of-sale scanning, they aren’t needed for ebooks. If you don’t aspire to stocking your pbook in a bricks-and-mortar store, then it won’t need a barcode either. If you do want to be stocked in physical stores, then a barcode is essential.

Internal Colour

Because many ebooks are read on grayscale devices, it is recommended that internal colour is avoided (particularly for text) – black always shows up clearly whereas yellow can be a real challenge when converted. Newer ereaders and tablets enable colour but you could be alienating a significant readership if you only cater to these more recent devices. Images are less of an issue because they are contrasted with the other grays surrounding them.

Internal colour in a pbook is entirely a personal choice but be aware that it significantly increases the printing costs, which means significant increases in the minimum price at which you will have to retail your pbook in order to recoup those costs.

Picture Quality

The quality of pictures in an ebook can be significantly less than that required in a pbook. Something that looks clear on a screen can look fuzzy and pixelated when printed. This doesn’t always prevent the image being used in a pbook. The printing company will generally raise the issue that the images may not be to the preferred quality but then leave the final decision to you. If the pictures are old, then there isn’t much that can be done about it. The decision is simply between leaving them in or taking them out.

Book Size

An ebook doesn’t require the choice of size (essentially the size of the device it is read on is the size of the ebook, automatically resized up or down) but there are dozens of size choices for pbooks. Six inches by nine inches is a common size.

Covers

While both ebooks and pbooks should have the same front cover, an ebook requires only a front cover while a pbook also requires a spine and a back cover. Ebook covers are always the same size but pbook cover and spine size is dictated by the pbook size chosen.

Internal Checks

Once you submit your book to the ebook or pbook platform, both generally take twenty-four hours for the platform to complete their checks. Once an ebook is checked and approved by the ebook platform, it can go on immediate sale. For a pbook, proofs will still need to be ordered and checked by the author/publisher before finally going on sale.

Proofs

Ebooks are read online so it makes sense that final checks (or proofreading) are done on screen. But because a pbook is printed and read on paper, ordering a physical proof copy is highly recommended. It is standard practice for all printed products (calendars, outdoor advertisements, everything) for proofs to be provided and signed off on so that the ultimate responsibility lies with the publisher and not the printer. (After all, it’s a huge hassle when 100,000 copies of something with a mistake are printed so the printers don’t want to be responsible for that. And it’s comparatively simply to rectify errors in an ebook and upload a revised copy.)

I’m not quite sure why but finding errors is always easier on the printed page. Despite the fact this adds quite a few more weeks to the pbook process, just go with it. Errors in an ebook can be fixed in a day. Errors in a pbook last forever.

Cost

When authors are trying to get published, we worry about the upfront costs to ourselves but sometimes forget to worry about the costs at the other end. It’s in everybody’s best interests to consider both.

Cost to Author

There are lots of companies out there offering to do ebook and pbook conversions but both ebooks and pbooks can generally be set up without cost to the author, especially if you choose to do all the hard work yourself. However, you should check with individual pbook printing services as some do charge a fee (Ingram, for example) while others don’t (such as CreateSpace). If they do charge a fee, make sure you know why and that it is justified.

Cost to Reader

Readers expect that ebooks will be cheaper than pbooks, simply because there are no printing costs and minimal to no delivery costs for them to cover. Keep this is mind when setting your prices.

Distribution

While distribution will depend on the platforms you choose to publish with, there are differences for ebooks and pbooks. An obvious one is with Amazon. When publishing through CreateSpace, the pbook will only be available for sale through the US and Europe Amazon sites. However, when publishing the ebook through the KDP service, it is accessible through all the Amazon platforms (Australia, UK, France, India, Japan, Brazil, etc). For purchasers, as soon as they sign in to Amazon, it will transfer them to their local platform and if that isn’t the US site or a European site, the pbook won’t appear. It can get confusing for your potential readers.

The key is always research. If your readers have a problem, they will expect you to be able to solve it, especially if you want them to buy your book, regardless of the format. Either choose a platform where these issues don’t occur (if such a thing exists) or know the limitations of the ones that you do choose and be prepared to answer the same questions over and over again.

Delivery Times

Once an ebook is purchased, it is delivered electronically almost immediately. Pbooks, however, must be physically shipped by mail. And if you have published via a POD service, a little extra time needs to be factored in for printing. Pbook shipping generally has three options – priority (within a week), expedited (within two weeks) and standard (between three weeks and a month). Obviously, the quicker the delivery, the more it costs, especially where the pbook is being shipped internationally. In fact, priority shipping can often be more than the cost of the pbook itself. It’s a choice for the purchaser but it’s good for the author to be aware, especially because delivery costs can impact on a purchaser’s decision to buy or not to buy.

Book Review: Sister by Rosamund Lupton

I had high hopes for this book. A straight-laced woman looking for her artsy, younger, pregnant and unmarried sister after she is reported missing by her landlord. And the longer I read, the more certain I was that the end must be mind-blowing because the build-up took forever. But when it came, I realised that the author had been jerking me around, using every writer’s trick in the book, just to let me down with a mediocre ending, a not particularly complex bad guy and a cliffhanger that, to be honest, I could see coming from a mile away.

Beatrice lives in New York, is successful in an unimportant job and catalogues everything in her life according to Pantone colours (although she really only needs one – beige). She’s engaged to Todd but clearly doesn’t love him – he’s just a safe option. Tess, the missing sister, is a student at an art college in London but she’s been forced to take a sabbatical by her tutor who is also her married lover and doesn’t want his bosses to find out he’s been sexing up students. She’s just weeks away from giving birth when Beatrice receives a call from her mother telling her that her sister has gone missing.

From the moment Beatrice arrives back home, she’s told by everyone – the police conducting the investigation, her mother, her fiancé, her sister’s friends – that she doesn’t really know her sister at all. And when she finds out that Tess had already given birth without calling to tell her, she starts to believe it. But, heck, the book needs another 80,000 words so despite her doubts, she decides to investigate her sister’s disappearance anyway. The police should be doing the job but apparently can’t do it without her – not well anyway. In fact, all the important discoveries seem to be made by Beatrice.

Unfortunately, the book is written in a “I know how it ends but I’m not going to tell you for another 100,000 words so just hang in there” way. As soon as it starts with “Dearest Tess”, you know it’s going to be the longest letter ever written or read. And there are so many moments of misdirection, it’s like talent night at a gathering of amateur magicians.

The reason I did hang in there is because the book is written really well and the depictions of grief felt very authentic. But the plot, when it finally reveals itself after a long, long time of hanging in there because it drags on and on in the middle, is terribly implausible and the resolution relies on that old-fashioned cliché of the bad guy explaining who, what, how, where, when and why he did what he did.

There’s an inordinate amount of dialogue in the book – a classic error of too much telling and not enough showing. And I think just about every writer’s trick you could think of is employed at some point in this novel.

It’s not straight crime fiction or straight literature – it meets somewhere in the middle – and it has both the successes and failures of both genres. It reminded me a lot of The Girl on the Train (which I also gave 3 stars) so if that’s the kind of book you like, you’ll probably like this, too. But don’t expect the perfection that so many of the newspaper reviews promised. It’s a good first novel and because Rosamund Lupton is a good writer, I hope she only gets better.

3 stars

*First published on Goodreads 12 March 2017

Reading Your Own Writing

Do you ever read your own writing? Not as part of a rewriting and editing process but just for pleasure? In the last five years, I’ve written over half a million words – it may even be closer to a million – in the form of articles, blog posts, book reviews, novels and non-fiction books. And that doesn’t include all the paid writing – tenders, case studies, websites, brochures and other types of marketing copy. I can’t possibly remember it all. So sometimes I go back and read bits and pieces of my own writing.

There are a lot of books out there, I like discovering new ones and I’m not narcissistically self-indulgent so after the rewriting and editing process, I’ve never sat down and read one of my own books from cover to cover. But every now and then I’ll bring up one of my book reviews, articles or blog posts and read it through.

Sometimes it’s because I have an idea for something I want to write and I need to make sure it isn’t too similar. Sometimes it’s because the things I have written really reflect a particular period in my life and I’m feeling a bit nostalgic (kind of like reading old diary entries except I don’t keep a diary). Sometimes when I’m struggling, when I’m trying to write and it isn’t working, when I’m writing total crap, it’s because I need to remind myself that I’ve been good in the past and I can be again. And sometimes when I’m feeling good about my writing, I do it to remind myself that I’ve been crap in the past and could easily slip back if I don’t keep working hard. If it has been a while since you wrote the pieces you’re reading, it can almost be like reading someone else’s work. You discover new things and rediscover old ones in just the same way you do when you reread your favourite author’s books.

Anyone with a decent amount of humility will have moments of embarrassment – “What was I thinking?” – mixed in with moments of pride – “That wasn’t half bad.” Rereading the first longer piece of fiction I ever wrote – a novella – is cringe inducing (unoriginal plot, stereotypical characters, bland writing). Conversely, my oldest and most dominant cat declaring, “Louise is my human. Got that? Mine!” and complaining about the bastard who owned (and abandoned) him before me cutting his balls off in a blog post I wrote from the perspective of my cats makes me smile every time.

If you don’t have any “That wasn’t half bad” moments, then you have a problem. Either your work isn’t that good or you can’t recognise that your work is good. Of course, one of these is more of a problem than the other. But if you don’t enjoy reading your own writing or if you can’t at the very least appreciate it objectively, how can you expect other people to?

Regardless of whether you enjoy it or not, reading your own writing can help make you a better writer in the long run. You can identify what you’ve done well (as we’ve all been told many, many times before, the distance of time can really help with perspective) and hopefully keep doing it. You can identify what you’ve done poorly (again with a bit of objectivity because you’ve forgotten writing half the things you’re reading) and try to do it better in the future. And reading a range of pieces rather than just focusing on one can show patterns and make identification of these things a little bit easier than assessing just one piece of writing would.

Rediscovering your own writing can also be an important part of the marketing process. Fans (assuming you’re lucky enough to have some) can often have an encyclopaedic and verbatim recollection of your work. And when they finally meet you at a book signing or a book reading or a lecture in a library or at the supermarket (you never know where you might be recognised), you should know your own writing as well as they do so you can discuss it with them knowledgeably and meaningfully. It can be quite embarrassing when people bring up things you’ve revealed on blogs or social media or in your novels and instead of recognising and being thankful that people are reading what you’re writing, you instead either have a total mind blank or become suspicious about how they know so much personal information about you. (I do this – I frequently forget that I’ve included a piece of personal information in a blog post or in a tweet, especially in a tweet which is such a small piece of writing that it feels almost disposable even though it’s the total opposite, out there forever unless you go back and delete it and even then, like everything else on the internet, it’s never really gone).

Of course, reading your own writing has limits. When you’re writing, there should be a fifty/fifty balance between reading your own and reading others. And when you’re not writing, it should be more like a one/ninety-nine breakdown. Otherwise there’s a chance of becoming a little too self-involved. And there are enough writers who have already succumbed to that.

So the next time you have a gap in your schedule or you’re feeling nostalgic or you’re looking for a way to improve, reading a few old pieces of your own writing might just do the trick.

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Creation and Evolution: The Two Stages of Character Development

Based on that heading, you might have thought this was going to be about an entirely different topic but fear not! Religion and politics are the two discussion subjects to avoid for an easier life and since I’ve already ventured into politics (in a very small way), I won’t push my luck with religion.

Of course, the creation and evolution I’m talking about here relate to character development: who your characters are at the beginning of your story and who they become as the story unfolds and concludes. The two stages have a lot in common but there are important differences in getting each of them right.

Stereotypes

Stereotypes are commonly pointed to as something to be avoided in character development but here’s something to consider: it’s okay for characters to be created as stereotypes so long as their evolution is about how they become uniquely themselves (although it’s probably best to avoid truly offensive typecasting). The reason stereotypes become so ingrained is not because they don’t exist but because they do, in spades. I’m a great example – single, approaching forty, owner of multiple cats. Yes, I’m a crazy cat lady (although I prefer cat woman). But I’m single (happily), age is just a number because I don’t intend to have children (I prefer to be the world’s greatest aunt instead), the cats chose me rather than the other way around (they kept turning up at my house and wouldn’t stop until I moved) and I’m in great mental health (the occasional bout of social awkwardness aside).

If your characters remain stereotypes, yes, it’s a big problem. But watching the process of how they break themselves out of the mould or reveal that they were never really stereotypes to begin with (despite outward appearances) can be terribly fun for both writers and readers.

Conception

Do a quick Google search for character development and you could spend days going through checklists of how to create a character. And I do literally mean checklists:

*Eyes: blue – check

*Hair: blonde – check

*Accent: none – check

*Political preference: centrist – check

*Preferred work day lunch eatery: yes, this was actually on a character development checklist I found – check

One checklist requested hundreds of minute pieces of information that could take weeks to complete for each character. I don’t know about you but I’ve got better things to do with my writing time. Don’t feel like you have to know everything about your characters before you start writing them. Creation, just like evolution, can take place over an extended period of time and in bits and pieces. And in many (if not most) cases, their preferred work day lunch eatery won’t have any relevance whatsoever.

I’m a fan of giving the creation of a character an amount of time that directly corresponds with the amount of time they appear in the novel. If there are four main characters in a book, then I spend roughly the same amount of time on developing who each of them is. If there is a secondary character who appears in only three chapters, then they’re going to get a lot less of my attention. Not because they aren’t as important but because if I devote huge amounts of time going into exquisite detail, most of it is going to end up on the writing equivalent of the cutting room floor. Again, I’ve got better things to do.

Transition

Character creation doesn’t necessarily need to make sense as long as your character is somewhat realistic. After all, the reader doesn’t see the process of creation, just the result. After creation, however, the reader sees almost everything and thus a character’s route to their eventual evolution must be logical. We must be able to trace the path they take and see how each incident has contributed to who they end up being at the end of the story.

But you don’t need to know how they get there when you create them. You don’t even need to know where they’re going. Writing is as much of a journey for a writer as it is for a reader. Sometimes it’s more fun to just head out on the open road without an itinerary. Sign posts will pop up along the way and you can decide as you approach them whether you’re going to slow down and detour or if you’re going to continue on until a more interesting one appears. (Oh, I love a good metaphor.)

You might even find that the character evolves in a way you hadn’t anticipated. But if you write towards a pre-determined evolution, you could be trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

Outcomes

It’s also important to remember that just because your story – and therefore your characters’ story – is ending, that doesn’t mean your characters’ lives are. “They lived happily ever after” generally doesn’t cut it in modern writing. If you’ve done a good enough job of it, they will be complex enough to live on in the memories of readers. Their lives could be extended through wonderings, imaginings, maybe some fan fiction. There might even be sequels. (Fairy tales used to be one offs but in these Disney days there are always sequels, even if they are straight to DVD.)

So while Thelma & Louise can get away with (spoiler alert!) driving their car off a cliff to end their story, most other characters can’t. But that doesn’t mean all the ends have to be tied up neatly. Life is so rarely neat. Not even poetic justice is neat. And the ends are almost never ends (until the ultimate end – death, that is). It’s better if the ends are tied up plausibly instead – because while it might not be an entirely satisfying conclusion to your characters’ story in a romantic sense, both your characters (and your readers) will get the ending they deserve.

Cheating Your Way to Better Editing

Let’s face it – there are so many rules in the English language that no one (not even a trained editor like me) can know them all (that’s why I have lots of reference books to make sure I get it right more often than I get it wrong). But if the rules and the reference books aren’t your thing, there are a few things you can do to cheat your way to better editing.

Minimalise Headings

The rules state that certain words in headings shouldn’t be capitalised, such as “a”, “the” and “and” (unless they are the first word in the heading). There are more groups of words that aren’t supposed to take an initial capital. But do you know what they are? More importantly, do you care?

So an easy way to avoid having to figure it out is to use the minimal approach – that is to only use an initial capital on the first word and to leave all others uncapitalised.

Capitalised example: What to Do When You’re a Bad Writer with a Good Story

Uncapitalised example: What to do when you’re a bad writer with a good story

Headings are always formatted differently to regular text (usually bigger and bolder and without punctuation at the end, unless it’s a question mark or exclamation point) so that sets them apart as headings even without the extra capitals. But don’t forget that proper nouns (naming words for those of you who don’t remember anything you learned in English classes) are always capitalised, even when using the minimal heading approach.

Capitalised example: What to Do When Santa Claus Visits from the North Pole and You’ve Been Naughty

Uncapitalised example: What to do when Santa Clause visits from the North Pole and you’ve been naughty

Eliminate Possessive Apostrophes

Apostrophes in contractions that indicate letters are missing usually aren’t where people get tripped up – words like “aren’t”, “didn’t”, “couldn’t” and “wasn’t” are reasonably simple because it is clearly the “o” that is missing from the word “not”, which is then slapped on the end of another word to reverse its meaning. When homonyms (words that sound the same) raise their ugly heads, there is some confusion (special mentions to “it’s” and “its”, “you’re and your”, and “there”, “they’re” and “their”) but the real trouble starts when trying to figure out the possessive applications of the apostrophe.

So maybe you’re just better off not even trying.

Apostrophe example: That is Ben’s boat.

Non-apostrophe example: Ben owns that boat.

Apostrophe example: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Non-apostrophe example: A Dream of/on a Midsummer Night

Apostrophe example: The cats’ litter tray is full.

Non-apostrophe example: The litter tray used by the cats is full

This approach can require some real creativity and often uses more words but once you’ve done it a few times, it will start to become a habit. But then again, if you’re prepared to put the effort into learning a new skill, you might as well give the apostrophe rule a chance.

Run the Spelling & Grammar Check

It’s amazing how many people forget to use the Spelling & Grammar Check in Microsoft Word. It’s not perfect – far from it, in fact – but if you don’t know anything about spelling, grammar and punctuation, then it’s going to know more than you. And it will complete a check that could take you days in just minutes.

Identify Errors but Don’t Fix Them (Yet)

One of the great pieces of advice I (and many others) give a writer is to put their book aside for a few weeks or a few months after they’ve finished a first (or second or third or fourth or… you get the idea) draft so that when they come back to it, they can read their writing with fresh eyes. The important word in that last sentence is “reading”.

The whole point of writing a book is so that someone (hopefully many someones) can read it. And to know whether it works, then shouldn’t you really read it yourself? I mean just read it? Just in case there’s any confusion, you really should. Because you’ll be surprised how many errors you find by just reading your book.

But here’s the crucial part – don’t try to fix it. Not yet anyway. Simply highlight it (if you’re reading on screen) or circle it with a pen (if you’re reading a printed copy) so that you know it needs fixing and keep reading. Being able to recognise that something is wrong is an important first editing step. Yes, you’ll have to attempt to fix it later but rather that it being a really long process, you can skip from highlight to highlight (or circle to circle) and forget about all the other words in between that don’t need your attention just now.

Ask an Older Relative to Identify Errors

The great thing about old (or older) people is that no matter how well you think you were educated, they will have received a better education in the rules of spelling, grammar and punctuation (assuming they were educated – if your grandmother left school at twelve or her first language isn’t English, the logic of this argument goes completely out the window). Older relatives also generally love to be right and to rub it in. So why not take advantage of that? They might not have the ability or inclination to fix the errors but they might pick up things that you’ve missed. And if they do have the ability and the inclination, score! You’ve just found yourself a free editor.

Have Your Book Professionally Edited with the Track Changes Feature On

Okay, this is less cheating than it is learning but if you can see how and what a professional is changing and figure out why, you might learn a few things and remember it the next time you need to edit something.

*****

To be honest, there aren’t that many ways to cheat at editing and it’s really in your own best interest to get good at it rather than trying to cheat. But if you can’t, then give these suggestions a whirl and see what you can achieve. A professional editor (an honest one, at least) will only charge you for the time it takes them to edit your work. And if you can help the process along, even a little, then maybe the bill will come down accordingly.

Book Review: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

When the first thing you read after opening the front cover of a book is that the author was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, it sets up a very big expectation in the mind of the reader. So imagine how pleased I was to discover how worthy this book and its writer were.

Of Mice and Men is the kind of book that high schools make students read in English classes, usually before they are emotionally ready to understand the importance of it. First published in 1937, it beautifully portrays the hard lives of two itinerant workers, George and Lennie, as they struggle to find their place in the world. Lennie is a “simple-minded giant” – today he would be described as intellectually disabled – and George is his protector, has been since the death of Lennie’s Aunt Clara. Why he feels this responsibility is unclear. They dream of a little patch of land they can call their own and just need the money to buy it. But there has been trouble in the past and as the two men prepare to take up new jobs on a California farm, George and Lennie agree on a place to meet up if there’s any more.

Almost as soon as they arrive, though, George knows instinctively it won’t end well. Slim, the most senior worker, is empathetic but Curley, the owner’s son, is a former boxer and determined to establish his authority by taking on and beating Lennie, whose physical size dwarfs his mental capacity. All he needs is the merest hint of provocation. So George tells Lennie to work hard, to keep his head down and to stay away from Curley’s attractive but bored wife who looks for entertainment by riling up the farm workers when her husband isn’t around. When he isn’t working, Lennie spends most of his time in the barn where Slim’s dog has recently given birth to a litter of puppies. (He’s been promised the brown and white one.) But Curley’s wife manages to track him down there and only one of them is going to get out of the barn alive.

Curley’s wife, Slim’s dog and Aunt Clara are the only females in the story but on a farm in the 1930s, it makes complete sense. The story is a very small slice of a very specific time and place, told with the contrast of Steinbeck’s perfect prose and dead-on ear for the working class dialect of the farm workers. There’s a lot of dialogue and for most of the book it feels like the characters are talking about nothing much. But the simplicity is actually a sneaky subtleness because when the end rolls around, it all makes sense – an awful but flawless sense.

This plot couldn’t happen in a modern setting – the current support mechanisms for the intellectually disabled would prevent a person like Lennie being dragged around the country by a person like George, even under the guise of looking after him. And it couldn’t happen in a longer book – at 95 pages, the length is also perfect because readers probably wouldn’t stick around for much longer. The ending comes at precisely the right time.

This is the first Steinbeck book I’ve read and it’s not even his most famous. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for The Grapes of Wrath, which I have a copy of just waiting to be read. And based on Of Mice and Men, it has certainly moved way up my very long list.

If you’re looking for a quick read with beautiful writing, a range of interesting characters, a deceptively simple plot and a powerful ending, this is the book for you.

5 stars

*First published on Goodreads 21 December 2016

An Interview with Louise Truscott by Louise Truscott

If you’re wondering why I’m interviewing myself, you obviously haven’t read my post from Tuesday (Can’t Get Anyone to Interview You About Your Book? Interview Yourself!). Read it first and then hopefully this won’t seem quite so self-indulgent.

How long have you been writing?

I don’t know where the time has gone but it’s been over twenty-five years now. I started, like all children, writing adorable yet cringe-worthy stories for my primary school English class, progressed to angsty poetry in high school and by Year 12, I was writing a novella. When I started university, I moved into writing romance. I was so sure that I was going to be the next queen of Australian romance fiction. But I found the confines of the genre very limiting. I didn’t want to write one thing, I wanted to write everything.

Who are your favourite writers?

Joss Whedon and Aaron Sorkin. Buffy, Angel, Firefly, The West Wing, Studio 60, The Newsroom. The writing and premises in these television shows are consistently close to perfection. There are plenty of novelists I enjoy reading but if we’re talking about writer envy, Joss Whedon and Aaron Sorkin are the two I wish I could write like. They do witty dialogue and suckerpunch storylines better than anyone.

You’ve self-published all three of your books so far. Why?

I tried half-heartedly to get my first book into the hands of the “right” people but it all seemed too hard. And when I started looking into it, self-publishing seemed so easy. Especially for someone like me who is also a trained editor. Right up until the point that I need a book cover, I can do it all myself. And I know a great designer, so even that seemed pretty simple. I’m not great at marketing myself but I know so many writers who say that traditional publishers don’t help you out much in that respect anyway. And a senior person at a publishing company told me I’d be better off not having an agent. So who am I to argue?

Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?

I think I did but I tried to suppress it because writing wasn’t and still isn’t considered a stable career option. But even when I was studying non-writing subjects and working non-writing jobs, I would go home and spend my evenings writing. Because I didn’t know how not to write. And then I got a job editing accounting textbooks and a job after that writing corporate tender responses. As much as I like to believe in free will, there has to be a little bit of fate in that.

Why do you love writing so much?

Sometimes it’s more of a love-hate relationship! But I don’t really know. It must be linked to how much I love reading but there are plenty of people who love reading and have no desire to write. I love creating something from nothing but, most of all, I love that I don’t need anyone’s permission to write. I can do as much of it as I like and nobody can tell me not to write. Well, I suppose they can tell me but I’m unlikely to listen to that sort of advice.

You’ve published two books about how to write novels. How did they come about?

I never had any intention of writing books about how to write novels. Back in 2014, I started a blog as a means of increasing my profile and as a place where I could house samples of my writing. It became evident pretty quickly that I would need to generate a lot of new material to stay fresh. So I started writing blog posts about writing, editing, publishing, marketing and reading. There was no rhyme or reason, it was just my random thoughts and advice. I got so into it and wrote so much ahead of schedule that I realised I had enough to fill a book. And that’s how Project December came to be. There was literally one week between me realising I had enough to fill a book and me releasing the book. All I had to do was arrange the articles into chapters so that they flowed, do some short rewrites, copyedit it, get my designer to do the cover and it was done. I even wrote a chapter for Project January inspired by the process: how to write a book without even trying.

What about Project January?

It was a similar process but because I’d done Project December a year earlier, I knew another book was a possibility so it wasn’t writing a book without even trying. It was a bit more stressful especially because I set a date for when I wanted to release it and that date went whooshing by without me meeting it. I’ve since become a fan of simply letting the writing dictate the release date. I release when I’m ready. That’s another advantage of self-publishing. No publishers putting pressure on me for my next book.

When will your next book be out and what is it about?

I’m aiming for the end of 2017 or the start of 2018. I’m trying to work according to a schedule of one book a year but if it’s slightly longer, so be it. My next book is called Black Spot and it was shortlisted for the Text Prize for Unpublished Children’s and Young Adult Writing in 2016. It’s a young adult mystery about a teenager named Livia Black. She lost her memory in a car accident six years earlier that killed her mother. Even since, she and her father have been living an isolated life on the family farm and that suits her because the accident left her with terrible scars. For some reason, some of her memories start coming back – not many, just a few – but they don’t match up with what her father has told her. She has to decide whether her former identity is important enough to her to pursue it, especially since the things she is recalling don’t paint a rosy picture of her life before the accident.

Why did you decide to write a young adult book?

A friend suggested it. She saw the explosion in popularity that young adult books were having, even crossing over into the mainstream like Twilight, The Hunger Games and Divergent, and said I should give it a go. I think she thought it was a potential money-making endeavour but I looked at it more like an artistic challenge. I was in the middle of writing another book and it was proving hard work so I put it aside to see what came of going down the different route. I wrote the first draft of the book within six months. The pace with which I was able to write it excited me and the story I came up with excited me, too. So it ended up being a good suggestion.

Will you continue writing young adult books?

I said earlier that when I first started writing, I didn’t just want to write one thing. My first novel was an action adventure, my next novel will be a young adult mystery, the one after that will be literary crime and the one after that will be speculative dystopian fiction. I wish I was better at sticking to a genre because it would be kinder to my reading base and my ability to develop a reading base but I tend to go where the writing takes me. When I try to force myself into a mould or to write things that I’m not feeling, it just doesn’t work. I’ve tried writing the sequels to my first novel and to the young adult novel – I’ve written about a third of both actually – but I was only doing it because I felt compelled to and I ended up getting to a point where I was stuck. I just didn’t know what the story was, only that I had these characters who my readers felt should continue on in other books. I hope I’ll figure out their stories eventually but in the meantime, I’ll continue writing other books.

What advice do you have for others wanting to write?

Buy Project December and Project January and read them! It’s two whole books full of my writing advice and they contain a lot more than I could ever squeeze into an answer to an interview question. But my general advice on writing is to just do it. Very Nike, I know, but they were onto something. The people who bug me the most are those who talk about wanting to write but never actually do it. Why? There’s nothing stopping them. Just sit down and write. Then write some more. And continue writing. There’s no big secret to being a writer other than actually writing. Whether you’re any good or not, that’s a separate issue entirely. If you take pleasure in writing, then you take pleasure in writing regardless of whether or not you end up published and feted.

Can’t Get Anyone to Interview You About Your Book? Interview Yourself!

As part of the announcement of the release of my latest book, Project January: A Sequel About Writing, I sent an email to the alumni group of Swinburne University where I studied and graduated with a Master of Arts in Writing. I’d done the same thing when I published Project December: A Book About Writing and they’d been kind enough to include a mention of it in their e-newsletter and a link to where it could be purchased. I hoped they’d do the same this time.

Instead, I got an email asking if I’d be interested in being interviewed and profiled as part of a series on their past students. I thought, “Why not?”.

But once I’d agreed to do it, I did what I always do, which is panic. Sometimes I feel like I have proverbial foot-in-mouth disease (not literal foot-in-mouth disease – gross!) and am prone to say things I shouldn’t. I aim for witty and end up coming off like a weirdo. It’s why I’m a writer, after all. I like having the chance to revise. And revise. And revise again. Speaking off the cuff doesn’t give you that chance.

To keep myself calm and to try to prepare for an interview where I didn’t know exactly what the questions were going to be, I decided to attempt to pre-empt what might be asked and come up with answers. That way, if they did come up, I’d have something that didn’t make me sound like a person on the low-functioning end of the autism spectrum.

Yes, essentially, I interviewed myself.

It was actually a lot harder than I thought it would be. Not answering the questions but coming up with questions that people might be interested in hearing the answers to. But I have to admit that when the phone rang and the interviewer and I had our chat, I felt relaxed, reasonably comfortable and also like I had an answer for everything he asked. Some of them I hadn’t anticipated but most I had and when I needed to prompt myself, I quickly looked over the responses I had typed out and it helped me continue on without becoming a stuttering idiot.

So what sort of questions should a writer ask when interviewing themselves? Here are a few that I came up with:

*How long have you been writing?

*Who are your favourite writers?

*Are you self-published or traditionally published? Why?

*Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?

*Why do you love writing so much?

*How did your book come about?

*Why did you decide to write this genre?

*Will you stick with this genre or are you planning to explore others?

*What is your next book about and when will it be available?

*What advice do you have for others wanting to write?

You can throw a few into the mix that are specific to the writing you do and the answers you give – after all, like any piece of writing, it should flow and feel like it transitions naturally from here to there. And since an interview is essentially a conversation, a good interviewer should pick up on parts of the answers you give that require a follow-up or elaboration. Even when the interviewer is you!

You can read the profile Swinburne University wrote about me here and on Thursday you can read the interview I did with myself for a comparison. There are vast differences because when I interviewed myself, I was only thinking about me but the Swinburne interviewer was very interested in how my master’s degree had helped me get where I was going in my writing career.

The most important thing to take out of all this is that when you release your book, tell everyone! Don’t be humble or embarrassed or concerned about bothering people. If they’re not interested, fine. They can go talk to someone else at that party or they can delete your email. But if they are interested, great! You just never know where the next step, the next connection, the next marketing opportunity might come from.