Dwayne’s Comments (group member since Apr 01, 2017)

Dwayne’s comments from the Support for Indie Authors group.

I read it right after you posted it and read it again just now. It's much, much better. Now we have some specifics to get us interested. Thanks!

The one in Message 22 is the most appealing to me. I agree with B.A. The flat font really takes a lot away from an otherwise great cover.

The character is super cute, by the way.

"Sizzling" - The weather has nothing to do with the rest of the blurb. Drop it.

"smashes" - how does a phone call smash anything, even figuratively?

"sleepy" - I can't imagine a police station having a sleepy routine.

"case-hardened Detective" - sounds too cliche

"young associate" - is never mentioned again in the blurb. Not necessary.

"bewildered" - by what?

"vicious and bizarre" - how?

"to say the least" - superfluous

"turns out to be a tricky job" - I would imagine any murder mystery would be tricky

"intriguing but snooty women" - Yeah. No. If nothing else this is a red flag that most of the "women" in the book will be cookie cutters of one another and not written as living, real people.

After that it becomes a lot of vague sentences that mean little to nothing to the potential reader. Allan is running away from something "painful" he needs to confront. What? Why? Every book has something like this. Why is yours unique?

Calling him Detective Chief Inspector once is enough.

Team wrote: ""

Team Goofwell, I've asked you a number of times not to spam our pages and not to post links. You continue to ignore the request. Please stop.

Gentle reminder that we don't discuss politics here. Thanks.

Yes he was no saint, but I prefer William. Jane Goodall is a lovely person.

Harry wrote: "My friends and family and my followers on my other social medias. People that follow my blog. Other members in Facebook groups that I'm a part of. There's lots of people who could potentially be a ..."

So, these are people that like you and aren't fans of the book, yet. Goodreads is meant to be a social catalogue. When I joined, I had to wait until my first work was published before I was granted author status. As far as I know it hasn't changed.

Having an author page here doesn't do a whole lot to move your success as an author. It's meant as a place for people to browse for and discuss existing books in order to find something new to read. You can look into it, but I doubt you will be able to set up an author page yet.

Curious as to how one finds fans of a product that isn't out yet. Even with an author page who would be a fan of a book they haven't read?

Florence wrote: "I'm a planner in writing..."

I have tried it and it bores me. Writing has to remain fun or I won't do it. A question that gets asked here from time to time is, "Do you treat your writing more as a business or a hobby?" For me it's a bit of both, but mostly it's therapy. So, I have to play it fast and loose or I'll lose interest and probably will become mad (thought not a scientist).

Jay wrote: "I tend to favor the advice Dwight Swain gave, in Techniques of the Selling Writer:

Do these stories in the style Burroughs used to use..."

William or Edgar?

When it comes to how I go about writing, when I have an idea that's pestering me long enough and I've turned it around in my brain long enough to see if there's really a story there, I start by writing sketchy scenes, the ones that I see most clearly. Early on I don't worry too much about how it will start or end or who will be in it or whatever, as that stuff changes so much in the process. When I've sketched out everything that needs sketching, I go back to the start and begin retooling the scraps and building on them. Eventually I look for ways to connect them, move things around to where the work best in the story, build the characters that feel they need to be there, eliminate the duds, tweak around with names and other garbage. It's all chaotic experimenting, like a mad scientist dinking around with a lot of chemicals just to see what happens. If it does nothing, I dump it. If it makes a pretty mess, I keep it.

Florence wrote: "Thanks, Jim. I don't know about you, but when this happens to me, I must write it down, or it gets lost somewhere in my head."

I'm the opposite. I don't write new ideas down. If a fresh idea doesn't stick with me, I take that as a sign it wasn't a good idea to begin with. I'm never lacking for ideas for a story or novel, as it is. Plus, especially for the short stories, my writing is generally a reflection of whatever I'm going through at the time.

Stop it.

I don't much care what happens to my work after I'm gone. After all, I'll be gone, and no one else will care about it. I do get a bit saddened when I think about the projects that will remain unfinished after I'm gone. I do hope somehow people can continue to read my work, but I'm not concerned about it beyond that.

J.M.K. I'm not able to delete your off topic and unwanted bookwhack. I will as soon as I can unless you do it first. Please familiarize yourself with our rules. Thanks.

Ian wrote: "Frankly, I am with Micah. I am not going to throw out this script merely because chapters 7 and 13 do not do anything of particular importance."

Same here. It's just something that came to mind and I was wondering if anyone else knew of the advice and what exactly it said. I won't be changing my manuscript to fit it, either, in which all my major characters finally appear together in chapter seven (though it's not an overly key scene in the book), and chapter thirteen is part of an investigation that takes place from chapter twelve to chapter sixteen. It's not any more or less important than the chapters around it.

Micah wrote: "Whatever the theory, it's a load of fetid dingos kidneys."

Great. Now I'm hungry again. Thanks.

I checked and my favorite novel only has nine chapters. The seventh isn't any more important than the other eight, either.

Eileen wrote: "I have never heard this.

What I have learned is that important events have to happen at the 1/4 point, 1/2 point and 3/4 point, and the halfway mark should be a huge event in the story.

I have ..."

At this point, I'm going to believe it's a dated bit of advice that, a theory of writing that isn't universal enough to fit all works of fiction.

The quarter, half, three-quarters you're talking about seems much better and more sound advice. The one thing I remember reading back in those days that I have always stuck to when novel writing is to make sure at least two events happen in every chapter that push the story forward. They don't have to be major things, just something. "The killer couldn't have been Mike (out of seven suspects) because..." "The coroner found three words written on the victim's chest in Magic marker..." That kind of thing.

The first feels as if you took a bunch of sentences and tossed them into a blender, then took out the remaining fragments and put them in a random order. It reads like flashes of an idea, but nothing really gels. Nothing really fits well.

November 1973: Kidnapping in the Middle East. Seventeen-year-old son of an American oil driller snatched by mercenaries. Government officials deny involvement. Which government?

No news on the other missing teenager, the daughter of the deceased U.S. ambassador. Who?

Senator Temple, friend of the families, accuses an old rival of the abduction—the tyrant who rules the energy sector. What families?

Harry, 17, wannabe navy SEAL. What about him? Is he the hero of the book, or the kid that was kidnapped? Or both?

Lilah, 16, chess player and future Harvard lawyer. Ditto.

The second is better. It's much easier to follow. It's too long, though.

To me, it feels stronger if you leave the meat of it and cut away the fat, like this:

It’s 1973. Senator Temple has his hands full, dealing with reelection on top of the powder keg that is the Middle East. The mistake he once made let a criminal take over the world’s energy sector. What the senator doesn’t need is the annoying campaign donor in his office. Unfortunately, the oil driller is the head of one of the three dynasties crucial to Temple’s plot to defeat the enemy.

Nothing the senator says changes the minds of the families. Greed and ego will not let them work together. Exasperated, Temple makes a suggestion which causes the oilman to send his foster daughter to a warzone. The moment she lands there, events are set in motion none of them can control, events which will echo across decades and change the course of history.

Tomas wrote: "However, I've seen books that had quite a lot of shorter chapters (I may fall there with 60-ish), and I've seen a book that had longer chapters, and ended up around 15 - so even chapter 3 would be too late, let alone 13."

Yeah, that's kind of why I'm curious what this seventh and thirteenth chapter theory of writing actually is, if it truly exists outside of my (sometimes) feeble memory. I've read lengthy books with only a few chapters. I've read short books with many chapters. It seems a one-size-fits-all theory of writing ain't really gonna work for most books, making the theory pointless.