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| Mark Coker |
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| Raymond Chandler |
The path took us along to the side of the greenhouse and the butler opened a door for me and stood aside. It opened into a sort of vestibule that was about as warm as a slow oven. He came in after me, shut the outer door, opened an inner door and we went through that. Then it was really hot. The air was thick, wet, steamy and larded with the cloying smell of tropical orchids in bloom. The glass walls and roof were heavily misted and big drops of moisture splashed down on the plants. The light had an unreal greenish color, like light filtered through an aquarium tank. The plants filled the place, a forest of them, with nasty meaty leaves and stalks like the newly washed fingers of dead men. They smelled as overpowering as boiling alcohol under a blanket."The air was thick, wet, steamy and larded with the cloying smell of tropical orchids in bloom." Larded, that word is evocative. I'm there in the greenhouse, the obscene sweetness of the flowers coating my tongue, my throat, making me want to gag. The scene is cast with a pall of sickness, of decay. I suppose it's a symbol for the decay that has infested the Sternwoods and come to fruition in Carmen.
The story skeleton (also called a story question) consists of a simple format:Why does it seem so easy when he does it?
*WHEN SOMETHING HAPPENS*, *YOUR PROTAGONIST* *PURSUES A GOAL*. But will he succeed when *ANTAGONIST PROVIDES OPPOSITION*?
For instance, look at Storm Front. (Yes, I'll use my own books as examples, because I'm just that way. ;) Also, I'm more familiar with them than I am with almost any other writer.) Storm Front's story question:
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When a series of grisly supernatural murders tears through Chicago, wizard Harry Dresden sets out to find the killer. But will he succeed when he finds himself pitted against a dark wizard, a Warden of the White Council, a vicious gang war, and the Chicago Police Department?
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Simply put, a story is a narrative description of a character (the protagonist/hero) struggling to attain an important goal. In general, the protagonist is opposed by another character (the antagonist/villain).Jim Butcher gave an interview not long ago in which he spoke about how to build a villain, so I'm going to let you follow that link and not talk a whole lot about the antagonist. Kristen Lamb also has an excellent post about this: Spice Up Your Fiction–Simple Ways to Create Page-Turning Conflict.
The protagonist sets out to achieve his goal and faces problems and opposition to his intentions along the way. His risk of loss increases as the narrative proceeds, and casts an element of doubt over whether or not the protagonist will attain his goal. Then, in a final confrontation of some sort (the climax), the protagonist either succeeds or fails, based upon his own choices and actions.
Here's the nutshell concept: Plan a great big freaking event for the end of the middle. You want it to be a big dramatic confrontation of whatever kind is appropriate to your genre. The fallout from your big bad Big Middle event should be what boots the book down the homestretch to reach the story's climax. Really lay out the fireworks. Hit the reader with everything you can. PLAN THE BIG MIDDLE EVENT. Then, as you work through the middle, WORK TO BUILD UP TO IT. Drop in the little hints, establish the proper props and motivations and such. Make sure that everything you do in the middle of the book is helping you build up to the BIG MIDDLE.I love Jim Butcher's name for the often amorphous middle part: The great swampy middle.
(I've used the Big Middle concept in EVERY book I've ever published. It works. It ain't broke. It ain't the only way to do the middle, either, but it's one way.)
A story climax is, in structure terms the ANSWER to the STORY QUESTION that we talked about earlier.Okay? Got it? Ready to write that story? Well then, what are you waiting for!
There, see how tidy that is? Simple! Again, not EASY, but simple!
For example, the overall Story Question of Lord of the Rings:
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When Frodo Baggins inherits the Ring of Power from his Uncle Bilbo, HE SETS OUT TO DESTROY IT before its evil can wreak havoc upon Middle Earth. BUT WILL HE SUCCEED when the Dark Lord Sauron and every scary evil thing on the planet set forth to take the ring and use it to turn the entire world into the bad parts of New Jersey?
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And the story climax of the Lord of the Rings:
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Yep.
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See? ANYBODY could have written Lord of the Rings!
. . . .
Remember earlier, how we talked about ways to hook your readers and get them emotionally involved in the story? Well, if we've done that right, then when you reach story's end, they are INVESTED in its outcome. They want to SEE what happens, preferably as vividly as they possibly can. By the time you've reached the end of a story, a good writer has got their readers on the edge of their seats, at 3:30 in the morning, and the pages are tearing every time they turn because the reader is so excited.
You've made an implicit promise by getting your reader so bound up in the story. You've /got/ to deliver on it, or that reader is going to freaking /hate/ you for doing that to them. They are gonna go away from that ride all hot and bothered and frustrated as hell. That's what catharsis is: the release of all that tension and sympathetic emotion that the reader has built up because of the writer's skill at weaving the story. Done right, your readers will cheer and cry and laugh out loud and dance around their living room.
EVERYTHING YOU DID IN YOUR BOOK LEADS UP TO THIS. Deliver on the climax or die as a working writer. Simple as that.
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| Mexican Sugar Skull |
The real work is in the day-to-day writing and connecting with people. So you're continuously putting out the poem, the short story, you're doing a reading in a series, you go to your writing group, you show up at a writers conference, you study with someone you admire, you go to workshop, you're blogging, you're critiquing, you're putting your ideas out there, that's the true work of writing. There's something profoundly wrong about the model of sitting in a room for three years writing a novel all by yourself. Successes that happened with that model happened in despite of the process, not because of it. That whole writer in the garret cliché came out the Industrial Revolution, and it created an absolutely alienated producer, the writer. I'm not saying all you should do is sit around and shmooze and not write your book. Not at all. I'm saying engage with others who are doing similar things, and if you do it right these people will advocate and be your ally in making better art that means something to you and your friends. And in fact, agents and publishers are more likely to find you if you are actively participating in your culture. If you do it for your own sake, it will make you a happier and more fulfilled writer.Amen!
Richard Nash is an independent publishing entrepreneur -- VP of Community and Content of Small Demons, founder of Cursor, and Publisher of Red Lemonade. He ran the iconic indie Soft Skull Press and was awarded the AAP Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing. Books he edited and published landed on bestseller lists from the Boston Globe to the Singapore Straits-Times; the last book he edited there, Lydia Millet's Love in Infant Monkeys, was a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist. The Utne Reader named him one of Fifty Visionaries Changing Your World and Mashable.com picked him as the #1 Twitter User Changing the Shape of Publishing. Twitter: @R_Nash Website: http://www.rnash.com/
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| Rock Bottom Remainders |
The group's "Past Our Bedtime Tour" (because real musicians don't get up early like writers do) will include a public performance June 22 at LA's El Rey Theatre, followed by a private show the next day for the American Library Association's Anaheim convention.To read about the Rock Bottom Remainders and their final tour, click here: Rock Bottom Remainders saying goodbye to lit-rock.
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| Net Sales Revenue From Book Publishing Is Up |
I’ve come to the end of my ninety days of exclusivity with Amazon’s KDP Select program. That means that I’m now able to upload and distribute SAVAGE CINDERELLA on other sales channels, such as B&N, Smashwords, and coming soon, Kobo. I thought I would give you my final analysis on my experience.
PROS:
1) All sales on one distribution channel. Easier accounting and focused marketing plan.
2) Cross promotion opportunities with other KDP Select participants.
3) Five days to offer the book FREE in an effort to gain exposure and readership.
4) Participation in the Prime Lending program (approximately $2 per borrow).
CONS:
1) Narrows your readership to Kindle owners, and may alienate Nook or I-pad owners.
2) Contributes to Amazon’s attempt to monopolize the e-reader market.
3) Unable to post excerpts for advertising purposes.
All in all, I’m very pleased with the outcome of my KDP Select experience. I’m not sure if I will do it again, only because I think it’s generally bad for the publishing industry for any one entity to have exclusive rights to our work, but I can’t deny the short term benefits are very enticing.Read the rest here: The End of Select
Writer Beware has received scores of complaints over the years about PublishAmerica, and hundreds more can be found online. The company has been the subject of at least one successful arbitration proceeding, resulting in a substantial award for a PA author.My advice: Don't even think about sending your work to PublishingAmerica. Few things in life are guaranteed, but if you send your work to PublishAmerica you're sending it into painful obscurity.
On June 11, 2012, a class action complaint against PublishAmerica was filed in US District Court in Maryland, in the name of three plaintiffs. See Writer Beware’s blog for more.
This information is current as of the update date at the top of the page. Writer Beware receives complaints, advisories, reports, and/or questions about PublishAmerica at least monthly.
Like plaintiffs, thousands of other aspiring authors who signed up with PublishAmerica have become demoralized because the publishing contract appears to be little more than a pretext for selling dubious services...These authors also feel trapped because PublishAmerica owns the rights to their books for seven to ten years. This presents a Hobson's choice for the authors: either throw good money after bad for suspect promotional services or abandon the book that was a labor of love.Read the rest here: Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against PublishAmerica.
There’s a writer in all of us, or so the saying goes, and in this day and age of modern technology and mobile computing, more people are considering this true. People update blogs from their smartphones while commuting to work on the train, and use their tablets to continue the next great American novel in every location from home to coffee shops to church on Sunday.Read more here: 4 of the Best iPad Apps for Writers
Since its inception and wide availability, writers of all kinds have embraced the Apple iPad. It’s smaller and lighter than a laptop and as conveniently portable as anything on the market today. Here’s a look at some of the top writing apps for the iPad, each designed to help you be the best writer possible…
