Stakes: 11 Ways To Make Readers Care

Chuck Wendig has written another fantastic article about writing, this time on the subject of stakes (NSFW -->): 25 Things To Know About Your Story’s Stakes.

Stakes: Making things matter

1. A story's stakes must be clear

The stakes must be clear. What will the protagonist lose if she fails to achieve her goal? What will she gain if she achieves it? Chuck Wendig writes:

"[W]hat is at stake? Life? Love? Money? A precious plot of land? The loyalty of an old friend? A wish? A curse? The whole world? Galaxy? Universe?"

2. Your protagonist's goal must be clear

Protagonists must want things. They can want more than one thing, but they must want one thing desperately and above all else. This thing that is desperately, passionately, wanted is the story goal. If the protagonist achieves the goal then they've succeeded, if they haven't then they've failed.

For instance, in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, if Indiana finds the ark and brings it back with him then he's succeeded. If not, he's failed.

What are the stakes? If Indie achieves his goal then he gets professional kudos and the opportunity to study a fascinating artifact. If he doesn't achieve his goal then the Nazi war machine will use the ark to help turn the tide of war in their favor.

Of course, the goal can change along the way. In The Firm Mitch McDeere starts out wanting to be a rich lawyer then, about halfway through the story, his goal changes: he just wants to be free. (He dosen't want either the FBI or the mob to own him.)

3. The stakes must matter to the characters

If the stakes don't matter to the characters ... well, that's like creating a beautiful car but neglecting to put any gas in the engine. If the stakes don't matter to the characters then there's nothing to drive the story.

Chuck Wendig puts it this way: "Why do they care? If they don’t give a damn, why will we?"

4. 'Pinning' the characters to the stakes: making the stakes matter.

A character's wants, needs and fears are what make the stakes matter.

One of my favorite scenes comes from The Princess Bride.  I can't embed it, but here's a link to the (one minute, thirty second) video: Hello My Name Is Inigo Montoya.

Here, Inigo Montoya takes the life of the man (Count Tyrone Rugen) who killed his father in order to avoid paying him for the sword his father created. It is the story of the injustice done to Inigo's father, Inigo's deep love of his father, his thirst for revenge, his fear that his years of sword training to best the six fingered man will have been in vain ... it is all those things, the messy human stuff, that makes the character--and us!--care about the six fingered man's death, that makes us (okay, me) glory in it.

5. Create conflicts of interest

Chuck Wendig's post is about stakes, but we can't talk about stakes without talking about goals. A story gains depth and texture when the goals of at least two characters are mutually exclusive. The goals of the protagonist and antagonist, for example.

In The Princess Bride this was, I thought, especially well done. In the beginning Inigo Montoya's goal--to kill the man in black (/Westley)--conflicts with Westley's goal to save his one true love. Then, later, Inigo and Westley join forces against Count Rugen and Prince Humperdinck, respectively.

In the end, these shifting alliances give the story a depth, an interest, it would otherwise lack.

As Chuck Wendig writes:

"Every character won’t necessarily gain and lose the same things in a story. What’s fascinating is when you pit the stakes of one character against the stakes of another (and one might argue this is exactly what creates the relationship between a protagonist and an antagonist). A gain for one is a loss for the other."

6. Stakes: Internal and External

Back to goals.

Characters have internal and external goals.

For instance, in Shrek the protagonist's internal challenge/conflict was to risk rejection and let people in, to risk rejection and let others know how he really felt (tell Fiona he loved her) so he could make connections, make friends (with Donkey), and find true love.

Shrek's outer challenge was to rescue Princess Fiona so Lord Farquaad would get all the creatures of fairy out of his swamp.

Different kinds of stakes accompany the different kinds of goals. If Shrek failed to get the creatures out of the swamp, Lord Farquaad would have had Shrek killed. If Shrek failed to lower his defenses and let people in, he would have lost the love of the Princess Fiona and had a sad and lonely existence in his now vacant swamp. A pyrrhic victory.

7. It's not size, it's complexity

It's not the size of the stakes that count, it's their complexity. Chuck Wendig writes:

"It’s all well and good to have some manner of super-mega-uh-oh world-ending stakes on the line — “THE ALPACAPOCALYPSE IS UPON US, AND IF WE DON’T ACT LIKE HEROES WE’LL ALL BE DEAD AND BURIED UNDER THE ALPACA’S BLEATING REIGN” — but stakes mean more to us as the audience when the stakes mean more to the character. It’s not just about offering a mix of personal and impersonal stakes — it’s about braiding the personal stakes into the impersonal ones. The Alpacapocalypse matters because the protagonist’s own daughter is at the heart of the Alpaca Invasion Staging Ground and he must descend into the Deadly Alpaca Urban Zone to rescue her. He’s dealing with the larger conflict in order to address his own personal stakes."

8. Escalate the stakes

Often a protagonist/hero will start off a quest to get something they want, something that will make their life better. Then they find out that it they don't get it--this thing, whatever it is--not only will their life not be made better (they won't win the million dollars and be able to quit their crappy 9 to 5 job) but it will be made much worse (they'll lose their home and their grandma will have to stay in a nightmare of a retirement community).

By the end of the story they'd be happy just to get back what they had at the beginning and go to their 9 to 5 job and thank their lucky stars they had food to eat, a place to sleep and people to hang out with. Why? Because by the end of the story their world has been turned upside down and it's impossible for things to go back to the way they were.

Generally there's a setback for the hero at the end, a big setback.

This setback could be anything, but let's say it looks as though our protagonist/hero has lost. She's failed to achieve her goal. Not only that, but the stakes--what happens if she does/doesn't achieve her goal--are heightened. Now, not only will our protagonist lose her job and her home, but so will everyone who has helped her on this quest. This, in turn, causes everyone (well, everyone except her mentor who just died a horrible death for standing up to the evil bully) to desert her.

I'm not saying this happens in every story--it doesn't--but the stakes, whatever they are, will escalate. That's part of how one creates dramatic tension/narrative drive.

9. Escalate, complicate, or both

Chuck Wendig writes:

"We can escalate stakes by complicating them and we have at our disposal many ways to cruelly complicate those stakes. A character can complicate the stakes by making bad choices or by making choices with unexpected outcomes (“Yes, you killed the Evil Lord Thrang, but now there’s a power vacuum in the Court of Supervillains that threatens to destroy the Eastern Seaboard you foolish jackanape.”) Or you can complicate the stakes by forcing stakes to oppose one another — if Captain Shinypants saves his true love, he’ll be sacrificing New York City. But if he saves the millions of New York City, he’ll lose the love of his life, Jacinda Shimmyfeather. Competing complicated stakes for characters to make competing complicated choices."

10. Story stakes and scene stakes

Stakes come in different sizes.

You have big stakes--story goal sized stakes--but you can have smaller, micro-sized, scene sized, stakes as well.

For instance, in Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark, there's a terrific scene in the middle where Indie ducks into a tent to hide from the bad guys and comes across Marion tied up. Indiana is dressed in native garb so, at first Marion doesn't recognize him. Indie (who thought she was dead) begins to untie her then realizes that if the Nazis discover Marion missing they'll know Indie is there looking for the ark. He can't give himself away.

So, what does Indie do? Well, he ties her back up, of course! Marion is furious with him, naturally. It's a great scene.

Lets take a look at the stakes at play. At the beginning of the scene Indie is trying to hide from the guard because he wants the ark.

Indiana's stakes:
Goal: Escape the guards notice and obtain the ark.
- Success: Indiana doesn't get captured and is one step closer to his goal.
- Failure: Indiana is captured, possibly tortured. He fails to obtain the ark and the world is taken over by Nazis.

Marion's stakes:
Goal: Get untied, sneak out of the camp, go to America.
- Success: Freedom.
- Failure: The unknown. She could be tortured, various nasty things could happen to her.

In the middle of the scene the stakes change when Indie realizes he has to tie Marion back up or risk losing the ark.

Indie's goal: To not completely alienate the affections of Miriam.
- Success: Marion's love and gratitude.
- Failure: Her lasting wrath.

For Indie to succeed in winning Marion's affection--or just to avoid making her furious with him--he must help her escape. But he can't. If he does then he risks his primary mission. So he accepts Marion's wrath, ties her back up, and exits the tent.

The point is that mini-goals with their own stakes can pop up within a scene. The scene between Indiana and Marion was especially interesting, I thought, because it highlighted their diametrically opposed interests. Marion would much rather just escape and forget all about the ark, but not Indie.

Chuck Wendig writes:

"Stakes smaller than those able to prop up subplots — let’s call ‘em “micro-stakes” — can instead be used to support a scene. When entering a scene, you should ask: “What are the stakes here?” The characters in any given scene are here in the scene consciously or unconsciously trying to create a particular outcome for themselves or for the world around them. Something is on the table to be won or lost... The stakes needn’t be resolved by the end of the scene, and may carry forward to other scenes..."

11. Stakes in dialogue

I hadn't thought about it like this before I read Chuck Wendig's article, but dialogue has goals with stakes attached, or at least it probably should. After all, we communicate for reasons, because we want things. He writes:

"Dialogue in a story is purposeful: it’s conversation held captive and put on display for a reason. Dialogue in this way is frequently like a game, a kind of verbal sparring match between two or more participants. Again: things to lose, things to gain. Someone wants information. Or to psyche someone out. Or to convey a threat. Purpose. Intent. Conflict. Goals."

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Altogether a fantastic article on writing, another in a long line. I'd encourage you to head on over to Chuck Wendig's site and read it for yourself: 25 Things To Know About Your Story’s Stakes.

An Apology

I intended to post this blog yesterday, but, instead, had to move brown cardboard boxes filled with memories.

I'm undergoing that horror known as 'moving'.

Sounds innocuous, doesn't it? But it means I'm neither here nor there. I live at two addresses--the old and the new--but, really, I'm at home at neither because my life has been parceled up into crates and stacked along walls.

As I creep through unfamiliar hallways staring at the brown corrugated reminders of work to come, the boxes begin to seem vaguely challenging. Perhaps threatening.

I think I need to read a Stephen King novel and write a horror story about moving!

Thanks for being patient with me. :)

Cheers, and good writing.

Photo credit: "Flying Ninja Man" by Zach Dischner under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

A Perfect Plot In 6 Easy Steps

Of course there's no such thing as the perfect plot, but there are certain things that every book with that I-couldn't-put-it-down-if-I-tried quality have in common. In his latest blog post, Dave Farland tells us about them: Dave Farland's Daily Kick in the Pants: Plots.

Plots that work

Here's what every book that is stuffed to the rafters with narrative drive (/dramatic tension) has:

1. Interesting characters

You've heard this before: All your main characters should want something and your protagonist should want something desperately.
For instance, in Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Story Goal was right in the title: Indie needed to find and return with the lost Ark.

2. Conflict

There must be something keeping the characters from achieving what they want.

Dave Farland writes:

"For example, here’s a story: I just went out and got the mail and hour ago.

"Does that sound like a story to you? Not really. There was no challenge for me. Now, if I had to get the mail, but in order to do it I had to dodge bullets, stick my hand in a mailbox full of rattlesnakes, and fight off an IRS agent in order to get back in my door, then perhaps I’d have a story.

"Or maybe not. Sometimes the try/fail cycles can be boring because they feel contrived. The author goes “over the top” as he or she struggles to entertain."

These conflicts are going to both be internal (for example, battling one's own fears) and external (battling Nazis who want the ark for themselves).

3. Setting

Setting has to do with both characterization and conflict. Think of how important the setting was to the opening sequence in Raiders. What is the thing most people remember from it? That's right, the big boulder rolling toward Indie as he tries to run away.

The setting is what it is because Indie is an archeologist and relic hunter. It lets us know this is an exciting and dangerous job and that our hero is used to betrayal.

4. Try/fail cycles

Dave Farland writes:

"The characters must struggle to overcome some obstacle on three or more occasions, and the tale must resolve in such a way so that the reader knows what happens."

5. Interesting try/fail cycles

Dave Farland writes:

"Now, you can’t just have try/fail cycles. Your goal is to have interesting try/fail cycles. Fascinating attempts. Thrilling ones. In other words, if you have a villain, the villain must try to thwart your hero in ways that deliver suspense, that keep us engaged. Similarly, your protagonist needs to deal with his problems in ways that are entertaining."

6. High stakes

Make sure your protagonist has something to lose, even if it's only his hopes and dreams.

For instance, at the beginning of the story the protagonist embarks on his adventure because he wants something. This could be the Story Goal, but often it isn't.

In the middle of the story our hero is still pursuing a goal--perhaps not the same one--but the stakes have increased. If he doesn't achieve his goal it will be bad, not just for himself, but also for his fellow adventurers.

By the end of the book the stakes have escalated to include the folks back home. Our hero's life, and the lives of all those he cares about, will be devastated if our champion fails.

Dave Farland writes:

"Let’s talk about the stakes for a moment. The major problem often broadens, so that it affects more and more people as the story goes on. For example, in a murder mystery, the victims begin to pile up over the course of a novel. But the problem can also deepen, having more deleterious consequences in the hero’s life. The detective in our story might find that he cannot sleep, cannot eat. He becomes obsessed with finding his killer, and it ruins his marriage and family life.

"In fact, most of the time, a good conflict will both broaden and deepen."

In closing I'd like to leave you with these words of encouragement:

"So at the end of a tale, I have to go back and examine the basic plot, and ask myself, how well did the author do. Guess what? It doesn’t have to be the best plot ever written. Many a fine movie or book might score only a five and still become a big hit."

That's the key, isn't it? Interesting characters (/characters with tangible goals) engaged in repeated, escalating, conflicts in a setting that helps fire the readers imagination.

Happy writing!

Photo credit: "Mixed Bags" by JD Hancock under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

5 Ways To Increase Your Productivity

I've just finished a novella I was working on, one that took about 5 times longer to complete than I thought it would, so today I celebrated by catching up on the wonderfully amazing writing blogs I've subscribed to.

I came across dozens of terrific articles, many of which I'll be tweeting in the next few days and weeks, but this one stood out: 5 Writing Habits That Could Be Destroying Your Creativity (And Income).

Andrea Wren, over at The Renegade Writer, writes:

"... I thought I’d share with you the five bad habits that were obstructing my work and creativity flow."

The points that follow were inspired by Andrea Wren's article.

5 Work Habits To Cultivate

1. Don't edit as you type

When you do your first draft, or zero draft, don't worry about typos or spelling or grammar. Just write.

In On Writing, Stephen King talks about writing a first draft with the door closed--write just for yourself--and writing the second draft with the door open--now you think about how others would think about what you've written.

On the first draft, don't worry about anything except getting the words down, getting the story out. Don't even worry too much about the structure. When you read over what you've written, then you can do an outline.

Or not.

I find, with me, it works differently each time. Sometimes I'll have the outline--or a partial outline--first and then I'll write the first draft. Sometimes I'll have a scene or two or three and I'll write those then I'll have to puzzle out what the story is, how the scenes fit together.

I agree with Chuck Wendig that having an outline from the beginning speeds up the process enormously! (See Chuck Wendig's post (adult language -->) 25 Things You Should Know About Outlining.)

Also, lately, I've been doing more of my stories in Scrivener and I find it helps that the manuscript is broken into scenes and each scene has a brief description that's visible at all times. This exposes the structure of the story and makes finding my way around a longer manuscript much easier.

2. Don't edit your previous days work

This point is intimately related to the last. I used to re-read and edit my previous days work, and it often ended up that that was all I'd get accomplished that day.

A couple of years ago I developed an odd sort of writer's block--I lost the ability to compose on my computer. It's gotten much better over the years, I'm typing this post into my computer, but for my stories I still write my first draft longhand.

One enormous benefit of doing it this way has been that I can't go back and do substantive editing of the previous days work.

3. Don't overplan

I think many writers, new writers especially, tend to overplan.

I used to overplan (and, honestly, I probably still do, but I'm not as bad). I'd need to know everything about all my characters, everything about the fictional world, the politics, etc, etc, etc. In fact, I got so involved in all the research often the story would never get written!

These days I don't need to know everything about the characters, or the plot, before I sit down to do my first draft. I find that much of the actual story development is done on the fly while I write.

This is a tip I picked up from a number of professional writers: I do as little research as possible for the first draft because I don't know what parts of the story are going to survive. Of course, if you have a detailed outline and feel confident about what you'll be including this doesn't apply.

For example, I just finished writing a story that included the use of guns, but when I wrote the first draft I wasn't sure what kind of guns (or ammo) my protagonist would use so, when my protagonist was suiting up for battle I just wrote 'gun' in curly quotes ({gun}) to remind myself on the second draft to do some research and figure out what make and model would be right.

4. Disconnect from the world

When you write, disconnect from the world. I know it's likely impossible to disconnect completely, but--this is true for me--there's nothing that can kill a writing session faster than social media or answering email.

Here's what has been working for me: I get up, make myself a cup of coffee, and start writing. I don't clean the litter box, I don't water the garden, I don't clean the kitchen, I don't check my email, I don't go on Twitter.

I go to my office and I write.

I knock off around noon--I need a break by then--and I do some housework, eat lunch, answer email, and so on. Then I go back into my office and write some more.

I've found that those first few hours of the day are pure gold. I do my best writing then.

5. Take breaks

This is something I learned from reading Dean Wesley Smith and Kris Rusch's blogs: the importance of taking a break. Myself, I try to take a break every hour or so and every two or three hours I'll take about half an hour off to have a snack, take a walk, do some housework, whatever.

Andrea Wren writes:

When you’re desperate to get things finished, you can work until exhaustion – chuffing away like a clapped out stream train on a disused railway.

Being on a deadline can be a creativity crusher. But not taking a break can be more so. Your head and brain need respite to let more ideas in, so give it a chance.

I’m lucky to have dogs that force me on walkies, so I have to leave my desk, and wandering by the river kicking up the earth, that’s when some of my best light bulb moments strike.

Thanks to The Passive Voice Blog for the link.

Photo credit: "glückstadt - das königliche brückenhaus" by fRandi-Shooters under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDervis 2.0.

George R.R. Martin: The Real Iron Throne & Boycotting Orson Scott Card

"Stories are broken mirrors. They’re fractal displays and unkempt jungles. They’re a sunset made beautiful by an unpredictable confluence of clouds and chemicals and the unknown and forever unexplored context of those who will behold just such a sunset. (Chuck Wendig, Hell With What Sells)"

This is going to be a miss-mash post where I talk about several things I've found interesting.

First up:

George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones

I'll admit it: I haven't read Martin's books, so I was surprised to discover that this (see the photo at the beginning of the article) is what the Iron Throne really looks like.

Very cool.

Which doesn't mean George Martin doesn't like the throne used in the TV series. He writes:

"The HBO throne has become iconic. And well it might. It's a terrific design, and it has served the show very well. There are replicas and paperweights of it in three different sizes. Everyone knows it. I love it. I have all those replicas right here, sitting on my shelves.

And yet, and yet... it's still not right. It's not the Iron Throne I see when I'm working on THE WINDS OF WINTER. It's not the Iron Throne I want my readers to see. The way the throne is described in the books... HUGE, hulking, black and twisted, with the steep iron stairs in front, the high seat from which the king looks DOWN on everyone in the court... my throne is a hunched beast looming over the throne room, ugly and assymetric...

The HBO throne is none of those things. It's big, yes, but not nearly as big as the one described in the novels. And for good reason. We have a huge throne room set in Belfast, but not nearly huge enough to hold the Iron Throne as I painted it. For that we'd need something much bigger, more like the interior of St. Paul's Cathedral or Westminster Abbey, and no set has that much room. The Book Version of the Iron Throne would not even fit through the doors of the Paint Hall. (George R.R. Martin: This is what the Iron Throne REALLY looks like)"

Ender's Game: To see or not to see, that is the question

I  love Orson Scott Card's writing, his stories, but not his political views.

Before I read this Salon article (Orson Scott Card’s long history of homophobia) I was going to go see the movie. The book is a favorite of mine and I was looking forward to watching Harrison Ford's performance.

I've changed my mind.

Here is a quote from the Salon article I mentioned, above. It is from: Orson Scott Card: State job is not to redefine marriage.

A term that has mental-health implications (homophobe) is now routinely applied to anyone who deviates from the politically correct line. How long before opposing gay marriage, or refusing to recognize it, gets you officially classified as “mentally ill”

Remember how rapidly gay marriage has become a requirement. When gay rights were being enforced by the courts back in the ’70s and ’80s, we were repeatedly told by all the proponents of gay rights that they would never attempt to legalize gay marriage.

It took about 15 minutes for that promise to be broken. …

If a court declared that from now on, “blind” and “sighted” would be synonyms, would that mean that it would be safe for blind people to drive cars?

No matter how sexually attracted a man might be toward other men, or a woman toward other women, and no matter how close the bonds of affection and friendship might be within same-sex couples, there is no act of court or Congress that can make these relationships the same as the coupling between a man and a woman.

This is a permanent fact of nature.

Here's the kicker:

Card went on to advocate for, literally, a straight people’s insurrection against a pro-gay government:

[W]hen government is the enemy of marriage, then the people who are actually creating successful marriages have no choice but to change governments, by whatever means is made possible or necessary… Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down….

I discovered these articles via Chuck Wendig's article: Tolerance For Intolerance: Boycotting Ender’s Game. Worth the read.

Homophobia is ugly, so I'd like to leave you with a photo that made me smile:

Source: Princess Queen

Photo credit (for the first photo graph in the article): Article by io9, This is what the iron thrown REALLY looks like. The artist is Marc Simonetti and George R.R. Martin talks about his work here: The Real Iron Throne. Here is a link to the photo on io9.com.

4 Reasons Why Some Stories Never Get Finished

I've been wondering: Why do some stories work out while others don't?

I'm finishing up a story I began in 2007; the story stayed with me, drawing my thoughts back to it. I kept wondering how it ended so I figured, well, why not? Pick the blasted thing back up and finish it!

Which is what I did ... or, rather, what I've almost done. It's nearly finished.

But it got me wondering: Why can I finish this story now? And why couldn't I do it before?

Here are four reasons why some stories never get finished.

1. The structure wasn't working

I love Chuck Wendig's posts on structure. He writes that there's no such thing as ONE archetypal structure. Rather, each story has it's own structure.

But of course there are things like arcs that are good to have, but not just arcs, shapes of all sizes, even squiggly ones. The important thing, the crucial thing, is to have movement.

In most of my early stories I started out with an idea and a good opening--and by 'good' I mean I had things happening, changes, problems being solved--but I had no idea where to go from there.

One idea/concept/rule-of-thumb that has helped me enormously is the notion of an 'all is lost' point where the hero goes through a major crises, a point where it looks as though not only is the very worst going to happen to him but that what we thought was the very worst isn't at all. A NEW and completely horrible very worst is introduced and our hero threatened with it.

Really, just the idea that one's hero should have a difficult time, that they should be persecuted, that the writer's job--one of them--is not to coddle their characters and pour them tea and share biscuits but to make their lives a living hell. One which, maybe, the writer will rescue them from.

2. Not enough of an idea

I've always been fascinated by creatures of myth. Or, more generally, of there being a Narnia-like place where I could go, my very own World Between The Worlds.

When I was a kid I wrote a bunch of stories consisting of about four pages. The stories would all be about an enchanted glade, about the quality of the air and how the light looked and the feeling of creation, of newness, of possibility, that the glade imparted.

It was probably good writing practice but it made for a lousy story because not only did nothing happen, it wasn't enough of an idea. Who was the protagonist? What did they want? How were they going to get it? What was opposing their efforts to get it?

The protagonist needs to solve a problem that will set her goal: the story goal.

For example, Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark had a problem: get the ark before the Nazi's did and bring it back to the museum. After Indie brings the ark back home the story is over.

3. The subject matter was too personal

Sometimes I remember an adventure from my past and think: That would make a terrific story! Almost always the story grinds to a halt, or isn't very good, because I'm too close to the material.

Please don't misunderstand. As Red Smith once said (I'm paraphrasing): "Writing is easy. You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed. (Red Smith, Wikipedia)" His tongue was firmly in his cheek, of course.

But I think that, sometimes, one needs a bit of distance from the material.

4. The structure was too difficult to keep track of

There are MANY reasons why a story goes unfinished.

It may sound silly, but I think one reason stories often go unfinished is simply because they get too long to organize properly! Without a detailed outline it can be difficult to hold a story in one's head, especially if that story has taken 100,000 or so words to write. (Incidentally, I've been using Scrivener more lately and find it an excellent partial solution to this problem.)

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Before I go, I'd like to leave you with what the great and wonderful Janice Hardy has to say about choosing a setting. Wonderful advice, well given: 10 Questions to Ask When Choosing a Setting.

Cheers!

Have you started writing a story you've never finished? Why didn't it work out? What would you do differently?

Photo credit: "Flirt Tail" by Laura D'Alessandro under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

How To Publish 52 Short Stories And 10 Collections Per Year

This is another terrific article by Dean Wesley Smith, this time on how to make your stories visible: The New World of Publishing: Helping Readers Find Your Work.

The Plan:

1. Pick a genre.

2. Write one short story a week.

3. Each short story should be around 5,000 words.

4. Brand each book.

5. Publish each short story as an ebook and charge $2.99.

6. Every 5 weeks bundle 5 stories together into a collection. Sell this collection as both an ebook and a POD book. Sell the ebook for $6.99 and the POD book for $12.99.

If you take DWS's advice at the end of the year you'll have 52 short stories and 10 collections.

Not bad!

How To Make A Living Writing Short Stories

Dean Wesley Smith writes that the key to selling books is threefold: Produce a professional looking book, brand each book and have many titles available for purchase.

Produce a professional looking book

There are hundreds of articles out there on what it means to produce a professional looking book and how you can do that so I won't cover it again here. (If you're looking for some help, here's an article on where to find cover artists.)

Make sure each book looks professional, has a good description, has appropriate keywords and has been slotted in the right category. 

Brand each book

A brand is the "name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's product distinct from those of other sellers" (Wikipedia).

I'm not going to talk much about branding because there are oodles of great articles out there (for instance, Why Content Marketing is the New Branding).

Especially in this case, a picture really is worth a thousand words. Look at Dean Wesley Smith's Books. (Note: You might have to scroll down the page.) Notice how his name is laid out in the same way on each book; the same styling, the same font.

DWS writes that you want all your books, especially the ones in a series, to look similar. Also, make sure that the cover conveys a sense of the genre you're writing in. Think of the cover of your average romance book and contrast that with horror.

Have many titles available for purchase

That is, have many titles under the same name (/pen name) and genre available for purchase. If you write everything from romance to horror under the same name (/pen name) make sure that the books within each genre are branded distinctively.

How many books should one have for sale? DWS says: It depends. Between 10 and 50, give or take. (grin)

And remember, that's 10 to 50 books within the same genre written by the same author (/pen name).

#  #  #

The above represents only a portion of his article, I recommend heading on over to DWS's blog and reading the whole thing.

Cheers!

Photo credit: "Happy Fourth of July 2013!" by JD Hancock under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Is Writing Rewriting? A Historical Perspective

Should Writers Rewrite?

There is a saying you've probably heard: rewriting is writing.

Some writers swear by this, for instance Elmore Leonard, Ernest Hemingway and Susan Sontag have all written passionately and convincingly on the virtue, in fact the necessity, of rewriting.

Other writers, Dean Wesley Smith prominent among them, just as passionately disagree. DWS points to writers like Harlan Ellison, writers who wrote stories in one draft, stories which have gone on to win awards. Dean himself has written a 70,000 word novel in 10 days and sold it for a tidy sum.

So, what's the deal with rewriting? Is it a writer's salvation or their bane?

I found this article by the Boston Globe absolutely fascinating: Revising your writing again? Blame the Modernists.

Craig Fehrman writes:

It’s easy to assume that history’s greatest authors have been history’s greatest revisers. But that wasn’t always how it worked. Until about a century ago, according to various biographers and critics, literature proceeded through handwritten manuscripts that underwent mostly small-scale revisions.

Then something changed. In a new book, “The Work of Revision,” Hannah Sullivan, an English professor at Oxford University, argues that revision as we now understand it—where authors, before they publish anything, will spend weeks tearing it down and putting it back together again—is a creation of the 20th century. It was only under Modernist luminaries like Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and Virginia Woolf that the practice came to seem truly essential to creating good literature. Those authors, Sullivan writes, were the first who “revised overtly, passionately, and at many points in the lifespan of their texts.”

. . . .

What first got Sullivan thinking about revision was encountering a version of Ernest Hemingway she’d never seen before. While a first-year PhD student at Harvard, Sullivan visited the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and its Hemingway collection. She marveled at the famous author’s archive—his letters, his family scrapbooks, even his bullfighting materials. But one thing in particular stood out to her: the typescript of his novel “The Sun Also Rises.” It showed Hemingway changing his book dramatically from one version to the next. Monologues vanished, entire plot points disappeared, and, in the end, he arrived at the terse, mysterious novel that became part of the American literary canon. “The Hemingway style that’s so familiar to us wasn’t in the first draft,” Sullivan says. “It was a product of revision.” [emphasis mine]

. . . .

“We often assume that style comes out of nowhere ... But style is produced in revision, and revision is not something writers do naturally.”

The Cost Of Paper

Why this attitude toward revision?  For one thing, the cost of paper! CF writes:

In the age of Shakespeare and Milton, paper was an expensive luxury; blotting out a few lines was one thing, but producing draft after draft would have been quite another. Writers didn’t get to revise during the publishing process, either. Printing was slow and messy, and in the rare case a writer got to see a proof of his work—that is, a printed sample of the text, laid out like a book—he had to travel in person to a publishing center like London.

All of these factors suggest that revision was not something that happened on the page. Indeed, during the 19th century, the Romantics made resisting revision a virtue. The best literature, they believed, flowed from spontaneous and organic creative acts. “I am like the tyger (in poesy),” Lord Byron wrote in a letter. “If I miss my first spring—I go growling back to my Jungle. There is no second. I can’t correct.”

What Is Good Writing?

This, really, is the nub of the issue. What counts as good writing? CF writes that Hemingway's attitude toward rewriting was ...

"... driven in part by a new philosophy of what made good writing. The Modernists wanted to produce avant-garde literature—literature that was less spontaneous and enthusiastic than it was startling and enigmatic. In an interview with the Paris Review, Hemingway famously described his “principle of the iceberg”: “There is seven-eighths of it under the water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg.”

A Shift In Technology

But it wasn't just a change in philosophy that made rewriting more attractive, there was also an advance in technology that made paper cheaper to make. CF writes:

"An equally big part of this change, Sullivan suggests, was a shift in literary technology. In 1850, Britain was producing about 100,000 tons of paper per year; by 1903, that number had increased to 800,000 tons per year. Printers started setting type by machine, which was five times faster than setting it by hand and allowed page proofs to be easily shared and corrected. Before long, authors were guiding their books through a long and potentially fertile process: first a manuscript, then a typescript, perhaps a magazine serial, and finally a series of proofs for the book. “One thing it allowed for that revision by handwriting didn’t is massive structural transformation,” Sullivan says. “Some writers reduced their work massively, and some expanded it massively.”

Jack Kerouac: Don't Afterthink!

Of course, not everyone is a modernist. That is, not every writer believes "that careful and substantial reworking would ultimately produce the best literature".

Can Revision Be Overdone?

CF writes:

In the last 30 years ... technology has shifted again, and our ideas about writing and revising are changing along with it. Today, most of us compose directly on our computers. Instead of generating physical page after physical page, which we can then reread and reorder, we now create a living document that, increasingly, is not printed at all until it becomes a final, published product. While this makes self-editing easier, Sullivan thinks it may paradoxically make wholesale revision, the kind that leads to radically rethinking our work, more difficult.

“The ideal environment for revision is one where you can preserve several different versions of a text,” Sullivan says. With only one in-progress draft on a computer, we lose the cues that led the Modernists to step back from their work and to revise it. “It’s that moment of typing things up that led to the really surprising and inventive changes,” Sullivan says. “The authors came back to their text, but it seemed estranged.”

A Cautionary Note

CF ends his article on a note of caution. He mentions that many authors who teach at universities "need to look more like professors and to discuss their laborious processes ... ‘We can’t teach you how to write, but we can teach you how to revise.’ And it’s a big business.”

CF writes that revision has always come with a cost. "... revision can go too far, making something worse instead of better.”

I think John Updike may have said it best: "Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying."

All in all a balanced, fascinating article. The link again is: Revising your writing again? Blame the Modernists.

Thanks to The Passive Voice Blog for the link.

Photo credit: "corn in the moonlight" by Robert Couse-Baker under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Stephen King On Storycraft: Don't Force It

Yesterday someone sent me a terrific link to Anthony Mason's interview with Stephen King: Stephen King on storytelling.

It was a wide ranging interview and King is animated and relaxed, there's also a video. Great reading/watching.

Wait Until You've Gotten All The Pieces Together

My favorite part was Stephen King's reply to Anthony Mason about how he knows whether an idea is robust enough for a story. King is talking about his soon-to-be-published novel Doctor Sleep and says:

King: "I'd be driving in my car and I'd think, Well, now Danny Torrance is 23. And then a few years later I think, He's 27, or he's 28. So question was, what exactly is he doing?

"That's the sort of thing where it's, like, half an idea - okay, he's dysfunctional, he's alcoholic, the way that his father was an alcoholic. But it's only half an idea.

"And then I saw this thing ... about a cat in a hospice, and this cat knew when patients were going to die. And the cat would go into their room and jump up on their bed. And that's how the personnel in the hospice knew that that patient was going to be the next one to step out.

"And what really interested me about the story wasn't the cat, per se, but the fact that the patients seemed to welcome his visit. And I thought, Well, he's like an angel of death or an emissary of death, and maybe death isn't a bad thing. Maybe it's only sleep. And I put those two things together and for me it clicked. So I wrote the book."

MASON: "Uh-huh. And so you were just waiting for something to click on it?"

KING: "It has to click. There has to be, like, two or three moving parts to make it go. It can't just be one. So sometimes they all come together, and sometimes you'll get one piece and you have to wait a little while to get the rest. "

MASON: "Do you wait, or do you try to work it?"

KING: "Never try to work it, just wait."

MASON: "Why? 'Cause that forces it?"

KING: "Yeah. It's like if you have a piece of furniture that you want to get into your house. And if it's too big to fit the door straight on, you have your choice: either you can wait until you get somebody to help you and tilt that piece of furniture so that it goes through, or you can just ram it and scrape the sides up. So you don't try to force it. It's a little bit like a batter at the plate; if you try to force base hits, you're going to strike out a lot. So I have a tendency to wait until I get the pieces together."

The entire interview is a must read, and the video adds another dimension to the conversation.

Also:

"Mason asked King if writing is a compulsion for the 65-year-old author: "Or do you need to have some story that just gets in your brain you can't get out?"

"It's a compulsion," King replied. "For one thing, when I was younger, my head was like a traffic jam full of ideas, and they were all jostling, and they all wanted to get out. And I wrote a lot more than I write now. I still write every day." (Stephen King and his compulsion to write)

 65 years old and still writing every day. Pretty darn good.

Photo credit: "Stalker" by Laura D'Alessandro under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

11 Tips On How To Become A Better Writer

For the past few months I've been enjoying Chuck Wendig's posts about writing, and they just keep getting better!

11 Ways To Become A Better Writer

1. Write.

Have you written today? If not, stop reading this and go write something. Seriously. Go.

Chuck Wendig writes:

"Stop talking about writing. Stop reading about writing. Stop dreaming about writing. Stop doing things that don’t qualify as writing. The thing that defines a writer is that the writer writes."

2. Do what works for you.

Writers talk a lot about what works for them, and that's great, but it's important to remember that just because something works (or doesn't work) for someone else doesn't mean it will (/won't) work for you.

The only way you'll know what works for you is to write. CW writes:

I don’t have answers. Neil Gaiman doesn’t have answers. Jane Austen didn’t have them. Nobody has answers. We have ideas. Suggestions. Possibilities. The only writer who has answers about your writing is you. Advice is just advice. ... You are your own Muse.

That said, Neil Gaiman gave one of the best pieces of writing advice I've read, one that has helped me enormously. The following is from Neil Gaiman's Pep Talk for NaNoWriMo participants.

The last novel I wrote (it was ANANSI BOYS, in case you were wondering) when I got three-quarters of the way through I called my agent. I told her how stupid I felt writing something no-one would ever want to read, how thin the characters were, how pointless the plot. I strongly suggested that I was ready to abandon this book and write something else instead, or perhaps I could abandon the book and take up a new life as a landscape gardener, bank-robber, short-order cook or marine biologist. And instead of sympathising or agreeing with me, or blasting me forward with a wave of enthusiasm—or even arguing with me—she simply said, suspiciously cheerfully, “Oh, you’re at that part of the book, are you?”

I was shocked. “You mean I’ve done this before?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Not really.”

“Oh yes,” she said. “You do this every time you write a novel. But so do all my other clients.”

I didn’t even get to feel unique in my despair.

So I put down the phone and drove down to the coffee house in which I was writing the book, filled my pen and carried on writing.

One word after another.

That's the key. Write one word after the other.

I know, it sounds absurd, like telling a person they need to breathe to stay alive, but the next time you're stuck, try to remember that even brilliant writers like Neil Gaiman get stuck too. All you need to do is write one word after another. Don't think about the whole novel, or about what you've written, just think about the next word. Write that word, then write another one, and so on.

3. Good grammar matters.

4. Your first stories will likely suck.

I know my first stories sucked. Nothing happened in them. I'd never heard of character arcs.

In my early stories I got hung up all the time, I'd wander off onto a storytelling ledge and wonder why I couldn't write the second half. Gah! I really wish there'd been more information in those days about how to create dramatic tension/narrative drive, or even moderately interesting characters.

Jim Butcher's advice on Tags and Traits was a revelation to me.

Also, though, it takes time. And practice. And I don't think the practice ever really stops. We continue to learn, to grow.

5. Ignore the naysayers

There's always, always, going to be someone--probably a lot of someones--who put you down, who tell you that you can't do it, who say that either you're not talented or that people aren't reading the kind of stories you're writing, or that no one is buying books anymore, or ... the list is endless. 

Ignore them.

6. Learn to say "yes" more than you say "no"

This one is all Chuck Wendig. I have friends like this, people who not only say "Yes" but "Hell yes!" to just about anything they're asked, whether it is to do an interview, or to judge a contest, or comment on a novel.

And I think it's great advise.

But it's advice I haven't been able to take. I've had to say "no" a lot, no to reading and commenting on novels, no to doing reviews, no to being on panels. Why? Because I'm zealously guarding my writing time.

Don't misunderstand. I'm not anti-social. I would love to read every novel sent to me and give it a review, but I can't do that and maintain my writing schedule. And what do writers do? They write.

Writing comes first. Writing always comes first.

7. Don't make excuses.

Chuck Wendig writes: If you’re not writing, that’s your fault. It’s not anybody else’s.

It's a hard truth.

I want to stress, though, that of course life events will affect one's writing. Tragic events happen. My father died last year and that had a profound effect on me both as a person and a writer. I didn't write for at least two months after his death.

On the other hand, if a few weeks go by and you're always giving reasons for why you couldn't write, perhaps think about where writing is in terms of your priorities. There's nothing wrong with not writing. In fact, if writing is something you constantly want to avoid and is creating all sorts of stress, perhaps you need to put that dream aside for now and go on to other things.

8. Figure out what you love about stories.

Chuck Wendig writes:

Realize what you love about stories, and bring that love to bear on the page. Let the audience in on that love. Your love should be viral, like cat videos or the norovirus.

Amen.

I think points 7 and 8 are related. If someone loves writing they'll come up with excuses to avoid doing other things to scavenge more time to write.

9. Quit chasing your voice.

Chuck Wendig writes:

You will never find your voice. It isn’t a car and you aren’t a dog chasing it. It’s not a pearl in an oyster or an elk in the forest. Your voice is who you are. The way you think. The way you speak when you’re not thinking about how you speak. You are your voice. If anything it’s like a lost key. It’ll turn up just when you stop hunting for it.

Great advice! I think this--finding your voice--is one thing writing blog posts can help with.

10. Make the reader feel, make them think.

Chuck Wendig writes:

The best two things your story can do is to stir my emotions and to challenge my assumptions. Make me feel something (rage! lust! love! grief!). Make me think something (what is the nature of evil? what is the enemy of empathy? ...).

11.  The Secret

CW writes:

The secret to writing is so simple it tickles: Write as much as you can. As fast as you can. Finish ... Hit your deadlines. Try very hard not to suck. That’s it.  That’s my secret.

 That's it. That's every successful author's recipe for success: hard work and good luck.

Chuck Wendig's article deserves to be read from start to finish (contains adult language -->): 50 Rantypants Snidbits Of Random Writing & Storytelling Advice.

Do you have a tidbit of storytelling and writing wisdom? If so, please share! 

Photo credit: "Lisboa #2" by Thomas Leuthard under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Writing: A Buisness Plan

My apologies for not posting much this week. One reason for my absence is I'm on vacation and have been busy doing cheesy tourist things.

It's been great!

The other reason I haven't blogged as much lately isn't new, I've been writing more and have been finding that all my stories take about four times longer to complete than I think they will.

A couple of people have asked me what I've been up to, so I thought I'd turn my answer into a blog post.

My Plan For Writerly Success

That's right, I have a plan! It's similar to Robert Heinlein's. Here it is:

a) Write.

Writers write
Writers often have a daily goal--they want to write X number of words--but I find I work better if I have a weekly goal. I write short, so my rewriting mostly consists of filling in scenes. That means I'll write a variable amount each day but a (more or less) consistent amount each week.

Also, rather than concentrate on the number of words I write a day I concentrate on the number of words I publish a month.

Write in many genres
Some writers have written in many genres and they know, not only what they like to write, but what they are best at writing.

I'm not one of those people, not yet, so I've set out to write a few stories in each major genre. At least, each major genre I like to either read or watch. Surprisingly, I've found writing horror stories rather fun.

Write stories of different lengths
I've been writing stories of all lengths: flash fiction, short stories, novellas and novels.

I know that there has been a lot of talk about what size story is the most lucrative--short story, novella or novel--and I think the verdict is in: the novel. (Though I tend to think that if several novellas, if they were in a series, were bundled together, that could sell just as well.)

Still, since I'm exploring a number of genres, it's much more sensible for me to write short stories than novels!

b) Finish what I write.

It is good advice to finish what you start but I think it's better to lay a story aside than force an artificial finish if you're stuck.

The best writers in the world have gotten stuck in the middle of a story. You know what this is like, right? You have a great idea for a story, you're writing gangbusters and then, after a certain point, nothing. It's like staring off the end of the world.

I've had stories like that--not many, but a few--and rather than forcing a finish, I put them aside. It has taken me years to finish some of those stories but, now, I'm picking them back up and completing them. And it feels fantastic!

So, yes, finish what you write but don't force it. Don't fear putting a story aside but, after you've consigned it to it's shoe box, do shift your focus and write something else.

One of the benefits of either doing an outline or writing the first draft sparely and quickly is that one knows, in broad strokes, what happens. It doesn't matter if there are gaps, you can go back and fill those in later.

But everyone's different. That's what I've been finding works for me.

c) Determine which stories are the most popular with readers

Downloads
Here's my criteria for what's popular: downloads. Not reviews.

Focus on readers, not writers
I'm interested in which stories are popular with readers, not writers. Yes, I love knowing what my friends and acquaintances think of my work, but many writers read like editors. That is, their literary taste is more like the average editor than the average reader. That's fine if one is submitting to editors or agents but not if one is putting ones work directly in front of readers.

d) No matter what, keep writing and publishing and learning.

Never give up, no matter what
You will fail occasionally. As Seth Godin says, if you don't fail occasionally, you're not trying. The key is not to give up. After all, the only way to get better is to continue putting yourself out there, continue getting feedback.

Comedians and risking failure

I love reading articles by comedians. Writers have it easy, we can work out our new material in the privacy of our offices. Comedians have it tough, they work out their new material in front of strangers and routinely get either ignored or heckled. But they keep doing it, they keep building up material.

Here are two articles I can recommend. The first is a 2012 interview Esquire did with Bill Murray.  At one point Bill Murray says:

"You gotta commit. ... You're goin' out there with just a whisper of an idea. The fear will make you clench up. That's the fear of dying. When you start and the first few lines don't grab and people are going like, "What's this? I'm not laughing and I'm not interested," then you just put your arms out like this and open way up and that allows your stuff to go out. Otherwise it's just stuck inside you."

It's important for writers to open up to failure as well. Of course we don't have to write in front of a live audience, we can write in the privacy of our office and publish it on a smaller site or hand it out to beta readers. The important thing is that we don't stop trying when we fall on our face.

The other article is by Paton Oswalt: A Closed Letter To Myself About Thievery, Heckling And Rape Jokes. PO's overall goal in the article is to talk about whether there are any subjects that are out of bounds, whether there are kinds of jokes that should never be told. It's a wonderful, thoughtful, article. Why I'm mentioning it here, though, is because he talks about what it was like for him as a young comedian, what it takes to make it in that business. Worth the read.

Okay! That's it for me today. Back to writing. I'll talk to you again tomorrow. :-)

Photo credit: "exposed" by Robert Couse-Baker under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.