Feb 24

Food for Thought: On Being Read and Reread

Every once in a while, I go to a website where I can listen to people tell stories about their lives.  The tales are entertaining and inspirational and represent, to me, the ancient tradition of oral storytelling that is all but gone today.  Sure, grandma and grandpa may share memories with their grandchildren, but the passing of information from generation to generation does not carry the reverence or importance that ancient peoples worked to establish.

Writing and publishing played a role in changing that perspective.  When important events can be written down and mass produced, there is no reason to commit things to memory.  You don’t even have to do the writing yourself.  Journalists and authors fill libraries, websites, and all manner of e-media with accounts of the major happenings of the world.

But what if you want to add your viewpoint to the public record, or just have a good story to tell?  You can share your observation and reaction in a short tweet.  If you want to express more than that, you can write something longer in a blog.  You can even self-publish a 500 page treatise with any number of e-book distributors.  The thing is, once it’s out there, is anyone going to read what you have to say?  Will anyone even find your story to read it?  Will it be good enough for people to recommend to others and come back and read more things written by you?

If it’s important to you for your writing to be read and reread by other people, there are three things that will help you build your audience:

  1. Learn and practice your craft – If your writing is unpolished and you don’t take steps to improve, it’s unlikely that anyone but your closest family and friends will stick with you.
  2. Decide how you want to get your story out in the world – Are you after the traditional brick-and-mortar path to a book deal?  Or, do you want to enter the world of electronic publishing?  Maybe social media such as Twitter, Facebook, or blogging is where you want to express yourself.  There are many options in today’s world and it takes some exploration to find what is right for you.
  3. Build an audience – Draw attention to your work through traditional marketing and social networking – today’s e-media enhancement to ‘word of mouth.’

My goal from this blog is to share ‘Food for Thought’ in these three areas.  I want to foster a conversation that is as fun and helpful to you as it is for me.  You see, I enjoy the discussion that comes from putting my words out for people to read.  Whether it’s giving and receiving feedback with my fellow Deadwood Writers, or an exchange of comments between me and my Facebook friends, this is fun for me.

If you think about it for yourself, I suspect you’ll realize these interchanges are fun for you as well, because writing alone in a vacuum is a very lonely place to be.  Come join me in the conversation and let’s enjoy the journey to being read and reread together.

Feb 23

What makes a story suspenseful?

Reality makes fiction writing suspenseful. That may sound like an oxymoron, but fiction also includes science fiction and fantasy, both of which skirt reality, and in so doing also skirt suspense.

For example, ever met Superman? Me neither. His character is suspenseful though, and great fun to read or watch.  But I know it is fantasy, it can’t really happen and I don’t feel any compassion for sidekicks Lois and Jimmy because, well, he’s Superman! I am strictly a tourist on a bus. But take a character clayed from mortal man and make him the hero instead. Now successful rescue becomes only one of several outcomes. Suddenly the bad outcomes take on new tension and you can feel this time it really will not end well. Like your favorite uncle, the hero is a little flawed. When everything is at stake, it’s their blemishes that must be cleansed first before they can save Lois and Jimmy, or their house from falling into foreclosure.

At the end of each story, the characters walk off arm-in-arm into the sunset, but which hero stands taller now? It is much more gratifying to take ordinary people, thrown them into extraordinary circumstances and then watch them try to wiggle out of it.

From Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain, it is the common man facing unsurmountable odds that holds our interest and keeps us turning the page. If Stowe’s Uncle Tom had been treated like a white man, would we still choke up when he dies? If Stein’s Danny wasn’t a suffering, single-parent would we still root for him to get custody of his daughter over his rich ex-in-laws?

Ian Flemming’s James Bond Series is nothing short of suspenseful, but it is suspense hung 15 minutes into the future. Fun stuff. We’re blown away by all his gadgets, but are we really sitting on the edge of our seat when the sharks smell blood? No, we’re waiting for him to pull the Shark-B-Gone out of his perfectly pressed suit. At no time do we feel for 007 because we know he’s always got something up his sleeve. Fifty years on, he’s still good fun to read and watch — and very collectable I might add — but it’s the author’s techno-candy that keeps us coming back, not the car chases, sharks and men with razor teeth.

A word about why.

I want to write this blog for two reasons. I hope to be able to pass along some of the wisdom I’ve learned over the past twenty-odd years to those just coming into this sport. In the beginning, I had three wonderful mentors who took hours-at-a-time out of their busy schedules to help me, without ever asking for compensation. It’s time for me to start to pay that forward.

I also hope to advance my own publishing success by finding enough folks who think my writing is entertaining and want to buy it and recommend it to others. I am on the lookout for a good agent and publisher, too, someone who can help me turn modest sales into moderate or more.

Next Month.

Can you envision a future where reading — and by that extension writing — is strictly digital? A time when all printed books are antiquarian? A day when everything ever written by every man will live long and prosper in cyberspace? We’re facing that future. Next month, we’ll take a look at what this means to the suspenseful writer.

Feb 21

Finding Something to Write About

I think one of the hardest parts about writing is finding something to write about, especially if you decide to start thinking of a topic at your computer. There’s nothing like that large, blank, white piece of paper staring back at you from the screen to drive all the ideas that were playing at the edge of your consciousness straight out of your mind. It’s the quickest way I know to get your mind to go completely and utterly blank.

When I go to bed at night I find it hard to fall asleep right away, so I’ve read a lot of articles on “sleep hygiene”. “Sleep hygiene” is all the things you can do to help yourself fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake feeling refreshed in the morning. There are a lot of articles out there. But they all start the same way, even if they use different words: Empty your mind, don’t think about all the things you meant to do that day and didn’t, don’t think about all the things that are wrong with your life and you need to fix, etc., etc., etc.

I’ve never been able to empty my mind. There’s always a thought or two buzzing around: I need to get the car washed tomorrow. I forgot to buy lox. I need to start rereading this book for my presentation to … You get the idea. My mind is busier when I’m trying to fall asleep at night than it is during the day when I can actually do something about these things.

So the one thing I’ve learned from all this is: Sitting down in front of that big, blank, white piece of paper on the screen is not where I should go when I’m looking for ideas.

I’m curious. When you’re looking for ideas for something to write about, what do you do? Where do you find the spark that gets you going?

Feb 18

The Writer’s Life

I have been a writer since age 5, but it has taken years for others to realize that.

I was always a writer, or, more directly, I was always writing.  The act of writing does make one a writer, but the subtleties of that are profound.  Writing is an activity that kids do as a school assignment or what adults do in their serious job.  Writing is an element of something else, not a stand-alone profession.  Why should writing be considered anything more than a hobby?  It is for the reader.

I was a child who was not good at sports and had no siblings to annoy or be annoyed by.  I had the time, and I recognized at that early age that I was creative.  My parents encouraged me or at least positively tolerated the hours I spent hunched over a pad of paper.  I kept diaries of thoughts, personal struggles, observations, conversation snippets and story ideas.  My middle school English teacher let me write stories for extra credit.  I continued that in high school, writing one teacher-acclaimed sequel to some book we read in class, some sort of social commentary combining 1984 and the character K-9 from the British TV show Doctor Who.  Then came the big moment: I was editor of my high school newspaper.  I made it; I was a writer.

I guess I was.

Wanting to learn more about the craft of writing, I took enough college poetry, creative nonfiction and fiction classes to obtain an English Writing minor.  Despite this, in my mind I was just a kid writing words.  I was not a writer.

Non-writers defined–and still does to an extent–that a “writer” is someone who earns enough money writing to pay the bills and put food on the table.  I had a full-time “real job”, but I did not define myself by that.  When people asked what I did, I said, “I write.”  Inevitably, the next question was, “Ooh, what do you write?”  My reply was always a bit choked: “I write in my journal.”  Because I could not point to a genre much less an actual published anything, people’s eyes glazed, they gave me a polite “oh,” and then looked over my shoulder as if at a dinner party looking for someone more interesting to talk to.  Society dismissed me.  It’s hard to argue with that; they’re right.

A coworker mentioned that she knew someone at a newspaper who was looking for writers.  The editor and I connected on the phone.  After an introduction and some discussion of my experience, the editor asked, “We really need someone to write a singles beat for us.  Do you know where all the 20-somethings go for fun?”

I was 20-something.  I was single.  I wrote.  “Absolutely!” I said.

No sooner did I hang up with the editor–my editor!–with an introductory article assignment, than I picked it up the phone, called my friend, and asked, “Hey, where do single people hang out around here?”

With a foot, or at least a pen, in the door, that first assignment led to another and then another.  My name was in print in a real publication, a free weekly newspaper.  Yes, you did not pay for it, but the paper had advertisers as well as columns on local news, sports and event.  I was legitimately published, and got paid; therefore, it counted as real.

I wanted some of that non-singles writing action, so I approached the Arts editor.  She gave me an assignment, and suddenly, I had a writing portfolio.

She called me after I submitted my third article and said, “Let’s discuss this piece.  You need to make some changes in your writing.”  She proceeded to take me through my article, line-by-line, and pointed out where my writing needed improvement.  She told me where a verb should be more active (she gave an example), where sentence length should be tweaked (gave example), where a description could be tighter and stronger (gave example) and so on.  I learned more about writing in that hour than I did all my years in college.  I followed her invaluable, free advice, and my writing got stronger.  I noticed it and so did she.

I’ve since written award-winning articles for newspapers and magazines, all a bit of luck, opportunity and skill.  I’ve had my queried ideas accepted, giving me freedom and confidence in my skills.  I published my first eBook in 2013, the first of many.  I’m here to share my perspectives and the struggles I have.  I hope you’ll learn with me as I continue my journey of writing.

I mean, my journey as a writer.

Feb 14

Bad Boys–Watcha Gonna Do

What is it about bad boys? Those loveable scamps who are utterly irredeemable but still attract us because their badness is so much more interesting than the good guy’s goodness. You can count on the hero to do the right thing because he’s the hero. You can count on the bad boy to be bad. Now, the bad boy may do the right thing if he feels like it, or for a selfish and egocentric reason. Or he may do the wrong thing and try to spin it as the right thing. But when he eventually does a bad thing, he can’t really be blamed because he’s “bad.” It’s in his nature to do bad and we should have expected it. Here’s an example.

SPOILER ALERT! I started thinking about bad boys after seeing the film Thor: The Dark World (IMDB) in November. My thoughts were prompted by the film’s fascinating bad guy, Loki (Tom Hiddleston – IMDb). Loki is a handsome schemer and magician who casts intricate illusions that fool even his brother, Thor (Chris Hemsworth – IMDb), who should know better than to take anything Loki does at face value. While Loki helped Thor do the right thing (Thor is, after all a hero), he still manages to twist appearances to suit himself and his ultimate goal. He steals a great scene where he repairs his relationship with his brother and perhaps squeezes a tear from the unsuspecting audience. *sniff* But watch out! Loki is, at heart, a bad boy, one might even say SUPERVILLIAN, who surprises the same audience within the hour. I left the theater totally psyched for Loki’s next film appearance, ready to embrace the badness.

From the author’s point of view the role of bad guy, or villain, or antagonist, can be a lot of fun to write. Most modern fiction writing guides suggest that the hero needs to grow and change in some manner by the end of the story, but the bad guy can get away with staying the same. No one expects the villain to be redeemed, only subjected to justice in some form. This means that an author can write his or her bad boy as sneaky, lying, and irredeemably bad as wanted–and most people won’t mind. What a rush that is, right? The antagonist doesn’t have to be sympathetic, yet he is. His backstory might include tragedy, drama, and loss suffered at a formative age, but remember you’re hearing the story from a bad boy. Can you believe any part of what he tells you? The author doesn’t have to make a charismatic villain logical or even give him a solid motive. The reader will accept him because he’s charming. The author doesn’t have to spend time researching the psychology of badness; he can make the villain sink from bad to worse to worst.

While the mindless and indestructible killing machine type of bad boy like Freddy or Jason may strike horror in the minds of filmgoers, a reader needs a different type of villain. A charming, cultured bad boy can heighten mystery and sexual tension in a story while fulfilling his role as someone for the protagonist to fight. Think about that the next time you’re writing a bad guy. Instead of writing him greasy and disheveled, try making him debonair. And then he can kill dozens of people, or sell the international secret, or betray the unsuspecting hero and we’ll accept him for it.

Oh, and apparently the makers of Jaguar automobiles agree with me. Check out the Superbowl commercial called British Villains Rendezvous (british villains rendezvous) which features Hiddleston, Ben Kingsley and Mark Strong. Then let’s have a spirited discussion about the bad boys you find irresistible.

P.S. I wrote my post weeks before seeing this ad, and I can prove it.

 

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