It Was Ten Years Ago Today...

And now, one of those quick commemorative posts! Yeah, I know I owe you all a month or so of real posts. I haven't forgotten. Sorry this has continued to be shoved down the priority list.

Did you know it was ten years ago today that Crypticon 2012 opened in Seattle?

Yeah, I know Crypticon 2022 just ended yesterday. Calendars are funny.

Did you also know I also released a new book at said Crypticon?

The year before I‘d pitched my publisher a zombies on the moon story, but he’d just bought a zombies in space book and didn’t want to do two right on top of each other. So I pitched this other half-formed mystery/ sci-fi/ horror idea I’d been kicking around. He said sure, go for it. I wrote it, he read it, told me it was one of his favorite things he ever seen. He absolutely loved it.

He then also warned me that every book he’d ever picked up that he absolutely, completely loved had bombed. Sooooooo... I should be prepared.

It was supposed to come out in June of 2012, but as a surprise the publisher got twenty copies (maaaybe twenty four???) printed up for Crypticon, where a bunch of the press’s authors were going to be (including Craig diLouie, Jessica Meigs, Timothy Long, Eloise Knapp, and more)

I gave one of those first copies to Kelly Young of Strange Aeons Magazine (and podcast) who was also at Crypticon because I was pretty sure he’d like it. Sold all of them that weekend (except for one I kept for myself). And then the book came out on Amazon and Audible (let’s throw some more thanks to Ray Porter) and, much to everyone’s surprise—me more than anyone else—it turned out to be somewhat popular. So in so many ways this is also the ten year anniversary of when my life turned around, I clawed my way out of poverty, and realized I could make a living telling weird little stories.

Happy tenth birthday to ~14~ , my weird little novel that could. And so many, many thanks to all of you who found it, told some friends about it, and wrote kind reviews about it.

It’s All Uphill From Here

            No, the title’s relevant. Really.  Just wait.

            Okay, so... we started with linear structure, and last week I went on for a bit about narrative structure.  This week I want to close up my extended TED talk by discussing dramatic structure.  It’s the way I weave the previous two forms together to form a killer story.

            Fair warning up front—this one’s going to be the longest, so if the others strained your patience or ate into your lunch break... hey, I told you.  Go hit the restroom, grab a snack, and pour yourself a drink. 

            What, now you’re drinking at work? Seriously? You might need to talk to someone.

            You might recall I said that linear structure is how characters experience the story and narrative structure is how the author chooses to tell the story. In that vein, dramatic structure is how my audience receives the story.  As the name implies, dramatic structure involves drama.  Not in the “how shall I make Phoebe love me” sense, but in the sense that the tension and interactions in my story should almost always be building.  Any story worth telling (well, the vast, overwhelming majority of them) are going to involve a series of challenges and an escalation of tension.  Stakes will be raised, then raised again.  More on this in a bit.  

            I hate getting really clinical with this stuff because... well, we’re talking about art. Not in that “ARRRRRTTTTT!!!” sense, but in that golden rule, we’ve-all-got-our-own-methods-of-doing-things way.  The art part of this is personal and we should all be cautious when someone starts slapping down graphs and charts of how “good” stories go together.

            But... I also think most of us here have been doing this writing thing long enough to understand that sometimes there are rules. There may be a few exceptions here and there, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are some very solid guidelines that cut across the vast majority of stories. Especially the vast majority of popular, successful stories.

            That being said...

            Let me show you some graphs and charts of how good stories go together.

            No, don’t freak out.  They’re really simple, and this is the easiest way to demonstrate the points I’m trying to make.  Hell, if you’ve been following the ranty blog for any time now (or gone back and read a lot of it) you’ve probably seen them before.

            On all these graphs, X is the progression or the story from beginning to end, Y is dramatic tension, high to low.  This first graph shows nothing happening.  Absolutely nothing.  This is me getting a good night’s sleep.  From my point of view.  I didn’t even have any interesting dreams.  No highs, no lows, no moments that stand out.  It’s flat and monotone.

            Boring as hell.

            As my story progresses, I want the tension to rise.  Things need to happen.  Challenges need to appear and be confronted by my protagonists.  By halfway through, the different elements of the story should’ve made things much more difficult for my heroes.  As I close in on the end, these difficulties and stakes should be peaking.

            Check this out. Here’s a bare-bones dramatic structure.  We start small, and tension increases as time goes by.  Low at the start, high at the end.

            Mind you, these don’t need to be world-threatening challenges or huge action set pieces.   If the whole goal of my story is for Phoebe to ask Yakko to the Sadie Hawkins dance without looking like an idiot, a challenge could just be finding the right clothes or picking the right moment in the day.  But there needs to be something for my character to do to get that line higher and higher.  There’s a movie out right now called Please Stand By where the main character’s goal is traveling to Los Angeles so she can submit her amateur Star Trek script to a screenplay contest.  The challenge is that she’s kind of high on the autism spectrum, so doing something this far out of her routine is a huge deal for her.

            Make sense so far?

            Okay, now here are a few things we need to keep in mind. 

            And there are visual aids, too

            First, you may have heard that “starting with action” thing that so many gurus preach.  A lot of folks start with that line up around eight... and then they increasing tension.  This doesn’t leave a lot of room for things to develop, but we’re hitting the ground running and going until we drop.

            Thing is...when we plot this out, the line looks a lot like the one on that first graph up above.  It’s pretty much just a straight line because there isn’t anywhere for things to go.  And, as we established earlier, straight lines are pretty boring whether they’re set at one-point-five or at eleven.  They’re monotone, and monotone is dull.

            This brings me to my second point. Dramatic structure can’t be a nice, even rise like the second graph.  That’s another straight line, and straight lines are... well, you get it by this point. 

            Think back to high school physics for a minute.  We don’t feel a constant velocity.  If I’m driving a car at a nice, even speed, I can reach out and play with the radio. I can have a drink of water or soda or coffee.  I can wiggle around and take off my jacket or get my wallet out or whatever.  And it doesn’t really matter if I’m moving at 40 or 60 or even a hundred miles per hour.

            Y’see, Timmy, we don’t notice the constant, we notice the change.  That’s what grabs our attention.  When I have to hit the gas or slam on the brakes or turn fast—these are the moments that grab me. These points stand out above the constant ones.

            In a good story, there’s going to be multiple challenges and my hero isn’t always going to succeed.  No, really.  He or she will win in the end, sure, but it’s not going to be easy getting there.  There’s going to be failures, mistakes, and unexpected results.  Ups and downs.  Because that’s normal. We don’t want a character who’s good at everything and never has a problem.  So that line is going to be a series of peaks and drops.  For every success, every time we get a little higher, there’s going to be some setbacks. A new, bigger challenge that appears.

            Still making sense?

            Good.

            So, with that in mind, here’s my big graph.

             This is everything I’ve been talking about these past few weeks.  Just like above, X is narrative structure.  It’s the story progressing from page one until the end of the story.  Y is dramatic structure. We can see the plot rising and falling as the characters have successes and failures which still continue to build.  And the letters on the graph are the linear structure—we all know what order the alphabet goes in.  We’re beginning at C, but there’s also a flashback much later on that go back to A, and we understand that occurred before C even though we don’t see it until this later point..

            Pretty much every story should look like this graph if I map it out.  Not exactly peak for peak, no, but they should all be pretty close to this pattern.  They’re all going to start small and grow.  We’ll see tension rising and falling as challenges appear, advances are made, and setbacks occur.  Small at the start, increase with peaks and dips, finish big.

            That’s it.  This is the big, easy trick to dramatic structure.  No matter what my narrative is doing, it has to keep increasing the tension.

            Simple, yes?

            Keep in mind, this isn’t an automatic thing.  This is something I, as the writer, need to be aware of while I craft my story.  If I have a chapter that’s incredibly slow, it shouldn’t be near the end of my book.  If a scene has no dramatic tension in it at all, it shouldn’t be in the final pages of my screenplay.  And if it is, it means I’m doing something wrong. 

            Not to hammer the point, but this is what I’ve talked about a few times now.  There needs to be a reason for this shift to happen at this point—a reason that continues to feed the dramatic structure.  If my dramatic tension is at seven and I go into a flashback, that flashback better take it up to seven-point-five or eight.  And if it doesn’t, I shouldn’t be having a flashback right now.  Not that one, anyway.

            See, let’s take another look at that A-B flashback up above.  Even though it’s near the end of my story, it’s still pushing the story higher than everything that came before it. I’m choosing to put this information in this place in order to create a specific dramatic effect.

            Think about a lot of your favorite stories.  When the readers learn things affect the kind of stories they are. And that change affects the dramatic structure.  Because dramatic structure tells us that things in the beginning are small, things at the end are big.  Something I know at the start is automatically a minor point, but it could be a major one if it’s revealed closer to the end.

            Got all this so far?

            Don’t worry, we’re almost done.

            There’s one last cool thing I can do with dramatic structure.  It makes it easy to spot if a story is worth telling.  I don’t mean that in some snarky way.  The truth is, there are a lot of stories out there that just aren’t that interesting. We all know this. Since we know a good story should follow that ascending pattern of challenges and setbacks, it’s pretty easy for me to look at even the bare bones of a narrative and figure out if it fits the pattern.

            For example...

            I’ve read a lot of zombie books (not surprising) and seen a lot of movies.  I’ve read and watched stories set in different climates, different countries, and with different reasons behind the end of the world.  I’ve also seen many different types of survivors.    One that crops up too often is the protagonist who decides on page seven to turn their house into a survival bunker for the thinnest of reasons. They stockpile food, weapons, ammunition, and other supplies.  But twenty pages later, when the zombies finally appear out of nowhere...  damn, are they ready.  Utterly, completely ready.  There’s no mistakes, no problems, no setbacks, because they have prepared for everything.

            In other words... there’s no change.  No challenge.  The plot just drifts along from one incident straight to another, and the fully prepped, fully trained, and fully loaded hero is able to deal with each one with minimal effort.  That’s not a story worth telling, because that story is a line. 

            And I’m sure you still remember my thoughts on lines...

            On the flipside, some of the best zombie stories have people caught unawares, or finding their plans collapsing around them.  The Undead Situation has a young protagonist who suspects the end’s coming and stocks his home... with candy and pet treats.  In Fiend we find out that meth addiction makes you immune to the zombie plague... but being on meth makes it challenging to survive the zombie apocalypse.  Roads Less Traveled has the protagonist work out a meticulous zombie-survival plan with her friends... which slowly unravels as people don’t follow the rules, come up short on their requirements, and generally act like, well, people.

            Again—dramatic structure isn’t an automatic thing.  Just because I reveal something later on doesn’t guarantee it’ll be more dramatic.  But if I map out my story like this, even in my head (and be honest with myself about it), I can get a better sense of how well my story’s structured.

            And honestly... I think with that I’ve thrown enough at you.  I wish I could offer you more.  But a lot of this is going to depend on you.  While the other two forms of structure are very logical and quantifiable, dramatic structure relies more on gut feelings and empathy with my reader.  I have to understand how information’s going to be received and interpreted if I’m going to release that information in a way that builds tension.  And that’s a lot harder to teach or explain.  The best I can do is point someone in the right direction, then hope they gain some experience and figure it out for themselves.

            On which note... next time I’d like to talk about getting started.

            Until then... go write.

Amazon Review Revisited

            For those who came in late...

            About seven months ago I came up with this idea of running a little experiment with Amazon’s review policy. A new wave of complaints had cropped up about reviews being deleted or blocked, and—as they tended to-there wasn’t a lot to them past “Amazon took down my review of XxX!”  Supposedly, the new rumor at the time was that everyone’s favorite online megastore was surfing social media sites, looking for potential connections between reviewers and reviewees—and using them as a reason to delete reviews.

            It struck me that I’d been hearing about review policies for years, but never seen any hard data on them.  It always came back to he said this, she said that, lots of people had it happen to them. There were never any hard facts.

            So... I decided to find some.

            I reviewed thirty books I’d really loved. One every day for the month of August.  I listed out all the social media connections between me and each author. I even did a handful of control reviews—ones that should get pulled regardless of social media connections.  And I listed all of it out for everyone to see.  And tweeted about it. And talked with folks on Twitter about it.

            A month after my little experiment ended, nothing had happened. No warnings, no deletions, no reprisals... absolutely nothing. Even on the control reviews, which really should’ve been removed under every possible version of the review guidelines. I left it at that and decided to check in six months later.

            Which is... right about now.

            How many control reviews finally got spotted by Amazon’s algorithms?  How many warnings were issued?  Did my account get frozen?

            Pretty much across the board... nothing’s changed.

            All thirty reviews are still up, including all the blatant control reviews.  Heck, two of the control reviews even have “people found this review helpful” checks.  I never heard a peep from Amazon. Even with the tweets.

            Seven months since the first review, Scott Sigler’s Alight (great series, check it out).  Scott and I have known each other for almost four years, if memory serves. We follow each other on Twitter, we’re both with Random House subsidiaries, we’ve done panels together, he even interviewed me last year at WonderCon in front of an audience of about three or four hundred people.  There is absolutely, no question a connection between us.

            That review is still up.

            I feel pretty comfortable saying the social-media scanning algorithm is either a myth or reaaaaaaally poorly written.  If it can’ t find a connection between me and Scott, it’s pretty inept. Same holds for me and the next two authors on the list—Chuck Wendig and Eloise Knapp.  There’s social media connections and shared blurbs galore.  Heck, with both of them I think there are pictures floating around.  Incriminating pictures, for these purposes.

            And yet... the reviews are still there.

            So, yeah, the social media bot probably isn’t real.  I wouldn’t bet anybody’s life on it, but the evidence sure seems to point that way.

            I think there’s another possible conclusion we can draw here, too. I might be stretching here, so bear with me. Feel free to point out flawed logic.

            The control reviews have nothing to do with the social media bot. As I mentioned above, just as they are they violate the basic rules for reviews.  And all six of them are still there.  Yeah, six examples isn’t a great number for a data pool, but considering the 100% survival rate...

            I think getting reviews pulled doesn’t have anything to do with the reviews themselves. I think it has to do with me. Or at least, my account.  Last time, one of the spitball-hypotheses I tossed out was that Amazon only applied its all-seeing eye to accounts based on suspicious activity or complaints about said account.  I’m more inclined to lean that way after six months of no activity.

            So if my review of Yakko’s Yappy Dog Omnibus gets quickly pulled, I think it’s more likely because of something else I did in the past than anything about this particular review.

            But, again, other ideas are always welcome.

            If I happen to notice anything happen with these reviews, I may revisit this again.  Barring that, though, I’m probably done with it.  Feel free to share the data with anyone next time you hear about reviews being pulled. 

            Or, in the spirit of science, repeat the experiment and share your results.

Con-etiquette , Part II

            Did anyone notice the clever title...?

            So, this time last week I talked about some of the ways I can be a better con-goer, based off my own meager experience.  This time I’d like to blather on  about a couple ways I can be a better vendor. Which, admittedly, is pretty much the hardest way to attend a convention (said as someone who's stood on both sides of the folding table).

            Being a vendor—any kind of vendor—means I’m starting Hypotheticon already in the red.  Paying for a table, paying for whatever I’m selling (books, for most of us, yes?), sometimes paying for internet, electricity, travel, housing.  There’s only two or three cons I do as a vendor, but I can say off the top of my head I probably start opening day a grand in the hole.  Not a great place to be.

            Here’s a couple easy things I can do to get out of that hole...

1) Be happy to be there—I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen vendors lurking behind their own tables.  I was at one con and the guy across the aisle from me actually just sat behind his table scowling. He barely talked to people--just sat there looking like he’d lost a bet and was stuck minding the store while his partner was off hooking up with the Australian women's volleyball team.

            Not a lot of people stopped to talk with him, as memory serves.

            I try to make a point of always standing behind my table. At the very least, I kneel on a chair.  I try to smile and be upbeat.  If I look upset, why would anyone stop to talk with me?  If I don’t look at least mildly excited to be here at Hypotheticon, isn’t it natural to assume whatever I’m selling is boring?

            Think of any surly, grumpy cashier you’ve ever had to deal with.  Did you want to deal with them?  Did they make you want to spend more time in their store?

            Don’t be the grumpy person.

2) Be polite to the customers—This kinda feeds into the last point. First off, I need to respect the fact that people at the con just might not have money to spend. Or maybe they’re not ready to spend it now (I’ve only been here for an hour, I’m still looking around, STOP PRESSURING ME!).  Remember, nobody likes the hard sell, on the internet or in real life.

            Second, I need to respect the fact that some people just might not like what I’m selling.  Nothing wrong with that. My mom doesn’t like all the stuff I write. Neither of my grandmothers was too fond of my chosen genres, either. That’s just the way things work.

            Also, I shouldn’t shout at people. Sure, I can try to call them over, maybe even have a quick long-distance sales pitch.  I’ve been known to call out “excuse me, sir, are you a fan of hypotheticals by chance?” to people walking past my booth at Hypotheticon.  But I don’t want to be hollering at every passer-by like a carnival barker.  I think we’ve all been in a mall or store where someone randomly shouts “HI, TRY OUR CHICKEN FINGERS!” or maybe “WELCOME TO TOYS R US!”

            Seriously, how often do we cringe from that?  It pretty much guarantees that’s not the store we’ll be walking into next, right?

            Look at it this way—would you, personally, stand at a booth when the vendor kept shouting at other people? Are you more likely to walk over to a booth where there are other people already standing there?

            Okay, now think of how those two points work together...
            Also, one last point that struck me at SDCC last year. Cons are getting tough for vendors because 95% of what vendors are offering is available online.  I remember being thrilled about ten years back when I found an old Maskatron (one of my very first sci-fi toys), something I hadn't seen in years.  But I just now searched eBay and found dozens of Maskatrons available for sale, in and out of the box--one of them selling for less then I paid ten years ago.  There are countless online shops selling old toys, geeky t-shirts, art prints, rare comics, and more.  The "once-a-year-geek-yard-sale" aspect of cons is over.  So the big thing I've got going for me as a vendor is in-person interaction.
            Which leads nicely into...

3) Be honest—Okay, who’s encountered the vendor...  no, let’s put it this way.  Who’s encountered the random person on the con floor who says “Would you like a free stress test?” or maybe “Would you like a free portrait?”... only to find out that free leads to “please buy my art or books” or maybe even “for the love of--oh, please don’t walk away I need this sale”...?

            As I mentioned above, we all have our own gimmicks and tricks and methods for bringing people to our booth and pitching our stories.  But they need to be honest. I can’t tell someone I’ve got the cure for cancer and then say “it’s a book about alien zombies in space” once they’re standing in front of me.

            I can’t lie if I’m trying to sell my books. Not about awards or blurbs or genre or why I called you over or anything.  The minute we think someone’s being dishonest with us, we walk away. And someone fighting to keep us there just makes us want to run more.  Oddly enough, being pushy tends to push people away...

            So don’t lie, and don't be pushy about it.

4) Be polite to other vendors

            So... let’s be honest. Cons are kind of scary because—to an extent—they can be seen as a zero sum game.  If you’re spending money at his booth, it’s money you don’t have to spend at my booth.  Her gain is my loss, and vice versa.

            Thing is, though... if I look at it this way, I’m just going to come across as a dick. 

            A friend of mine was at a con once where the guy in the next booth kept interrupting her while she was making her spiel, trying to lure the folks she was speaking with over to his booth.   I was at one con where a publisher was undercutting some of their authors who were also there.  At another con, some vendors were shooting random people with Nerf guns... including other vendors trying to talk to customers.

            Personally, I try to be nice to everyone at cons.  Other writers aren’t my competition.  Never forget that.  This isn’t a scheme or a marketing strategy—it’s just the truth. Plus, most of them are just fun, fantastic people, so the whole experience will be better if I’m working with them rather than against them.

            And you know what?  I’d guess at least a third of the people who stop by my table when I’m a vendor come by because another vendor recommended me.  For a while, Craig diLouie and I would get paired up at cons by our publisher and we loved it. We could (and often did) pitch each other’s books to whoever stopped by our table.  I did the same thing with Peter Stinson at SDCC one year. And Katie Cord from Evil Girlfriend Media.  And Tim Long.  And Ellie Knapp.  And Jonathan Moon.  And Jessica Meigs. All of these folks are great writers, and I wasn’t going to twist someone’s arm to make them buy my books when it was clear one of these other authors was a better fit for their tastes.

            It will never, ever hurt me to help out another vendor.  Especially if they’re another author selling their own books. And the truth is, as I mentioned above, it's tough to just break even at cons as a vendor.  Really tough. It's better to just look at the whole thing as a publicity event rather than a sales event.

            Plus, it’s always great to have someone who’ll cover my booth if I have to run for the bathroom.  Or for food.  And nobody’s going to do that if I’m a jerk.

            And there you have it. Four really simple ways I can be a better vendor.  And probably make my way out of that hole I was talking about at the start of this.

            One week from now, how to be a better con guest.

            A few days from now... I can’t even describe what we’ll be talking about.

            Until then... go write.

Plot vs. Story: Ultimate Crossover Event

            Okay, it’s been a while since we had some solid, deep, digging-in-the-gross-stuff discussion about writing. So let’s get back to basics, shall we...?

            A couple years back I had the fantastic opportunity to spend about an hour on the phone with Shane Black.  If you don’t know his name off the top of your head, he’s the writer-director behind (among others) Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Iron Man 3, and just recently The Nice Guys.  He knows a lot about storytelling, and during our talk he tossed out a dozen or so useful lessons, one of which I’d like to share with you.

            Yeah, I’ve talked about this before, but I came up with some new ways to talk about it, and I figured it’s a good refresher...

            Pretty much any book, movie, television episode, or short story can be broken down into two parts—the plot and the story.  The plot is the events and moments going on outside my characters.  The story is all the events and moments that are going on inside my character.

            Here’s another way to look at it—plot can affect lots of people, but the story is mostly going to affect my character.  A bomb going off is going to affect hundreds of people.  Phoebe marrying Wakko instead of me is mostly going to affect... me.

            Let’s go into some more detail.

            Plot is the external threats and goals in my book.  Most books tend to have the plot scribbled out on the inside flap (the jacket copy, they like to call it).  If I pick up a BluRay, they’ve usually got the plot of the movie or show on the back.  For example (using a book I’ve mentioned recently), the plot of Anamnesis is about a bottom-tier drug dealer, Ethan, who tries to learn more about a custom drug that’s appearing on the streets, and then has to try to save himself when he discovers some of the people behind this drug.

            After looking at a lot of books or movies from the storytelling point of view, one thing I noticed is that the plot is almost always an attempt to do something.  Win the big race, get the guy, stop the villain, save the orphanage, save the world.  As I mentioned above, the plot involves a goal, and any decent goal in my story is going to take some effort to achieve.

            Another thing I’ve noticed is that plot tends to get a bad rap.  A lot of artsy folks will scoff at the idea of “plot,” like it’s some crude tool that only hack writers use.  Which is just wrong--plot's an essential part of storytelling--all storytelling.
            Now, in all fairness, there are a decent number of “plot-heavy” films and books out there.  The characters are kind of... well, irrelevant.  And these tales might be great to kill an afternoon with, but that’s all they’re ever going to be.  To anyone.
            As it happens, though, a lot of those artistic “character based” works of film and literature tend to meander and not really, y’know, go anywhere.  I think that’s because of the refusal to have a plot.  As I mentioned above, plot  means the characters are trying to do something, so “no plot” means the characters are... well... not doing anything.

            That brings us, nicely, to story.  Story is the flipside of plot. It’s all the internal desires and needs and struggles of my characters.  It’s a big part of the character arc and the reasons behind that arc.  Story tends to be what we tell our friends about when we explain why we like a character.  We enjoy the plot, but what we get invested in is the story. 

            To use Anamnesis again, Ethan’s story is that he suffers from severe retrograde amnesia—for all purposes his life began just a few years ago when he woke up on a beach.  So the memory-erasing drug that appears on the street—and the people suffering from its effects—strikes a chord.  He feels compelled to help them, even though it’s really not in his best interests.

            Every now and then, you might hear someone say there’s really only seven plots (or six or nine or something) and there’s a bit of truth to that.  The reason there are millions of different books, though, is because of story.  If I drop two different characters into the same situation, I’m going to get radically different results, because they’re going to approach things... well, differently.  If Peggy Carter had gotten the super soldier formula instead of Steve Rogers, Captain America would’ve been a radically different movie, on a bunch of levels.  An example I’ve used before is Never Let Me Go and The Island, two movies with almost exactly the same plot but very different stories. End result--two very different movies.

            I’ve talked a few times about working on Ex-Isle, which came out back in February.  One thing I realized as I started the second draft was that I had a plot, but no real story.  What was going on inside St. George, one of my main characters, while the plot progressed around him?  And figuring out his story (his ongoing need to help people vs. how his position and purpose at the Mount was changing) helped solve some knots and eventually even changed the ending of the book.

            Now, let’s play with this a bit...

            Who’s heard of the Moonlighting curse?  It’s the idea that if you have a TV show with a strong “will they or won’t they” element, it’ll collapse as soon as they do. It happened famously with Moonlighting and more recently, alas, with my beloved Castle.

            But we’re talking about this as writers.  So... why do these shows collapse at this point?

            The plot of Castle is that a wildly popular crime novelist (Richard Castle) ends up working with the homicide department of New York’s 5th precinct.  His personality grates on them a lot, but they can’t deny he has a quick mind and some amazing insights into human psychology and criminal motives.  Plus, he’s friends with the mayor... so they’re kinda stuck with him as long as he wants to be there.

            The story of Castle is about the developing relationship between many-times-married Castle and married-to-her-job homicide detective, Kate Beckett.  They each have a lot of baggage, but they also have a lot of chemistry.  And the chemistry kept growing even as they came to accept (and even admire) each other’s quirks and hangups.

            All sounds great, right?  But does anyone see the problem?  It’s something we’ve talked about before...

            See, the basic plot of Castle is pretty much infinite.  I think we can all agree there’s no foreseeable future where New York City is going to have a drastic shortage of homicides.  So that part of the series can keep going forever.

            But... the story of Castle pretty much ends once Castle and Beckett become a couple.  Our whole story was “will they or won’t they,” so once they do... that’s it.  Done.  My story’s over. Sure, in some cases we can stretch things out a bit with all the usual new-relationship stuff (early riser vs. late, snoring, family and friend approval, toothbrushes, how far is this going, etc.), but the longer a series runs, odds are a lot of that will already be established and resolved.  Hell, before the two of them ever kissed, I think Becket had celebrated three or four Christmases with Castle, his daughter, and his mom. 

            Y’see, Timmy, the plot of Castle was still going, but the story’d come to an end.  Which means the series either stumbled into that plot-heavy area I talked about up above... or it came up with a reason to extend the story. And as we’ve talked about in the past, that kind of artificial extension usually doesn’t go over well.

            So, plot and story.  Every good tale should have both.  They can overlap.  They can intertwine.  But if I’m missing one or the other, no matter how many excuses I want to make... my work’s going to be lacking.  And my audience is going to be able to tell.

            Next time...

            Well, next time is going to be a few days before Christmas.  And Hanukkah.  We’ll all have things to do, so I’ll try to do something brief.

            Until then... go write.

Better Books by Better Authors

            Hey, folks.  Sorry about last week—I had, alas, a family emergency I had to fly back east for, and there just wasn’t time to get a ranty blog post put together.  So, now that I’m back, I thought I’d give you this for now and return to our usual semi-useful writing stuff on Thursday...

            As I have in the past, it’s time for me to toss out a few more titles and names for you.  Essentially, these are a bunch of books I really wish I could say I wrote.  They’re not in any order, and I don’t even think they all came out this year, but if you’re looking for something new and different for somebody (or for yourself), it’s going to be tough to go wrong with any of these. In fact, you may have heard me mention some of them before...

            As before,  I’ve put links to a few of them, but you can also just go to your local bookstore.  You may spend an extra buck or two, but you’ll feel better about yourself in the long run...

The Unnoticeables/The Empty Ones by Robert Brockway– This is a fantastic, twisted little series about punk rock and stuntwomen and angels.  It manages to swing back and forth between damned funny and seriously unnerving, sometimes on the same page.  The first book works as a stand-alone, which is why I was stunned when he pulled off the second one.

Experimental Film by Gemma Files—If someone you know is a horror fan, they’re going to love this book.  If they also happen to be a film fan (as in, the process of filmmaking), this is going to be their new favorite book.  It’s about a film student who starts researching one of the early pioneers of filmmaking in Canada, a woman who had some very eerie subject matter.  This is one of the very few books I’ve read in recent years that  freaked me out and actually made me feel nervous about shutting lights off at night. Seriously.

Rise of Io by Wesley Chu—If you know his Tao books, this is the first of a new series set in the same universe.  Although now things are flipped—Ella is a smart, savvy street-urchin in a future-shantytown who finds herself sharing headspace with one of the most incompetent Quaslings on Earth.  It’s got action, humor, a touch of romance, some political intrigue—it’s just fantastic and a beautifully smooth read.

Anamnesis by Eloise Knapp—This overlooked gem is half identity crisis, half biomedical thriller.  Ethan’s a low-level drug dealer whose life began a few years ago when he woke up on a beach with full amnesia.  He stumbles across the new thing hitting the streets—a drug that erases recent memories—and feels compelled to help people affected by it.  Now imagine every creepy thing you could do with that drug... Wonderful character stuff with a creepy-as-hell plot

Invasive by Chuck Wendig—I’m sure you’ve heard about Wendig’s Star Wars books, and if that’s your thing you should definitely check those out (they’re fantastic).  Invasive is for everyone, though.  Unless you have a thing about bugs.  And if you don’t now, you will by the end of this.  Hannah’s a brilliant character, and the premise is skin-crawling.

The Voodoo Killings by Kristi Charish—This is another one I got an early peek at, and then I was kind of annoyed because I couldn’t talk to anybody about it for another four or five months (and now I’m waiting for her to finish book two so I can whine and plead to see that one early).  This book takes zombies back to their voodoo roots, and imagines a world where the supernatural is real, publicly known, and so heavily regulated that our main-character, sorceress Kincaid Strange, has to pay the bills by summoning up dead rock stars for frat parties.  And then an illegal zombie shows up in her neighborhood...

Panacea by F. Paul Wilson—If all goes well, this book is the start of a fantastic ‘80s homage series.  This one starts with a simple premise—what if there was a substance that could cure anything?  And then think of all the different reasons people might be searching for it. It also has, hands down, one of the most horrific death scenes I’ve read in years.  So there’s that...

The Crooked God Machine by Autumn Christian– Do you like Ray Bradbury?  The Addams Family?  Small town America?  Dystopia?  If you can answer yes to any of these, you’ll love this story of the life of Charles, his family, friends, and the girls he falls in love with. It’s dark and beautiful and one of my absolute favorite things I read this year.

Made To Kill by Adam Christopher—This is a noir detective novel about a robot assassin, Ray Electromatic, in 1960s Hollywood.  And if I need to say any more than that to make you pick up this book, you are dead to me.  Seriously.

Breaking Cat News

by Georgia Dunn—If you or someone you know is a cat lover, you’ll love this little comic strip about a cat news team as they report on the odd happenings around their home and the bizarre behavior of “the people.”  Plus, Georgia just got the strip syndicated—she’ll be in your local paper soon, so buy the book now so you can look all in-the-know and cool before everyone else jumps on the bandwagon...

The Last Adventure of Constance Verity by A. Lee Martinez—I just finished this one a few days ago on a plane (it had been on my Kindle for a while) and I absolutely love it.  A young child, Constance was blessed (or cursed) to have a life of action and adventure.  Now, after over two decades of fighting monsters, cults, ninjas, clones, and killer robots—having stopped wars and saved the world countless times—she just really, desperately wants to have a normal, boring life.  This book is to the action/adventure genre what Shaun of the Dead was to zombies.

            And there you have it.  Eleven books I’ve really loved.  Please check ‘em out, or feel free to mention anything I’ve overlooked down below.

            Next time, long overdue... I’ll be shouting at you.

            Until then, go write.

            And maybe do some Christmas shopping and pick up a few books.

Amazon Review Policy, Pt II

            So, a month or so back I outlined a simple experiment to check some of the ongoing stories , articles, and rumors about Amazon reviews and who can post them.  It’s been a month, so I figured I could toss down a few lumps of data for your perusal.

            First off, the books I reviewed.  There’s a full list below.  I’ve included links to Amazon just to make it quick and simple for anyone to follow up on each review. There’s also a few letters by each name that cover a bunch of other variables.

t  = I follow the author on Twitter

T = We follow each other

F = Facebook friends/followers with said author

A = Amazon verified purchase

C = Control review. This should be rejected immediately, for reasons

            The dates I’m listing are the dates I wrote and submitted the review.  As mentioned in the earlier post, they all had at least twelve hours between them.  Most of them went up in minutes.  In a few cases cases, there was a delay of anywhere from hours to almost two days before the review actually posted on Amazon.  And yet... every one of them did go up.

            They’re roughly alphabetical, except in a few places where I had to swap out titles for one reason or another (a few books I’d planned to review for this didn’t actually come out yet...). That’s more a function of the original list I threw together, not anything else.  All of them are books I’ve read in the past year, more or less.

            I know originally I said I’d only do positive reviews.  After the second or third day, I decided to only do five star reviews (to smooth out one more variable).  Again, these are all honest reviews. I really, truly loved all of these books and I think you should read a bunch of them right now or at least put them on your Christmas list.  On a few, I mention that said book was maybe a 4.5, but I rounded up since Amazon doesn’t allow partial stars.  This also meant I had to switch out one or two books (because believe me... not everything I read is five-star-wonderful by a long shot).

            All the control books either have a blurb from me right on the cover or there on the Amazon page in the editorial/press material. The one exception is Kaiju Rising, an anthology I have a story in, where Amazon lists me as the sole author, and most of the editorial/press stuff mentions me as well.  On all those reviews (as you can see) I openly, blatantly stated my connection to the book, both for Amazon and also so it wouldn’t look like a cheap/bogus review that might reflect back on said author.
            If there’s some factor you can think of that I missed, please let me know and I’ll see if it’s something I can include the next time around..

            Anyway, here’s the list of books/reviews...

1st Alight—Scott Sigler (T)

2nd Life Debt: Aftermath– Chuck Wendig (T)

3rd Anamnesis – Ellie Knapp (T, F, A)

4th Chapelwood—Cherie Priest (T)

5th Crooked—Austin Grossman (t)

6th The Crooked God Machine – Autumn Christian (T, A)

7th Creeping Stones-- Cullen Bunn (T)

8th Experimental Film – Gemma Files (T)

9th Grave’s End—Sean Patrick Travers (T, A)

10th Head Full of Ghosts – Paul Tremblay (T)

11th Hoo-Doo Mountain Horror – Jonathan Moon (T, F, A)

12th Mistakes I Made During the Zombie Apocalypse- Michelle Kilmer (T, A)

13th Made to Kill—Adam Christopher (T)

14th Ms Marvel: Generation Why—G. Willow Wilson (t, A)

15th Lois Lane: Fallout --Gwenda Bond (t)

16th One Dead, Two To Go—Elena Hartwell (T, F)

17th Panacea – F. Paul Wilson (T)

18th Perdition Score – Richard Kadrey (t)

19th Railroad! : Collection 3-- Tonia Brown--  (T, A)

20th – Okay, I spent the day at the LACMA Guillermo del Toro exhibit and went out to dinner with friends.  Sue me.

21st Shoot This One – Javier Grillo-Marxuach (T, F, A)

22nd The Unnoticeables—Robert Brockway (T)

23rd Dark Ascension: A Generation V novel—ML Brennan (T)

24th The Water Knife--Paolo Bacigalupi (t)

25th Zero World – Jason Hough (T, A)

26th The Big Sheep—Robert Kroese (T, C)

27th Desert Bleeds Red—Jason Hornsby (F, C)

28th Impact Earth – Timothy Long (T, F, A, C)

29th  Kaiju Rising --assorted authors (T, C)

30th Phoenix: A Road Less Traveled novel—C. Dulaney (T, F, C)

31st The Voodoo Killings—Kristi Charish (T, F, C)

            Now, with those titles and dates in mind, here’s a few things that’ve happened already...

            First off, doing a review a day becomes oddly time-consuming. Especially trying to write an honest-I-read-this-review without giving away any spoilers.

            Also, I never knew this before, but... things people buy as gifts off your Amazon wish list do not count as verified purchases.  Yeah, I know—weird.  Creeping Stones and Experimental Film were birthday/Christmas gifts, yet neither reads as a verified purchase. I mention it just because I’m trying to put down all the info I can.  I’d guess it’s because even though the item was clearly bought for you, you’re not the one who purchased it. Something to work on, Amazon...

            And as of this writing, all thirty of them are still up.  It’s been six days since I reviewed The Voodoo Killings and over five weeks since I reviewed Alight. 

            We’ll check in on this experiment one more time in early October and see where things are at.

Q-n-A Bonanza Extravaganza

            Spectacular spectacular!

            What I’m going to do this week is run through a few questions and requests that have shown up here this summer.  A few of them I can do a full post on, but some of them are things I’ve touched on before (or, at least, I think I have) so I think I can answer them with a few paragraphs and links.

            So... let’s get to it.

How similar are your drafts in terms of character arcs and overall plot? 

            Tricky question that’s going to be a little different for every writer and for every project.  For me, once I get a pretty solid draft, it’s really rare for things to change that much.  It happens sometimes, but not often.  I think once the plot and story are solid, for most writers, there won’t be any real changes to them.

            Please note, though, that I didn’t say no changes.  Every draft is going to be a little different as I tweak and cut and make other adjustments.  But all of these adjustments serve the plot and the characters.  Things are just getting tighter and clearer.  Maybe it means omitting a few story beats or changing someone’s second language from French to Spanish.  But these changes aren’t changing the bigger picture, they’re enhancing it.

           It’s probably worth mentioning that if I’m making changes that do radically alter my plot or characters, what it really means is that I don’t have a solid draft yet.  Yeah, even if I’ve done six drafts before this.  If I suddenly realize Yakko should be my main character while Dot’s the supporting character who dies in the second act... that’s a big change.  That’s a lot of changes.  It means different interactions between different characters, new motivations, possibly a whole new linear structure.  And it also means I’m kind of going back to square one.  Now I need to tweak and cut and make adjustments to this plot and story.

            Do you have any thoughts on working on multiple projects at once? Like editing one, drafting another, plotting a third? Is that something you do?

            Yeah, I do this, but in a bit more limited sense.  When I’m working on a first draft of something, I focus pretty much exclusively on that.  Once I’m out of that, though, and into the editing, I’m always jotting down character ideas, lines, beats—all sorts of elements—for whatever I’m going to be working on next.  So while I’m doing drafts on one I’m setting all the groundwork for another.  I’ve also  found this helps me as far as any kind of block goes—being able to dip my toes into something else helps keep my brain from getting stuck on a project.

            Overall, though, this is one of those things that’s definitely more advice than rules, because it’s all going to come down to the individual.  Am I someone who can split their attention or not?  And to what extent?  Some folks can do it (to different degrees), some folks can’t.  Unfortunately, the only way to find out is to try it once or thrice.  I’m comfortable at the level I just described.  You might be able to do two or three  things side by side.  Someone else might need to focus on one thing at a time.   

            I do think it’s worth noting that “another project” can easily be a distraction, too.  Sort of like eating when you’re bored.  I’ve also seen some folks use multiple projects (consciously or not) as an excuse to never finish anything. Sooooo... something to keep in mind.

I'm still struggling with how writers develop an interesting narrative voice - character voice I think I'm getting the hang of, but the narrative bits still sound like me reading a grocery list. 

            Narrative voice can be tough.  Part of it depends on how much I want to insert myself as the author. Some folks do this extremely well, others... not so much.

            As far developing a narrative voice goes, think of it like a narrator. Who’s actually telling this story to the reader?  I’m not saying my book or short story has to be in first person, or that a narrator even has to exist, but in my perfect world, who’s reading this aloud?  Christopher Lee?  Felicia Day?  Doug, the guy down at the garage?  Ms. Phoebe, my college English professor?  Knowing the narrator tells me how they talk and what kind of words my narrative voice will use. 

            So, from a certain point of view, the narrative voice is another character. Even if it’s me, it’s the version of me I’m choosing to project through my writing (a friendly me who wants you to enjoy the story and is going to tell it in fun, simple terms, and who also has much better abs...).  So narrative voice is a lot like character voice, which is something I mentioned here just a few months back.  Well, okay, a year and a half ago...

            It’s probably worth mentioning that if there isn’t some kind of narrative voice in my head to start with, that might be a sign of a bigger problem.  If I have no sense of how my story should be told—how my audience should be hearing the words in their heads—I may need to stop and think about things some more.   Maybe the plot or the story aren’t as solid as I thought, and if they’re not clicking with me, there’s a good chance they won’t click with anyone else.

            Do you feel  an author should stick to one genre for the most part?  I want to go write something as far from my current genre as possible. Will that throw my fans for a loop?  I notice that you and most other authors pretty much stick to one thing.

            Well, I’d argue not much of my work falls in the same genre, unless we’re talking in broad, sweeping terms.  I’ve got a superheroes vs. zombies series (sci-fi fantasy with some soft horror), a suspense-mystery-horror novel, a sci-fi thriller, a classic mash-up where I share credit with Daniel Defoe, and I just started work on a historical time-travel road trip story.  I’ve also got some short stories out there that are straight horror, some that are straight sci-fi, and even a pulp action war story.

            And I’m not alone.  The majority of writers work in a bunch of genres.  They may be known for one thing, but they’ve usually got a lot of other stuff past that.  Jonathan Maberry, Seanan McGuire, Scott Sigler, Craig DiLouie, Eloise Knapp, Timothy Long—and these are just the ones I know personally. All of them have written in at least two or three genres.

            Heck, look at Stephen King.  He’s known as a horror writer, but Firestarter and The Dead Zone, two of his earliest works, are pretty much straight sci-fi when you really look at them (there’s a post in that alone).  Under the Dome and 11/22/63 are both pretty solidly sci-fi, too.  The Dark Tower series is an epic fantasy.  Eyes of the Dragon is a young adult novel.  And then there’s “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption,” a  prison drama/character study that was adapted into a wildly popular film by Frank Darabont.

            So, no.  I don’t think an author needs to stick to one genre.  Yeah, there are some fans who might get upset I’ve moved away from their particular interest, but there’ll be just as many who’ll be intrigued to see how I deal with something else, and new ones who’ll come to me because of that something else.  And it’s my opinion that flexing those other muscles, so to speak, usually makes someone a better writer overall.

            I will say, though (there’s a “however...” on almost all of these, isn’t there?), that I don’t recommend chasing the popular trend.  It’s tempting to jump on the nymphomaniac-android-biker-school-romance bandwagon, I know.  But it rarely works out well in the long run.
           

            And I think that’s everything for now, yes?  Okay, I went over three or four paragraphs for some of them, but if you’re going to complain about that... Also, if I misread your question somehow, or if my answer just wasn’t complete enough, please say so down in the comments and I’ll try to answer there.  Or maybe bump it up to a full post.

            Next time, I’m going to answer one of those larger questions I mentioned up at the top. 

            Until then... go write.