What are you Writing?

[PeterGunnLives]

I am writing business correspondence, as well as workplace procedures and policies. Good times.

 

[MikeKardec]

I am writing business correspondence, as well as workplace procedures and policies. Good times.

Yeesh! There's been WAY too much business correspondence in my life this year. I'm looking forward to getting back to just doing my work and eventually to more creative projects.

It's been good to get back at it even though my late summer getaway/business trip was fun. Most of the essays I'm poking away at these days is related to the late pulp early paperback era, tracking the development of different stories as they made their way to market. That and creating a big website to go with the program. Sometimes it feels like a bit of a waste of time. I'm not so sure the public looks at websites with much written information any longer. So much of the traffic is on smartphones and the like. It does help with the publicity angle, however. Bloggers and reporters go there to get their questions, so you can pre-load what you want to be asked or want to talk about.

I did a graphic novel a few years ago and between the afterword and the website we set things up so that virtually everything we wanted others to put out there into media was automatically taken care of ... but then everything attached to that project was blessed. Well, everything other than overwhelming sales ... but I won't look a gift horse in the mouth!

 

[MikeKardec]

Finished a new "Weird West" story, part of a series, 4500 words. Something about the Weird West genre, or subgenre, comes very easily to me; I grew up watching TV Westerns and have savored novels by people like Elmore Leonard and Loren D. Estleman (both crime writers who have written Westerns). So my WW tales seem to have a mystery woven into the story.

I always like to think that every good story is both a mystery and a love story ... on top of whatever else it's about. I absolutely loved Valdez is Coming, such a fusion of substance and style. Valdez is just a guy in late middle age for whom a bowl of soup is the highlight of his day, he's almost impossible to anger. But OH BOY don't get him started. He's liable to impassively disassemble your entire world because, you know, he has nothing else to do.

Recently I discovered a story I've been planning (it could be years 'til I am able to get around to it) drifted sideways from being a sort of slightly SciFi Noir Detective into a Weird West story ... more appropriately it's now a combination of all that. It'll be fun to see if it comes together and interesting to get back down to southern NM to do some research. The West is Weird. I've spent a lot of time in SE Utah which, believe me, is about as weird as it gets!

 

[Benzadmiral]

Mike,

I've never been to SE Utah; the closest I've come is the western slope of the Colorado Rockies. Been to southern CO, below the Arkansas River, and to San Luis; to SE NM and north central NM, including Taos; and once (though I'll never do it again in summer) to Tucson, AZ.

By the way, I've had a note from the editors of the Lawless Lands anthology:

"Hello dear authors,
"Thank you for sharing your stories. It is quite a challenge to choose only ten from over 300 submissions! We are busily reading every one of them. In order to give each story the consideration it deserves, we are going to take a little extra time and make our final decision on acceptances by November 15th.

"Sincerely,
"Misty Massey • Emily Lavin Leverett • Margaret S. McGraw
"Co-Editors, Lawless Lands: Tales From the Weird Frontier"

I suppose that could be construed as good news. . . .

 

[MikeKardec]

Good or Bad you'll soon have enough for your own Kindle collection. That's good news! The great thing today is that no one can stop you. Certain genres, SF/Horror being one, are easier to promote electronically. The easiest seems to be Romance with some electronic authors of prodigious output making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month ... GULP, and you heard that right!

San Juan County UT is easily the strangest place I've ever been and there are tales of the supernatural around every corner.

 

[Benzadmiral]

Good or Bad you'll soon have enough for your own Kindle collection. That's good news! The great thing today is that no one can stop you. Certain genres, SF/Horror being one, are easier to promote electronically. The easiest seems to be Romance with some electronic authors of prodigious output making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month ... GULP, and you heard that right!

San Juan County UT is easily the strangest place I've ever been and there are tales of the supernatural around every corner.

Mike,

I already have quite a collection of short stories, a few crime, a number of pure fantasy tales (what I call "hardboiled" fantasy -- where magic works but people still have to earn a living), and now three in this Weird West genre. Maybe it is time to see about going to e-books.

 

[MikeKardec]

I'm not sure it could hurt. Read up on the blogs and websites and such about the pluses and minuses of each Kindle program. You have a blog and you'd probably best start an author FB page. Gather a core group of people who read and give honest reviews on Amazon. Keep a good mailing list. Direct connection with your readers as you gather them is paramount. Kindle or Amazon "shorts" is also an alternative or a path to promoting your book.

There's many other sources of information to look at but check out Hugh Howey's personal site and his http://authorearnings.com/ site. How much money is being made is secondary to how some of these people did it, knowing the genre, knowing the search parameters that readers use, promoting material, how to release material and how to price it ... though that last is not that important as long as you don't get greedy. Many think that low prices are very important to encourage people to take a chance on you (true) but publishers think that having prices at one level and then offering "discounts" for limited times works better (also true ... if you are a publisher trying to get more sales on thousands of titles). Generally the info about how author's did it is pretty good except the nonsense they'll tell you about how they write totally for their fans and not themselves ... they are lying, you can't keep doing it if you don't love what you're doing. They are just trying to sound like they are smarter than the average bear and reminding you that if you write something utterly personal, rather than universally entertaining, no one will read it. No kidding!

 

[MikeKardec]

By the way and just to introduce today's odd factoid: The first "Spaghetti Western" (Italian Western movie) was a Weird Western. Vincenzo Leone (father of Sergio!) directed "Vampira Indiana" in 1913!

 

[AmateisGal]

The week leading up to the election and a few days after it completely wiped out any desire for me to write. BUT! I have climbed back on the saddle again and things are going well on the novel.

 

[Benzadmiral]

The Lawless Lands anthology turned down the two stories I sent them. Ah, well, I have some revisions to do on both, as I've further developed the world they take place in, and they don't match up with the revisions. During T-giving break, and then during Christmas, I'll look for some new markets, and maybe consider writing a longer Weird West story.

 

[MikeKardec]

I started to write a review of ALLIED because it contains a number of writing mistakes I have been guilty of or writing wars I've recently fought but there were a lot of spoilers. If anyone comes out of this movie scratching their head about the choices made it might be worth posting but I'll hold off until that time.

Without talking any politics (not that I have any politics that others seem to find coherent!) I have to say I feel the same way. I was really depressed when we (well, really it was me) decided that going up against this election with the release of new books was a mistake. Now I feel great about it, avoiding that three ring circus was absolutely the right thing to do, even if it postponed everything a whole year. Many successful authors say they don't feel a book is "real" until it comes out. I never understood that because I never had as much invested in something that took a long time to be released. Now I get it. Waiting too long for something to be published is like being in suspended animation!

Benz: I've got a giant project that keeps morphing like that, I feel for you, I really feel like there is something there but have never really been able to pull the whole thing into tune at the same time.

Actually, that's alot like my feelings about Allied.

 

[Benzadmiral]

I've found a new angle on an old story idea of mine -- my "notes" document dates it to 2007, if you can believe it. Sat down on Sunday morning and typed away, and suddenly there was my angle. See, folks, it only takes 9 years sometimes!

 

[MikeKardec]

I'm still working intermittently on my Great Structure Round Up. For my own purposes and looking at the work of mentors, text books and things I have written without initially planning the structure here's some of what I have discovered.

Though I was taught to write in 3 Acts I quickly realized that I was nearly always planning things in four acts. In the beginning I was doing a lot of Audio Drama scripts and our distribution medium was as an Audio Publishing product released on cassette. The moment when you had to have the audience flip the cassette created a Mid Point and so, like episodic in TV, I would create shows in four roughly 15 minute acts. This cured many of the nebulous Second Act problems that have always plagued screenwriters and I applied the same rules to the full length screen plays I was writing in those days. I thought it worked pretty well. I even optioned one of those screenplays about five times, almost certainly not a Hollywood record but that's a heck of a lot more often than most! What I really learned is that the MINIMUM number of acts is 3, as in 2 of anything is not a complex pattern ... you can show before and after, not much more. Even zealous 3 Act adherents will discuss the usefulness of an Act Two Midpoint, thus dividing a story into 4 parts.

Later writing more successfully in the TV movie (remember those!) format forced me to work in their 7 or 8 Act structure. This was really congested if you took the "acts" literally but if you didn't and centered your story around 6 to 8 "events", placed in an Act Structure of however many acts you like, that many can work pretty well. David Lean commented that he liked to deal with 8 basic events in his epic movies. If you take a chill pill and think small you can make that framework work for an 89 to 94 minute TV script. Act 8 was usually an 3 to 5 minute resolution or punch-line bit attached to the credits.

After a lot of study of my own and reading a lot of other people's work, I came to the conclusion that a lot of what I was writing and what I was seeing was actually falling into 5 Acts, even if I thought I was doing 3 or 4 or even if it was likely the writer, whoever it was, had their own system. Five allows specific clear sections that are conducive to gradual character growth and plot development and it's a good number to scale up to a novel or down to a (in my early days) 60 minute Audioplay. Here's how that breaks down:

Act One – The Hook. The Inciting Incident. Stuck in his/her Ordinary World the Hero is challenged by a new opportunity or a recent event. A situation becomes critical and makes the Hero do something new.

Act Two – The Promise of the Premise. The Basic Concept of the story is explored. The Complications of a New Adventure. The Hero accepts the fundamental challenge of the Story and moves forward. That new action demands follow up to achieve success.

Act Three – The Tipping Point. The Dilemma. The Hero must take their situation seriously and confront the fundamental contradiction of the story. What has been happening can not KEEP happening and turn out well. A hard confrontation with the reality of where the follow up is leading leads to significant reconsideration.

Act Four – The All is Lost Crisis. The Hero is forced to confront that he or she is facing the extreme end of human experience. There is no easy way out and they must prepare to get medieval. Following the reconsidered path requires serious fortitude.

Act Five – The Climax. The Showdown. The issues introduced at the Inciting Incident and shown to be critical at the Tipping Point are forced to a point where they must be dramatically resolved. Resolution can only be reached and peace achieved once all the suggested lessons have been learned.

I'm messing with Blake Snyder, Syd Field, Robert McKee, Joseph Campbell and other people's ideas here as well as my own. Just trying to find a bottom line. Each of these Acts can also be divided into 5 considerably more minor-key beats that break down the same way and I'm also fitting them into a traditional Hero's Journey structure too. Probably too complex to post here but we'll see how it all turns out.

I've always found that I need to reteach myself to write every time I start a new project. The idea is to create a cheat sheet so I can reduce the pain and error of my continued relearning!

 

[AmateisGal]

Mike, I admire you so much for taking the time to delve into all of these story concepts. Wow!

I wrote a pivotal scene for my novel last night - ended up writing about 1700 words - so that is a pretty good writing session in my book. Will continue to do more today!

 

[MikeKardec]

Here's another version of story structure that includes some notes on dealing with the same structural issues within an Act or a Scene:


Story or Act Structure

· Initiating Incident

o Kicks off the critical aspects of an Act or Scene by destabilizing the situation. It puts a character uncomfortably out of sync. It can either be caused by an active choice or occur by coincidence if something random or accidental happens. Whichever, it arouses a reaction in the Hero and will require a choice (choosing not to react is still a choice). This choice causes … progressive complications.

§ In an Act or Scene: The main characters, each with their own agendas, find themselves in a situation where they must deal with one another.

· Progressive Complications

o Events occur, often shaped by the Villain or the primary opposing force, that make it more and more difficult for the Hero to achieve his goals. Each raises the stakes and/or the jeopardy. Each should be increasingly irreversible. Eventually this process culminates in a … turning point.

§ In an Act or Scene: The main characters maneuver, investigating and evolving their positions regarding one and other.

o Turning Point(s) that is reached either through the Action of a character, or the Revelation of information. This often forms the Climax of this Act or part of a scene and leads to a dilemma over what to do.

§ In an Act or Scene: The main characters come to an understanding that one wants something that the other does not want to give. What they are trying is not working. There is an obstacle to their desire.

· The Dilemma

o The Hero is confronted with a character defining, confusing and possibly ironic, situation. In many cases they are faced with either two bad choices or two, irreconcilable, good choices; if there was an obvious path then it would not really be a Dilemma. Confronting this choice often requires the Hero to up their game, shift to a higher goal or deal with the Villain shifting to a more evil plan. Making this Decision is another Turning Point and acting on it is called … The Climax.

§ In an Act or Scene: The Hero is are confronted with a difficult choice about what to do to get what they want. Often one of the main characters does something to thwart the other’s goal or desire creating a question as regarding how to proceed.

· The Climax

o The Hero must make a choice and act on it. This point is highly resonant with the choice that defines the Initiating Incident and the Hero’s entry into the Adventure. Usually, the Hero now acts with all the knowledge he has gained thus far by making a significantly different type of choice. At the very least the Climax of Acts One, Three, and Five should escalate the Values and/or the Stakes and/or the Jeopardy. All Three should be irreversible even if the others are not. Once the Climax action has passed living with that decision is called …

§ In an Act or Scene: The main characters each act on their choices and one wins and the other loses. The Climax either doubles down on or reverses the value choices that led us into the story at the Initiating Incident.

· The Resolution

o The Hero confronts the lesson he has learned from his actions. He can learn from those actions or not but the Audience can not avoid understanding the lesson.

§ In an Act or Scene: The characters deal with the results of their choices, methodology, and what they have learned.

I collect this stuff, try to rewrite it, rethink it, apply it to my future work and compare it to my past work. There's no one exact way that is universally right but the pattern is pretty common no matter what terms you express it in and no matter how many divisions you break it into. My big "current state of the art" structure outline is about 20 pages. I'm not very good at creatively using this material when I'm writing so I try to apply it in the rewrite stage and violate my own rules whenever they seem more likely to get me in trouble. What I have found important is that by concentrating on these structural models I can keep myself from "soft balling" the story ... basically, I often fail to go for the real meat of a story and push the boundaries as hard as I can without something reminding me that RIGHT HERE is the place to really go for it.

The stages outlined above need not be symmetrically sized though the Beginning = 25%, Middle = 50%, End = 25% is pretty much the rule. The last Audioplay I did was a bit slow off the mark and if an Act is the material between one serious "can't go back" moment and another it contained too many. It was a nice way to set up all sorts of stuff you need to know for every nuance of the story to play out but the more I listen to it (now a year or two later) the more that seems like a structural mess that could slow people's ability to get into it. The publisher needed longer shows so initially I wasn't that concerned about it ... a mistake.

As mentioned in an earlier post with a bunch of examples the Dilemma stage (I didn't use that term, I think I used Mid Point) is really critical. The shift of the stakes to a "higher goal" is important as well as the typical increasing jeopardy you tend to take for granted. A good example from E.T. might be when the kid has to recognize that the E.T. isn't some sort of pet. It is sentient, it has it's own agenda, and it must be respected as a peer; a friend, not an animal (it's also going to die if it stays). The realization of this Dilemma is followed by a great Climax or Fourth Act where the kid has decided to shift and help it do it's own thing rather than to use it for his own needs. A good Dilemma section contains a breaking point like that questions and possibly changes the basic conditions of the story up to that point. I keep coming back to the realization that this moment has a lot to do with what the story is about.

 

[Bushman]

Just finished a profile I did on a local computer repair shop that is shutting down due to a lack of business. The gu and his brother y is talented, but they're not making the kind of cash that would give them an edge in the advertising department, plus the location they're at isn't ideal compared to the one that they were at previously and had to move out of due to flooding.

 

[AmateisGal]

More work on the novel. Hope to keep this momentum going, even though the next few days will be busy with holiday stuff.

 

[MikeKardec]

Taking my own advice I hope to go over Dad's first novel (78 years sitting in a drawer while all that time he set record sales!), and gently impose a touch more adherence to structure while tying a couple of characters into the narrative a bit better. Both are hard to do without messing with the complex nature of this book but the tighter it is the better.

Note to all first time novelists (including myself); narrative complexity is not your friend. Writing is hard enough, the nuance with which you develop simple scenes will create the impressive depth you desire. In the words of an old screenwriter: simple is hard, we make the big bucks for making things simple.

Anyway, that's my holiday and post holiday assignment, that and writing an article on the unbelievable lengths the producers went to while attempting to set up "Shalako" an early Euro Western and Sean Connery vehicle. Not an extraordinary film but "independent production" in those days meant INDEPENDENT!

 

[Benzadmiral]

An idea for a science fiction story involving cetaceans. I've never read anything like it, so I hope it's a fairly new idea. It's also a mystery, so Mike, I'll try to keep your advice in mind and keep it simple.

 

[AmateisGal]

I'm at my wit's end with my writing. Within the past two years, I have struggled with this novel. I am nearing the end - have 1/4 or so left to write - yet getting me to sit down and write is worse than pulling teeth. I have an almost supernatural fear of it. And it doesn't make sense! I know how the book is going to end, so that's not the problem. But when I sit down to write, I freeze up. This problem has really manifested in the last two years, and I think it may have to do with my health: 1) I entered menopause two years ago and 2) my rheumatoid arthritis decided to ramp up, leaving me sick and in bed much of the time. I've been on different meds the past two years to try and get some semblance of a life back and have had to quit some as the reaction wasn't worth it and made me feel worse. I had to get a work accommodation for my job enabling me to leave early or call in sick as needed. Working a full week is nearly impossible. (And don't get me started on my boss's reaction to my illness. Let's just say he's less than supportive, though I think HR finally set him straight on that).

Usually, my writing sustains me through all of this. I can escape to my characters' world and lose myself. But getting to that point - of actually sitting down and entering flow and writing, writing, writing - is excruciating. It's not just my writing that has suffered. I feel discombobulated almost constantly. When a person has a chronic illness, having a schedule is really hard. For example: my ideal schedule would be:

1) Go to work (8-5)
2) Come home and eat supper
3) Decompress (maybe read a book, chat with my daughter, etc.)
4) Get on the treadmill for a 30-40 minute workout, shower
5) Write for at least an hour
6) Spend time with hubby/daughter
7) Bedtime

That's not a tough schedule. I don't have any extracurricular activities with my daughter (she isn't into sports, and would rather read and write like me) and my volunteer position with our local veterans garden board is quite minimal. I rarely go out of town, (health doesn't permit it) and honestly, am home more than anything else. That's where I like to be.

But that schedule can be disrupted with a flare-up. When I don't feel good, out goes the exercise (it makes me feel worse and can actually damage my joints if I exercise during a flare), out goes the writing, and sometimes, out goes the day job! I end up in bed all day, sleeping and mindlessly surfing on the 'Net or watching TV because I don't have the brain capacity to write. Dealing with chronic pain is exhausting; dealing with the guilt that goes along with it (for example, my husband and daughter end up doing a lot of housework/chores/etc. when I'm down and out) is also exhausting; and dealing with the guilt of not writing is not only exhausting, but demoralizing.

I apologize for suddenly airing out my writing problems here, but I am so tired of feeling this way, like I can't get a handle on things because my health changes so much from one day to the next.

I really just want to write! That's all!