How to Be a Good Writer, Part 8

Real Power.

My good friend Aaron Patterson recently posted up a comment on Facebook about this: what’s it take to sell your book (basically)? I mean, some of us are selling and some of are not, and it’s not as if it’s cut and dried that the nonsellers are bad writers. Pardon me, but come on. And there’s plenty of hot-selling total crapola out there. So it’s not simple.

Adding to the complexity is the free market, which I adore. The rise of the eBook confounds the Big Six publishers today just the same way Napster and iTunes changed just about everything in regard to the music business about ten years ago. Well…when I say everything…the point is that Bob Dylan was right about how times change, but only insofar as they don’t really, which was King Solomon’s counterbalancing bit of sagacity.

Aaron and I secretly agree that for the business-minded author, the entrepreneurial, the indie author, pssst, there’s really no need for a publisher. The dirty little secret is that the Big Six will expect you to work just as hard for them as if you were going it alone, and in exchange for that gigantic favor they will be taking about 85% of the pot, thanks. At least. I personally don’t want to shove against that wall. Someone else can shove it, if you get my meaning.

The facts, therefore, have been distilled down to these: editing, cover design, publishing, and marketing strategy. Those are the things that matter most, and the things that any competent publisher (even if he’s just a one-man operation, i.e. an indie writer) will spend the bucks on. Let’s have a look at ‘em one at a time.

Editing is the process, often painful, whereby you as the author pay large amounts of cash so that your work can be pulled apart by someone wiser than thou. It’s also so that you can be emotionally abused about it. A good editor will do that so nicely that you’ll catch yourself saying, “Thank you, sir, may I have another.” Remember that editing isn’t just spelling and grammar; it’s content, the creative bits, pacing, character development, plot, and so on. It’s my personal opinion that the best editors are a one-stop shop. Spelling and grammar are fixed pretty well by Word itself. Anyway, editors who only do spelling and grammar are often called proofreaders, not editors.

Cover design is something at which I suck. Just being honest. So few authors are double-edged swords, able to produce literary and graphic excellence. I recently posted on Facebook a cover I did for my upcoming novella The Marsburg Diary, alongside another cover that was professionally done, and asked people to vote. It was something on the order of 20:1 against mine. Not to say that I can’t learn eventually, but for now, I’ll be leaving it to the professionals. I’d counsel you to do the same. It’s almost impossible to spend too much on a good cover. Don’t be afraid to “focus group” it with your friends, either.

Publishing just means that you’re taking your work public. That’s all. And right now one of the best ways to do that is to convert your Word .docx (or .doc, if you’re Vincent Zandri) to Amazon’s eBook format. There are rumblings that Kindle devices will soon open and read any eBook file format, by the way. Unless, perhaps, that has already happened and I didn't get the memo. But guess what. Once you pay for the file conversion on an eBook, there’s no more overhead, really, and Amazon pays out 70% royalties on eBooks, provided you’re within a certain price envelope.

But what of marketing strategy? What about print? What about eBooks? This is such a loaded subject that I think it might be best to broach it in a separate blog. There’s so many opinions on it. But you’ve got to know that all the work you’ve done before this point will rot like something nasty on the underside of a café table if you’ve not got a marketing plan, and a good one. Also bear in mind that, hello, technology, love it or hate it, is a very important part of how well you’ll do as far as sales are concerned. It’s my opinion, and Aaron will probably back me up on this, that social media is still a large part of the best marketing plans for eBooks, and rightly so. Until the sea changes again, Facebook and Twitter are necessary evils at worst, and powerful tools at best.

Look, folks, the marketplace is changing everyday. It’s been that way ever since uncle Abu was hawking fish in the square in Mesopotamia and keeping the accounting ledger in Cuneiform. I love to write. In order to keep doing that, I have to sell the books I produce. While it’s not rocket science, there are certain requisites. I hope this longish post helped to illustrate some of those, and that you’ll be applying some of these tips to your own journey as a professional. Look alive; it’s a wonderful time to be a creator and artist.

~Chris White (C.P. White Media Blog)

How to be a Good Writer, Part 7

This week I want to feature plot as a theme. I’ve posted other things about this subject (Archetypes), and that’s because it bears study. A good writer is one who understands at least the basic elements of plot. For me, plot = characters in a lot of ways. But first, plot.

A good story has a skeleton in good order. If you break out the major events in any well-written story, you can build an outline around them. Sometimes we get a look at it in disjunct ways, a la LOST orThe Prestige, which are great stories that keep us guessing—but they’re organized quite well in the final analysis. In other words, whatever happens in the storyline has a reason for happening (the fictional past) and a consequence as well (the fictional future). That’s what I mean by a skeleton in good order.

Good stories have certain elements that are universal, too. It’s been that way since the dawn of time. If a crowd can relate to part of the story, they buy in. And if it’s a book, they buy it. That’s the goal here, folks, and it doesn’t require selling out or ignoring/forgetting your principles. Contrary to popular belief.

Take a look at any Sherlock Holmes story. I still stand in awe of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s knack for this. I always wonder which part of the story he wrote first; as if he wrote it inside out and backwards, because how can anyone do that?! It's crazy good writing, with lots of layers, lots of interdependencies; like a combination lock on a safe.

A good plot has lots of layers, interdependent interactions between the characters and the story—because really, the characters are the story. And ideally, as we read, we shouldn’t be able to notice the plot happening. It should feel just like life; like we’re voyeuristically observing the characters moving through their virtual world. In other words, a good plot shouldn’t be noticeably fictional. You’ve gotta have real and believable characters. In other words, they’re flawed. They have issues. And those issues, which go hand-in-hand with a good plot, are compounded by the issues that are created by that plot.

Bills are hard to pay in real life, for example. People get divorced and their kids pay the price in one way or another for the rest of their lives. Parents raise kids that become psychopathic in spite of their best efforts to the contrary. Young people get shipped off to combat and come back changed. If they come back. Accidents happen. Factions within families grow like a malignancy. And still the world turns. What I’m saying is that you don’t have to have some unexplainable time travel event or some impossible meteor hurtling toward earth in order to write a good story, or even tell one. You just need something for the reader to hold onto. And arguably, the closer to home it hits (depending upon a lot of other variables) the more books you’ll sell. And that's the goal, if you're making a living as a writer. Ironically, the more successful you become, there's a danger of being more insulated from good material for inspiration.

I think that’s one reason why some writers at the beginning of their careers can produce better work than those who are a commercial success: they draw from real poignant conflicts, through which they have had to live. that's not to say Stephen King is an idiot. But Jane Austen was never "discovered" in her lifetime, and her work is delicious as a result. Real people live real lives that are marked and shaped by conflict, and they will be more apt to enjoy reading stories that have an air of familiarity, even if the setting is exotic or fantastic. We all want fiction to feel like the truth at its deepest levels. Remember V for Vendetta, where we heard the line, "writers use lies to tell the truth." Fabulous.

~Chris White

(Catch the rest of the How to be a Good Writer series on the C.P. White Media blog. Next week is the final installment here on StoneHouse Inklings.)

How to Be a Good Writer, Part 6

A good writer knows the rules, folks. It’s just that simple. In the interest of serving my fellow man through the broadcast of useful knowledge, I’ve decided that this week will focus on a rule you probablydon’t know about. Well, several, in fact. It’s all interrelated. Like Deliverance.

Here’s a rule that’s not in the style guide I have, but one I cannot overstress the importance of nevertheless: Never ever use exclamation marks in your narrative. If you find yourself doing this, you’re probably ignorant of another rule: the cardinal sin of telling and not showing. In other words, you’re using the narrative to communicate the story, when you should be using dialogue to do it. If your story is being told, there’s little dialogue because it’s all narrative. If it’s being shown, it has lots of dialogue, like a movie. But this week's writerly bit is about exclamation marks, so here's an example of when not to use them.

The car came around the corner so quickly that it came up on two wheels!

Okay, there are lots of problems with this bit, not the least of which is that when I look at it I want to add OMG to the end of it, or some other texting-based rot. Have I mentioned how I feel about smartphones? Anyway another problem is that the word came is in there twice. That’s another thing to watch out for, and don’t just right click>synonyms to fix it. Rewrite it with your brain, not Word tools. The above example is an amateurish sentence made far worse by the exclamation mark. If you're adding excitement or tension with punctuation, you've got problems. A writer's spice rack includes not just punctuation but also words, whole phrases...and the insight required to make good use of all of them. It's safe to say that exclamation marks are only for dialogue or something not strictly narrative, like when a character notices a sign that says:

Don’t pee in our pool!

The narrator isn’t saying it, and neither is the character. It’s speaking from inside the world of the book; therefore the flamboyant punctuation is apropos.

Let me give you an example of a far better way to communicate urgency and danger in the bit about the car:

“Slow down,” Jimmy said.

John sped up, however, though the corner was fast approaching.

“Dude, slow down!”

“Shut up,” John said, “I know what I’m doing.” As he yanked the wheel, the car skidded off the shoulder and grabbed, popping it up on two wheels.

Okay that’s a pretty basic version, but I think you get the idea. I’ll leave it to you to decide if the exclamation mark killed everyone or not.

How to Be a Good Writer, Part 5

Investment: Scary. I’m not only talking about money. I’m talking about you. Your time. Effort. Sacrifice. That kind of investment—which, yes, can involve money but mostly involves guts.

A couple of questions: How much investment is enough? And in what does one invest? Allow me to argue in favor of you: Invest in yourself.

I have a dear friend who tells me that most entrepreneurs tend to underinvest not in their idea, their passion for it, or in doing the numbers, the research—but in themselves. That’s why most of us fail, at least once: we’re afraid to lay down the money on, let’s face it, the venture about which we know the most. Instead we invest in shaky Wall Street hedge funds, which really amount to Las Vegas East, if you get my meaning. Why would we do that? Why would we favor some idiot account manager in New York City over ourselves? Why do we depend on huge multinational slush funds to properly manage our retirement? Why not invest in the one business idea that actually has merit?

Full disclosure: I don’t have a 401(k) and never have (now we see the bias inherent). But I’m highly motivated to be a retirement hawk, if you will, and manage what I do have aggressively.

All this to say that if your project needs a little jump start to get going, and you have a little something tucked away somewhere, by God, wager it on your own enterprise. You’d do better than sending it off to be confiscated by Lenny-the-Wall-Street-con and his Mob boss in dark places, Uncle Sam. But I digress.

I’ve blown through my word count pretty much already this week. So I’ll leave you with this: Don’t be afraid to invest in yourself. This is what separates the careerists from the hobbyists.

Also, I’ll just go ahead and debut my Tips for Writers motif by popping one off right here: Never use the phrase, “but I digress.” If you do, your piece is already running off the rails and can only be salvaged by self-deprecating humor. Such things are only pulled off adequately by the consummately skilled.

Now, I know I promised a little bit here on mechanics and other boring stuff last week. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I’ve run out of space. Aren’t you glad.

~Chris White

How to Be a Good Writer, Part 4

Let’s talk about attitude. As in, “I’m a professional creator and I couldn’t care less about the business aspects of my career.” Or, “You publisher-type people ought to know how lucky you are to be talking to me.” And there’s, “Editing is for amateurs. Don’t you dare critique me.” As acquisitions editor for an indie publisher, I can tell you for a fact that whenever I run across even a hint of this kind of sentiment my finger hovers precariously over the delete key.

It’s not professional. It’s not even realistic. And I daresay, if you suffer from this kind of thinking and yet persist in calling yourself a writer, perhaps you should consider getting in touch with reality. And a vocational change. To something in government. Tyrants and thieves are peas in a pod.

Right. On with it then. We know what’s not productive. The question is, how do we purge this blackness from our minds and professional careers? I don’t think successful people set out daily with the intent to cause as much pain and suffering as possible everywhere they go. Quite the opposite, in fact. But after writing your one-hundredth query letter, after you reach your one year anniversary for your blog and still have only two followers, after you have attempted to sit down and write that sticky part of your current project once more—only to be interrupted yet again—it’s difficult to remain optimistic about much of anything, let alone remain professional.

Once thing you can do is exercise your second amendment right to keep and bear arms and take up a new hobby—obliterating old milk jugs at close range. If you’ve got a twelve gauge I recommend rifled slugs and rotten produce. Downrange effects with that combination are like an all-Taco Bell diet: explosive. The point of it is to blow off a little steam whenever necessary.

Once you’ve done that and you’re feeling better both about yourself and your (indispensible) work, what then? I strongly recommend a group setting that is both supportive and honest. Join up with fellow writers who are actively writing, who are unafraid to read their work for critique and are eager to return that courtesy to you. Professionals are not defined by their salaries in any given field. Professionals are, at least in part, defined by their bearing and comportment, their civilized kindnesses. What you’re looking for then is fellowship.

My old 1890 Webster’s unabridged dictionary defines fellowship as “partnership in act or suffering, profit, success, or loss.” Well, that’s one of the definitions. My point is to assert that in order to be a successful writer you’ve got to have a good attitude—and the best way to have that is to surround yourself with quality, like-minded people.

Next week we’ll talk about investments, plus a little dry mechanical nuts and bolts action. Until then, writers, write boldly.

~Chris White

How to Be a Good Writer, Part 3

Last week I posted another blog in a series of highbrow lectures about how little ol’ you can be more like Ernest Hemingway. Not that I have the slightest clue. But these days, who gives a #@!% about whether or not anybody actually knows what they’re talking about? Full steam ahead.

On to the business, then.

Let’s talk about references. When I was earning my wee business degree at a school that I can decidedly recommend against attending, I nevertheless picked up more than one useful thing for all the tedium and money expended. One of these was a grammar guide. It’s laminated and three-hole punched for your convenience, and tells you all about how to use pronouns. And other useful tidbits. I recommend finding something like this at, say, a college bookstore.

Another useful publication that resides happily on my shelf is this: The Dictionary of Problem Words and Expressions (Shaw, Harry, McGraw Hill, © 1975). This book tells you when to use farther versus further, the difference between hung and hanged, lay and lie, than and then and so on. These are all handy things to know, and they make you look far more intelligent than you actually are. I use it ceaselessly and obviously to great effect.

While we’re talking books to have on hand, we really need to, as professional writers (or at least people who fancy themselves professional writers), build our own library, starting with our very own reference shelf. To that end, I suggest starting off with a quality dictionary. I mean an actual paper one. The older the better (those old ones have such nicely groomed words in them; they never chew gum whilst speaking). I have one from the 1950’s and an unabridged Webster’s from 1890. At one point or another, you’re going to outgrow the stupid and clunky Encarta tools that Microsoft builds into its Word application, and you’re not going to have anywhere to turn if you’re not prepared. I’m warning you now. These older dictionaries are really handy, by the way, for writers of historical fiction or steampunk.

We can include in this vein of reference materials a quality thesaurus. Contrary to what most ignorant bumpkins might think, these are alive and well, and not in fact extinct.  I have a youngish one; it’s paperback and about thirty years old, and already segregated at the binding around the l-m area. So I must treat it carefully. This, again, is an indispensible tool for writers looking to find another word for “suddenly,” or, “therefore.” I’m told by an accountant friend of mine, who was highly irritated as she read through the Twilight books, that she suspects that’s mostly what Stephenie Meyer did especially in books two and three of the series: right click>synonyms in order to make things more interesting. I’ll leave it to the peanut gallery to decide whether or not, as Stephen King has asserted, “She can’t write.”

Now that I’ve worked in a King reference for three weeks straight, I’ll call this a perfect finish.

How to Be a Good Writer, Part 2

Last week I posted the first in a series of blogs about how to be a good writer. I’d like to say thanks for sticking with me past the sheer presumptuousness of the very idea. And now that my anti-self-aggrandizement clause is out of the way, let’s get down to it.

In keeping with the template, I’ve come up with three more things good writers do all the time:

1. Write.
2. Write.
3. Write.

Point one: write. Keep notes, in other words. Again with the reference to Stephen King here, but good writers always have a notebook handy and that’s something I learned by reading his book, On Writing. You never know when your ideas will come. Well, scratch that. You know precisely when they’ll come. 5% of them will come at extremely inconvenient times, like when you’re driving on the freeway or in the shower scrubbing off the detritus of another sweaty day at the keyboard. The other 95% will come at the moment you are just drifting off to sleep. To minimize blazing fits of profanity, please at least keep your notebook on the nightstand. Try to make a habit of it. And don’t forget the pen. This is very important—writers should always have some way to record their ideas and keep their notes near at hand at all times. You may think, as I have done, that you’ll remember it in the morning. You won’t. Trust me.

Point two: write. Write articles. This is where the rubber begins to meet the road, folks. I read about this little bit of advice in an article (imagine that) on Helium, a great place to get exposure and get feedback. You can sign up to become a contributor there, or on sites like Factoidz or Examiner.com. Start a blog. Get it on a schedule and post at least twice per week. I’ve done all this. And the discipline of writing concisely, clearly, accurately and simultaneously threading in various keywords for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) purposes will only help you in the long run.

And the long run perspective, by the way, is the one you’ll be wanting to adopt as your own. This is a little aside, but writers—or anyone, really—for the most part, do not make it big overnight. Sure, your life can change in a single day, but that normally only comes after years of hard work. So many of us newbies (a moniker I’m only now just beginning to outgrow) have this completely unrealistic attitude that something is owed to us. It doesn’t go well for anyone with that mindset. But I’ll get into that more next week.

Point three: write. Write stories. Now, I’m not recommending that you run off all half-cocked and dive into your magnum opus. I dabbled with that; it’s more work than it’s worth, really. Start off with a 5,000 word short story. Find a professional editor who will give you a read and give you some detailed feedback—you’ll probably pay them about $50-$100 for this, but the investment is well worth it. You might also want to look into joining a local writers’ group, where fellow writers meet perhaps once per month to read and critique their work, and read your stuff there. Your next short story might have a goal of 10,000 words, and you could do a novella, around 20-30,000 words, after that. You can even publish eBook versions of your (finely polished and edited) writing on Amazon while you’re busy working on the next project. It helps to earn rewards for all that work.

Next week I’ll share my thoughts on how to be a good writer a little more. We’ll be covering writing mechanics, plot and character development, and the all-important Attitude. Until then my friends, go forth and write boldly.

How to Be a Good Writer, Part 1

Recently I received notice of an anonymous comment posted to an old blog that said simply, “How do I become a good writer?” I’d like to respond with my own thoughts on how I’ve gone about that very thing. Keep in mind that there is no formula; there are no quick and easy steps to take to become brilliant. It’s all about the hard slog.

Now—I don’t want to be presumptuous here—I know I’m not God’s gift to writing—but I know at least enough to offer up three recommendations:

1. Read.
2. Read.
3. Read.

Stick with me. There’s a method to my madness.

Point one: Read. Read books about how to write. I will cover this in an upcoming post (titled Archetypes), but read Booker's The Seven Basic Plots. Hugely instructive, that. I cannot recommend more enthusiastically a book written by Stephen King, entitled On Writing. You may or may not be a fan, but King is one of the masters of the craft. He’s also been quite successful. Besides, getting outside the boundaries of your preferences occasionally is part of what transforms your writing from ordinary to extraordinary.

Point two: Read. Read history. This is, in my opinion, one of the most important disciplines for any member of society to undertake because the reading of history provides so very much in the way of foundation of character in a person. It’s not to say that you have to go and pick up some dry old tome on the foundations of colonialism in West Africa, either, unless of course that interests you. The key here is to find something that does interest you and then read about it. I personally found Stephan Talty’s book Empire of Blue Water, a gritty and honest thrill ride about the real pirates of the Caribbean and the actual Captain Henry Morgan, to be one of the most entertaining books I’ve ever read. It was one of those books you don’t want to finish because you don’t want it to be over. Anyway, read history—for your own good, for the good of those around you, and for the exercise of reading.

Point three: Read. Read fiction. This is something I’ve had to work at. But if you aspire to be a writer of fiction, that is, a storyteller, you can’t get around reading it. The only way to discover how to produce good dialogue (i.e. believable dialogue) is to read how other writers have done it. Some of it will be crap, and some of it will be stunning. You never know until you try. And you’ll never know how to construct a plot, develop a character, devise a good mystery and on and on, until you read enough of them to get some ideas of your own. One book that simply blew me away was Stephen King’s Desperation. Not for the faint of heart, but very rewarding. Another King novel that's not quite so gruesome, and still excellent, is Duma Key.

The idea, and hopefully you’ve guessed it by now, is to read enough different things that your mind is stimulated in new directions and then follow that stimulus on to wherever it leads. For now, remember that the only way to grow as a writer is to grow as a reader. Good writers are always reading. No excuses. On the treadmill. During the commute (if you drive, get into audiobooks). As an alternative to watching the drivel that spills out of the TV. Read several books at once, and on wildly different topics. You get the idea. And one last thing: get to know your public library. That place is amazing.

~Chris White