What If You Could Not Fail

Lots of Input About Outlining

I received a great deal of input from people in response to my recent inquiry about outlining methods for my next novel.  Lots of good ideas.  

There are a lot of methods out there. Some people work with a sentence outline to plot the chain of events from start to finish. Some take it a step farther and divide the outline by acts or scenes in the book, all the time watching how action is distributed throughout. Others preach the value of profiles of major characters, including physical descriptions. Nothing like describing a character with blue eyes in the first chapter, and then changing them to brown three-quarters of the way through.

Most of these outlines are done as MS Word files, but a few people also use Excel to assemble their outlines.

A number of people also referred me to various computer programs out there that can help outline your novel. These ran from the very simple to the extremely complicated (at least they sounded that way on paper). A number of the programs are for screenwriters or playwrights and have been adapted for writing novels. They range in cost from free to up to as much as $170.

I was also referred to several websites, from Larry Brooks to Randy Ingermanson. Some people also sent me samples of the systems they use.

Almost everyone agreed that you have to expect that you are going to wander from the outline when you start writing. That’s expected. Many of them said they could not envision writing without an outline.

A lot of good stuff out there. I’m going to check out as many as I can. Thanks to everyone who sent me information. It is much appreciated. Writing is like golf. Every shot is different, requiring a different club and different strategies. Sometimes you will even use a club mean for another type of shot, but you’ve found a method that works for this instance. Making it more complicated, when you swing a golf club, there are about seventy-five things you need to do. If you remember five of them, you’re lucky.

Like I said, a lot like writing.  

Here are some of the referrals I received:

Snowflake method-- http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php--free.

Scrivener at--https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php—costs about $30.

Novel Ideas-- http://www.freelance-copy-writing.com/How-to-write-a-book-Novel-ideas-for-creating-story-line.html--cost unknown.

Dramatica Pro--http://www.screenplay.com/p-13-dramatica-pro.aspx--$269.95

 

 

More Books That Have Made a Difference

Yesterday I mentioned a novel that made a difference for me, and for the last day I’ve been thinking about other novels that changed my frame of thinking. I came up with a few of them.

The Mysterious Stranger—If your experience of Mark Twain is limited to Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, then you have missed out on one of the great American authors, and perhaps one of the world’s greatest. Late in life, after the death of his wife and one of his daughters, Twain let it all hang out. His writing took a dark turn, and much of it was not published until after his death. The Mysterious Stranger deals with God, heaven, hell, fate—all the good stuff.  At the end you wonder if any of it is real, or as Twain’s character says, “a cruel and foolish dream.” In addition to The Mysterious Stranger, check out Letters from the Earth and What is Man?

East of Eden—Can’t really tell you why this novel—a modern-day version of Cain and Abel—threw me into such a tailspin when I read it. Might have had something to do with some difficult periods raising stepsons, and two of my own sons, who were born less than a year apart. If you have sons, especially twins or sons close in age, East of Eden is a good read.

Novels by Walter Mosley—Mosley has four different series novels out.  He started with the Easy Rawlins series, which includes perhaps a dozen novels, starting with Devil in a Blue Dress and ends with Blonde Faith. Other characters of Mosley’s that have a series include Leonid McGill, Fearless Jones, and my favorite, Socrates Fortlow. Mosley also had a number of stand-alone novels. What I like about Mosley is that his novels depict black characters in the black communities where they live, and reveal feelings and events a white guy like me can’t get anywhere else.  I can’t point to any one novel by Mosley and say, this is it. It has more to do with the weight and gravity of his entire body of work. BTW, if you can get hold of the movie version of Devil in a Blue Dress with Denzel Washington, the real performance comes from Don Cheadle, who does an expert job of capturing the essence of Mouse, Easy’s best friend.  I also want to say here that although Mosley killed Easy Rawlins in the last novel of that series, I don’t believe he’s dead.

Over the Edge of the World—I mentioned this non-fiction book a few days ago. The complete title is Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe. Most people know that Magellan died halfway through the trip, killed in a battle with a tribe in the Philippines. What they don’t know is that Magellan’s manservant and slave, Enrique, was likely the first person to circumnavigate the globe. Enrique was captured from the area of the Philippines and brought west to Spain, where he became the property of Magellan. When they embarked on the voyage, Enrique went with them, traveling west, around the tip of South America and onto Asia.  Once in southeast Asia, Enrique recognized some of the languages.  He had come full circle around the globe. Over the Edge of the World reads more like a novel than history, providing insight into how scary this voyage was, and others like it. They really had no idea where they were going.

There are other books that have made a difference for me, but these are some of the more memorable. Let me know what’s rocked your world. I’m always looking for new books to read.  

 

Five Amazon Stars to a Novel That Makes Me Think

When asked to rate something on a scale of one to five, or one to ten, or something similar, I hesitate to give the highest allowable score.

It’s a personal policy. If I allow the highest score to everyone, what do I do when something comes along that rocks my world? I can’t give it a higher score. It might be better, but I’ve equated it to everything else that was good, but not necessarily stellar.

So, if anyone bothers to check, in the few reviews I have done on Amazon, most of the novels I have read and reviewed get, at the highest end, four stars. Worth the read, to be sure, but I know there is better stuff out there. We can’t hit it out of the park every time.  Even my favorite author, someone I’ve been following for twenty years, disappointed me with a recent novel.

My definition of a good piece of work, one that deserves the highest rating, is one that changes my thinking, that shifts the paradigm.

The last novel I read, Summer of the Big Bachi by Naomi Hirahara, got five stars from me. I learned things I didn’t know and it made me think. The novel tells the story of Mas Arai, a Japanese gardener born in the United States and brought back to Japan when he was a child. At fifteen years old he was in the basement of the Hiroshima train station when the atomic bomb detonated. He survives with few physical injuries, but a host of horrific memories. Mas returns to the U.S. after the war, marries and raises a family. He also struggles with the aftermath of that event, and the secrets he shares with friends who were there, and others who were not.

I looked up a bio of Naomi Hirahara and her life experience was very close to the things she writes about in the novel. She’s in a position to know.

It was interesting that none of the characters in the story who were survivors voiced any bitterness towards the U.S. for dropping the bomb. At least that was my perception. One character, a Japanese-American who was interred in a detention center stateside during the war, voiced his animosity for mainland Japanese “We are the ones who were locked up,” he said towards the end of the book, “stripped of our manhood, because we looked like them.”

These are perceptions and feelings I was surprised to learn. I gave me something to think about. A friend of mine is Japanese-American. He is second-generation, which I think makes him Sansei. His father was in a relocation camp in the U.S. during the war. We've never really talked about it. When the Facebook timeline format came out, one of his first panorama photos was a shot of him standing against a wall with copies of the various relocation notices from that time. He was smiling, but the expression was, “Yeah, this happened to my family.”

The next time I see him, I’m going to ask him about Summer of the Big Bachi. I want to know.

Five stars, Naomi. 

 

Write 15 Words and Meet an Agent

If you live in the Big Apple, and even if you don't live there, this will be a fun contest, and perhaps a way to make some contacts.

Karen Dione, a VP on the board of directors of International Thriller Writers, relayed a message to me about a logline contest being put on by the Backspace Agent-Author Seminar, in conjunction with
Seminar, a Broadway comedy featuring Jeff Goldblum. Goldblum stars as an international literary figure giving a private writing class to four aspiring novelists.

People can read the entry rules on the contest landing page and also check out the conference Facebook page, where they have more prizes for the Facebook entries that get the most likes and comments. Entries are judged by Michelle Brower, Molly Jaffa, Jeff Kleinman, and Shawna Morey–all agents at Folio Literary Management.

To be able to make an impression on these folks alone is a prize, and If you don't live within driving distance of New York, then maybe you can donate them to a good cause. 

 

Getting in line with the Outline

I have shared in this blog that my next novel will begin with an outline.  The first one, Rules for Giving, did not have one.  I sat down and wrote it.  Now I’m going through a painful re-write. This one, however, will require an outline for a variety of reasons.

I’m reading Story Engineering by Larry Brooks, and Brooks is a big advocate of outlining.  He refers to writing without an outline as “pantsing,” short for “writing it by the seat of your pants.” My problem is that I’m not sure what a story outline looks like.  I’ve done a little web surfing and come up with a few different methods, but I am loathe to spend a lot of time on a method I know nothing about. I’m hoping somebody can give me a referral to a story outlining method.

Refer away. 

 

Did You Study History in 2011?

Looked at this list of the eleven best history books if 2011, found over on Brain Pickings. Didn't read 1493, but I did read its predecessor, 1491. Surprised not to see Lawrence Bergreen's Columbus, The Four Voyages, but after his earlier work, Over the Edge of the World (the story of Magellan's voyage), everything else pales.

1491 is a good read before you take on Columbus. It gives you a look at what the Americas were like, and also a look at the sad but unavoidable story that came with the discovery of the new world. Nine out of ten Native Americans died of small pox, plague, influenza and measles within 100 years of the arrival of Columbus.  

Need Some Inspiration?

Many writers are tortured by self-doubt. Mark Twain struggled his entire life. I think the better the writer, the more they struggle. Next time you are in a rut, check out this video from Britain's Got Talent. 

What He Said

Wow!

Lots of action and response about my blog a few days ago on words to stay away from, and the conversation got around to quote tags. Many folks out there are critical of the repetition of the word "said," as opposed to whispered, exclaimed, shouted, laughed, cried, or any of the others.

The professional advice is to stick as much as possible with "said." This allows you to work on great dialogue, and the word said becomes invisible. It's not there. If someone exclaims or whispers or shouts or cries, then the best way to convey that is by the words in the dialog and the expository writing that's part of the scene.

Yes, you will find authors that break this rule. Don't ask me how they get published. The writing still has to get past an editor, and every editor I've met preaches the rule of said.  

   One of my favorite books on writing is Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King. Everyone should read it. My favorite passages are in Chapter 5, entitled Dialogue Mechanics. The prologue reads.

   Mr. [Robert] Ludlum has other peculiarities. For example, he hates the "he said" locution. Characters in The Borne Ultimatum seldom 'say" anything. Instead, they cry, interject, interrupt, muse, state, counter, conclude, mumble, whisper (Mr. Ludlum is great on whispers), intone, roar, exclaim, fume, explode, mutter. There is one especially unforgettable tautology: ''I repeat,' repeated Alex."

   The book may sell in the billions, but it's still junk.

     --Newgate Callender, New York Times Book Review

Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men, All the Pretty Horses, The Road) is a master of dialogue. His characters will go on for two or three pages with nary a quote tag. You can identify the speaker by what they say and how they say it.

Try an exercise that I've seen done several times. Write two pages of dialogue without a quote tag. Convey who is speaking by what they say and how they say it. A month or so ago one of the members of the Village Idiots Writers' Group on Facebook wrote a conversation between four people, using no quote tags. There was one line I could not link to a character.

Good job!

Good Stuff in Newsprint This Weekend

The weekend Wall Street Journal included a good article and review of two recently releases collections of hard-boiled noir, along with some recommendations on some of the best noir books to read, including They "Shoot Horses, Don't They?"

I'm going to reveal my igorance on this subject and ask: What's the difference between hard-boiled noir and pulp fiction?

In yesterday's L.A. Times there was a piece on how everyone, even presidential candidates, sees "The Hunger Games" as a testament to their particular cause. 

Forget These Words

Early in my adult life I wanted to be a police officer, so much so that I was one, for a brief period of twenty months. I didn’t like the job, and it didn’t like me, so we called a truce and I walked away. Someday I will talk about the experience in more depth.

Something I learned as police officer, however, has remained with me as a writer. My training officer drilled into me that I should remove the words seems or sort of or kind of from my vocabulary, and especially my writing.

“When you write a report,” he told me, “the suspect never ‘seems to be’ under the influence. He either is or he isn’t. Anything in a report that conveys any uncertainty is fodder for a defense attorney in court.” Any report you write as a police officer can land you in the witness box, and you will look dumb—or worse—if you can’t defend it.

This was reinforced at a writing seminar I was in at the Southern California Writers’ Conference last month. Writer and editor Jean Jenson told the group that there were three words we should eliminate from our writing: just, really and very. They’re fall into the category of seems and sort of—qualifying words that are not necessary.

Even when dealing with fiction and abstract concepts, I favor exactness as much as possible. I also believe that you should learn the rules so you can break them properly (thank you, Dali Lama). Sometimes I need to use those words, but it had better be a good reason.

What are the words you avoid?