How to Get Published

by John Bowers

One of the hardest things I face when writing a novel is keeping the story consistent. Writing a book-length story may take from a few weeks to a few months, and you put the story down a few hundred words at a time. Over a period of several weeks, it’s sometimes hard to keep track of what happened earlier, and consistency can suffer.

If you’re writing from a detailed outline it may be easier, but if you’re like me, outlines are too restrictive. When I start a novel I usually have a general idea of what the book is about, three or four high points I want to hit, and a couple of characters. From that starting point, the adventure begins, and I usually don’t end up where I thought I might. But the journey is fantastic-I discover the story as I go, just as the reader does later on. (more…)

by John Bowers
One of the great things about reading a good adventure book is the atmosphere in which the story takes place. If the author is good, you are transported to whatever setting he describes, and wish you were actually there as events take place. Atmosphere is critical to a good novel, but how hard is it to create?

There are many kinds of atmosphere. Initially we think of the setting, like a cool autumn day where the trees blaze with color and a delicious little wind stirs the leaves around your feet; or a sunny beach where the sun bakes you brown and the surf crashes loudly while circling seagulls screech overhead-but atmosphere can be more than that. Atmosphere can be a pall of gloom that settles over a city under siege, a joyous giddiness that infects the guests at a wedding, or a cold dread that stalks the streets where a serial killer remains at large.

You can develop an exciting plot, colorful characters, and lots of action, but without atmosphere, your novel is missing a key ingredient. (more…)

by Al Kalar
One of the pieces of advice I give writers is, “join a writing workshop”. No, not a one-day “become a best-selling author” given by Famous Writer. I’m talking about a peer-to-peer workshop that’s really a club.

Well, I do follow my own advice. I’ve been a member of an online workshop since the late 90’s and I learned a LOT. I still learn more on a regular basis, but I also dispense advice (everyone does from the day they join).

This last weekend, I critiqued a submission from one of our members. The writer is a big fan of “classic” pulp science fiction and decided to write his book in a similar style, including a rather lengthy “foreword”. I took him to task over the forward (it violated my favorite “rule”: get right into the story, explain later if at all). I also objected to the fact that he started with four separate story lines (part of the reason for the forward). (more…)

by Victory Crayne

Ah, that sweet spot when you’ve completed the first draft of a new story. In your excitement, you may want to show others your creation. After all, if you had so much fun writing it, it MUST be good, right?

Hold it right there!

First drafts can always use some revisions and, in some cases, SERIOUS rewriting. You wouldn’t want people to read your half-baked draft and think that it is your BEST work, would you? (more…)

by Al Philipson

A good story often involves a number of details. Plots, people, and things that often come together at the end to produce the all-important climax.

Along the way, you’ll include a number of things which may or may not be important to the story. Keeping track of these things over the months it takes to write a novel can be daunting at best and impossible at worst, especially if, like me, you forget things easily (why did I come into this room?). (more…)

by Al Kalar

Good writers get all they can out of a verb.

For instance, when a character moves from one place to another in a scene, he doesn’t “move across the room”. He “plunges”, “saunters”, “minces”, “charges”, “slinks”, etc. across the room.

Let’s look at an example:

Jim moved over to Henry and hit him in the face.

[yawn]

Jim charged Henry and smashed a fist into his face.

So, what happened to Henry?

Henry fell to the floor. His nose was bleeding.

[Wake me when it's over]

Henry crashed to the floor, blood flowing from his mangled nose.

Remember to review your verbs when you edit your own work. Not just action verbs, but any verb. Victims aren’t afraid, they “quake”; their knees shake, their stomachs churn, and their bowls threaten to disgrace them.

Your thesaurus (often built into your word processor) can be a good friend, but your mind and a command of a wide range of verbs are your main weapons.

by Al Kalar

Head Hopping:

You’ve seen it in the writings of even established writers. The scene is being played out from the viewpoint of one character, when suddenly you’re given the internal reaction of another character. Some writers can do this without confusing the reader, but often the reader is left hanging, wondering who’s thinking or feeling something.

“Head hopping” is the result of sloppy writing. New authors (who get rejected because of this) and established writers who have become lazy are the most frequent offenders. The established writer gets away with it because his work will sell in spite of it and his publisher knows this (but still dislikes putting the story out that way). (more…)

by John Bowers

One of the hardest things I face when writing a novel is keeping the story consistent. Writing a book-length story may take from a few weeks to a few months, and you put the story down a few hundred words at a time. Over a period of several weeks, it’s sometimes hard to keep track of what happened earlier, and consistency can suffer.

If you’re writing from a detailed outline it may be easier, but if you’re like me, outlines are too restrictive. When I start a novel I usually have a general idea of what the book is about, three or four high points I want to hit, and a couple of characters. From that starting point, the adventure begins, and I usually don’t end up where I thought I might. But the journey is fantastic-I discover the story as I go, just as the reader does later on.

The problem with writing that way is that things will often happen that I didn’t anticipate. Characters may make decisions on their own (don’ t laugh, this actually happens), and I find myself on a side road heading for a different horizon than the one I had aimed for.

That isn’t always a problem, but when you get into the details, consistency can get lost. (more…)

by Michelle Gagnon

During our first page critiques, we discussed the danger of incorporating strong language on page 1 of your manuscript. Encountering an f-bomb at the outset of a novel can turn off a lot of readers, so editors are understandably leery of acquiring works with it.

However, I think that strong language does have a place in novels- at least in mine. I frequently get emails or reviews from people who say things like, “I loved this book, but wish that someone had gone through and crossed out all the f-bombs for me.” Equally perplexing to me are the people who claim that they “didn’t mind the f-bombs, but at times Gagnon takes the name of the Lord in vain.” (more…)

The art of what I call “the big grab” – getting the reader hooked from the start.

By James Scott Bell

Last time, I wrote about what not to do on your opening page. Today, I want to suggest to you an opening strategy that works for any type of fiction.

At the outset, please note that what follows is not a formula. This isn’t painting by the numbers. But it is a principle, and thus has infinite possibilities for application. No matter what your style or genre, this principle will work its magic for you, every time.

Recall that my last post was triggered by something an agent said at a recent conference, to wit: “If you cannot write a compelling opening scene, from the opening sentence, I’m not going to finish your proposal.”

I assume you do want agents — and editors — to finish your proposal. If so, you must grab them on page one. How can you do that?

By beginning your novel with a disturbance to the Lead’s ordinary world.

Why disturbance? Because: Readers read to worry. They want to be lost in the intense emotional anticipation over the plight of a character in trouble. Only when that connection is made does reader interest truly kick in.

But in their opening pages many writers fall into what I call the “Happy people in Happy Land” trap. They think that by showing the Lead character in her normal life, being happy with her family or dog or whatever, we’ll be all riled up when something bad happens to this nice person, perhaps at the end of chapter one, or beginning of chapter two.

Or they fall into the “I’m the Greatest Literary Stylist of Our Time” trap. This is where a writers desires to display brilliance via pure prose before, somewhere down the line, something like a plot kicks in.

But that’s too long to wait. You need to stir up the waters immediately.

A disturbance is something that causes ripples in the placid lagoon of Happy Land. It can be anything, so long as it presents a change or challenge to the Lead. (It’s important to note that this disturbance need not be “big” as in, say, a thriller prologue. The opening disturbance can be a jolt, however slight, that indicates to the Lead she is not having an ordinary moment here).

And you need to have that jolt on page one, preferably paragraph one.

This is true for both commercial and literary fiction, BTW. Compare the following two openings, the first a commercial example, the latter a literary one.

They threw me off the hay truck about noon.

(The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain)

The world outside the window was in flames. The leaves on the pistachio trees shone fire-red and orange. Mattie studied the early morning light. She was lying on the side of the bed where her husband should have been sleeping.

(Blue Shoe by Ann Lamott)

Notice that Cain starts with a character in motion at a point in time that is obviously a disturbance to him. In this case, the disturbance is physical.

In Lamott’s example, we have two lines of description, then the Lead is introduced, and the last line is a ripple of disturbance, this one emotional: where is her husband?

Dialogue, if it indicates immediate conflict, is another way to create an opening disturbance. I’ve heard more than one agent say they like to see dialogue in the first pages. Why? Because it means you are writing a scene. Not exposition or description or backstory, but a real scene. Like this:

“The marvelous thing is that it’s painless,” he said. “That’s how you know when it starts.”

“Is it really?”

“Absolutely. I’m awfully sorry about the odor though. That must bother you.”

“Don’t! Please don’t.”

(”The Snows of Kilimanjaro” by Ernest Hemingway)

From these examples it’s plain to see that there are countless ways to grab readers right away through this wonderful thing called disturbance.

Now why wouldn’t you want to do that?

Perhaps you have a reason. Maybe style is what you’re after most of all. A mood. Or maybe you’re writing a grand epic, and want to “set the scene” as it were. But before you abandon the disturbance principle, look at the opening lines from a couple of “big” novels:

The boys came early to the hanging. (The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett)

The gale tore at him and he felt its bite deep within and he knew that if they did not make landfall in three days they would all be dead. (Shogun, James Clavell)

I don’t know about you, but that’s enough narrative energy to propel me through the next few pages. If I get a long weather report up top, or two pages on the sunlight over Rio (no matter how beautifully rendered) I will be sorely tempted to put the book down. If you tell me how the character got to the scene, via backstory or flashback, I’m definitely moving on.

But if you indicate there’s a character here facing change or challenge, uncertainty or conflict, I’m going to want to know why. I don’t need to know the background info yet. I’ll wait for that if trouble is brewing.

John LeCarre once said, “The cat sat on the mat is not the opening of a plot. The cat sat on the dog’s mat is.”

Mr. LeCarre has it right. The opening page of a novel has to draw the reader in with an indication of trouble to come.

Do that by disturbing your characters from the very start.