Status: Reading what's next on the Starchild Duel rewrite. Starting Chapter 144. Could last 100-150 pages at the least; seeing how close to the end I really am. If I'm lucky, I could very well start Starchild Ruin in the next couple of weeks.
Doing: Writing this blog; surfing the net; answering e-mails
Watching: Nothing at the moment. A quiet early Friday morning.
Listening to: Taped C-89.5 music. (Seattle radio station.)
Reading: Nothing at the moment. I still have Kushiel's Scion to finish--but things have been so nuts in the past couple of months, I haven't found the time to read.
TOPIC: THE LAST 80 YEARS IN PUBLISHING: A LOOK BACK
I found this article to be particularly appealing since it has some interesting 'factoids' from the last century on some of the things which now graces the mainstream publishing circuit.
Sky
***
Writing mag's advice through the decades
CINCINNATI - Emma Gary Wallace, professional author, had more than a few notions about the business of writing.
With a resume that included essays in housekeeping and cooking magazines, and a popular Christmas story, "The New Neighbor," she was able and ready to share tips with readers of a new monthly magazine called Successful Writing.
"Writers waste a great deal of postage sending stuff around the country to impossible markets," she observed. "Don't carry coals to Newcastle or offer jewelry in a blacksmith shop. Every magazine has its own policy and makes a definite appeal to a certain clientele. Study these and take them into consideration when offering your wares for any market."
The year was 1921, and advice about writing was —and remains —a market itself.
The timeless cry for help as one makes the great leap from the desire to write to actual writing to published writing has inspired countless books, magazines, classes and Web sites. Successful Writing, now Writer's Digest, is one of the oldest players in the business. Based in Cincinnati at the corporate headquarters of F&W Publications, it still enjoys a circulation of more than 100,000.
"I sincerely believe that we have something to offer a broad spectrum of writers at every stage of their development, from the novice to the veteran writer in every genre," says Writer's Digest editor Maria Schneider.
For anyone who wonders what the emerging writer has faced over the decades, the magazine's files — preserved in bulky, bound volumes — tell a dual history. Evolution is constant, as technologies from airplanes to computers, and historical events from the Great Depression to the sexual revolution, bring on new markets and genres. But at the heart of the game, the riddle remains: How does one write, and write well? How do you get your writing noticed and sold?
Like the best epics, reading through the pages of Writer's Digest is less about finding the answer than enjoying the questions.
"It's like asking if we're any closer to the great mystery of how one paints a portrait or composes a symphony?" says mystery writer Lawrence Block, who for years contributed a column to Writer's Digest. "Most of the arts certainly are extremely difficult, and there are always more people who want to do it than can do it."
Writer's Digest features interviews, market surveys and general advice. The April issue includes a cover story on vampire novelist Laurell K. Hamilton, updates on such "hot" genres as romance and horror and an essay by contributor Bonnie Trenga, who recommends that sentences run no longer than 40 words because "your readers don't have a very long attention span."
When the magazine debuted, "crook stories" were in, dialect was out and the great new draw was "motion pictures," or photoplays, a business barely as old as the century. The Goldwyn Co. ran an advertisement about its hunt for the "screen's own Shakespeare." An article reported that the "penurious playwright who used to peddle manuscripts" was "probably writing his plays for the motion pictures now, and living in ease."
Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and other modernists were already breaking up traditional narrative and grammar, but in the early 1920s, the marketplace belonged to the straight and the simple.
"A readable, lucid style, is far preferable to what is called a `literary style.' ... a complicated method of expression which confuses rather than clarifies thought," one columnist advised. A suggestion for nonfiction writers: "One of the surest ways to please editors is for the writer to prove himself accurate."
The market often danced to the tune of current events. In the '20s, the rise of commercial flights resulted in "airplane fiction," adventure stories set in the skies. The repeal of Prohibition, in 1933, led to new opportunities in beer industry journals.
During World War II, romance writers were urged to forget those Depression-era tales of financial peril and were reminded that if a young man wasn't in uniform, the writer had to explain why. At the end of 1945, after the Japanese had surrendered, correspondent Sgt. Donn Hale Munson reported that the "war market" was "shot" and that it was time to "take your hero out of uniform ... and put him back in civic clothes."
The times could change as surely as snow melts in spring. In January 1981, the cover story centered on authors and their typewriters, and revealed that Gay Talese used dental floss for repairs. By April, the magazine was running a long article on word processors. By the end of the year, one article speculated about an "easily accessible database network."
Cyberspace and electronic publishing seemed like science fiction for much of the 20th century, and it took a science fiction writer to catch the future. A 1971 essay by the editor of Galaxy magazine, Frederick Pohl, an award-winning science fiction writer, uncannily anticipated print-on-demand and electronic books as he imagined the market of 2001.
"Suppose you want to read a novel. You type out the name and byline on the keyboard of your teletype, and `order' a copy of the book. Immediately it starts printing out your personal copy, a page at a time," Pohl writes. "And if you don't care about (having an actual book), you can hang your TV tube over the foot of the bed, have the book displayed to you a page at a time and read it at your ease."
Scandals that seemed new in recent years were around long before. In the 1930s, articles were appearing on plagiarism, ghost writing ("as old as the proverbial hills") and journalistic fakery.
In the 1950s, a new genre — teen fiction — was identified.
If publishing was ever a gentleman's game in tweed, the pages of Writer's Digest were not telling. Books over the decades were compared to breakfast food, chewing gum and oil-burning engines. A columnist in 1930 complained of the "abnormal emphasis being stressed on sex." As early as 1945, the industry was condemned for selling its soul to the gods of publicity.
"Nowadays it is not enough to publish a book; it must be sent skyward like a trial balloon, carrying its banners and famous names," complained Vardis Fisher, an Idaho-based author and newspaper columnist.
Romance and mystery were in demand all along, although trends and publications have come and gone.
In the early '20s, you could try Saucy Stories, which called for "fiction with very rapid action" and a few "clever epigrams" thrown in, or "The Youth's Companion," which "welcomes humor and pathos, but not pessimism." During the Depression, the MacMillan Co. was looking for "realistic, proletarian" novels, while by 1974, in the wake of Watergate, magazines from the National Tattler to The Woman were seeking investigative pieces.
The writer in 1949 looked out on an especially interesting market. Whisper magazine was seeking "sensational material, only with tabloid treatment." Jungle Stories was soliciting stories on "native tribal life or adventures of white men in the jungle."
Both sides of the Cold War were possible: Personal Liberty Magazine sought examples of "the enslaving spirit of Communism, Nazism and fascism." The Kapustkan Magazine wanted fiction "aimed at the evils of war, greed, hypocrisy, secrecy, poverty, injustice, intolerance, inequality and intimidation."
A caution: "Brevity desired."
The market was a code to crack and self-proclaimed experts came bearing solutions, such as J. Berg Esenwein, whose advice "plucks out the heart of magazine writing" and saves much "eye strain" for young writers. Readers of the '20s and 1930s likely heard much about William Wallace Cook's Plotto, "a new method of plot suggestion." Other options included Grace Porterfield Polk's "Polk-a-Dot Primer for Poets" and the Sherwin Cody School of English, presided over by Cody himself, a bearded man with a stern, professorial gaze.
No one was readier to counsel, and console, than Thomas H. Uzzell, identified as a former editor of Collier's and a market watcher whose ads and essays appeared for more than two decades.
In 1931, as the Depression dragged on, he reminded the idle businessman that the empty hours could be filled writing that long-promised book. "Necessity has launched more literary careers then you'd like to imagine," Uzzell observed.
A decade later, soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into World War II, an Uzzell ad was headlined "WAR! NEW MARKETS! NEW DEMANDS! NEW PROBLEMS! Can you solve them?" Uzzell declared that in "such times only craftsmen, trained writers with editorial insight can survive. Escape and propaganda must be combined."
The famous, too, have prescribed. Somerset Maugham, in a 1942 essay, thought hospital doctors were ideal writers because they have seen human nature "bare" and frightened. Fifty years later, Stephen King urged against writing outlines, even as the magazine itself touted a system of plotting with index cards. Michael Crichton believed that you should get published first, then worry about an agent.
All agreed that the only way to become a writer was to write. The prolific John Updike recommended steady work habits, while Michael Chabon said nothing was possible without "talent," "luck" and "discipline." And in the early 1920s, a promising young short story writer offered a terse formula for success after a less fortunate peer sought help on how to develop a plot.
"Your letter was very vague as to what you wanted to know," the author scolded. "Study Kipling and O. Henry, and work like hell! I had 122 rejections slips before I sold a story."
The author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, was not easily discouraged.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Friday, March 14, 2008
FRIDAY'S MAINSTREAM MUSINGS
Status: On Vacation; sick with bronchitis--may have to extend my time off further to get over this
Doing: Writing this blog; surfing the net; answering e-mails
Watching: "Pitch Black"; CBS Evening News
Listening to: Nothing at the moment.
Reading: Kushiel's Scion by Jacqueline Carey (Page 173)
TOPIC: WHAT GOOD IS A TRADITIONAL PUBLISHER?
Something that I've been trying to get my points across for the last few years: That traditional publishing isn't as cracked up as it looks. And while the author of this article still vouches for mainstream; I am still strongly advocating that you always keep your options open.
A colleague recently put this question in the bluntest of terms: "If publishers won't promote your book and they take a huge percentage, what exactly do they do for the author?"
I wouldn't say that publishing houses won't promote your book, but first-time authors get a very small piece of the marketing pie-and publishers have smaller marketing budgets than they used to.
They have smaller everything budgets than they used to, which means less personal attention, and that's one reason someone could legitimately ask: "Well, what good are they, then?"
Another reason is the increasing availability of print-on-demand technology and self-publishing resources. No longer does a would-be self publisher have to start a publishing business and spend thousands of dollars to get into print. Authors have more options than they did 20 years ago.
For many non-fiction authors (and even some novelists), self-publishing and POD are valid options. There's no question that authors who use these methods of publishing get to keep more of the book's cover price. And there are still a number of small, independent presses out there who provide more support to their authors because they take on only a few books each year.
But there are still some advantages to getting your book published by one of the giants. They know what sells before you can get your book published, you have to submit a proposal with an outline of your book and a marketing plan. Acquisitions editors at the big houses know what's selling and what isn't.
If you get repeated rejections which all cite the same problems, it's a sign that you need to retool your idea before you go to all the trouble of writing the book. And if they accept your proposal, it's because they believe there's a large enough market for your book to justify their investment in producing it.
They pay in advance.
Admittedly, the advance you get for your first book isn't likely to allow you to quit your day job, since it's likely to be in the low five figures. And it doesn't arrive the minute you sign the contract, either. But that money can cover many of the costs associated with writing and marketing the book, such as travel for research, a local direct mail campaign, or the services of a ghostwriter.
They have more resources.
When you self-publish or use a POD house, you have to locate, and pay for, all kinds of professionals, or spend extra time doing the many jobs of publishing yourself.
You may be the top expert in your field and a good writer on top of it, but creating a book also requires copyediting, book design, typesetting (though no actual type is involved anymore), proof reading, and cover art, among other things.
Large publishers already have all these people either on staff or working for them as contractors, and they've had decades to learn things like which fonts are most readable and how much white space you need on a page.
Many POD houses offer editing, book layout, and cover design services, but they charge you for them. If you're truly self-publishing, you have to find and pay all these people yourself, in addition to your actual printing and shipping costs. (And much as I admire self-publishing guru Dan Poynter, I don't hold with his theory that you can use clip art for your book cover and still look professional.)
They get you into bookstores.
Very few self-published authors can get their books onto the shelves of large chain bookstores like Barnes and Noble and Borders. These companies have strict policies about which distributors they deal with and require return policies which no sane person would stand for.
And, of course, if a chain won't carry your book, it's not likely you'll be able to hold an author event there. What's more, the publisher takes care of shipping extra copies of your book to thestore when you do the signing, so you don't have to drag books around with you. (You do have to notify them that you're doing the event and ask them to send the books.)
Publishers also have booths at major publishing conventions like Book Expo America. Your book might not get star billing, but they'll be pushing all their new titles.
So yes, traditional publishers do still provide their authors with valuable services. And the "huge percentage" they take rarely amounts to a huge profit: It goes to covering their very considerable costs in preparing, printing, and distributing your book (not to mention offering those killer return policies to thebookstores).
Despite the increasing ease and respectability of self-publishing, pitching your book to Random House or HarperCollins may still be your best option.
Doing: Writing this blog; surfing the net; answering e-mails
Watching: "Pitch Black"; CBS Evening News
Listening to: Nothing at the moment.
Reading: Kushiel's Scion by Jacqueline Carey (Page 173)
TOPIC: WHAT GOOD IS A TRADITIONAL PUBLISHER?
Something that I've been trying to get my points across for the last few years: That traditional publishing isn't as cracked up as it looks. And while the author of this article still vouches for mainstream; I am still strongly advocating that you always keep your options open.
A colleague recently put this question in the bluntest of terms: "If publishers won't promote your book and they take a huge percentage, what exactly do they do for the author?"
I wouldn't say that publishing houses won't promote your book, but first-time authors get a very small piece of the marketing pie-and publishers have smaller marketing budgets than they used to.
They have smaller everything budgets than they used to, which means less personal attention, and that's one reason someone could legitimately ask: "Well, what good are they, then?"
Another reason is the increasing availability of print-on-demand technology and self-publishing resources. No longer does a would-be self publisher have to start a publishing business and spend thousands of dollars to get into print. Authors have more options than they did 20 years ago.
For many non-fiction authors (and even some novelists), self-publishing and POD are valid options. There's no question that authors who use these methods of publishing get to keep more of the book's cover price. And there are still a number of small, independent presses out there who provide more support to their authors because they take on only a few books each year.
But there are still some advantages to getting your book published by one of the giants. They know what sells before you can get your book published, you have to submit a proposal with an outline of your book and a marketing plan. Acquisitions editors at the big houses know what's selling and what isn't.
If you get repeated rejections which all cite the same problems, it's a sign that you need to retool your idea before you go to all the trouble of writing the book. And if they accept your proposal, it's because they believe there's a large enough market for your book to justify their investment in producing it.
They pay in advance.
Admittedly, the advance you get for your first book isn't likely to allow you to quit your day job, since it's likely to be in the low five figures. And it doesn't arrive the minute you sign the contract, either. But that money can cover many of the costs associated with writing and marketing the book, such as travel for research, a local direct mail campaign, or the services of a ghostwriter.
They have more resources.
When you self-publish or use a POD house, you have to locate, and pay for, all kinds of professionals, or spend extra time doing the many jobs of publishing yourself.
You may be the top expert in your field and a good writer on top of it, but creating a book also requires copyediting, book design, typesetting (though no actual type is involved anymore), proof reading, and cover art, among other things.
Large publishers already have all these people either on staff or working for them as contractors, and they've had decades to learn things like which fonts are most readable and how much white space you need on a page.
Many POD houses offer editing, book layout, and cover design services, but they charge you for them. If you're truly self-publishing, you have to find and pay all these people yourself, in addition to your actual printing and shipping costs. (And much as I admire self-publishing guru Dan Poynter, I don't hold with his theory that you can use clip art for your book cover and still look professional.)
They get you into bookstores.
Very few self-published authors can get their books onto the shelves of large chain bookstores like Barnes and Noble and Borders. These companies have strict policies about which distributors they deal with and require return policies which no sane person would stand for.
And, of course, if a chain won't carry your book, it's not likely you'll be able to hold an author event there. What's more, the publisher takes care of shipping extra copies of your book to thestore when you do the signing, so you don't have to drag books around with you. (You do have to notify them that you're doing the event and ask them to send the books.)
Publishers also have booths at major publishing conventions like Book Expo America. Your book might not get star billing, but they'll be pushing all their new titles.
So yes, traditional publishers do still provide their authors with valuable services. And the "huge percentage" they take rarely amounts to a huge profit: It goes to covering their very considerable costs in preparing, printing, and distributing your book (not to mention offering those killer return policies to thebookstores).
Despite the increasing ease and respectability of self-publishing, pitching your book to Random House or HarperCollins may still be your best option.
Friday, March 7, 2008
FRIDAY'S QUIET MUSINGS
Status: On Vacation; goofing off--catching up on some things
Doing: Writing this blog; surfing the net; answering e-mails
Watching: "The Jim Lehrer Hour" on PBS
Listening to: "What I've Done" by Linkin' Park; "Doomsday Clock" by Smashing Pumpkins (The Transformers soundtrack)
Reading: Kushiel's Scion by Jacqueline Carey (Page 173)
TOPIC: HOOKING YOUR READER
I had this posted on another group when the issue of hooking your reader came into question. If this sounds like a rant--it's because I'm very passionate about these sort of things.
***
I don't bother with hooking the reader. I just start out with something that I hope the reader will find interesting--and just write the story however it pans out in the end.
Trying for the dramatic angle for a beginning is really stupid. It just shows how amateurish you really are.
You can't just drop right into the tension pool and expect people to eat it up with a spoon. You have to build up the moment to that moment.
So it takes your hero 5 full chapters to find what he's looking for. And?
So what!
Will it kill the reader a little if he's not bashing in skulls or performing a Matrix-like move to eradicate his foes at this very second? Nope. It doesn't matter.
He's looking for something important and so he must journey with himself and the reader to search for that one elusive item. But in the meantime, it's dark, it's scary, and he has zombies chasing after his ass every step of the way.
Does it matter if he's avoiding confronting them instead of dragging out a can of patented Whoop-Ass and using it on them in the first page?
Nope.
But the agent will say: "Why is he doing this instead of fighting them? Why isn't there any action?"
Because...? I'm writing it this way. Will you people chill out a little? The action will come when it comes. Not before, not after.
But impatience rues the day and agents are not known for their patience. Neither are publishers. So out goes the little "Dora the Explorer" angle and here comes Neo the Zombie Killer.
The journey of that character gets axed and here is a guy with some cool martial arts moves and an attitude like Rambo on Prozac. (Suicidal in case you're wondering.)
The zombies are dead meat in a split second and both the agent and publisher are happy and titilating with one orgasm after another.
No prose, no need for personal recollection. Just another MDK (Murder/Death/Kill--from "Demolition Man") in action and the reader gets all that more desensitized by what he or she reads as a result.
Oooh! Wow! That was so brilliant! All that hard work put in so that the industry can butcher it into a chain of books that has as much shelf life as your standard house fly.
But this is what they want. Everything marketable has no chance of hanging around. Too many books out there competing for fame, fortune, and a spot on a milk carton or that box of Wheaties one of these days.
And the sad thing is? Most books never make the cut. And those that do are so overdone in themes and lacking originality--that all they are are just boxed pieces of commercialism and nothing else.
Who needs to really write well when we have this to draw inspiration from?
It certainly takes the starch and fun out of exploring the worlds we all sit down to create. Y'know?
So the important thing is to remember that hooking your reader isn't dependent on that all important action scene or some commercialized ploy designed to draw in a targeted--or benchmarked--readership.
Having a hook isn't just about the first page either. Hooking a reader is about the whole book being presented as a single entity to your audience. By giving them more to chew on than a single sentence, or a prospective fight scene--you're allowing the reader a change to absorb and assimilate their next favorite read.
And in order to do that you have to start embracing risk and shuck off what the industry tells you to do without question. Show your reader what your book is about by giving them every little bit and piece. In steps--if you want.
Over time.
Hook them through your words, your characters, and your ongoing storyline--not just what the first paragraph says or what the first five pages read like.
If the agents want to play mind games with your work, then tell them to go Cheney themselves. This is your book, right? So shouldn't you have the final say in what's in it that will interest the reader?
Why destroy yourself because the industry doesn't want you to hook your reader in your own right? Just becaused you're a beginner, it doesn't mean that you have to give up your rights to personal imput--because some agent tells you: "This is the way it's always been done." (Yes...maybe back in the 1960s!...what year and century is this again?)
Tell them that if they don't like it, they are free to find some other sucker author is more than willing to play the role of a complete kiss-ass.
People, being published traditionally revolves around two things: Money and control.
Control over your work. Control over YOU.
You want to be sheep to these individuals, then wear a fucking bell around your neck and go, "Baa-aaah!"
You want to take control of your own destiny, then look these people in the eyes and tell them that they can take a walk off a very short pier.
You want money, you want the fame, the fortune, and the whole ball of cheese? Then you're going to have to work for it!
Stop looking for the easiest ways out and start taking more risks with your life and your work as a writer!
If you want to hook your readers than you'd better start writing more than just a fancy-schmancy, snazzed up paragraph that begins with the words: "It was a dark and stormy night..."
Think about what you're writing and who you are intended it for. Most people I've run across say they are writing for their audiences. But boy oh boy...! Are they going to be fucking disappointed in the long run.
Especially when they find out that their target audience has moved on to bigger and better reads.
Wanna know a safer bet? Write for yourself. I can't stress this often enough. Sure, it won't bring in as much recognition, fame, or a publisher's contract. But you want to know what I found all this time? By doing it myself?
I didn't come away disappointed with the results.
My works have come away stronger, better organized, and more interesting than their previous first-gen counterparts.
And the hooks within aren't buried in the first paragraph, the first page, or even the first five pages either.
But the whole book!
The whole book should be your hook. The whole book should be more than enough to entice your reader to want to know more.
You can't do that with such scant information, a limited pitch spiel or a restricted time frame.
Readers these days are going to want to know the whole kit and kaboodle. They aren't satisfied with just being thrown tidbits anymore. And as much as the industry, some hawk of theirs, or someone else is going to tell you otherwise--these days, you have to constantly adapt and evolve the art of hooking your reader with your published books.
And the best way to go about doing that is by getting them involved from the start.
Show them everything there is about your novel. Not just the parts you think will guarantee a future sale. Every element written in has a part to play in your overall success as a published writer.
Most experts will commonly tell you to fixate yourself on just one thing and one thing only. In order to hook your reader, you have to go beyond the first page of your novel.
Show your reader what lies in store for your hero or heroine. Show them what they are up against. Tell them that what kind of a rough ride they are going to encounter as the novel unfolds.
Offer them personal insights and tragedies into your respective characters. Show them their victories and their failures. Happy endings or not.
Don't be afraid to immerse your reader into your own work. That helps them stay engaged with you every step of the way.
This helps you secure future sales against whatever advance you may get.
Because people will remember you and go, "Hey! I know that guy! He's got a great book coming out!"
And from there, he or she will go on so avidly about it, interest in your published tome will pick up in no time.
All because of how you hooked your reader.
Sky
Doing: Writing this blog; surfing the net; answering e-mails
Watching: "The Jim Lehrer Hour" on PBS
Listening to: "What I've Done" by Linkin' Park; "Doomsday Clock" by Smashing Pumpkins (The Transformers soundtrack)
Reading: Kushiel's Scion by Jacqueline Carey (Page 173)
TOPIC: HOOKING YOUR READER
I had this posted on another group when the issue of hooking your reader came into question. If this sounds like a rant--it's because I'm very passionate about these sort of things.
***
I don't bother with hooking the reader. I just start out with something that I hope the reader will find interesting--and just write the story however it pans out in the end.
Trying for the dramatic angle for a beginning is really stupid. It just shows how amateurish you really are.
You can't just drop right into the tension pool and expect people to eat it up with a spoon. You have to build up the moment to that moment.
So it takes your hero 5 full chapters to find what he's looking for. And?
So what!
Will it kill the reader a little if he's not bashing in skulls or performing a Matrix-like move to eradicate his foes at this very second? Nope. It doesn't matter.
He's looking for something important and so he must journey with himself and the reader to search for that one elusive item. But in the meantime, it's dark, it's scary, and he has zombies chasing after his ass every step of the way.
Does it matter if he's avoiding confronting them instead of dragging out a can of patented Whoop-Ass and using it on them in the first page?
Nope.
But the agent will say: "Why is he doing this instead of fighting them? Why isn't there any action?"
Because...? I'm writing it this way. Will you people chill out a little? The action will come when it comes. Not before, not after.
But impatience rues the day and agents are not known for their patience. Neither are publishers. So out goes the little "Dora the Explorer" angle and here comes Neo the Zombie Killer.
The journey of that character gets axed and here is a guy with some cool martial arts moves and an attitude like Rambo on Prozac. (Suicidal in case you're wondering.)
The zombies are dead meat in a split second and both the agent and publisher are happy and titilating with one orgasm after another.
No prose, no need for personal recollection. Just another MDK (Murder/Death/Kill--from "Demolition Man") in action and the reader gets all that more desensitized by what he or she reads as a result.
Oooh! Wow! That was so brilliant! All that hard work put in so that the industry can butcher it into a chain of books that has as much shelf life as your standard house fly.
But this is what they want. Everything marketable has no chance of hanging around. Too many books out there competing for fame, fortune, and a spot on a milk carton or that box of Wheaties one of these days.
And the sad thing is? Most books never make the cut. And those that do are so overdone in themes and lacking originality--that all they are are just boxed pieces of commercialism and nothing else.
How much money did I waste again for buying this piece of crap?
So when we talk about hooks, my eyes glaze over and my head does that thing from the "Exorcist" or "Beetle Juice"--and I'm like, "Oh goody! Let's all do our readers in with senseless gore and violence!"Who needs to really write well when we have this to draw inspiration from?
It certainly takes the starch and fun out of exploring the worlds we all sit down to create. Y'know?
So the important thing is to remember that hooking your reader isn't dependent on that all important action scene or some commercialized ploy designed to draw in a targeted--or benchmarked--readership.
Having a hook isn't just about the first page either. Hooking a reader is about the whole book being presented as a single entity to your audience. By giving them more to chew on than a single sentence, or a prospective fight scene--you're allowing the reader a change to absorb and assimilate their next favorite read.
And in order to do that you have to start embracing risk and shuck off what the industry tells you to do without question. Show your reader what your book is about by giving them every little bit and piece. In steps--if you want.
Over time.
Hook them through your words, your characters, and your ongoing storyline--not just what the first paragraph says or what the first five pages read like.
If the agents want to play mind games with your work, then tell them to go Cheney themselves. This is your book, right? So shouldn't you have the final say in what's in it that will interest the reader?
Why destroy yourself because the industry doesn't want you to hook your reader in your own right? Just becaused you're a beginner, it doesn't mean that you have to give up your rights to personal imput--because some agent tells you: "This is the way it's always been done." (Yes...maybe back in the 1960s!...what year and century is this again?)
Tell them that if they don't like it, they are free to find some other sucker author is more than willing to play the role of a complete kiss-ass.
People, being published traditionally revolves around two things: Money and control.
Control over your work. Control over YOU.
You want to be sheep to these individuals, then wear a fucking bell around your neck and go, "Baa-aaah!"
You want to take control of your own destiny, then look these people in the eyes and tell them that they can take a walk off a very short pier.
You want money, you want the fame, the fortune, and the whole ball of cheese? Then you're going to have to work for it!
Stop looking for the easiest ways out and start taking more risks with your life and your work as a writer!
If you want to hook your readers than you'd better start writing more than just a fancy-schmancy, snazzed up paragraph that begins with the words: "It was a dark and stormy night..."
Think about what you're writing and who you are intended it for. Most people I've run across say they are writing for their audiences. But boy oh boy...! Are they going to be fucking disappointed in the long run.
Especially when they find out that their target audience has moved on to bigger and better reads.
Wanna know a safer bet? Write for yourself. I can't stress this often enough. Sure, it won't bring in as much recognition, fame, or a publisher's contract. But you want to know what I found all this time? By doing it myself?
I didn't come away disappointed with the results.
My works have come away stronger, better organized, and more interesting than their previous first-gen counterparts.
And the hooks within aren't buried in the first paragraph, the first page, or even the first five pages either.
But the whole book!
The whole book should be your hook. The whole book should be more than enough to entice your reader to want to know more.
You can't do that with such scant information, a limited pitch spiel or a restricted time frame.
Readers these days are going to want to know the whole kit and kaboodle. They aren't satisfied with just being thrown tidbits anymore. And as much as the industry, some hawk of theirs, or someone else is going to tell you otherwise--these days, you have to constantly adapt and evolve the art of hooking your reader with your published books.
And the best way to go about doing that is by getting them involved from the start.
Show them everything there is about your novel. Not just the parts you think will guarantee a future sale. Every element written in has a part to play in your overall success as a published writer.
Most experts will commonly tell you to fixate yourself on just one thing and one thing only. In order to hook your reader, you have to go beyond the first page of your novel.
Show your reader what lies in store for your hero or heroine. Show them what they are up against. Tell them that what kind of a rough ride they are going to encounter as the novel unfolds.
Offer them personal insights and tragedies into your respective characters. Show them their victories and their failures. Happy endings or not.
Don't be afraid to immerse your reader into your own work. That helps them stay engaged with you every step of the way.
This helps you secure future sales against whatever advance you may get.
Because people will remember you and go, "Hey! I know that guy! He's got a great book coming out!"
And from there, he or she will go on so avidly about it, interest in your published tome will pick up in no time.
All because of how you hooked your reader.
Sky
Thursday, March 6, 2008
THURSDAY'S MUSINGS
Status: On Vacation; exhausted from the past few days' ordeals
Doing: Writing this blog; surfing the net; answering e-mails
Watching: Nothing.
Listening to: Nothing.
Reading: Kushiel's Scion by Jacqueline Carey (Page 173)
TOPIC: WHEN IN DOUBT? FABRICATE!
It's very odd how my local paper picked up on something about people fabricating their life stories just to embellish things a bit more--in order to get picked up by a traditional publisher. What's even more scary is how these same houses we want to be published by do not even pick up on the fact that what they may have could be faked! (Much like Jame Frey's A Million Little Pieces.)
They don't do any checking of their sources to make sure that the material is what it says it is.
But they publish it anyway--because they believe in its authenticity and its ability to sell books to a sympathetic reading audience.
I thought about doing that too. You know...just make up a few things about my life as well.
For example?
Instead of living in a breadbox for an apartment (which has seen better days), I could say that I've been living in a lavish condominium in downtown Seattle and making a six-figure income as a telecom engineer for let's say...Quest.
On top of that, I am a gradudate of Havard (cum laud), raised by a rich and well-to-do family, and basically am a staunch supporter of George W. Bush himself.
And this, I could add in my own personal autobiography and have it published by some big name publisher in New York--and they would never know!
But...
It wouldn't be the truth. Much like these two incidences illustrate:
Boring life story? Don't worry, just create one that will sell
The book publishing industry, through its apparent refusal to hire fact checkers, has single-handedly changed the definition of "memoir." A memoir used to mean one's own personal story; one that couldn't happen to anyone else because it happened to the author. These days, however, it's good enough for an author to believe, or feel strongly, that it happened.
Last week, Riverhead Books, a unit of Penguin Group USA, published "Love and Consequences," a critically acclaimed memoir. This week, the publisher is busy recalling all copies. The memoir, by Margaret B. Jones, is about her life as a half-white, half-Native American foster child growing up in South-Central Los Angeles, living among gangs and running drugs for the Bloods.
The memoir, three years in the writing, was immediately debunked by the author's sister after a profile of her appeared in the New York Times. Cyndi Hoffman identified the memoirist as her sister, Margaret Seltzer, who is white and grew up in a well-to-do Los Angeles suburb with her biological family and attended private school. Now of course Seltzer says she's sorry (but it was the only way to get the story out). Her editor, Sarah McGrath, says, "There's a huge personal betrayal here as well as a professional one."
"I've been talking to her on the phone and getting e-mails from her for three years and her story has never changed. All the details have been the same," McGrath said. Well, what more proof do you need?
After the denouncement, McGrath called Seltzer "naïve." Perhaps that goes both ways. ("Hey, on the phone, and on paper, she really sounded like a former gang banger.")
The episode comes on the heels of the news that a Holocaust memoir, "Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years," by Misha Defonseca, was also made up. Published is 1997, "Misha" is about a Jewish girl from Brussels who walked across Europe by herself during World War II and spent months living in the forest, sometimes among wolves. Before it was published, two historians warned the publisher that the work was fantasy.
Never mind.
It turns out Misha Defonseca is really Monique De Wael, orphaned daughter of two Catholic members of the Belgian resistance. Before Seltzer and De Wael, it was James Frey, making up details in his book, "A Million Little Pieces," his "memoir" of his drug addiction and recovery. The story of Misha, De Wael helpfully explained, "Is not actual reality, but was my reality, my way of surviving."
Whatever.
Apparently there's no cache in writing fiction anymore. But the absence of fact-checking doesn't turn fantasy into reality.
***
From the net
NEW YORK (Reuters) - "Love and Consequences," a critically acclaimed memoir about a mixed-raced girl growing up in a gang-ridden neighborhood of Los Angeles, is a fabrication and the 19,000 distributed copies of the book will be recalled, its publisher said on Tuesday.
Author Margaret B. Jones, is actually Margaret Seltzer, a white woman who grew up in Sherman Oaks in Southern California and attended a private Episcopal school, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.
In a tearful telephone interview with the newspaper, Seltzer admitted she never ran drugs for a gang and never lived with a foster family as she had claimed in the book.
Riverhead Books, the imprint of Penguin Group that published the book, will offer refunds through booksellers to anyone who bought it, spokeswoman Marilyn Ducksworth said.
The incident is the latest black eye for the publishing business. Two years ago author James Frey admitted he had fabricated key parts of his drug and alcohol memoir "A Million Little Pieces," which was the top selling nonfiction book in the United States in 2005.
"The business of publishing is so difficult, so challenging, and so elusive at times that people will do anything," said Lee Gutkind, author of "Keep It Real: Everything You Need to Know About Researching and Writing Creative Nonfiction."
"You would think what happened with James Frey would wake up the publishing world," he added.
According to the Times, Seltzer, 33, also never graduated from the University of Oregon, as she claimed.
In a statement, Riverhead said that Seltzer had provided "a great deal of evidence to support her story," including photographs, letters, support from a former professor and from people who pretended to be her foster siblings.
Ducksworth said Seltzer's real sister had called the publisher to express concerns, after which the story fell apart. Riverhead is canceling Seltzer's planned book tour.
"When it became known that the author was misrepresenting her personal story we took it seriously, moved very quickly and attempted to corroborate new information we were presented with," Riverhead said in a statement.
***
Writer admits Holocaust book is not true
BOSTON - Almost nothing Misha Defonseca wrote about herself or her horrific childhood during the Holocaust was true.
She didn't live with a pack of wolves to escape the Nazis. She didn't trek 1,900 miles across Europe in search of her deported parents, nor kill a German soldier in self-defense. She's not even Jewish.
Defonseca, a Belgian writer now living in Massachusetts, admitted through her lawyers this week that her best-selling book, "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years," was an elaborate fantasy she kept repeating, even as the book was translated into 18 languages and made into a feature film in France.
"This story is mine. It is not actually reality, but my reality, my way of surviving," Defonseca said in a statement given by her lawyers to The Associated Press.
"I ask forgiveness to all who felt betrayed. I beg you to put yourself in my place, of a 4-year-old girl who was very lost," the statement said.
Defonseca, 71, has an unlisted number in Dudley, about 50 miles southwest of Boston. Her husband, Maurice, told The Boston Globe on Thursday that she would not comment.
Defonseca wrote in her book that Nazis seized her parents when she was a child, forcing her to wander the forests and villages of Europe alone for four years. She claimed she found herself trapped in the Warsaw ghetto and was adopted by a pack of wolves that protected her.
Her two Brussels-based lawyers said the author acknowledged her story was not autobiographical. In the statement, Defonseca said she never fled her home in Brussels during the war to find her parents.
Defonseca says her real name is Monique De Wael and that her parents were arrested and killed by Nazis as Belgian resistance fighters.
The statement said her parents were arrested when she was 4 and she was taken care of by her grandfather and uncle. She said she was poorly treated by her adopted family, called a "daughter of a traitor" because of her parents' role in the resistance, which she said led her to "feel Jewish."
She said there were moments when she "found it difficult to differentiate between what was real and what was part of my imagination."
Pressure on the author to defend the accuracy of her book had grown in recent weeks, after the release of evidence found by Sharon Sergeant, a genealogical researcher in Waltham. Sergeant said she found clues in the unpublished U.S. version of the book, including Defonseca's maiden name "De Wael" — which was changed in the French version — and photos.
After a few months of research, she found Defonseca's Belgian baptismal certificate and school record, as well as information that showed her parents were members of the Belgian resistance.
"Each piece was plausible, but the difficulty was when you put it all together," Sergeant said.
Others also had doubts.
"I'm not an expert on relations between humans and wolves, but I am a specialist of the persecution of Jews, and they (Defonseca's family) can't be found in the archives," Belgian historian Maxime Steinberg told RTL television. "The De Wael family is not Jewish nor were they registered as Jewish."
Defonseca's attorneys, siblings Nathalie and Marc Uyttendaele, contacted the author last weekend to show her evidence published in the Belgian daily Le Soir, which also questioned her story.
"We gave her this information and it was very difficult. She was confronted with a reality that is different from what she has been living for 70 years," Nathalie Uyttendaele said.
Defonseca's admission is just the latest controversy surrounding her 1997 book, which also spawned a multimillion dollar legal battle between the woman, her co-author and the book's U.S. publisher.
Defonseca had been asked to write the book by publisher Jane Daniel in the 1990s, after Daniel heard the writer tell the story in a Massachusetts synagogue.
Daniel and Defonseca fell out over profits received from the best-selling book, which led to a lawsuit. In 2005, a Boston court ordered Daniel to pay Defonseca and her ghost writer Vera Lee $22.5 million. Defonseca's lawyers said Daniel has not yet paid the court-ordered sum.
Daniel said Friday she felt vindicated by Defonseca's admission and would try to get the judgment overturned. She said she could not fully research Defonseca's story before it was published because the woman claimed she did not know her parents' names, her birthday or where she was born.
"There was nothing to go on to research," she said.
Lee, of Newton, muttered "Oh my God" when told Defonseca made up her childhood and was not Jewish. She said she always believed the stories the woman told her as they prepared to write the book, and no research she did gave her a reason not to.
"She always maintained that this was truth as she recalled it, and I trusted that that was the case," Lee said. "I was just totally bowled over by the news."
***
Often, it is too late for the publisher to do anything about it. But the question still: Why didn't they bother catching it in the first place?
This is just another clear example of the pitfalls in traditional publishing. Tread carefully when dealing with your publisher. Make sure what you've written is yours and not some fantastic yarn about a "pre-supposed" life which never existed.
Because defrauding the public and the industry comes with a not-so-nice consolation prize in the end.
Doing: Writing this blog; surfing the net; answering e-mails
Watching: Nothing.
Listening to: Nothing.
Reading: Kushiel's Scion by Jacqueline Carey (Page 173)
TOPIC: WHEN IN DOUBT? FABRICATE!
It's very odd how my local paper picked up on something about people fabricating their life stories just to embellish things a bit more--in order to get picked up by a traditional publisher. What's even more scary is how these same houses we want to be published by do not even pick up on the fact that what they may have could be faked! (Much like Jame Frey's A Million Little Pieces.)
They don't do any checking of their sources to make sure that the material is what it says it is.
But they publish it anyway--because they believe in its authenticity and its ability to sell books to a sympathetic reading audience.
I thought about doing that too. You know...just make up a few things about my life as well.
For example?
Instead of living in a breadbox for an apartment (which has seen better days), I could say that I've been living in a lavish condominium in downtown Seattle and making a six-figure income as a telecom engineer for let's say...Quest.
On top of that, I am a gradudate of Havard (cum laud), raised by a rich and well-to-do family, and basically am a staunch supporter of George W. Bush himself.
And this, I could add in my own personal autobiography and have it published by some big name publisher in New York--and they would never know!
But...
It wouldn't be the truth. Much like these two incidences illustrate:
Boring life story? Don't worry, just create one that will sell
The book publishing industry, through its apparent refusal to hire fact checkers, has single-handedly changed the definition of "memoir." A memoir used to mean one's own personal story; one that couldn't happen to anyone else because it happened to the author. These days, however, it's good enough for an author to believe, or feel strongly, that it happened.
Last week, Riverhead Books, a unit of Penguin Group USA, published "Love and Consequences," a critically acclaimed memoir. This week, the publisher is busy recalling all copies. The memoir, by Margaret B. Jones, is about her life as a half-white, half-Native American foster child growing up in South-Central Los Angeles, living among gangs and running drugs for the Bloods.
The memoir, three years in the writing, was immediately debunked by the author's sister after a profile of her appeared in the New York Times. Cyndi Hoffman identified the memoirist as her sister, Margaret Seltzer, who is white and grew up in a well-to-do Los Angeles suburb with her biological family and attended private school. Now of course Seltzer says she's sorry (but it was the only way to get the story out). Her editor, Sarah McGrath, says, "There's a huge personal betrayal here as well as a professional one."
"I've been talking to her on the phone and getting e-mails from her for three years and her story has never changed. All the details have been the same," McGrath said. Well, what more proof do you need?
After the denouncement, McGrath called Seltzer "naïve." Perhaps that goes both ways. ("Hey, on the phone, and on paper, she really sounded like a former gang banger.")
The episode comes on the heels of the news that a Holocaust memoir, "Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years," by Misha Defonseca, was also made up. Published is 1997, "Misha" is about a Jewish girl from Brussels who walked across Europe by herself during World War II and spent months living in the forest, sometimes among wolves. Before it was published, two historians warned the publisher that the work was fantasy.
Never mind.
It turns out Misha Defonseca is really Monique De Wael, orphaned daughter of two Catholic members of the Belgian resistance. Before Seltzer and De Wael, it was James Frey, making up details in his book, "A Million Little Pieces," his "memoir" of his drug addiction and recovery. The story of Misha, De Wael helpfully explained, "Is not actual reality, but was my reality, my way of surviving."
Whatever.
Apparently there's no cache in writing fiction anymore. But the absence of fact-checking doesn't turn fantasy into reality.
***
From the net
NEW YORK (Reuters) - "Love and Consequences," a critically acclaimed memoir about a mixed-raced girl growing up in a gang-ridden neighborhood of Los Angeles, is a fabrication and the 19,000 distributed copies of the book will be recalled, its publisher said on Tuesday.
Author Margaret B. Jones, is actually Margaret Seltzer, a white woman who grew up in Sherman Oaks in Southern California and attended a private Episcopal school, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.
In a tearful telephone interview with the newspaper, Seltzer admitted she never ran drugs for a gang and never lived with a foster family as she had claimed in the book.
Riverhead Books, the imprint of Penguin Group that published the book, will offer refunds through booksellers to anyone who bought it, spokeswoman Marilyn Ducksworth said.
The incident is the latest black eye for the publishing business. Two years ago author James Frey admitted he had fabricated key parts of his drug and alcohol memoir "A Million Little Pieces," which was the top selling nonfiction book in the United States in 2005.
"The business of publishing is so difficult, so challenging, and so elusive at times that people will do anything," said Lee Gutkind, author of "Keep It Real: Everything You Need to Know About Researching and Writing Creative Nonfiction."
"You would think what happened with James Frey would wake up the publishing world," he added.
According to the Times, Seltzer, 33, also never graduated from the University of Oregon, as she claimed.
In a statement, Riverhead said that Seltzer had provided "a great deal of evidence to support her story," including photographs, letters, support from a former professor and from people who pretended to be her foster siblings.
Ducksworth said Seltzer's real sister had called the publisher to express concerns, after which the story fell apart. Riverhead is canceling Seltzer's planned book tour.
"When it became known that the author was misrepresenting her personal story we took it seriously, moved very quickly and attempted to corroborate new information we were presented with," Riverhead said in a statement.
***
Writer admits Holocaust book is not true
BOSTON - Almost nothing Misha Defonseca wrote about herself or her horrific childhood during the Holocaust was true.
She didn't live with a pack of wolves to escape the Nazis. She didn't trek 1,900 miles across Europe in search of her deported parents, nor kill a German soldier in self-defense. She's not even Jewish.
Defonseca, a Belgian writer now living in Massachusetts, admitted through her lawyers this week that her best-selling book, "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years," was an elaborate fantasy she kept repeating, even as the book was translated into 18 languages and made into a feature film in France.
"This story is mine. It is not actually reality, but my reality, my way of surviving," Defonseca said in a statement given by her lawyers to The Associated Press.
"I ask forgiveness to all who felt betrayed. I beg you to put yourself in my place, of a 4-year-old girl who was very lost," the statement said.
Defonseca, 71, has an unlisted number in Dudley, about 50 miles southwest of Boston. Her husband, Maurice, told The Boston Globe on Thursday that she would not comment.
Defonseca wrote in her book that Nazis seized her parents when she was a child, forcing her to wander the forests and villages of Europe alone for four years. She claimed she found herself trapped in the Warsaw ghetto and was adopted by a pack of wolves that protected her.
Her two Brussels-based lawyers said the author acknowledged her story was not autobiographical. In the statement, Defonseca said she never fled her home in Brussels during the war to find her parents.
Defonseca says her real name is Monique De Wael and that her parents were arrested and killed by Nazis as Belgian resistance fighters.
The statement said her parents were arrested when she was 4 and she was taken care of by her grandfather and uncle. She said she was poorly treated by her adopted family, called a "daughter of a traitor" because of her parents' role in the resistance, which she said led her to "feel Jewish."
She said there were moments when she "found it difficult to differentiate between what was real and what was part of my imagination."
Pressure on the author to defend the accuracy of her book had grown in recent weeks, after the release of evidence found by Sharon Sergeant, a genealogical researcher in Waltham. Sergeant said she found clues in the unpublished U.S. version of the book, including Defonseca's maiden name "De Wael" — which was changed in the French version — and photos.
After a few months of research, she found Defonseca's Belgian baptismal certificate and school record, as well as information that showed her parents were members of the Belgian resistance.
"Each piece was plausible, but the difficulty was when you put it all together," Sergeant said.
Others also had doubts.
"I'm not an expert on relations between humans and wolves, but I am a specialist of the persecution of Jews, and they (Defonseca's family) can't be found in the archives," Belgian historian Maxime Steinberg told RTL television. "The De Wael family is not Jewish nor were they registered as Jewish."
Defonseca's attorneys, siblings Nathalie and Marc Uyttendaele, contacted the author last weekend to show her evidence published in the Belgian daily Le Soir, which also questioned her story.
"We gave her this information and it was very difficult. She was confronted with a reality that is different from what she has been living for 70 years," Nathalie Uyttendaele said.
Defonseca's admission is just the latest controversy surrounding her 1997 book, which also spawned a multimillion dollar legal battle between the woman, her co-author and the book's U.S. publisher.
Defonseca had been asked to write the book by publisher Jane Daniel in the 1990s, after Daniel heard the writer tell the story in a Massachusetts synagogue.
Daniel and Defonseca fell out over profits received from the best-selling book, which led to a lawsuit. In 2005, a Boston court ordered Daniel to pay Defonseca and her ghost writer Vera Lee $22.5 million. Defonseca's lawyers said Daniel has not yet paid the court-ordered sum.
Daniel said Friday she felt vindicated by Defonseca's admission and would try to get the judgment overturned. She said she could not fully research Defonseca's story before it was published because the woman claimed she did not know her parents' names, her birthday or where she was born.
"There was nothing to go on to research," she said.
Lee, of Newton, muttered "Oh my God" when told Defonseca made up her childhood and was not Jewish. She said she always believed the stories the woman told her as they prepared to write the book, and no research she did gave her a reason not to.
"She always maintained that this was truth as she recalled it, and I trusted that that was the case," Lee said. "I was just totally bowled over by the news."
***
Often, it is too late for the publisher to do anything about it. But the question still: Why didn't they bother catching it in the first place?
This is just another clear example of the pitfalls in traditional publishing. Tread carefully when dealing with your publisher. Make sure what you've written is yours and not some fantastic yarn about a "pre-supposed" life which never existed.
Because defrauding the public and the industry comes with a not-so-nice consolation prize in the end.
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