EARLY FRIDAY LOOK BACK.

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'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.

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