Adam Heine

Endings, Again

I'm only a couple of days out from finishing Air Pirates. It's exciting (obviously). On the other hand, this last chapter has been taking longer than the others because it's the end. It has to be good. To do that, as Natalie said in her post on endings, I have to take it slow.

So obviously I've been spending a lot of time thinking about what makes an ending good. I've mentioned before that I have a problem with endings. I think I'm starting to figure out why.

As a writer, one thing you have to realize is that while you're telling your story, you are making certain promises to your reader. Some of those promises are inherent in the genre you're writing: if you're writing a murder mystery, you promise the reader will learn who did it and why; if it's a romance, you promise the right people will get together in the end.*

But genre aside, every story makes promises, and it's your job to give the reader what they want. That doesn't mean you have to be predictable, but throw in the wrong kind of twist and your reader will throw your book across the room in frustration.

Let's look at an example. Halfway through Back to the Future, everything's set up for a big climax. The two major conflicts (will Marty get back to the future? can he get his parents together so he still exists when he gets there?) are set up so that Marty's only chance at both is at the same time: the night of the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance. How does this have to end? You might think there are a thousand ways it could end - after all, anything's possible - but the truth is that the viewer is expecting a very limited subset of what is possible.

In BttF, the viewer expects Marty to get home and his parents to get together. Why? Because it's a light-hearted, funny movie. From the very beginning, the movie sends subtle clues that this will be a fun story, which implies a happy ending. There are a number of twists that can happen, but if Marty dies in the end, or gets stuck in the past forever, the viewer will be upset.

BttF also sent signals about what kind of climax it would be. Because there are action scenes (the Libyans attacking Doc Brown, Biff and his goons chasing Marty), the reader expects not just similar, but bigger, action for the climax. Because the movie is funny, we expect a little comic relief from the climax (or at least aren't blind-sided when it happens).

There's more. Marty's dad didn't have to become confident, did he? Could Marty have gone home and found everything exactly as he left it - loser parents and all? He probably could have, but we're all glad he didn't, because the viewer expects the characters they care about will not only win, but win big (or, if it's a tragedy, lose big). It's not enough for George McFly to get the right girl, he has to become more than he was before Marty interfered. Marty doesn't just come back home, he comes back to something better (a new truck, Doc Brown lives and is a closer friend to him than ever).

I'm not saying all endings have to be happy and predictable, but they have to be satisfying. They have to be bigger and better than anything that's happened in the book so far. If you twist it, the twist should be better than the straight-forward ending would have been - don't twist just to be unpredictable (woah, that advice came out of nowhere, and I realize I need to follow it!).

This post is long already, and there was something else I wanted to say about cliffhangers. I'll put it off for another post. In the meantime, ask yourself, what has to happen in the end? Twists and details aside, where do the characters have to end up for me to be satisfied? That's where the ending needs to go.

* These rules aren't strictly true 100% of the time, of course. They can be broken, but if you don't know what you're doing, nobody will put up with you breaking them.

Language Problems

(For WAG #6: Overheard, in which the goal is to eavesdrop and notice how people really talk. I had some problems, as you'll see, and so shattered the rules into tiny, glittering pieces on the floor. Wear shoes.)

I can't understand you. I've lived here 4 years, even went to school to learn your language, but I can't understand you. You're not speaking your language.

I realize they didn't teach me about languages in the US. Oh, they teach the big ones - Spanish, French, maybe Chinese - but nobody is expected to actually use them. When someone, or some country, doesn't speak English, the typical American sentiment is, "Why don't they just learn English?"

I didn't want to be like that, so when I came here I determined to learn Thai the best I could. For you. I've done that, am still doing that, but though Thai is the national language, it's hardly the language everyone speaks.

Even in my own house, Thai is everyone's second language. My wife and I speak English. My oldest daughter grew up speaking Karen. My youngest daughter speaks Lisu with her mom, Kham Mueang with her school friends, and English with me; she only uses Thai with her teachers.

By your rhythms and sounds, I know you're speaking Kham Mueang. I recognize it, even know a word or two, but I don't understand you. In northern Thailand, everyone speaks Kham Mueang. Everyone but me. In the market, if my face didn't already mark me as an outsider, my use of the so-called "national language" would.

It's not really fair, you know? Why can't you all just learn English?

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Other participants in WAG #6:

How to Join the Writing Adventure Group

Book Trailers

I didn't know there was such a thing as book trailers until a few months ago. They're... weird. Let me explain.

First, some definition. A book trailer is like a movie trailer. It's an ad designed to get you excited about the book so you'll pay for it. The major difference, obviously, is that movie trailers have about 2 hours of existing footage to work with, every second of which accurately portrays the movie being advertised (because, obviously, it is the movie being advertised).

It's because book trailers don't have this that they're so weird. About the only visual both a book and its trailer share is the book cover. So they have to make do with stock pictures, movie soundtracks, actors playing out scenes expressly for the trailer... none of which are a part of the actual experience of reading the book.

There's another weird aspect to book trailers. Due to the ease of making videos and putting them online, there's a lot of amateur book trailers out there - both fan trailers for bestselling books and actual trailers done by midlist authors themselves. Some of them are pans and zooms of the book cover while the author reads the back cover blurb. Some use stock footage to help visualize the narration. Some piece together clips from actual movies.

Some of these amateur trailers are decent. Many are not.

I think the reason I find book trailers weird is because I'm comparing them to movie trailers. On the one hand, it's an unfair comparison - the mediums are very different. On the other hand, the comparison is demanded; most book trailers are trying to be movie trailers. They're even called "trailers."

Which brings me to my question: what should book trailers be? Should they be like movie trailers - a visual representation of the book? Or should they be something else (and what)?

I'm not sure there's one right answer to this. The better trailers I've seen are good more because of the production quality than because of any methods used.

I will say that I'm not sure about the movie-clips-as-trailer method. It looks cool, but I think it sends mixed messages to the viewer. Especially if the clips are from movies I'm familiar with, I get confused as to what's being advertised. Often I find myself, at the end, more excited about the movies than the book.

Travelers on Hold; Air Pirates Nearly Drafted

If you look at the status of my works in progress on the sidebar, you'll notice two things.

First, I have changed Travelers' status from "Querying agents" to "On hold". In truth, I haven't really done anything for Travelers for two or three months now. There are still a few agents who haven't gotten back to me, but given the overwhelming number of negative responses, I'm not optimistic. Some statistics...

Queried: 60 agents
Form rejections: 39
No response: 19
Personalized rejections: 2 (thank you, Ms. Gendell and Ms. Meadows!)
Partial requests: 0
Full requests: 0

From the personalized rejections, I've gathered that (1) my current query letter doesn't suck, (2) neither does my voice or writing style, but (3) the characters in the early parts of the novel are not characterized very well and/or the agents didn't feel as connected to the characters as they wanted to (Arad and Garrett were mentioned, in particular).

I'm leaving the first chapter online for now. I may consider a rewrite later, but I'm not going to think about that until I'm farther along in the query process of Air Pirates and am thinking of my next project.

Which brings me to the second thing. I'm writing the final chapter of Air Pirates (Whee!). It's taken me 1.5 years to write the whole draft. That's a lot slower than some people, but it's about 3x faster than the last novel I wrote (so that means the sequel will be done in 6 months, right? Right?).

I'm excited (obviously, since I'm posting about it before I've actually done it), and I'm ready. I have the query letter all set. I've got a 4-5 month timeline for the beta/revision phase of the project. I even have a first draft of "instructions" for my beta readers. That's right, I'm that neurotic.

I guess that's all I have to say. I'm excited. When the draft is finished, you'll hear it here. When I need beta readers (I have 2, but I think I want a few more this time around), you'll hear it here. Maybe I should give you guys some excerpts or something. I'm just so excited!

Okay, I need to outline the chapter before I have to eat all my words. Words are gross!

Commercial Bestsellers

I don't have a lot of choice in what I read here in Thailand. The English bookstores only carry the very best of the bestselling (i.e. Harry Potter). Instead, one of my friends and I trade what books we get back and forth. He gets random books that friends in the States find for cheap, and I (for the last few years anyway) get a gift certificate once a year from my sisters-in-law.

Lately my friend has been loaning me commercial bestsellers. These are the books you see in Walmart or Ralphs or the very front of Borders. A lot have been thrillers from authors like Dean Koontz, Robin Cook, and James Patterson. I usually walk right past these on my way to the Sci-fi/Fantasy section, so this is kind of a new genre for me.

I was surprised to find that some of them are very good. I read my first Koontz novel with heavy skepticism, only to find that he writes really well. His imagery is vivid, evocative, and ties together the tones and themes of any given scene.

On the other hand, a lot of these haven't been any good at all. The stories are fine; it's mostly problems with their craft - a lot of telling when they should be showing. A lot of unnecessary "As you know, Bob"-style dialogue. Sometimes the action will stop for a paragraph or two to explain the character's motivations ("Despite the fact that the killer had a gun, Jack got angry. It was a problem he had that went back to his overbearing father..."). In one novel, there was a seemingly-major character who did nothing but sit in his office and answer phone calls that explained various aspects of the plot.

A couple of years ago, I don't think I would've noticed these things, but the more I learn about writing well, and the more I get criticized myself on these very things, the more I realize that these extremely successful authors are getting away with total crap, and getting paid very well for it.

At first I didn't mind. I actually felt good about it. "If they can get published with this garbage," I thought, "then I'll be published for sure!" (How innocent and naive I was). Then, as I earned more rejections and criticisms on my own work, I began to get angry at the double standard.

I'm better now. Though I'm not happy about it, I have accepted that publishing is a business, and these authors sell. On the other hand, this undermines one of the major things that publishers supposedly provide, namely credibility. If I can't trust a bestseller to be any good, how can I trust the midlist?

These authors sell (I think) because of the huge fanbase they've accumulated back when they actually were credible. Those same fans keep coming back because they want more of the same, the familiar - and the fans don't care (or don't notice) that the quality of the familiar has declined.

I don't know what can be done about this, or if anything even should be done. It grates against my sense of rightness, but pretty much all entertainment mediums have the same problem. It's just capitalism at work, really. So the question is what can I do about it?

The only answers I can think of are: (1) don't buy the crappy books and (2) don't let the quality of my own writing go down just because I'm rich and famous. Unfortunately I rarely buy books and I'm not rich and famous, so I can't actually do anything. Not yet.

First Sketch of Air Pirates

Natalie finished my prize sketches much faster than I'd thought. She was only supposed to give me one sketch, but she got so excited about it she drew two.

Here's Hagai Dekham Wainwright. He's never done anything braver than put peppers in his stew, but on his 21st birthday he receives a stone from his supposedly-dead mother and sets out to find her. Unfortunately, air pirates want the stone for its ability to give chance visions of the future, and Hagai soon finds himself in more trouble than he thought.

And this is Sam Draper - elite fighter and wanted air pirate. He nicks the stone from Hagai only to have the lad track him down and ask for it back! Sam doesn't give it back, of course, but he learns that the stone works for Hagai. Since Sam hasn't been able to make it work himself, he lets Hagai join his crew. Adventure ensues!

Thank you again, Natalie, for these awesome pictures. If Air Pirates never gets published, I'll still have these forever. And if it does, I can sell them for millions. It's win win!

Free Fall Math and BASE Jumping

Every once in a while, I research something that's just random enough or cool enough or geeky enough to share (like, you know, should you use the definite article when writing about ships, which is way cool).

I'll start you off with the good stuff. Some free fall survival tips:

First of all, you're starting off a full mile higher than Everest, so after a few gulps of disappointing air you're going to black out. This is not a bad thing. If you have ever tried to keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, you know what I mean. This brief respite from the ambient fear and chaos will come to an end when you wake up at about 15,000 feet. Here begins the final phase of your descent, which will last about a minute. It is a time of planning and preparation.

Read the whole thing. It's both amusing and interesting. Now, here's some cool free fall math:

For a person of average weight, in spread eagle position, terminal velocity is about 120 mph (190 kph).
An experienced skydiver can attain velocities of 160 mph (250 kph). With training, that can be increased to over 200 mph (320 kph), and the record is over 300 mph (480 kph).
It takes about 14-15 seconds to reach terminal velocity (120 mph).
In those 14-15 seconds, the plummeter will have fallen a little over 1,800 feet (550 m).

That means in the Air Pirates' world, where the ships typically fly 1-2 km above the ground, it would take 20-40 seconds for someone to hit said ground.

Now onto BASE jumping. After a short amount of research, I realized I didn't know much about this sport. BASE is an acronym that stands for Building, Antenna, Span, Earth: four categories of objects from which one can jump.

It's basically skydiving without the plane, but it's more dangerous than skydiving. The practical minimum for skydivers to open their parachute is 600 meters, but most BASE jumps are made from less than that. Jumpers have far less time to control their jump, and they usually don't even reach terminal velocity.

That brings me to the other cool thing I learned about: the wingsuit. This is a skydiving suit with added fabric sewn between the legs and between the arms and body. With a wingsuit, the jumper's fall rate drops to an average 60 mph (95 kph) and can get as low as 25 mph (40 kph). It also gives the jumper additional control over their fall, almost to the point of gliding. Some jumpers are even trying to set a record by landing without a parachute.

Check this out:

In Air Pirates, there are 3 scenes where someone jumps or falls from an airship (actually there's a lot more than that, but speed and distance only matter for 3 of them - the rest just die). I even finagled a wingsuit in one of the scenes - some of my protagonists are just too extreme for their own good.

I'm a Terrible Writer! Hooray!

Finally, my inability to write good endings pays off! Natalie over at Between Fact & Fiction recently ran a contest to see who could write the worst ending, and I won!

For your reading pleasure, and because I can't help but show off bad writing, here's my entry:

Frodo screamed as the twisted creature bit off his finger - the ring with it.

"My precious!" Gollum chortled and danced in ecstacy at having reclaimed his prize, paying no attention to the precipice behind him. The edge crumbled, and he fell to the burning lava below.

Suddenly a voice hissed from the darkness, "Accio Ring!" The ring leapt out of Gollum's clutch and flew towards the waiting grasp of a snake-faced man holding a wand.

"Who's that?" asked Sam.

Frodo shrugged. "Sauron?"

Before the wizard could hold the ring, it halted in midair. Without warning, it flew the opposite direction, over Frodo and Sam's heads, to a tall man dressed all in black armor. "Impressive," the armored figure said, "but the ability to control the rings is nothing compared to the power of the Force." Suddenly the armored figure howled. He fell forward; the ring flew upwards out of his hand.

Behind him stood another man, strangely dressed in a tight-fitting vest and leggings. His eyes were hidden behind a black pair of spectacles. He caught the ring neatly and said, "Tell me, Mr. Anderson, what good is a ring if you're unable to speak?"

"Master Elrond?"

The new arrival looked at Sam, stonefaced, and said, "No."

"Avada Kedrava!" A ray of fire shot from the dark towards the newest owner of the ring, but he avoided it with inhuman speed. The armored man got up suddenly, drew a glowing red sword, and attacked as well.

While the battle raged, Sam looked to his master. "What do you reckon we ought to do, Mister Frodo?"

Mount Doom was getting crowded. Even Gollum had scrambled back up the cliff face and was even now clawing at the back of the snake-faced man's head.

"I'm tired, Sam," Frodo said. "F--k the ring. I want to go home."

There were a lot of good entries (most of them not so long), and you can read them in the comments. Also be sure to check out Natalie's tips on what makes a bad ending.

As a prize, Natalie is going to draw me a full-colored sketch of my Air Pirates' protagonists. Woohoo!

Free Stuff

I have a theory that for any given thing I want to do on the computer, somebody has written a free program for it. As it turns out, that's pretty close to the truth. Admittedly, the free software isn't always as powerful or intuitive or functional as the pay version, but it's rare that I need more than the basics. In most cases, I'd rather have the basics for free than a couple of extra features for hundreds of dollars.

Here's a list of some of the free software I have on my machine, most of which I use on a regular basis. I bet you can find something here you can use.*

AdAware/SpyBot - After cleaning spyware from nearly a hundred machines, I now install these two together by default. I've yet to find a piece of spyware that one of these won't catch.
Buddi - Budget software. Not as good as Quicken, but infinitely cheaper.
Skype - Free video phone via the internet. Surprisingly good quality even from Thailand to Mexico.
ZipGenius - I got tired of Window's lame "compressed folder" nonsense. I need something that can handle zip files like zip files, as well as jar, gz, rar, tar, war, and z files, without telling me my trial period is over. ZipGenius is the best program I've found for this yet.
PrimoPDF - I know Macs deal in PDF by default, but Windows doesn't (unless you pay $450 for Adobe's solution!). This program fixes that. I love PDF. It means I can send a query package to MattyDub across the Pacific and he prints it exactly like it's supposed to be.
DeltaCopy - A reliable backup program capable of scheduled, incremental backups.
FileZilla - An FTP program that doesn't complain about being a trial version and supports drag-and-drop.
SketchUp - A 3-D modeling program that's easy to learn and fun to use. I designed my house with this.
Audacity - High quality recording/sound-editing software.
Metapad - A slightly better alternative to Window's notepad.
NetBeans - For programmers. A free, feature-full IDE for Java programming.

The following programs are also free and seem very promising, though I haven't yet used them myself. I think it's only a matter of time.

OpenOffice - Microsoft Office for free. And better. As soon as my copy of MS Word (2002) becomes useless, I'm switching to this.
yWriter - Novel writing software, created by an experienced programmer/novelist. I haven't switched over yet, because I have a system and it works, but I get closer with every project.
Picasa - Photo organization software. I've seen it in action, and it's a lot better than my "name the directories with dates and hope that's good enough" method of organization. I just haven't taken the time to load all my photos into it yet.
Avidemux - Video-editing software. For when Windows Movie Maker just isn't good enough.
Clam AV - I have my own anti-virus solution for now, but this is the best free one I've seen.

What about you? Anything you like better than what's on this list? What other free software do you use?

* Unfortunately, while these are all available for Windows, some are not available for the Mac. I love Macs, but the open source movement doesn't always extend that far. That was actually one of the reasons I chose a Windows machine the last time I had the choice.

Characters We Hate

(Side note: I've updated the Night Sky in Chiang Mai post to link to other writers who did the same exercise, if you're interested. Now back to our regularly scheduled blog entry...)

Last time, I gave a list of 10 things we like in characters. The short version was:

Courage.
Fair Play.
Humility.
Draftee/Volunteer.
Dependable.
Clever.
Victim.
Savior.
Sacrifice.
Goals and Dreams.

The things that make us hate a character (also derived from Characters & Viewpoint) is almost, but not quite, the opposite.

Liar: Cheats, lies, breaks their promises. Their reasons for lying matter just as much as the lie itself, of course.
Self-Centered: Brags. Readily takes credit for accomplishments. Takes criticism poorly. Blames others, complains, or whines about their problems.
Self-Appointed: Puts themselves in a position they did not earn, where they are uninvited or do not belong. A usurper.
Arrogant: We like clever characters, but a character who knows they are smarter or better than other people (or worse, simply thinks they are) is despicable.
Bully: Makes others suffer for their own enjoyment or to exercise control over them.

Like the other list, these are only guidelines. Real people, and therefore real characters, are a lot more complicated than this, as are our feelings towards them. The real world can't typically be separated into "good people" and "bad people." In the same way, not every story has identifiable heroes and villains. I think it's important for writers to know what makes the reader love or hate our characters. Often the reader won't know themselves. In such cases these lists might be useful.

This is also not a checklist. It's rarely a good idea to give a villain all these traits. Just as the most lovable character is mostly good with some flaws, the best villains are the ones who are mostly evil with some sympathetic traits as well.

Above all, any good villain - any good character, actually - is the hero of their own story. No matter how evil or comical or insane somebody is, they believe that what they are doing is right. If the reader is allowed to see their version of events, they may not like them, but they will respect them and, more importantly, they will believe in them. That's the real goal.

Characters We Like

Last week, Nathan Bransford talked about what he feels makes a character sympathetic. He gave this formula: "charisma - action = redeemability" and suggested that if a character's redeemability dropped below a certain base line, that character would lose the sympathy of the reader, and if that character is the protagonist, or any other character that's supposed to be likable, the story's in big trouble.

It's a good way of looking at it, but from this author's point of view it's a little too vague to be workable. So I present to you this almost-checklist derived from Orson Scott Card's Characters & Viewpoint.

10 Things We Like in Characters

Courage: Does what's right even if it's risky.
Fair Play: Doesn't cheat. Isn't sneaky or underhanded.
Humility: Doesn't brag. Is modest or shy about praise. Doesn't argue to defend themselves when criticized. Takes responsibility for their mistakes. Doesn't whine or complain about their problems, but tries to solve them.
Draftee/Volunteer: Related to humility. If a job requires great courage, but won't bring much glory or reward, the sympathetic character will volunteer for it. Conversely, if a job will bring glory and reward, the sympathetic character needs to be drafted.
Dependable: Keeps their word as much as possible.
Clever: Thinks of smart solutions to difficult problems.
Victim: We pity a character who is a victim of suffering or jeopardy, but you have to be careful. Too much of a victim seems weak; after all, a real character would do something about it. This works best if we know the character has tried their hardest and still can't get out of the situation.
Savior: Rescues those in need. Readily defends someone who is being criticized unfairly.
Sacrifice: A character who sacrifices themselves for something is hugely sympathetic, but only if the sacrifice is necessary and if it's for something important and worthy. Otherwise, we'll think the character is just stupid.
Goals and Dreams: In general, sympathy will increase with the importance of the character's goal and the amount of effort they've already expended to try to attain it.

Of course, there are no hard rules in writing. Like everything else, these are guidelines.

It's also not a checklist. If you try to imagine a character with all these qualities, you may find yourself sickened of them. A perfect character becomes unbelievable and unlikable. The best characters - our very favorites - are ones who are mostly sympathetic, the ones who have some small, understandable flaws that make them real and (strangely) lovable.

There's also a very fine line for some of these. For example, a character who is clever is likable, but a character who knows they're clever, and acts like it, is just the opposite. I'll talk about that a little more in the next post: Characters We Hate.

Night Sky in Chiang Mai

(For Nixy Valentine's Writing Adventure Group)

Of course I understand the physics of it - suffusion of light, a terrestrial observation point, and all that. Even so, I am dumbfounded at how a handful of heated wires and gases can reduce billions of celestial furnaces into a countable collection of hazy dots in a not-quite-black sky.

MORE INFORMATION (added 3/9): The assignment was to describe the sky. This was observational, so writers were encouraged to use descriptive words more than metaphors or emotive words. Follow the links below to see how other people took the exercise:

Cora Zane - Stars Will Cry

Sharon Donovan

Adam Heine - Authors Echo

Nancy Parra - This Writer’s Life

Criss - Criss Writes

Carol - DMWCarol

Nixy Valentine

Marsha Moore - Write On!

Jesse Blair - SexFoodPlay

Jackie Doss - The Pegasus Journals

AuntSally

JM Strother - Mad Utopia

Actual, Physical Writing

Last week I was at a homeschool conference for a couple of days. One of the days, there weren't any workshops I wanted to attend, but I still had to be there with my kids. That meant either sitting in a classroom I didn't want to be in, or waiting around for a few hours.

I chose the latter, because I'm good at waiting (I always bring 2 or 3 things to do on plane trips to the States, for example). In this case, I decided to take Tobias Buckell's advice and write on paper. I took out my old moleskine, given to me by a friend like 4 years ago. I've done lots of brainstorming and pseudo-outlining in the notebook before, but never actual writing. That is, I've never written anything in the notebook that I transferred directly to my manuscript. Tobias followed his own advice and shared his exp erience, so I thought I might as well do the same.

The thing I liked least is no surprise: it's slow. I can type almost as fast as I can think (or at least as fast I can decide what to say). Writing by hand bugs me because by the time I write a few words, I'm thinking 3 or 4 sentences ahead, and I forget how I was going to finish the first sentence.

I also didn't like being away from my notes (my timelines, my outlines, my character bibles, my maps...). I'm a planner, which means I have faith that my outlines are pretty decent to start with - there's a reason I plan. As I spent time writing without my notes, I felt like I was getting farther and farther off my plan.

There was one really good thing about it: it forced me to keep going. There was no e-mail to distract me, no World Doc to write sudden world-building thoughts in, no dictionary or thesaurus to ache over word choice. No notes meant I didn't spend time hunting down details, so when the protagonist referenced something that happened "4 years ago," I had to write "X years ago" and move on.

One of the things that forced me to keep going surprised me: there was no room to edit. Often when I get stuck on something (even if only for a few minutes), I end up looking back and revising. But writing single-spaced in the notebook, there was only a small amount of room to edit. Once I'd changed a word once or twice, there was no more room to change it, and I was forced to leave it and move on.

In the end, I wrote 1,000 words in 1-2 hours. That's about the same speed as my normal rate (although I still had to retype the whole thing once I got home). I'd definitely do it again, if given the opportunity, but I think I'd have to study my notes ahead of time to make sure I stayed on track.

Maybe the next time I fly to the States, I'll bring my notebook instead of my laptop. It's easier to carry around and setup anyway (especially with 2-year-olds in the next seat).

The Voices in my Head

Tony Jay is an English actor, best known for his voice acting in various cartoons and video games. He's played many roles, but it was always his villains I loved. His smooth, British baritone lent an air of danger and superiority to characters like Shere Khan (though not the one in the original Jungle Book) and Chairface Chippendale.

Now you may have no idea what I'm talking about. You may never have seen Tale Spin or The Tick. Odds are good you've never played Fallout, Torment, or Icewind Dale either, all of which starred villains

voiced by the late Tony Jay.

But for me, these were some of my favorite stories, and now it's presenting an odd sort of problem. See, the other day I discovered that no matter who my villain is, no matter how well I know them or plan their background and character or even pretend to talk like them - when I sit down to write the dialogue of that villain I involuntarily write the voice of Tony Jay.

Like Arad, the nigh-omnipotent tyrant of Travelers. In my head, he speaks with Tony Jay's voice. Now I didn't realize this at the time because the voice fit. Arad is a dangerous being who considers himself superior to, literally, everybody. So I thought it was just Arad's voice.

But then the other day, I was trying to write Jacobin Savage, the cruel pirate captain from Azrael's Curse (slash Air Pirates). The pirates in this world tend to speak like something between the Irishman from Braveheart and Pirates' Captain Barbosa - fast and flippant, with heavy use of slang and light use of grammar. Savage was supposed to be no different, but when I tried to write his dialogue he sounded less like Captain Barbosa and more like Commodore Norrington.

The difference is relatively subtle on the page, I suppose. For example, Tony Jay's Savage might say, "You want to change the world, isn't that it? You want to rid it of folks like the Imperium, and you think by hitting military targets instead of random merchants, you might do that. What you don't see is that you're just scratching an itch."

But Savage's words need to be more like, "You want to change the world, aye? Want to rid it of the Imperium, and you reck you can do that by hitting Navy marks 'stead of chance merchers. But you're just scratching an itch."

Subtle differences. And for all I know they both sound like Alan Rickman in your head. But it's hard when I want Savage to have a unique voice, and all that comes out is Tony Jay.

So thank you, Tony, for portraying such memorable villains that I can no longer imagine evil in any other voice. You've simultaneously enriched and ruined my life. Well done.

I Heart My Alpha Reader

I have beta readers who will read the novel when it's finished. In the meantime, I have one person who is willing to read each chapter as it comes out, even if it's weeks or months between, even when the chapters she gets are a confusing mess.

She's my alpha reader. The following is a random list of things I love about her:

She claps in excitement when I tell her I have a new chapter.
It's fun to watch her read. She winces and laughs and gets scared at all the right moments.
She asks me all kinds of useful questions, especially when what I wrote doesn't make any sense.
She doesn't put up with me when I try to argue why something I wrote is right. (Don't argue with the reader!)
Even if a chapter sucks, she encourages me by telling me what she liked.
Having her read each chapter, when I haven't finished the novel yet, helps keep me going. It helps me believe that what I'm writing is worth reading - or can be.
Knowing she'll read the ending as it happens forces me to plan everything leading up to it, so it (hopefully) strikes her well.
Her questions, and her convictions about what "has to happen next," give me ideas I hadn't considered and make the novel better.
She doesn't give me ideas often (usually preferring to let me do the writing), but when she does they're always good.
She believes in me.

Everyone's got their own process. For some, an alpha reader might just get in the way. For heavy planners like me, though, I recommend finding someone who can tell you how you're doing, chapter by chapter. They don't have to be a writer, just a reader. My alpha reader (who's also my wife, if you didn't already figure) has as much to do with the quality of my manuscript as I do.

She doesn't even like sci-fi or fantasy.

Random Sentence Meme

I'm mutating a meme for writers (don't worry if you're not a writer, I still have instructions for you below):

Open up your current work in progress. If you have no WIP, go to step 3.
Leaving it in its current formatting, copy the 5th sentence on page 21, and paste it into the comments of this post. If your WIP does not have 21 pages, go to the last page divided by 2 (round up).
If you have no WIP, use the 21st page/5th sentence of the book you are currently reading.
If you are not currently reading a book, then get off the internet right now and read one.

A Spectator's View of Publishing's Future

UPDATE: See the comments for two more interesting articles on this topic.

Everyone's been talking about the future (or sometimes the end) of publishing lately. As a spectator, I am totally unqualified to talk about it, but I'm going to anyway because it's my blog and that's the way I like it. (Likewise, if this is a little stream-of-consciousness, I apologize. I'm kind of thinking out loud.)

I used to think that authors write the books, then publishers do all the printing, marketing, and selling of it so that we don't have to. It turns out that's not true (people have been talking about that too). So if all but the best selling authors are expected to do their own marketing, what is the publisher doing?

As far as I can see, they (1) get art for your cover, (2) pay for the printing, (3) get your book in bookstores, and (4) get your book in at least the basic review places. Those are good things. It's very hard for regular people to do any but (2), and if you are self-published, you can't do (3) or (4) at all.

But how many people read those reviews and then buy the book? Is that a lot of copies there? It's some, certainly, but it's not your main readerbase (well, certainly not in my genre). Similarly, who is buying books at bookstores (other than MattyDub and me, who would live at Borders if they let us)? That's some copies as well, but the bookstores seem to be dying which implies that fewer and fewer people are buying from there. That trend might not continue, but what if it does?

What I'm saying is, if the majority of my readerbase is coming from my own marketing efforts, then what do I get by being with a publisher?

Okay, okay. You get a lot of proofreaders who know what they're talking about, which makes your book a lot better and gives it Credibility. I don't want to knock that. Credibility is good. But it's possible to write a good book, and get a huge readerbase, without the credibility of a publisher. It's hard, but no harder, I think, than getting a publisher to begin with.

I guess my real point is that all the trends seem to be moving the advantages of a publisher away from them and into the hands of small authors. The internet is enabling us more, the slow death/metamorphosis of the publishers is requiring us to take on more. If the publishers don't figure this out soon, someone on the internet will find a way to hand out Credibility to self-published books, and then it will all be over.

Well, not over. Different.

(Bonus Question: how do I self-publish books on the Kindle? No print runs, no art required. I think that would undercut almost everything that's left of Big Publishing, if it can be done.)

Turning an Idea into a Story

In Orson Scott Card's writing books Characters and Viewpoint and How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, he mentions this thing he does called A Thousand Ideas in an Hour. It's fun to do and a good way to get past writer's block.

The idea is this. You start with whatever idea you have, then begin asking these three questions: How? Why? What result? For example, you've got a princess locked in a tower. How did she get there? Why is she locked up? What happens as a result? Every answer is a branch. Some branches will end quickly, others will lead you into the rest of your story if you continue to ask the same three questions. Toss in a little, "What could go wrong?" and toss out anything that feels too cliche, and you've got yourself a story.

I did this with a class of highschoolers a year ago, and I think it was their favorite part of the class. It went something like this:

Me: Let's start with something simple. Give me an occupation.

Teacher.
Banker.
Lifeguard.
Swimmer.

Okay, let's go with the banker. What could go wrong at a bank?

It could get robbed.

Sure. I don't think we need to ask why yet, so how might this happen?

A man walks in with a gun and asks for money.
Some men take the bank hostage.
Someone blows up the safe.
Someone inside the bank robs it.

Okay, great. Let's go with someone inside the bank. Who could do that? Who's inside a bank?

Bank tellers.
Security guards.
Managers.

How could one of these folks rob the bank?

The guard could let other robbers inside the bank.
The teller could grab some money off the counter when nobody's looking.
The guard could raise a false alarm and, while everyone's distracted, go into the vault.
...or take money off the counter.
...or take money from someone's pocket.

What about the security guard. Why would he do that?

He hates his job.
He's been planning to rob the bank for months/years, and got hired so he could do it.
He needs the money for his daughter's operation.

I think around here we had to end the class, but hopefully you get the idea. It's really fun to do in a group with a leader - someone asking the questions and picking the most interesting paths to follow. I tried to follow paths that sounded more original to me and had more conflict potential. It's what I try to do with my own stories too.

Try it out and see what you come up with. Better yet, tell me how you brainstorm to get past writer's block.

Endings

I recently received a short story rejection from Beneath Ceaseless Skies. It was a nice rejection; he explained what he liked about the story and what didn't work for him. The more I think about it, the more I realize that the things that didn't work for him were things I didn't like either. One of those things was the ending.

I have a problem with endings. I always have. I can remember getting reports back in 4th grade with all the red pen on the last paragraph. "Needs a better conclusion," it would say.

One problem is I don't plan them well. For all my neuroses about planning ahead, the truth is that I plan the near parts in excellent detail, with increasingly less detail towards the end. So by the time I get there, I am often left with all these plots and subplots crashing together, knowing who wins and who dies, but never knowing how.

This happens a lot in smaller scenes throughout the writing process, and I always figure something out, but for the ending that something has to be really good. That's hard to do when so much of the story has already been decided.

My other problem with endings, I think, is that I don't care about them. Oh, I know how important they are, and my very favorite books are those with amazing endings. What I mean is, when I first fall in love with a story I'm writing, it's never the ending I'm thinking of. It might be the world, or the speculative element, or one of the characters, but it's never the ending.

My Beloved Alpha Reader told me she loves the way I end chapters - could I just end the novel like that? The problem (I told her) is that what makes my chapters are the cliffhangers. I'm real good at cliffhangers. I can pull a decent scene- or chapter-ending cliffhanger out of almost anything. But if I ended my book like that, I'd make a lot of readers mad (including myself - I hate books that end with blaring cliffhangers).

Okay, so here we are. You're all readers. What makes a good ending to you? I know the basics - the logistics, if you will: It must answer most, if not all, of the questions raised earlier in the story. It must make sense, arising naturally from the plot and characters (e.g. no deus ex machina). It should not be boringly predictable (though it doesn't always have to have a major twist). What else, then? These things make an ending not bad, but what do you think makes one good? What are your favorite endings and why?

(Be kind with your answers to that last one. Mark spoilers appropriately.)

The Pillar of Skulls

Near the gate between the first and second layer of Hell, there lies a grotesque monument of the damned. Towering more than a mile high, howling and writhing with eternal torment, is a terror to match any other in the Nine Hells.

Here lies the Pillar of Skulls. It seethes with the frustration and hatred of a billion souls, moaning and wailing in endless, hopeless agony.

Yet here, too, lies the greatest store of knowledge in all the planes of existence. For among the Pillar's eternal prisoners lie great thinkers, world leaders, teachers, scientists... the entirety of the world's lore and experiences can be found within.

And so once in a great while, a seeker of knowledge will brave Hell itself to speak to the Pillar. But should they survive the charred wasteland, should they avoid the endless legions of Lord Bel's devils, should they escape the watchful eyes of the five-headed Tiamat, they must still contend with the Pillar itself.

When a visitor comes, the billion skulls fight each other to make themselves heard. The surface of the Pillar billows and pulsates, one skull appearing - howling unintelligible obscenities - then disappearing as quickly to be replaced by another.

Even should the seeker find the right one - a soul who has the information they are after - there is a price. For every skull on the Pillar, every soul doomed to live out eternity in the Nine Hells, wants only one thing. "I'll tell you what I know," they will say. "I'll do anything you ask. Just, please, take me off this pillar. Please, I...

"I just want to be published."

Keeping Up With the Internet

Depending on how you count, there are over a hundred social networking sites out there and God only knows how many blogs. It's impossible to keep up with everything, even if you cut out all the crap you don't care about.

My own personal slice consists of 57 blogs, 23 Twitterers, and 244 Facebook friends (at current count). I interact in these venues as well, writing tweets, commenting on Facebook and blogs, as well as updating two blogs of my own.

I don't have the time to do all this, of course. I've got five kids and a novel to write. I want to share with you a couple of tools that have made my life simpler and (if you haven't already found similar tools) can maybe make yours simpler too.

Google Reader. In the year 2009, you have to have some kind of RSS reader (similarly, if you have a website, you have to have a feed - I'm looking at you, Homestar!). I like Google Reader because (a) it checks the feeds automatically, (b) it feels like Gmail, and (c) I heart Google - they may be the New Evil, but they know how to do a GUI.
Twitterfox. I started using Twitter while looking for a way to update my Facebook status and Gmail status at the same time.* I stayed there because it connected me to certain friends and the cost in time to use it was small - but only after I found Twitterfox. There are about a thousand ways to read and send Twitter updates, but I like this one because (a) it's a Firefox extension, so I don't have to open another app to use it and (b) it's quiet and unobtrusive (once you tell it not to pop-up a window).
Ping.fm. I like status updates. They're quick and informative. It started when some friends wrote Gmail statuses that started with "is" (as in "Adam Heine is..."). Facebook was doing the same thing when I got there. When I got around to Twitter, I found myself writing 3 separate updates to separate groups of friends. Ping.fm is a solution to that. Now I can write a single update (sent through Gmail chat even) that automatically gets sent to wherever I want.*

If these tools don't do it for you, I bet you can find some tools that do. Examine your internet surfing for areas of redundancy or wasted effort (e.g. manually checking 10-20 blogs to see if they've updated yet), then look for tools that solve it. If you look hard enough, I can almost guarantee someone has written the right tool(s) for you.

* I have found a way to get Twitter to update Gmail, but it still works less than half the time. I'm hoping they fix the problem soon, or ping.fm figures out a solution. (You hear me, Google Titans? I want you to work with other developers!).

Skipping Ahead

If you didn't already know, I'm mildly OCD. I hate reading books out of order. I won't watch a movie sequel if I haven't seen the first one. I don't even want to watch a TV series unless I start from the beginning. If I'm going to get into a story, I don't want to miss a thing.

That may help you to understand what happened to me the other day.

I was writing chapter 20, in which protagonist and friend are escaping from a pirate lord's prison. As in many of Air Pirate's chapters, there is a fight scene.* Fight scenes always stick me. Mainly because the outline says something to the effect of "Sam and Kiro fight. Sam wins," and I realize I don't know how he wins.

I'm aware that one way of getting through writer's block is to skip ahead to another scene. So I tried that. I started to type "[fight scene]" where the scene would go, intending to move on to what happened after the fight.

But hard as I tried, I just couldn't do it.

I've identified two reasons I couldn't skip ahead. The first is quite sane: I use past events to inform future ones. Minor details that I think of during one scene will come up again later once I'm aware of them. Like in one airship escape sequence (this one, in fact), the police hit Protag's ship with a harpoon-like weapon I made up on the spot. Also made up on the spot was how the protagonists then cut the cables to free themselves, leaving harpoons and severed cables hanging from the airship.

In the next scene, I realized these cables had to be pulled out, so Sam enlisted Hagai to do so. This made for an excellent opportunity to showcase Hagai's low self-esteem and uselessness, and it gave me a good place for Hagai to have a conversation with another character.

Now obviously these sorts of threads and connections can be added after the fact in revision, but as I've touched on before, I'd rather not if I can help it. I'd rather get it right, or at least mostly right, the first time.

But the second reason I couldn't skip ahead - and more likely the real reason - is far less sane. I couldn't make myself skip ahead because, just as if I'd accidentally hit Next on my DVD remote, I felt like I missed part of the action. I wanted to know what happened.

That's right. You think I'm writing for others, but the truth is I'm writing this story, and probably all the others, because I want to know what happens next. I guess that's not so insane. I'm writing for me as much as anyone.

* Out of 28 chapters, 18 have either a fight scene or a chase scene. What can I say? I like action.

Firebrand Literary's Query Holiday

Firebrand Literary, an agency known for doing things differently, is having a query holiday. For one month they are not accepting query letters, but rather first chapters (as Word attachments, no less!).

I'm kind of excited about this because I queried them in my first transport, which means (1) I thought they looked like a really good fit for me and (2) they received my crappiest query letter and sample pages. So I'm glad for this second chance with them.

If you also want to get on this, do it fast. I only just found out about it, and the month-long query holiday ends January 15th. So get there fast!

UPDATE: I just noticed their website calls this their "first annual" query holiday. So I guess this is going to be a recurring thing, which makes it even cooler.

My First Published Words

A couple of weeks ago, I announced my debut on Thaumatrope. Multiple people informed me that this makes me a professional writer, but I just remembered that a small piece of my writing has already been published for payment long ago.

In a past life, I was a scripter for the role-playing game, Planescape: Torment. A scripter is like a programmer, except instead of writing complicated graphical algorithms, I wrote simple scripts that told each character and creature what to do. Perhaps the simplest example being:

IF See( PC )
THEN
Attack( PC )
END

I was also responsible for putting the levels together. Designers designed them and wrote the dialogue, artists drew everything, and I put the pieces together so it worked. On one level, I required a piece of dialogue to inform the player that he'd have to leave his party behind before entering the Immortal's Tomb. The designer told me to write it myself. I present to you the first 72 words of my publishing career (click to enlarge):

It's wordy, I know. I mean, I wrote it ten years ago. And anyway, in a game that contains an estimated 800,000 words, seventy-two is negligible. But these are my first words written and published for money.

So I guess I've been professional for a decade now and didn't know it.

Air Pirates Query on Evil Editor

Evil Editor has done a critique (slash-parody) of my latest query letter for Air Pirates. No, the novel isn't finished, but I followed my own suggestion and wrote the query early to help me focus the novel. Evil Editor mentioned being nearly out of queries a little while ago, so I figured I'd see what he and his minions thought. What the heck, you know?

Some notes on how Evil Editor works. At the beginning of the post, he does a "Guess the Plot" feature, where various minions (i.e. blog readers) send in fake plots based solely on the title. Evil Editor then puts his critiques (and sometimes pictures) in the query letter in a different color so you can see them. These are mainly just to be funny. The really useful information comes in Evil Editor's notes at the end and the minions' comments afterwards.

Anyway, go ahead and read it. Let me know what you think, either there or here.

Bad for Borders

Depending on what cross-section of the internet you pay attention to, you may or may not know that things are bad for Borders. Really bad. Like, there-might-not-be-any-Borders-in-a-couple-of-months bad.

It's scaring some people in the publishing world. The blogging agents I read keep saying don't worry about it, people will still read books. I tend to agree with them, and as an as-yet-unpublished author, I'm not worried. Not yet. I can't find the link, but one blogging agent said that unpublished authors should push harder than ever, because by the time their books are selling (i.e. in a year or two) the economy will have turned back again and people will want things to read.

Anyway, here's a couple of other recent links on this topic. Agent Joshua Bilmes points out a few stores that are closing post-Christmas (the beginning of the end or not?), and Agent Jenny Rappaport talks about what "the end" may or may not look like if Borders does go under.

Querying Travelers, Postmortem

My previous postmortem was for the process of writing Travelers. It occurred to me there were lessons I learned in querying it as well. Although technically I'm not finished with the querying process, I'm close enough that I think I can examine it.

What Went Right

Querying statistics - As I've said before, I like statistics. Keeping track of who I've queried, what batch they were in, what I sent them, and if/when they responded not only helped me to stay organized, but also kept me going. I don't like rejections, but at least when they come I get to update my Excel sheet.
Queried in batches - A lot of people recommended sending queries in batches of 5-10. This is extremely good advice. It gives you a chance to evaluate your query package based on the responses you're getting. It is much easier to stay organized and make sure you send the right things to the right people. And it gives you a more-or-less steady flow of incoming responses.
Enlisted help with snail mail - I have queried something like 60 agents, half of which prefer or require snail mail. I live in Thailand, making this an expensive venture (plus we only have A4 paper out here, and I'd hate to get rejected because my paper was the wrong size). Fortunately, I had my friend MattyDub to help me with that. I couldn't have done this without him.

What Went Wrong

Queried all the best agents first - As you research agents, you'll find that some of them look like perfect fits for you and what you like to write. You should be able to separate the agents you query into an A list and a B list. Then in each batch you send out, you should have a mix of agents from both lists, so that when you get to your third or fourth batch, you still have some A list agents to query with your new, improved query letter. I didn't do this. So when my query letter was finally good enough to grab someone's attention, all my A list agents were used up.
Not enough research - I did a lot of research before writing my query letter, but I could have done more. Not just research on agents, but mostly research on writing query letters. If you're thinking about sending out that query letter, here's what I recommend you do first:

On Nathan Bransford's blog, read every post listed under "The Essentials" on the sidebar.
Read at least 100 posts on Query Shark and Miss Snark and the "Face-Lifts" on Evil Editor. When you start to see patterns, don't stop. When you are able to predict patterns, then try fixing your own letter.

Not enough critiques - Before I sent out my first query letter, I had some of my friends read it. As much as I love them, this wasn't very useful (except for one friend who had taken a class related to the business of writing). What I needed was a serious critique group. There are lots of these online, but here's a couple that I've found useful. These are places you can throw your query at again and again until you get it right (and you should):
- The forums on AQConnect, specifically the Query Critique Corner.
- Evil Editor (again). The turnaround time is pretty quick here. Query Shark is another good one, but she's way backed up at the moment, and you probably won't see your letter anytime soon.

Published on Thaumatrope

I just got a story accepted on Thaumatrope, to be published April 12th. Yeah, Easter. I'm pretty excited about that, and I got paid a whole $1.20 for it. You can subscribe to the e-zine here.

So does this make me a professional writer now?

Dealing With Critiques

Over at SFNovelists.com, Kelly McCullough suggested the attitude that "whatever book or story you are revising or getting critiqued at this very moment, is a solid piece of work that can and will be improved if you work at it and learn from comments."

That's the ideal, and I hope to have that attitude one day. Unfortunately, my attitude towards critiques tends to mirror the stages of grief:

Denial: "I don't need anyone's help critiquing my story. Heck, I could probably sell it right now."
Anger: "The story's perfect! They just don't get it!"
Bargaining: "Do I really need to make that fix? Maybe a smaller fix will be good enough."
Depression: "This story's terrible. I'll never get it right. I might as well throw it away and write something else."
Acceptance: "I can do this. I can make it better, I just need to work through the critiques one comment at a time."

Actually, it's a little unnerving how closely this mirrors my actual reactions - like getting critiqued is some kind of life tragedy. That's totally the wrong attitude to have, I know, but I haven't yet had enough practice with it to get better.

Really, Really, Really Short Fiction

Twitter: a free social networking/micro-blogging service, that allows its users to send and read other users' updates of up to 140 characters in length.

Thaumatrope: A sci-fi/fantasy/horror online fiction magazine that uses Twitter to accept and publish speculative fiction of 140 characters or less.

What a crazy, great idea. They pay authors $1.20 per story. That's almost two plates of Pad Thai. I just might get in on this.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention, you can read Thaumatrope for free. Either on their website or, for instant gratification, via Twitter. And because it's Twitter, you can get these stories sent to your cell phone if you want.

Ship Names and the Definite Article

The other day, I was trying to figure out if it was grammatically correct to use, or not use, the definite article "the" in front of a ship's name. This is something that never occurred to me until I saw Firefly. In one episode, Inara corrects an Alliance officer on the use of the definite article with regards to their ship - "Serenity," not "the Serenity." Grammatically, I found no consensus, but here's what I found out.

The only really useful sites I found were style guides. The US Navy Style Guide says don't use it, ever. But that's a relatively recent decision and is meant primarily for formal use, and fiction is not necessarily formal. According to Wikipedia's naming conventions, "the" is not needed, but neither is it wrong.

Ironically, the most useful discussion I found was in a forum of Wookieepedia* editors. Ironic because it's the least official of the three, but it's the most useful to me because it's the one most closely related to fiction.

Their final decision is not really relevant, but the discussion raised some interesting points. In particular, they could not decide to "always" or "never" use the definite article, for primarily two reasons: the Millenium Falcon and Slave I.** Try to use the definite article with Boba Fett's ship, or remove it from Han Solo's, and you will understand.

So for now, I'm going to make the decision on a case by case basis and keep track of what I decide in (yet another) document to help me stay consistent. Basically, I'm going to pick the one that feels right, or sounds the least stupid, and stick with it.

* Wikipedia for the Star Wars universe.

** Those weren't the only reasons, but they suffice to summarize the point.

Travelers Postmortem: What Went Wrong

On Saturday I talked about what went right while writing Travelers. Today I have some things that went wrong.

Not Enough Planning
This is controversial. Some writers prefer to just write and see what happens, fixing it later. I'm not one of them. My goal is to streamline my writing process until there are 5 steps: plan, write, revise, peer review, sell - each performed but once. Unrealistic? Perhaps. I won't beat myself over the head if I have to revise more than once, but I will figure out what went wrong to avoid it in the future.

That said, I didn't plan Travelers well enough. Characters popped up from nowhere. Necessity dictated their existence, but when I started thinking about their backgrounds I began to like them better than my protagonists.

That's part of the fun of writing, I know. But it only served to highlight how little I developed my protagonists. I just didn't care about them. In the beginning they weren't even characters, they were just points of view, giving me an excuse to explain this strange, decrepit future to the reader. I tried to fix it in revision, but I think the problem still shows. That could've been prevented if I had planned the characters and the plot out in more detail before I started writing.

The lack of planning also reared its head in certain climactic moments. I'd throw characters into a crisis and, in the outline, I'd write the ever-helpful "They escape" or "They fight and protag wins" without ever thinking about how they win. It wrote me into a corner a couple of times, and I don't like corners. When I write, I wanna run.

No Thought for Theme Until the End
This has happened to me more times than I'd like to admit. I get to the end of a story (short or long) and find myself asking, "How do I end this? What's this story about anyway?" I was just writing a bunch of cool stuff that happens, like an action movie. But like an action movie, it lacked any punch or purpose.

I never really understood theme back in highschool. I'm only starting to get it now, and realizing that it's something I should think about before I outline the plot, and then again everytime I write anything.

Useless Statistics
When I started Travelers, I didn't know what would be important. I chose to keep track of word count, # of pages, # of scenes, and dates of drafted chapters and revised chapters. The word count and dates were good, like I said, but # of pages was meaningless (being based on my personal writing format, which is very different from manuscript format) as was # of scenes.

Another problem was that I counted words only at the end of every chapter, and my chapters were really long. It would've been better to keep track of word count per week or month, in addition to chapter dates and word counts.

No Deadlines for Beta Readers
I had two beta readers. One finished reading the manuscript in 3 weeks, the other took 9 months. At the time, it honestly didn't bother me. The feedback was more important to me, and I figured it didn't cost me any time because I just worked on my next book while I waited.

In retrospect, with 35 rejections and no requests of any kind, it didn't cost me anything to wait, and it taught me a valuable lesson. Next time the beta readers are getting a deadline, and I'm moving on without them if I have to.

Travelers Postmortem: What Went Right

In the gaming and business worlds (two of my past lives), we would do postmortems at the end of a project to determine what went right, what went wrong, and how we could improve our process. I've unofficially done that on my own with Travelers, but "unofficially" means "not very well," so I'll do it more officially here now. It'll help me to think about my writing process, and I hope it can help others too.

I'll start with what went right. This isn't so much about the specifics of the story as it is about my writing process in general.

Developed Character Backgrounds Beforehand
For every major character, I made a chart like the one below. The information in these charts is out-of-date, poorly thought-out, and mostly never used, but if I didn't do it then every character would have been much flatter than they are. Knowing who the character is supposed to be, and used to be, helps when I'm writing and thinking to myself, "What would they do here?"

Random Passages
Before I started officially writing the manuscript, there were a number of scenes that seemed clear in my head. Often they were the ones that excited me most (my candy bar scenes), though sometimes they were scenes from a character's past, or scenes from a future book that may never be written.

Whenever I got stuck in my outline, or I got bored of the story or some character, I'd go write one of these scenes in a file called "Random Passages," prefixed with some note about the context of the scene. For Travelers, I wrote 9 such scenes over the course of the novel. Six of them ended up in the novel. Four of those were rewritten to the point of being unrecognizable (and one of the remaining 2 "scenes" was just a line of dialogue, three sentences long).

Even though they were almost never used as-is, writing these scenes kept me interested in the story and gave me a place to play with the characters before they were "committed" in the story. I read the scenes now and groan because they're bad and make no sense to the story anymore, but I also read them with fondness because I remember how much I enjoyed writing them.

Microsoft Word's Document Map Feature
I learned this during my life at Black Isle. Here's a quick run-down of the feature.

I didn't use the document map for an outline, though. The top-level headings were my chapters, and the sub-headings were the first lines of my scenes. It worked amazingly well to keep me organized and to remember where everything was.

Word Count Statistics
Most authors I've heard of keep word count statistics. I love statistics anyway, so for me, seeing my word count increase and dates of how long it took me to write a chapter kept me going. One of the things that motivated me to finish chapters was that I knew I got to update my stats file when it was done. It's geeky, but it worked.

Alpha and Beta Readers
Beta readers are the folks who read your manuscript before it gets sent out. For some authors, they read it when the draft is finished, for others they read it as each chapter is done. I have both, and call the former my beta readers and the latter, alpha.

For me, I had one alpha reader - my wife. She was both my encouragement and my insurance that I was on the right track. My beta readers were immeasurably helpful as well (in particular because my wife is not a sci-fi reader), but I don't think I would've gotten to the beta stage at all if I didn't have an alpha reader to push me through.

What's the Point of Writing Queries?

By and large, authors hate the query process. It's like you just spent years crafting "the perfect novel," only to be rejected by someone who never read it, who only read your short letter that you wrote in a day.

When I started this, I honestly thought query letters were just a formality. It was only after I realized that agents judge authors by the quality of their query that I started to hate the process. "Just read my stuff!" I cried at my computer screen. "I'm good for it!"

But no matter how we feel about them, query letters are a necessary evil. Agents get hundreds of these things a week. They can't read hundreds of manuscripts, or even sample pages, in a week and expect to get anything else done (like, I don't know, sell novels). They have no choice but to make snap judgments based on a 1-page pitch.

But more than that, I'm learning that the agents are right. They already know this, so I guess I'm speaking to the authors (besides, what agents spend their time on this blog? Pah!). If you can't write a solid, gripping, concise query letter, then chances are you can't write a good novel either.

Don't hang me yet! Hear me out!

We tend to think that writing a query and a novel are two separate skills, but they're not. They aren't the same skill, but they do overlap considerably. Sentence structure, word choice, clarity, word economy, etc. are just as important in a novel as in a query.

In learning how to write query letters, my novel writing has improved as well. I find myself being more concise, choosing words more intentionally, focusing on clarity and logic flow. I've also found that in focusing on what's important to the story for the query, it keeps me focused in the novel.

The biggest mistake writers make in queries is trying to tell everything that happens, losing focus on what's important. If can't stay focused in the query chances are you'll lose focus in the novel too, though it will be more difficult to see.

Finally, before you decide to execute me, remember that I said "chances are." It's still possible to write terrible queries and amazing novels, just as it's possible to write amazing queries and terrible novels. But by and large, the agents have a point; our query writing skills say a lot about our writing skills in general.

And in the end, if I, as an author, dismiss any aspect of writing as unimportant - if I am unwilling to learn how to write a query letter well because it "has nothing to do with writing good novels" - how good of a writer can I really be anyway?

Workspace

When I was writing Travelers, I usually only had a couple of documents open: the manuscript and an outline. I'd open other files as needed, like if I needed to find some old notes or update my word count statistics, but it was rare.*

The other day, I was working on Air Pirates, and one of my kids came up and said (as teenagers will), "Wow! You've got a lot of stuff open!" I have the taskbar expanded to double, and at any given time it's packed with manuscripts, world docs, outlines, brainstorming notes... Well, let me just show you an example:

I mean, just in that screenshot, I've got 2 time management docs (TODO and Writing Statistics), 4 story docs (manuscript, timeline, outline, character bible), 6 world docs and notes, plus the directory they're contained in and Firefox. That's normal. Sometimes I'll also open "Details to Remember,"** "Random Passages," or any of 100*** other files containing various notes on different story-related topics.

I don't feel disorganized yet, but I can sense that I'm getting close. If I have to write three books in this world, I may have to find a better way to manage all of this stuff.

* For example, at the time I only kept track of word count each time I finished a chapter. Travelers only has 11 chapters and an epilogue, and it took me three years to write. So I only got to open this file about once every 3 months.

** An increasingly obsolete document in which I attempt to keep track of little details, like how much money the protagonist has on him, and which leg was broken of a particular minor character.

*** One hundred twenty three, at the moment. Character notes, maps, old dead stories in the same world, old drafts, early outlines... I even have a flash animation of the world, its 3 moons, and 2 suns.

Elements of Fiction: Why?

I've been reading this book, Blue Like Jazz, where Donald Miller talks about his Christian journey in decidedly non-religious terms. It's refreshing, and I highly recommend it, whatever your beliefs.

At one point, he talks about a lecture he went to on the elements of literature - setting, character, conflict, climax, and resolution - and he (and I) began to wonder why? Why do stories have to have these elements? Nobody invented them. Nobody said, "This is how it shall be done," and so we all do it that way. These elements are in the core of our being. Humans of all cultures identify with stories that contain these elements and have trouble with stories that do not (literary fiction, I'm looking at you).

The real reason (and this isn't my idea, but Miller's) is that these elements speak to things inherent in the human condition. Let's take a look at them.

Setting. This one is obvious. The fact that we exist means we exist somewhere. We cannot experience life without a setting in which to experience it.

Character. Likewise, there is no life but it has characters in it. Even the most secluded hermit has himself in his own story.

Conflict. Life sucks; it has hard things in it from the beginning. Pain. Loss. We want something, but there are always obstacles. There is no life without conflict.

Climax. As we face more conflict and more obstacles, eventually things come to a make-or-break point. Will I ask her out? Will I try out for the team? Will I propose? Will I win the contest? Will I have a baby? We must make a choice, we must act out that choice, and the experiences and decisions we've made up to that point all play a part in determining how each climax plays out.

Resolution. Whether the climax was a success or failure, the resolution is what happens as a result. Questions are answered. Loose ends are closed. Cliffs are left hanging towards the next climax.

The fact that these are inherent to life suggests some things too. Perhaps our lives build towards a climax and have resolution - maybe death is not an abrupt end to the story, but some kind of climax itself. Perhaps also there is something after death, with conflict and climax of its own (though of what kind, I cannot possibly imagine).

Because if there is one thing that is true about all stories, it's that they never end. After one scene reaches its climax, the conflict-climax-resolution cycle starts again in the next one. A few such scenes, and you've got a chapter. Many chapters, each with their own climax, make a book. Many books make a saga. Sagas make life.

And then it all starts again.

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