Cup of Story

Machine writes story

A trade publisher and sports journalism site are using software to write stories so they can save money on writers.

Here's an excerpt generated from an article:

“Wisconsin jumped out to an early lead and never looked back in a 51-17 win over UNLV on Thursday at Camp Randall Stadium. The Badgers scored 20 points in the first quarter on a Russell Wilson touchdown pass, a Montee Ball touchdown run and a James White touchdown run. Wisconsin’s offense dominated the Rebels’ defense. The Badgers racked up 499 total yards in the game including 258 yards passing and 251 yards on the ground.”

It's seems to have all the facts most people want to know--scores, runs, yardage gained, and players. What's lacking is the human element--the voice. 

I'm not a journalist; I work with fiction writers. But in all the news stories and non-fic articles I've read over my lifetime, there's always a point of view, a human voice relaying information. It's not a listing of facts and figures--there's always a reason behind why that data is relevant to the story (STORY!).

If you want a piece of software to gather data and blurt it out in a more user-friendly way (rather than a spreadsheet or graph), than I can see how this might be useful. But as a means to tell the story of the event or process or historical moment? Not even close to the human element.

 

World Building tips

You've got a big epic fantasy with lots of cultures and nationalities from Midnight Elves to Sandbox Snifters. But the feedback you've gotten sounds like this: "Your world's a little thin." "I'm not convinced." "I'd like to see your characters inhabit your world more."

What does it mean and how can you fix it (or avoid responses like that)?

You could break your world down into components:

Culture: fashion, food, language, superstitions, traditions, music/art/literature/dance

History: past and present, ancient, who controls it (did the conquerers rewrite history)

Religion: strong, weak, evolved, many systems, none at all, rites, taboos, rituals

When you consider your cultures, be sure to flavor your entire world with your choices--link them to your characters' backgrounds, the choices they make, the food they eat, the clothes they wear. If all of your characters come from the same nation and that nation is at war with a border country, how do they feel about the war? Are they pacifists, nationalists, extremists? Why do they make these choices? Their language should reflect their beliefs, morals, and ethics (there's a great chance at creating conflict and a plot thread if people within your group disagree).

History can also heavily flavor your characters' background. If the borders have flowed back and forth over the centuries with each nation falling to the other at one point in time, there might be a prejudice against those with mixed heritages. Or maybe they are the stronger ethnicity and the "pure" bloodlines are thought to be weak and closed-minded. Perhaps there have never been wars between armies, but wars of religion with holy leaders waging a social morals war within the city. Maybe there's an ancient tradition or rite that has always been feared, but no one will call for its abolishment because it has become the social norm (and your society does not tolerate anyone who rocks the boat).

Religion can play a huge role in mythic fantasies--gods, demons, spirits, a power source. Not all of your characters should feel exactly the same about your belief system. And your system can be a background color rather than a focal plot point.

Language, superstitions, taboos can be shown in dialog, clothing (what's acceptable or not), actions (i.e. Touching palms to palms is a social flub, shows how unsophisticated you are--greetings between strangers is a light touch on the right shoulder, only; a single man between the ages of 16-30 must be escorted at all times or else be considered a predator; aristocrats of a certain pedigree must always carry a fan and a coin purse to distribute small coins to peasants or else be considered miserly and socially unsophisticated). Create anything and then have your characters act accordingly. You may think of a million things to fill your world, but only show what's relevant to your scene, your characters' point of view, and your plot.

Your novel should not be a history of your nations, but a story with a plot and characters overcoming challenges. World building just swallows the reader and thrusts them into your vision so they can smell, taste, hear, feel, and experience your worlds alongside your characters. It has to be immersive and details will help your readers envision it the way you want.

 

Friday Reads--Dragonbreath

 

What is it: An illustrated kid's book series

What's it about: Danny Dragonbreath is the sole mythical creature in a school of reptiles and amphibians who goes on all kinds of adventures.

Why I like it: Awesome artwork, hilarious writing, and snarky humor that appeals to my inner 8-year-old. And my son thinks it's hilarious that I laugh along with him at the crazy stuff that happens to Danny and his best friend, Wendell.

Wendell is a nerdy iguana who does not share the same devil-may-care attitude that Danny has, but he's dragged along on various adventures all the same. The comedy is priceless, and there's just the right balance of danger and mystery to keep the pace bumping along.

In the first book, Dragonbreath, Danny is tasked with writing a paper about the ocean. Wendell refuses to help him, so Danny goes to visit his sea-serpent cousin (Danny's family is made up of all sorts of mythological critters) who takes them to see all sorts of neat things--a coral reef, a sunken ship, the lower depths where they almost get eaten by a giant squid. 

The other books in the series are Attack of the Ninja Frogs, Curse of the Were-Wiener (my favorite so far), Lair of the Bat Monster, and No Such Thing as Ghosts.

What I didn't like: I love these books, but I had a difficult time finding the first two at any local store. I finally stumbled upon a single copy at a Barnes & Noble (maybe they're just super popular and demand is high). Be aware that they're in hardcover only and seem costly for their size (although they are entirely illustrated, but still, I wished these came in paperback and didn't cost so much).

Final thoughts: If you like quirky odd-couple repartee, adventure and snark, you might really enjoy this series.

More can be found at Ursula Vernon's website.

 

 

A meaning behind editor rejections

So you send out your manuscript and you get back a few rejections.

 "It just didn't grab me."

 "Thanks, but not for us at this time."

 "Lovely, but no thanks." 

What could this mean?! Does it have anything to do with your writing? Skill level? Plot, concept? Writers writhe in agony and seethe with the fire-of-unknowing. If editors want writers to be better, why don't editors tell the writers how to make it better so that they'll accept the manuscript and offer a deal?

There are lots of reasons why the acquisitions editor isn't saying anything beyond a noncommittal rebuff.

1. The manuscript was unacceptable for all the reasons writers need to put in their hours.

2. Editors don't have the time to give you a detailed rejection. Their job is to work on books under contract.

3. Editors aren't going to give away expert advice only to see that manuscript walk over to a competitor.  

"It just didn't grab me."  This could mean any number of things. You plot sagged in the middle; laborious pacing; lack of tension; weak concept; weak characters; not the kind of book editor enjoys (fiction is subjective). How do you know which of these things needs improvement?

 a. If your book lacks tension/sags in the middle/has a slow pace, people will stop reading it. They'll skim, they'll put it down. You want them to groan about staying up too late because they couldn't stop reading! Maybe your book needs some work.

 b. If the book is just not in the editor's taste field, there's nothing you can do about it except to fire your agent, who should have known better. That's what the agent is for, which is why having an agent isn't necessarily going to land your book on the right desk. I expressed widely that I was not interested in talking-cat-fantasies. And yet, I still got submissions where a cat was the lead character. Or the heroine had a cat companion who was her "spirit guide" or whathaveyou. See, not for me.

 

"Thanks but not for us at this time."

 a. Could mean the house already has a lot of similar types of stories in the pipeline. A monthly list of the same kind of titles isn't good for a mass market publisher trying to net a wide audience.

 b. Could mean the house already has too many First Time novels. It's very risky to take on too many unknowns.

 c. Could mean the money is tight and no one is taking any risk at all--they're only renewing current contracts with current authors. But they don't want to look like penny-pinchers.

 d. The always wonderful excuse that the editor is overbooked and overworked and just doesn't have the time to spend on stroking another fragile author ego. Editor might just want a low-drama professional to whom she doesn't have to explain every nuance of the business, someone who already knows the process.

 

"Lovely, but no thanks."

 This could be the generic No Thanks. It could include all of the above. Either way, it didn't grab the editor enough to make her go to bat for it. Wowing the editor, grabbing the editor, thrilling the editor--it all means the same thing: the editor doesn't feel strongly enough about it to start the internal process of convincing the rest of her company that it'll make money.

 And let's be honest, sometimes, your manuscript might not be up to standard. You might need a lot more work despite what your agent thinks (again, fiction is subjective). In the end, if you keep getting rejections, you haven't come to a screeching halt. Put your book out in digital format and see how readers feel about it. If it doesn't sell, then maybe it means you need a lot more practice (either in writing or in selling, but either way, you can be in control).

 

More Gatekeeper myth

Mike Shatzkin writes about how writers shouldn't oppose agency pricing.

First, I have a hard time agreeing with Shatzkin's "union" metaphor. Writers aren't paying "union dues". That 15% is compensation earned by the agent for brokering the deal. The writer doesn't pay a dime--the agent works for the writer.

 "It will be easier for authors (through agents) in the future to improve the split than it would be for the publishers to raise prices in the future to get authors more money."

 I agree--if the split for eBook royalties were fair for the authors, then yes, the author would make more money. But why wait for the future? Why aren't agents working NOW for their writers to get a fair return? 

 "But writers will also make less money when there is less to divide, not more. All writers, whether they’re among the fortunate ones that have a publisher pushing them or whether they’re trying to do it themselves, should be grateful that publishers are doing their damnedest to maintain prices and the perception of value for writers’ work."

Sorry, the writers should be thanking the general public for taking the risk the publishers won't. The whole perception that the publisher is establishing the value just points back to the Myth of the Gatekeeper.

The only time I think about the publisher's price is when the eBook costs more than the paperback. That really burns me up. The costs of a printed book are acceptable knowing that the physical item incurs costs--paper, manufacturing, shipping, warehousing, distributing, overhead. The digital format costs labor and overhead. And that's all. To protest that there are more costs is delusional.

 The only time I think about the value a publisher brings to a book I'm considering purchasing is where I can buy it; can I get it at my local store? Oh, wait. They're closing. They never have stock. They don't have the backlist titles I want. They're selling eReaders now instead of paper books. Huh.

 No wonder Amazon is growing.

Once upon a time, the "brand" of the publishers was clear. Editorial direction was cleaner. But not any more. I don't know one reader who complains about a "brand".  They buy the author they like regardless of the publisher. I don't think Stephen King lost fans just because he went from Penguin/Viking to Simon & Schuster. I bet most of them didn't even know it happened.

 Echo chamber. We talk a lot about the industry, and Shatzkin is a smart guy, but the majority of readers don't even know or care that there's a change happening. If we stepped outside and talked to people who just read books (don't write, don't publish, don't edit), all they care about is whether they can find what they like at a price they can live with. At the end of the day, it still boils down to writers reaching readers who will pay. If the publishers and bookstores continue to drag their feet, the writers and their audience will go around them.

 

Greg Bear's multimedia art

Greg Bear, Neal Stephenson and others are creating a serial novel. There's video, art, all sorts of neat stuff.

 

3 Tips to Banish Writer's Block

Writer's Block, oh the bane of the creative mind. Oh the foolish crap we fill our heads with.

There's no such thing as Writer's Block. What you're suffering from is a lack of planning or fear… or a fear that you haven't planned well enough. But you can overcome it! Here are three things to think about:

1. Basic Story Idea. What's your book about? You should be able to answer this in a paragraph. I'm not talking about details or world or concept. I'm talking about the truly basic "My book is about a boy who saves the kingdom from an evil sorcerer." If you can't write it in a nutshell, you're not ready yet for narrative.

 2. Beginning, middle and end. Do you know your ending? What happens in the middle? Even if your ending is as simple as "Hero saves the world from utter destruction", that's an ending you might not have thought of before. Of course, as you start to work your way backwards, you might end up refining your ending to have more details. Try writing it out in a simple list, like this:

 Beginning: Boy's family is killed by sorcerer. Orphaned boy is adopted by ex-soldier, who trains him to be a fighter.

Middle: Boy thinks he can kill sorcerer, although he's far from ready, and nearly gets killed himself. Mentor dies saving boy's life. Boy is saved from death by sorcerer's apprentice who want to team up for revenge.

End: Boy and apprentice save the world!

 3. Characters' goals: what do they want, why do they want it, what will they do once they get it? Again, if you can't answer these things, you have work to do.

Boy wants to kill the sorcerer who murdered his family. He thinks revenge is a way of honoring his family, as taught by his ex-soldier mentor (soldier has his own list of goals). If boy succeeds in killing sorcerer, boy will have achieved life's goal and he hasn't thought what he'll do when he's done. But boy will find family and love by the end of the book softening his lust for vengeance and giving him a choice for a more fulfilling life.

 

If you already know the highlights of plotting--you have a beginning, middle and end, you know your characters--and you're still stuck in a chapter, try doing this:

 a. Take away something your character wants. Or give it to them, but upon receipt, new problems appear. This is a good way to keep the action moving forward to the inevitable conclusion. Hero needs to get magical item (sword, stone, pendant, etc.). Maybe he gets it, but it's cursed or maybe it's not exactly what he needs because he believed a lie. Maybe the item is exactly what he needs, but his trusted friend is actually a double agent and steals it from him.

b. Kill a major character. That should shake things up.

c. Dial back on your world building/concept explaining. Don't get bogged down in your world at the expense of your plot. Keep it simple by thinking What happens next? 

I like the image of dominoes. For every tile you set up, you're adding to your picture. When the reader turns to page one, the reader starts a chain reaction that will reveal your picture when they're done. Satisfying and lovely.

 

Amazon vs. bookstores matters to writers

Interesting interview with Mike Shatzkin. It's an audio clip, but take a few minutes to listen. Shatzkin's an in-the-know industry guy, who, according to his bio, has been in the business for a long long time.

It's too bad no one has any solid information on whether or not Amazon is making their ebooks an exclusive to Kindle, which is a deal breaker for B&N (who would like to sell their Nooks), who will not (most likely) sell AmazonPrint (I'm making up this word for sanity's sake) in their stores unless the digital format of those titles are also available for the Nook. So many assumptions and guesses, but there's not really any solid information.

Shatzkin didn't talk about the book distributors like Ingram and Baker & Taylor. They have a stake in the Amazon-->brick&mortar stores, too. Or do they? Will Amazon make deals with Costco and Target direct? Will they make a deal with Kroger foods to get paperbacks into grocery chains? And how about those stores in the airports? Barnes & Noble has a huge chunk of space, but they're not the only ones involved in pushing product. And no one's talked about libraries, which is of interest to readers (let's not forget about all those people who don't have a Kindle/Nook/idevice/home computer), but not so much to sellers, of course.

The thing I'm most curious about is how Amazon's contracts with writers differ from the other big publishers. If they're doing the same type of legacy deals--other than a guarantee for a digital format (and this is only a guess)--then what exactly is the draw for a writer? What's the advantage for a writer to go with Amazon than Random House or Penguin?

If the terms of the deal for a writer is to be seen ONLY on Kindle and in the Amazon store (as a paper copy), wouldn't they be losing out on a bunch of potential sales? As a writer, I'd want my book to be available in as many places as possible including all digital devices (iPad/iPhone, Kobo, Nook, Kindle, some Google or Microsoft or RIM device that hasn't yet been launched--that's another thing; what if some other digital reader comes out that is shinier than the current ones. Will the decision to buy a device be based on the retailer of my favorite author? Once upon a time, I didn't think about whether or not I'd go to B&N or Borders to buy my books. Both places were selling the books at about the same price, so it didn't matter who was selling it, generally speaking).

And if the money flows to the writer, and the sales outlets are diminished (if AmazonPrint books are sold only on Amazon), than wouldn't that be a disadvantage for a writer?

Maybe, in the long run, it doesn't matter. Maybe the order-online-deliver-to-your-mailbox way of getting books is going to become the dominant sales generator. We won't know until Amazon starts to reveal to the public how exactly their printed books will be bought (or unless writers who contract with them start to blab about their contracts or the differences between their deals with Amazon and their other publishers).

Thanks to The Passive Voice for blogging about this.

Writers who know business

Dean Wesley Smith, writer, publisher, teacher. Along with Kris Rusch, he's written a gazillion books across many genres. His Killing the Sacred Cow of Publishing series is MUST READ material if you're considering a career as a writer. There are also some very smart people responding in the comments, so set aside some time to read it all.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch is also a multi-genre writer and teacher. Her Business Rusch series is also chock full of good stuff.

Dean and Kris are good people--straight forward, no-nonsense types with solid business credentials. And they're not all anti-Big 6-publishers that you might hear about in the rising indie world.

David Vandagriff, is a lawyer who blogs about publishing and contracts as The Passive Guy. He's got some very good information and throws out a lot of food for thought.

The best advice I've picked up recently is to keep an open mind about the industry. Things are changing quickly, so the best thing you can do as a writer is to educate yourself about the industry, about what it means for you, and don't sell yourself short by signing a contract you don't really understand (or have been told "it's the standard contract") or by giving up any idea of publishing because you can't land an agent or your agent can't land you a contract.

There are readers out there who are looking for you book. Give them a good story, tell them where they can buy it, and they will come.

Print-on-demand instantly

The University of Washington Bookstore, a great indie place to get books in Seattle, has an Espresso Book Machine. The machine prints books on demand. You plug in the title chosen from their catalog and badaboom! You've got a book.

You want a hardcopy of your own work, maybe to carry with you to show that you're a bonafide writer, and ba-bing! You've got a book.

Okay, so you have to live in the Seattle area to take advantage of this, but think of the possiblities! Kiosks at malls! Little boxes for books at the grocery stores (like a Red Box for books). Neat, huh?